EPISODE SUMMARY
A big "THANK YOU" to the guests for sharing their expertise, stories and experience. Thanks to all the listeners for supporting each other. Introduction:
Recap of the year 2022 and the growth of the podcasting industry
Gratitude to guests and listeners for their contributions and support
Behind the Scenes Look at Podcasting:
Discussing the process of podcasting, including recording, editing, and publishing
Highlighting the challenges and rewards of podcasting
My Podcasting Journey:
Sharing personal experiences and lessons learned from the podcasting journey
Discussing the growth and evolution of the podcast over the past year
Expanding My Network:
Discussing the role of podcasting in expanding personal and professional networks
Highlighting the importance of building relationships and community in podcasting
Tools and Systems for Successful Podcasting:
Discussing the tools and systems that have enabled a successful podcasting journey
Highlighting the importance of organization and planning in podcasting
Ode to the Podcasting Community:
Expressing gratitude to the podcasting community for their support and encouragement
Discussing the impact of podcasting on personal and professional growth
Conclusion:
Recap of the key takeaways from the podcasting journey
Encouragement to continue to explore the world of podcasting and the opportunities it presents.
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Below is a transcript of the episode, slightly modified for reading.
PODCAST DETAILED TRANSCRIPT
This is the last episode for 2022. This is your host, Sirisha Kuchimanchi, and I am doing a wrap-up. First of all, I would like to thank our guests. Without them, this podcast would be very challenging to do. They have been incredibly gracious in sharing their expertise and experience and the lessons they learned and their stories for us all to move together forward as a community.
So big shout out and a big thank you to all our. I would also like to thank all our listeners for everything they've given back for their sharing and for enabling this community to move forward. I love hearing from you and would like to continue to hear your engaged responses, how this is impacting you, and what questions you have for us as well. When I look at the Spotify wrap that I just did recently, it shows that we have had 25 episodes over 21 guests. over 600 minutes of content, and it has listed in the top 30% of podcasts on Spotify, and it's getting shared amongst many people. Thank you for doing that. It's also very heartening to hear that it's being listened to in 19 countries. The top five are the United States, India, United Kingdom, Germany, and Ireland. And it's great to see this impact across the globe. So you can see that the footprint is across the North American continent, the Asian continent, and the European continent. I think a lot of us have similar questions, and similar parts we are seeking as we try to achieve our career and life goals, and the message is very resonant amongst the large audience.
So thank you for helping listen to this podcast and for sharing it. This episode is not just about thanking, but also recapping my journey, like behind the scenes of what I have learned in this last year. I started the podcast on August 21. The idea for the podcast came a few months before that, closer to the new year of 2021.
Took a lot of time to figure out what the scope of the podcast was, how to record, how to edit, and how to blog. Everything was new for someone new. And thinking of starting a podcast is more than just interviewing someone or researching a guest. It's about staying consistent. It's about trying to find your niche, a.
Being able to record it, build a community around it, and have to tell you. Editing is the hardest part of it, and there are tools now that I use that have made life much simpler. I've also had a team slowly on board, which helps with social media and some of this, and which is incredibly happy to have them help enable me to produce this podcast.
If you're looking for tools, I use Riverside. FM for recording my podcast. The audio quality is really good. It's meant for the podcasting platform, so if you have resources to invest in, I think a lot of the software I'm suggesting do have some free versions for less content. So those are areas to try. I use Descript. It's D S C R I P T for editing. I find it invaluable. I was just sharing it recently on a podcast that I went on for them to edit theirs as well. It's like editing a Word doc, like an essay that you would edit for school or college you just deleted, and it just deletes all of the staff, including all the fillers and those are like my primary two. I use Canva to produce a lot of the social media and other formats and then put this onto my website and blog so that the information can get disseminated. LinkedIn and Instagram are two large preferred platforms for reaching an audience. I do put some out on YouTube once in a while on Twitter, but Instagram and LinkedIn are where I find my primary audience sitting and being able to engage.
So what have I learned when I started the podcast for those who've asked me, it was a way to give back, a way to volunteer, and also a way to answer a lot of questions Many of us have. Like, how do I get ahead? Who do I ask these questions to ask? How? How do I get answers? What questions do I even ask? So it was a way to share questions and information so others can move without having to go through the same learning process that some of us might have.
So they can go further ahead in their career and also find a community and audience to understand that other people are facing similar situations and they are not alone. I think that the other part of a lot of our journeys is we are never sure if there's someone else experiencing the same thing or in a similar situation and it's always a hard thing to know that you're not on your own trying to figure all this out. So podcasting has given me many things. I think a sense of community, a sense of challenge, a sense of expanding my horizons. It's been a great way to meet a lot of people with diverse views, diverse experiences. I get to read a ton of books and connect with a lot of the authors and experts that I have on the podcast and just learn such different perspectives. If I were to last look very objectively, I'm an engineer, so I'm gonna keep pulling stacks, and you talk about data from time to time. If I were to look at my LinkedIn profile before I started the podcast, my LinkedIn profile contacts were very niche, and very specific to my job function job.
But if I go and looked at my LinkedIn profile now, it's a huge community. It's expanded into such diversity. People, podcasters, producers, just from the podcast community, people who are researchers, people working in various fields, people who are empowering, women who are working in D n I. Just the scope of it has expanded so much and has given me the ability to connect with so many different people.
The sense of community, two ways. The challenge of podcasting, actually, for me, and I think a lot of people initially resonate with this, is it's a very lonely thing to do in a way if you're not co-hosting, especially. , you don't have someone always to bounce ideas or you don't have a community. You can't always see your audience.
You can connect with them in different forms, but it's not the same thing. Like YouTube. It's easier to see who's communicating or who you're having a conversation with. I feel like sometimes it goes off into the ether and you're trying to figure out where that person is. Looking at the stats, of course, it's nice, but it's very hard to reach your audience, so.
One of the things I did earlier this year in August was they had the podcast movement conference in Dallas and I took four days off from work to attend it. It was the best thing that I did for the year in a lot of ways, especially for my podcasting journeys, because it got me connected to a lot of people who sit in the podcast community.
It helps me hear speakers and guests and experts and people who are also learning through the journey, and see how they are progressing. I didn't even know I had some of those questions. So it was a good way to build community and find local podcasters who I'm able to stay in touch with and meet every few months.
I've also found incredible mentors through this experience in the podcasting space and others who are willing to share their information and give you avenues.
There's a lot of work to podcasting as any podcaster will tell you.
Many of us start, at least in my case, start off thinking, okay, be fun to talk to people, learn their stories, and publish that is a very small sliver of the whole podcasting process. Someone asked recently, and for me and the guest takes up a lot of time. It's something I enjoy, but it does take out a tremendous amount of time.
Finding the guests, reaching out to them and connecting and setting it up and hoping to be able to learn their stories and experiences. Then writing and figuring out what you wanna talk about and then interviewing the guests, and then the post-production process is also. Time-consuming and then figuring out your launch schedules, and social media. So there's all of this humongous ecosystem that sits around a podcast as you're trying to produce one. So for those who are thinking about podcasting, it's a great avenue to get in and try something new. Be aware that it would help to have a support system or be aware that there's going to be a lot of work.
One of the phenomena they talk about is pod fade, where you know, a certain percentage, maybe somewhere between 60 and 80% of podcasts fade after a few months cuz it's very hard to stay consistent with the schedule to release. So it's good to batch process if you can record a couple of episodes early and edit them and keep them ready to publish.
In all honesty, this episode should be released in three days because it's the final episode. It's something I've been thinking about because I knew this one would be different from the other episodes I released. So I'm recording this on a Sunday, and it's going to be slated for release on a Wednesday.
But having done many of these, I feel more comfortable about the editing and other processes. So I'm not incredibly worried, but I always want to have content ready to go because. Things will happen and it'll become challenging to release. And, for me personally, I do not want to miss the cadence. I want to be very consistent about releasing it.
So if you're starting a podcast, build a backlog. And that's what I did. I built a couple of episodes way before I even started and launched my podcast. So I felt like there was a buffer to go as I was doing. And as you learn from that experience, you may change your mind on which ones to release, but at least you feel like, okay, I have something. It's also about building community and teams to help enable this process. Growings, my social media, some of it with my editing and others. I have had a team that supports me and it's something that I've had to invest in because I realize that time is a big constraint as well. It's sometimes from of the biggest constraints, many of us face.
So how can we move forward? We touched on so many topics in 2022. We talked about mentorship. We talked about how to work through our finances and invest in ourselves. We talked about d and I leadership, how to give elevator pitchers, how to advocate for ourselves, how to set goals in our life, how to grow an equitable workplace, and how to find our voice. As we do this, check out all the different episodes and see which one is the one speaking to you then and take a listen. I'm sure you'll find value in 2020 threes episodes as well. The format has changed. It's gone from 20 minutes to 40 minutes, and we'll continue to explore new ways of growing our life and careers.
I'll be looking at it from different perspectives and lenses on what we can do versus different people's experiences, trying to understand what we can do differently. To break different ceilings that we might be dealing with in our carriers. It has been a journey, and I'm sure next year I will learn more, much, much more and find new ways to explore and meet new people. That is what I enjoy the most. It's learning from them and just meeting new people with different ideas. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Thank you for sharing your stories. Thank you for lending your year. Thank you for your time. I could not do this without you. I hope to do more in 2023. I hope you get to enjoy your time, spending it with family and friends, and regrouping.
Taking time to self-reflect, stepping back. This whole place has allowed me to feel more empowered, more engaged, and I hope the content that I'm producing allows you to make huge strides in your environment and feel and forward and move forward as you go. I would love to hear from you about what you have learned, and what impact these episodes have had.
I would love to hear from you on specifics that have had an impact on your career or your life, or you took away, or maybe topics or stories you want to share with me that I can work on in 2023. You can reach me at Women Carrier and life@gmail.com. You could also contact me through Instagram. Please don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave us a review.
Happy holidays. Wishing you all the best. Take care. I hope you enjoy today's episode, June and every other Wednesday to catch the next episode. If you think a friend may benefit from this, please share this podcast with them. All the resources we talked about are also available on my website, women career and Life.com.
Please like, subscribe, and leave us a review on your favourite podcast. I would love to hear from you about your stories and your journey. You can reach me on my blog, Twitter, Instagram, or Gmail at Women Carrier and Life. Until next time, this is Siria signing off. Remember, there are infinite possibilities to drive change in your career and life, which will you choose to make a reality today.
Host: Sirisha
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