Hiring a Podcast Editor

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One thing that I see happen to a lot of podcasters might be happening to you as well - we start podcasting and our "to do" list just keeps growing and growing. Maybe there are new things you want to do. Maybe there are things you used to do that you just can't get to because something else is taking your time. Maybe your ability to grow your show or your income is stalled because other things are getting done first.

That can be a scary place. But today we're going to take some of the fear out of it. We're going to drag that monster out of the dark and into the light, give it a name, and start to tame it.

A little too silly? Maybe. But there's some serious power in taking the time to take stock of what's taking you away from what you really need to be doing. And that's what we're going to do today.

I want to say from the outset, that not everything that's on your to do list necessarily deserves to be there... the same is true for me. But we're going to take a brainstorming approach to getting it all down on paper. Then you can go through it later when you start to decide what ACTUALLY matters to you.

Good with that?

OK. Let's go...

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Links & Resources

Links & Resources

• Engaging Missions Show - This is the show that I was producing at the time that I brought on my first podcast editor. It's on an indefinite hiatus, primarily because editing was taking over my life and this show was costing money rather than making money.

Listen to Hiring a Podcast Editor

Hiring a Podcast Editor website

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15 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Podcast Editor

If you want to get the clarity you need to avoid a hiring mistake with your podcast, you will want to grab this free guide. No email required. We just want you to make the best decisionfor yourself and your show.

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Sponsored by Top Tier Audio

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Do you feel like your podcasting to-do list is becoming a too long list and

maybe too many things are just not getting done?

If so, you're going to want to take at least two minutes, probably more to listen to this.

Think through the exercise that we're going to go through.

Before you really start considering hiring an editor.

Welcome to hiring a podcast editor.

My name is Bryan Entzminger.

I'm a podcast, editor and manager at TopTierAudio.com.

This show is intended to help you be able to find the right podcast editor for you.

Whether you're looking for your first editor.

Or your next editor in season one, we're going to help you get clarity on what you really want before you

start connecting with editors and then provide you with the tools to make the right decision for yourself.

This show is sponsored by top tier audio.com, where we provide podcast production services for

multi-passionate coaches, trainers, and consultants.

Be sure to stick around to the end, and I'll tell you how you can get a free tool to help you organize

your thoughts and make sure you don't anything.

One thing that I see that really, I think, happens to a lot of podcasters and it might be happening to you as well, is

that we start podcasting and as we do, our to-do list starts growing and it continues to grow and it continues to grow.

Maybe if that's you, there are some things that you want to.

That you're just not able to get to.

Maybe there are some new things you want to do.

Maybe there are things that you used to do that you just can't seem to get back to because

now something else is consuming your time.

Maybe your ability to grow your show or to grow your income is stalled.

Because other things are getting done first speaking from experience, that can be a pretty scary place, but today

we're going to try to take some of the fear out of that.

We're going to drag that monster out of the dark and into the light.

We're going to start to name it and then we're going to start to tame it.

Now that might seem like a kind of a silly analogy and it probably is, but I believe that there is

some serious power in taking the time to take stock of what's taking you away from what you really.

Need to, or want to be doing that's what we're going to be doing the outset that not everything that's

on your to-do list necessarily deserves to be there.

And conversely, I would also say that not everything that seems to be taking your time away from something is.

Maybe something that needs to be let go.

Right?

So that's the reality there.

The same is true for me, but I think that if we take the time to do this as a brainstorming session, so not trying

to edit everything, but just get it all down on paper.

Then later, as you're continuing this process of refining, what you're looking for in your podcast, editor, your

podcast, producer, what you want your future to look like.

You can then decide what you actually.

Want to have matter for you?

Not what I say is important, although I have some opinions, not what somebody else says is important,

but the time to go, okay, this matters to me.

And to start making those trade off decisions based on some things that are written down and are concrete, and you've

had time to think through rather than what often ends up in my mind being kind of an emotionally jumbled mess.

Okay.

So if you're good with that, we're going to keep on going the analogy I like.

To use for this is the idea of something falling off of your plate.

When we have dinner, we generally have plates that are a certain size and there's a certain

amount of food that will fit on that plate.

Generally, I try to leave my plate with a little bit of margin because I don't actually need all

of the calories that I could fit on a plate.

However, For special occasions like Thanksgiving or Christmas, I might have more stuff that I want

to keep piling on my plate than actually fits.

And the idea here is that a lot of times as podcasters, that can happen to us as well.

And when it does, we can start to make some messes, right?

It can start to affect our commitments.

It can start to affect our relationships.

It can start to affect our attitude.

It can also start to affect the quality of our show.

And that's why we want to take some time to think this through.

Now, this.

This could be approached as a calling exercise, right?

Some things you want to take off of your plate, totally get that.

This is also a place for you to start taking stock of the things that you're not able to get to, that you

might either be able to ask for help with, or maybe reprioritize as you get help with another part of your show.

Right?

So that's the idea here is we're just trying to get all this stuff out.

I like to think of this in kind of three different categories.

One of them.

Podcast production.

We'll go through some things that might be falling off of your plate.

In terms of podcast production.

One of them might be in the area of community or relationships or marketing.

Those for me, I'll kind of fit into the same general place.

They may not for you, but that's how I think of them.

And then the other one.

Is the idea that some of this might be affecting things that are related to income or growth.

I understand that not every podcaster wants to make money.

Totally fine with that.

You don't have to make money from your podcast.

You don't have to make money because of your podcast.

However, if you're thinking of hiring a podcast editor, there's a good chance that there's some kind of revenue stream going on.

Or it's going to be really hard to hire and afford a professional editor.

Just, you know, that, I mean, that's the reality of the situation, right?

Because editors are not cheap.

So the first category is the, the idea of podcast production.

And there are a lot of things that go into production.

There's the preparation, right?

There's the actual performance.

There's the, the post production, all of that kind of stuff.

And if you start to get overwhelmed, at least for.

A lot of times, the thing that was easiest to drop off of my plate was the, the stuff that comes before recording.

And so I often struggled in the idea of content strategy.

There's a lot more effort that goes into creating a series of 10 episodes around a single topic and trying to get all those

interviews or conversations or whatever lined up and taken care of so that you can release on a schedule as compared to.

Interviewing, whoever comes next.

And I know when I started to get overwhelmed, that was one thing that really felt overwhelming to me.

Another one falls in the area of planning content, right?

So maybe a little, maybe a level down from strategy.

There's the idea that I've got an episode coming up.

But I need to plan the content for that.

And that involves everything from potentially research or researching a guest, maybe making sure

that I've chosen the right guest and vetting them for the quality of the content that I'm looking for.

It could also include if they're an author reading the book.

I always liked to read the book because I felt like I couldn't have a really good conversation with an author,

unless I'd read at least a good portion of the book.

I didn't always get all of 'em and I was honest with them.

Right.

Work at a full-time job, working as a professional editor, interviewing people who have written books, it takes some time.

Right?

So I was always honest with people, but at the same time, it wasn't the level that I was looking for.

And as my production, ebbed and flowed, sometimes that got more attention and sometimes it didn't, and that

was something that tended to fall off of my plate.

Now I'll be.

Transparent with you.

My podcasting plate is still pretty full.

And so there are still things that are falling off of my plate.

Another thing that might be falling off of your plate, or maybe another way to look at this might be kind of slipping

over the edge and maybe dragging a little bit on the table.

Could be the actual performance, maybe.

You're doing the preparation and you're putting it all together, but then when you go to delivery, you don't have the energy.

You don't have the passion that you used to have, right.

That could start to be slipping off of your plate.

Another thing that often tends to slip is writing the show notes, the quality of the titles, all of the things that go into that.

That's easy to let it slip off.

In fact, that was one of the things that slipped for me when I was producing the engaging missions show.

I'll share a little bit more about that in a minute.

And another thing that sometimes starts to slip for people is the editing, right?

Maybe you used to spend hours and hours and hours editing.

Now you've got enough time to record, add the intro and the outro and publish it.

And this isn't a no judgment zone.

I'm not saying that you can't do.

But I don't think that you'd be listening to this show.

If that's the quality that you wanted to put out now, for me with the engaging missions show, as I shared

there, there were times when my production schedule ebbed and flowed and my energy ebbed and flowed, and

my other commitments had all of these ups and downs.

And so there were times when things started to fall off of my plate.

One of the things.

for me was often a consistent struggle when I was doing it was writing the show notes.

Now I think I'm a reasonably good writer, but I'm not a great writer.

So for me doing the interviews was pretty easy.

I did a lot of prep, you know, I tried to think through what I would want to talk about and how to sequence that,

to make it flow as best I could and try to leave open-ended questions to kind of allow the guest story to come out.

I, I would try to do all of that kind of stuff, but.

Coming up with a way to summarize that and to then capture the important points and to put the show notes

together in a way that I felt would add the most value and that some of this was really kind of internal stuff.

It was important to me.

My listeners may not have cared.

Right.

But it was important to me.

And that was one of the things that started to slip.

And so when I took stock of the things that were not where I wanted them to be.

That was one of the things that I put down for that show that I wanted to fix.

And it wasn't too far into that show that I actually hired a.

It was somebody that I knew from church.

She was a good writer.

And so I brought her in and she would listen to the episodes.

She would write the show notes for me, and then I would go on and publish them.

And that's one of the ways that I approached that kind of thing.

So if you haven't already go ahead and pause this recording and think through.

As it relates to your podcast production.

Are there things that are falling off of your plate or slipping off of your plate or things

that seem just the tiniest bit out of reach?

Go ahead and take care of those.

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The next category I think of as community or relationships or marketing.

And because podcasting in my view is a social medium.

right.

It's social, we're interacting.

I would love to hear from you, by the way, if you're interested in reaching out to me,

[email protected], I would love to hear from you.

Podcasting is a social medium.

And so part of your job as a podcaster in my book is to engage with your listeners and your community, and

to make sure that you understand what your audience or your market wants to be, where they are as best

you can with the time and the resources you have.

and to share what you're doing, right.

Because you're making it because it's valuable for somebody.

And so there are a lot of things that go into that.

And some of them are kind of the mechanical things that we might think about.

And some of them are just having time.

As I think about my journey, some of the places where I tend to struggle, and I'm trying not to

project on you, but maybe these will speak to you.

Are the areas of creating customized graphics, like quote cards or images with the guests.

Face on it or custom graphics for the episodes or that kind of thing.

Sometimes I struggle.

And sometimes I still struggle with engagement, right.

To.

Be on social media and it's a challenge, right?

I mean, I've got a job, I've got a family, I've got this business.

And also sometimes it feels like I need to engage.

Now, the reality is I love my friends.

I want to engage with them, but sometimes it does start to feel like it's slipping off the plate, another area.

And this one actually is difficult for me.

Is emails or email newsletters.

Maybe that started to fall off of your plate.

Another one might.

Offering people, the places to connect either with you or with each other, maybe having calls or I don't

know, master classes or some kind of get together.

I know that I hosted last year as I'm recording this, it was last year.

I hosted for a few months.

A podcast mixer.

And that's something that I couldn't continue because of my time commitments elsewhere, but that was great.

Cuz we'd get together with anywhere from five to 10 podcasters.

Some of them would know each other, some of 'em that wouldn't and we'd just talk about podcasting things.

This wasn't a real great lead generator for me, but it was a great connection point.

Maybe some of those are starting to slip off of your plate.

If there's something in this category that kind of speaks to you.

Just go ahead and make note of.

The third category that I like to think about is in the area of business and income.

And like I said, at the beginning, you don't have to earn income because of, or from your podcast.

However, if you're thinking about bringing on help, that money's going to have to come from somewhere.

And my preference is always if possible to have that come from either from your.

Or from something related to your show or from something that your show is enabling.

Right?

So I've got a, a client who has a business.

His business has been subsidizing his podcast for a while.

And so we're working together to come up with some ways to make sure that his podcast, which is not

specific to his business can also serve his business.

Right.

So there there's a, a tie in there, but that's kind of a side trail.

When I think about business or business development or that kind of thing, there's certainly the idea of sales calls.

Some of those things that could fall out or maybe add development or additional outreach or that kind of thing.

Definitely.

You know, if you need to do some kind of outreach and you're not getting that done because you're

making your podcast, well, that may be a long-term play, but you still have that short term gap to fill.

Right.

So that's something that you might want to take.

Note of another thing might.

if your entire calendar's filled up with production, but you also need to have consulting or coaching

calls with clients or with prospective clients.

Well, you've gotta have time available for that.

Right?

So that might be something that's falling off of your plate.

The big one, especially for a lot of content creators and people who provide training or resources or consulting might

be things like creating courses or tools or things like that.

That would be valuable for people.

If that's you, then you'd want to make sure that you're taking note of that.

Now in my business, the challenge is that I'm always focused on doing the work.

not on the marketing.

And I say that it's a challenge in, in reality, it's a bit of a problem and transparently, it's a little

bit of a perspective problem, but I've really been trying to focus on that as I've been making this show.

So this show takes some time it's not super time consuming, but it does take some time to produce, however, As I'm producing

this show, I'm also trying to make sure that I'm making resources for you so that if you're thinking of hiring that

podcast editor, you've got something to help you through that.

So if you listen to the end of the episode, you'll be hearing about a resource that you can download

that might help guide you through this process.

And that's one of the things that I'm trying to do now, like I said, you may have your own list.

This is not intended to be an inclusive or an exclusive list.

Before you go and write that ad, or you think about who you want to hire, or you start posting in Facebook groups.

Hey, who can recommend a great editor?

Take the time to think through everything.

I know it can seem like a long time.

My goal isn't to make it long and laborious, but I do want you to get what you're looking for.

Not just what seems expedient right now.

And that's kind of what this, this episode, this exercise is all about.

So take the time to think through what is it that's falling off of your plate.

Not going to try and fix it right now.

We're just going to try and make that list.

Next time.

We're going to talk about something that's maybe related, but a little bit more fun because we're going to be talking about

needs and some stuff like that, but it's really going to be around trying to define the style that you're looking for.

And that's all I'm going to say about it right now.

If you want to catch that, you're going to need to subscribe to the.

You'll find [email protected] slash listen, get it absolutely free delivered to your favorite podcast app.

You'll get the entire back catalog and every episode that's released in the future that's higher podcast, editor.com/listen.

Hope to see you next week.

If you'd like to be able to get the clarity you need in order to avoid making a hiring mistake, be sure to download our

guide 15 questions to ask before hiring a podcast editor, you can find it at HireAPodcastEditor.com/15questions,

and it'll be linked up in the show notes.

It's totally free.

We don't require an email address or anything like that.

We just want to make sure that you have the tools that you need to make the right decision for you.

That guide has the questions we'll talk about on this show.

Some instructions and suggestions.

Even a place to take notes.

If you want to get even more out of it, though, be sure to subscribe to this show at HireAPodcastEditor.com/listen

and share it with the rest of your team.

Your work is important.

Now.

Go out there and make a great podcast.