Episode 52 – On this, the 1st anniversary, Marc recaps the first year of the Repurpose Your Career podcast, how it all came together, and what’s coming up in 2018.
Description:
Marc thanks his listeners, and invites you to take an audience survey about the podcast, so he can provide more of what you want in the coming year. He discusses his interest in podcasts and books, and how he decided to launch the Repurpose Your Career podcast in support of his book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life, by Marc Miller and Susan Lahey. Marc goes on to describe how the show has evolved once the book launched, and finally, what he plans for 2018 and beyond.
Listen in for a look at Marc’s processes of launching and running a podcast and making it appeal to you.
Key Takeaways:
[1:22] Marc thanks you, the listeners. Please fill out an audience survey to help guide how Marc can continue to serve his audience with helpful content. Marc also invites you to give your honest review of this podcast on iTunes.
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[3:00] In August of 2016, Marc had the idea of the Repurpose Your Career podcast, to support the launch of the next edition of his book, Repurpose Your Career. The idea largely came from listening to podcasts. Thom Singer’s, Ryan Rhoten’s, and Roger Whitney’s podcasts were his motivation. He wanted to blend their features in one show.
[3:40] Marc found Podfly Productions through Thom Singer. Podfly sponsor’s Thom’s show and does his production work. Marc had the ability to produce and edit his own show, but all the production details were more than he wanted to handle.
[4:00] Marc contacted Corey Coates, the owner of Podfly, and bought one of their launch packages. Corey and the Podfly team walked Marc through selecting music, creating artwork, creating an intro with a professional voice artist, and everything else to get his show launched. Marc knew he had no artistic talents, so he needed help.
[4:30] Marc talks about the recording process. First, he had trouble with cable hum. So Corey suggested recording on his Mac with Piezo for Mac software. Marc decided next on a series approach where he would, over four weeks, interview an expert, interview a late-career pivoter, read a chapter from his book, and then do a Q&A session.
[5:03] Marc discovered he was much better as an interviewee than an interviewer. Marc was used to speaking on topics he enjoyed as a public speaker. When he has to interact with someone on an interview that is off script, it is not a smooth process. Marc is his harshest critic when he listens to a recording of himself, but he edits out mistakes.
[5:51] Marc has made a lot of refinements in this year. Marc can tell the difference between the early episodes to what he is producing today. The most important improvement in his technique is recording standing up in a closet with the microphone and pop filter attached to a shelf.
[6:47] Marc tells how the production week goes with Podfly, from Marc’s raw file to audio edit, show notes, proofing, tagging, and uploading to LibSyn. From LibSyn, they show up on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. On Monday afternoon, Marc’s VA creates the blog post, which contains the show notes, for Tuesday morning publication.
[7:28] Marc lists some expert guests: Kerry Hannon, who writes on Boomer issues, Chris Farrell, author of Unretirement, Retirement Answer Man podcaster Roger Whitney, Taylor Pearson, author of End of Jobs, and John Tarnoff, author of Boomer Reinvention.
[7:49] For the career pivoter episodes, Marc had a group of career changers in his network. At episode 20, Marc had to invite someone from his post clients to be interviewed. Marc’s first pivoter interview was with Dr. Joel Dobbs, who had volunteered to tell his great story in episode three.
[8:14] Marc started recording episodes from his book and knew he had episodes for about a year. The book launched in April of 2017 and the original reason for the podcast had kind of come to an end. Marc introduced solo episodes, like this one, and found out it was really hard. Marc starts with a script, but ad-libs as he goes along.
[8:55] Marc admires podcasters who do solo episodes and make it sound great. Roger Whitney does most of his Retirement Answer Man podcasts solo, and they are well-produced.
[9:15] The last episode in the series is the Q&A episode, which Marc first named the Mailbag episode. The idea was to answer three listener questions. If Marc did not receive enough questions, he reflected back on his past clients’ questions. Marc recorded these with Elizabeth Rabaey, Marc’s long-time client and intern.
[9:57] One thing Marc learned from recording is that shuffling pages is noisy. He reads from an iPad. Elizabeth rewrites in her own words a script Marc provides. Marc writes his points and then adlibs answers to the questions. Marc and Elizabeth can knock out an episode in just over 30 minutes. These have become the easiest episodes, by far.
[10:44] By watching download stats on LibSyn, Marc saw that downloads dropped when the name Mailbag was in the title, so Marc dropped the name. By the middle of the year, Marc was editing more of his own audio. He likes to make it sound good. A 20-minute podcast takes a couple of hours to edit. By forgetting breath sounds, his edits got faster.
[11:19] The book was launched about six months in, but there were a lot of other things going on. In October 2016 he noticed his health insurance premiums were about to explode, and they did. In November after the presidential election, Marc’s phones quieted for a few months. Business was off 60% for the first half of 2017.
[12:07] This downtime gave Marc time to finish his book, and he was interviewed on different podcasts almost weekly promoting the book. He was using a podcast booking service to get the interviews booked. The book launched, has sold well, and continues to sell. Marc’s email list continues to grow.
[12:33] Marc and his wife started exploring the possibility of becoming expats and living in another country. Next month, Marc will have an episode on their experience. In May they visited Ecuador, and returned early. Marc’s wife ended up in the hospital. The high altitude uncovered a condition that is now being resolved, at some expense.
[13:05] Marc recorded episode 29 from his wife’s hospital bedside in Austin after they returned. 2017 has been an interesting year. Business started picking up again in June, perhaps when people became unfrozen from the uncertainty. Marc is glad that the AHCA failed, as it could have raised his insurance premiums.
[13:43] At the same time, Marc began the CareerPivot Community website concept. Being so busy has made getting this podcast produced on time more difficult. Marc is now on a week-to-week basis. The second half of the year Marc turned over the blog post to his virtual assistant. The interview audio quality has improved, as has the flow.
[14:30] Marc heard Roger Whitney’s podcast series, “Can Carl Retire?” It helped Marc create a series, just concluded, called, “Can Tim Repurpose His Career?” This series finished off the first year of podcasting. Please listen to episodes 48-51 for this series. This has delayed Marc’s audio recording of Repurpose Your Career.
[15:22] It costs about $4,000 annually to produce this podcast. Starting in 2018, Marc will have a Patreon page for people to donate money on a recurring basis to support a cause. Patreon has become popular with podcasters. Podcasts are rarely profitable on their own. Marc would like to do a Repurpose Your Career series per year.
[16:14] In 2018, Marc will be shifting his business away from individual coaching to group coaching and the community website. Marc has the initial cohort of about 10 individuals that he is onboarding onto a trial platform. Once he has feedback, he will create a more final product and open the community up to small groups of 10 to 15.
[16:40] This will be a pod membership community, but Marc wants to keep the fees affordable to help more people. To learn more, you can sign up for the waiting list at CareerPivot.com/Community.
[17:01] Now that the podcast is a year old, Marc wants to survey the audience on what you like, and what you would like in the future. Please take the survey at CareerPivot.com/PodcastSurvey. Marc will be sending an email to the entire subscriber list about the time this episode goes up. This will help Marc shape what comes next.
[17:47] This podcast is a success because of you, the listener. Marc wants to thank everyone who’s been listening and supporting the cause. Onto a second year of the Repurpose Your Career podcast! Next week, Marc will interview author Thea Kelly.
Mentioned in This Episode:
Please take a moment — go to iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play. Give this podcast an honest review and subscribe! If you’re not sure how to leave a review, please go to CareerPivot.com/review, and read the detailed instructions there.
Thom Singer’s Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do podcast
Ryan Rhoten’s The BRAND New You Show
Roger Whitney’s Retirement Answer Man Show
The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5, by Taylor Pearson
Boomer Reinvention: How to Create Your Dream Career Over 50, by John Tarnoff
CareerPivot.com/Episode-20 with Elizabeth Rabaey
CareerPivot.com/Episode-48 “Can Tim Repurpose His Career? Part 1”
CareerPivot.com/Episode-49 “Can Tim Repurpose His Career? Part 2”
CareerPivot.com/Episode-50 “Can Tim Repurpose His Career? Part 3”
CareerPivot.com/Episode-51 “Can Tim Repurpose His Career? Part 4”
Get That Job: The Quick and Complete Guide to a Winning Interview, by Thea Kelley
Please pick up a copy of Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life, by Marc Miller and Susan Lahey The paperback and ebook formats are available now. When you have completed reading the book, Marc would very much appreciate your leaving an honest review on Amazon.com. Marc is recording the audio version of the book, and he plans to have it available in late November 2017.
Marc is taking on new clients. Contact Marc, and ask questions at Careerpivot.com/contact-me or call at 512-693-9132, and leave a message with your email address. Marc will respond with a link to his calendar, to find a time to talk.
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