Should We Spill the Beans
by Lisa Sanchez and Diana Kimball, co-hosts of Should We—a podcast with potential
Should We is a conversation between friends, in podcast form. In every episode, we ask and answer questions that turn expectations inside out. For example, should we subscribe to things? Should we move to the Nordic region? And how old should we be?
Lisa and I don’t believe in secrets when it comes to podcasting, so we’ve decided to spill the beans on how we made season 1 of our very low-maintenance podcast with potential. Plus, we’d like to capture where things stand before we start actually trying for season 2.
Principles
Before we committed to Should We, we held a half-day summit, which took the form of an extended afternoon hangout at Lisa’s place. The purpose of the summit was to figure out what success might look like. We concluded that as long as making Should We was fun for us, it would be worth it, with or without an audience.
However, keeping it fun required holding the line against any inkling of perfectionism. Success for us looked like establishing a ritualized way to hang out with each other, feeling understood, and — at the far edge — making new friends. Any urge toward increasing production value that didn’t serve one of those goals was a non-starter. These principles have served us well.
Tools
- There is a blanket fort made up of a blanket and stools. We are the poles. This works brilliantly in a cavernous room, but it gets very hot. We used this technique only once.
- The fancy microphone we used once — a Yeti USB mic from Blue — sounded weird. Possibly because we didn’t know how to work it. Also abandoned. (That is, until we got into video production).
- Believe it or not, we have 44 Slack channels just for the two of us. Most of our channels are solely for threaded conversations kept alive over many months — evergreen topics like #divas and #overit. Three of them are practical: #episodeideas, #agenda, and #todo. Episode ideas go in #episodeideas. Agendas go in #agenda. To-dos go in #todo.
- For recording, we’ve settled into a phone- and food-based workflow. (No snacks, no recording.) When we’re together, we grab a mug and place Diana’s iPhone upside-down inside of it, tilted toward Lisa to balance out the volume of our voices. (Diana is louder.) On Diana’s iPhone, we open Voice Memos; on Lisa’s, we flip to the stopwatch. Then, we hit ‘Record’ and ‘Start’ simultaneously. When we’re apart, we still record in Voice Memos. Then, we share the recordings either by first uploading to Dropbox and then dropping the link into the #todo channel on Slack, or uploading the audio directly to Slack. These recordings sometimes sound better than the mug ones because we use the microphones in our earbuds, which seem to do a better job of eliminating background noise.
- For editing, we do nothing.
- That’s not strictly true. Diana will sometimes trim off the beginning and / or end of the audio file in a podcast-preparing app called Opinion. This is also how we stitch together individual voice notes, when necessary.
- For posting, we use SoundCloud as a conduit to iTunes. Opinion has an upload-to-SoundCloud flow baked in; on Diana’s phone, it’s hooked up to the Should We profile. SoundCloud has an entire guide for podcasters. It’s possible to upload your audio there and then generate an RSS feed that lets you cross-post to iTunes. That’s what we do. The picture we upload to represent each podcast is typically the one toward the front of Diana’s camera roll that’s most pleasing.
- For our profile image, we use a picture of us in pink brocade ponchos taken at a live taping of Call Your Girlfriend, overlaid with text in Google Slides and screenshotted into a square. This works, but also makes us extremely excited to work with designers on season 2.
- For our website, we use Medium with a custom domain, shouldwe.co. Medium’s new publication tools are really good. The only reason to have a website at all anymore is to collect email addresses.
- For collecting email addresses and building a direct line into people’s inboxes, we use TinyLetter. Email is still the most universally-acceptable and -accepted channel for receiving and handling notifications. Posting to Medium gives us a boost in the moment and builds our back-catalog in real-time; sending out a TinyLetter guarantees that it’s on people’s radar as a listening option for the rest of the week.
- For drafting and riffing on long-form pieces and big plans, we use Quip.
Process
- Collect episode ideas in our #episodeideas channel on Slack.
- Use our #agenda channel on Slack to plan a time to meet.
- Meet at one of our apartments and devote a few hours to personal catch-up.
- Eventually, get around to looking at the #episodeideas channel; discuss which three questions we want to focus on.
- Write the questions we’ve agreed on in a notebook or on a sticky note. Put the piece of paper where we can both see it.
- Find a mug for the iPhone.
- Hit ‘Record’; no turning back now!
- Talk for approximately thirty minutes, then wind down the conversation as soon as we’ve both had a chance to address all three questions in turn.
- Stop recording when we start laughing uncontrollably.
- Debrief on the episode; marvel at the art of conversation.
- Discuss when we want to post the episode. Outline next actions in the #todo channel; or, just remember them.
Best Practices
- Don’t do anything that feels hard. Let it be easy. Otherwise you might start to associate podcasting with struggle. This could be disastrous.
- Take great pleasure in listening to your own podcast. Laugh out loud. Say to your fellow commuter, “I can’t get over these two!”
- Build your process around brunch. You don’t want to podcast on an empty stomach.
- Split up some of your tasks, but don’t be too rigid about it. Diana usually posts the episode on SoundCloud/iTunes, and Lisa usually posts the newsletter and Medium post.
- Look ahead to the future, but not too far.
Should you make a podcast of your own? Perhaps you should.
Our thanks to Lulu Cheng and Bo Ren for encouraging us to put our process into words.
