Okay, it's Thursday, and it's how to do a podcast day. So let's do this, shall we? Okay, welcome to The Daily Grateful. I'm Michael Kroos, and I've gotten requests about Thursday, podcast day, with all kinds of questions.
And one of them was, could I take you on a tour of my studio? We'll do that next Thursday, because I've gotten a couple of requests for this one. And that is, what do I podcast about? And that is a very good question.
So you want to start a podcast. If you want to start a podcast, you need to make a couple of decisions. Decision number one is, what am I going to podcast about? That's an important thing.
Now, what do people podcast about generally? Well, there's different categories. So let's go through a couple of them. How's that?
Category number one is, you have a business that you want to promote. You may have a service business. You may have a retail business. You may have a mail order business.
You may have something like that, or a book that you've written that you want to promote, or maybe a series of books that you're writing that you want to promote. That's a reason for a podcast. That's an important one. Here's another one.
Say you've got a church, and you really want to promote your church. I'm not talking about promoting your religion so much, although that's podcast too, but a podcast promoting your church. Say you've got a Presbyterian church in a town, like Battle Creek, Michigan. Say you've got a Presbyterian, I'm sure there's a bunch of them out there, but say you're in Battle Creek, Michigan, and you've got a Presbyterian church there that you just love, and you want to promote it.
Oh, let's skip and go to the Baptist church. Whatever kind of church you've got, and you want to promote your local church. Well, you could start a podcast about that. You could interview your pastor.
You could interview elders of your church. You could interview parishioners, or people who just show up, volunteers, and talk about all the different ministries and outreach that you do. I went and did a speaking engagement with my buddy, Doc, at the Loyal Order of the Moose in, what was the town? Some little town on the other side of Tampa Bay, and I had never been to a Loyal Order of the Moose.
I was there to talk to them about podcasting, and they had about 150 people there to listen to me talking about podcasting, and there was a speaker ahead of me, and I needed something to drink. You know, not drink. I needed like a Diet Coke to wet my whistle, and I go, you know, I wanted, I got to tell you, I was so impressed. I'm bouncing around.
I'm not going to edit. When I walked into this place, because when I walked into this place, all this stuff, I finally found my way to the bar, and the, oh gosh, they have some title for the guy that's in charge, and it's a very long title. I wish I remembered what it was, but this guy was so nice. He bought me a Diet Coke.
Everybody that was sitting at the bar, there's a bar in the Loyal Order of the Moose. Who knew? I didn't know. And anyway, sent me on my way, and so I go out, and I'm talking about podcasting, and they said, well, what would we podcast about?
I said, well, let me tell you something. When I walked in the door here at the Loyal Order of the Moose, the first thing I noticed on the left-hand side was a big blackboard, it's like a hallway, and on the blackboard, it had all of your members that needed something, you know, prayer, or they were in the hospital, or anything like that. I was so impressed with that. And then over to the right, right before you walked into, I guess, would be the bar, they had a table set for an MIA, Missing in Action Soldier.
They had a table set for them to come home and have their meal, which I thought, whoa, I don't know why that struck me, but that was powerful. And then I walked into the bar, and I saw a bunch of stuff on the wall. I saw a box, like a shadow box that somebody had made, and inside was an American flag, and it had a little fan on it, and the American flag was waving. It was the coolest thing I ever saw.
And so I'm telling the audience about this. I said, so there's a podcast about your blackboard. There's a podcast about that table setting, because there's a story there. And I said, there's at least five podcasts on stuff I found in the wall on the bar.
I could do five podcasts about different artwork and different things that you guys had made that were stuck on that wall. So what are we up to now? And you do one podcast a week, you make this podcast, and you put it out into the world. And I guarantee you, when somebody is in Wyoming, and they're coming to Florida, and they've heard this podcast, they don't want to show up here.
So if you have some type of an organization that you want to promote, what a better way than a podcast. Yeah, I mean, it's just a really good idea. What if you're into political stuff, and you want to do a political podcast? Better you than me.
But if that's what you want to do, go for it. And then the other thing you need to decide is, are you going to do a solo podcast, or are you going to have a guest on occasion? Last night or yesterday, I had my very first guest on this podcast. It was my son, Zach.
I thought he did a good job. We had fun. Might have him back on again sometime soon, because he was good. But I'm not one who does regular guest.
If you're somebody who's going to do guest, are you going to have guests in your studio? And we'll talk about the studio next week. Or are you going to do them remotely? My daughter has a couple of podcasts that she does, and she has guests just about every week when she does her podcast.
But none of them show up for her studio, because she lives with her three kids, and she don't want people in her house. I understand that. I'm allowed in her house, because the kids kind of like me. But she does all of hers remotely, over Zoom, or there's a bunch of things out there that you can use that are better than Zoom.
So just do that. I guest once a year on The City's Backyard, which is a Connecticut podcast, which they're talking about New York City's Backyard. And I do a gardening thing with them once a year, and we do it via Zoom, but we don't do videos, strictly audio. And the audio sounds really good when we have that good connection.
So are you going to do remote? If you're going to have guests, how are you going to do that? You need to spell all of this stuff out and start doing preparation for it. So once you've decided what you're going to podcast about, the next thing you're going to do is we're going to talk about equipment.
And when you come back next Thursday, next Thursday, then what we'll talk about is my studio. And we'll talk about a minimalist studio that you can do. And we'll talk about my studio, which is probably four or five steps up. But I've got a real professional studio here.
The other thing you're going to want to think about is, are you going to do a video podcast, which essentially is going to be a YouTube channel. I have everything in here to do that. I'm just not doing it. I may do it sometime in the future.
I may do a special thing once a week on video. But I've got professional lighting here. I've got a nice camera. I've got a video switcher.
I've got all of that stuff. I'm addicted to spending money on my studio. I'm sorry. Which is better than being addicted to spending money on a bunch of other stuff.
So anyway, that's my suggestion to you. So you want to do a podcast? Now you've got a lot of thinking to do. What do you want to do the podcast about?
And when you're making those decisions, think about monetization down the line. Think about how this podcast can actually make you money. And maybe on another Thursday, we'll talk about how to promote your podcast. My daughter's an expert on that.
I might drag her in here to my studio and have her talk about that in a couple of weeks. Back tomorrow for the Friday edition. Have a great day, everybody. We'll see you next time.