The Ghost of Podcast Past: Year 1 vs. 8 of my Show
I hope you don’t mind if, for this Friday before Christmas, you’ll allow me to wax poetic about How I Built It, as we’re in its 8th year of existence.
The next two days will look towards the ghosts of podcasts present and future, so I thought today I’d explore the ghost of podcast past (well…at least one podcast).
The point of The Ghost of Christmas Past from A Christmas Carol was to show Ebenezer Scrooge how he got to where he is today. So let’s do the same thing for How I Built It.
When I set out to create How I Built It, I didn’t know much about podcasting. The lessons I learned were from a podcast of poor quality I started at the end of 2012, that ended toward the beginning of 2013.
Heck, my friend Jackie had to remind me that I couldn’t just host my audio files in my WordPress site.
But I still thought I had a great idea. Here’s how I positioned How I Built It back then:
Asking for help and learning from others is such a valuable and important aspect of our world. Sharing and telling stories is something I love to do. On How I Built It, I interview product owners and developers to see how they built specific products, from idea to execution.
The goal was a good one: tell good stories that didn’t often get told. Those of inception, failure, hard work, and eventually, success.
In 2016, a podcast with good audio quality that wasn’t about Apple was in fact, a differentiator.
It hit 50,000 downloads in the first 9 months, and 100,000 shortly after. It was already generating 5 figures for me.
So at the 1 year anniversary, I started getting questions about what I was doing to be successful.
I wasn’t really sure — or at least I wasn’t making a conscious effort to grow the show. But after some reflection, here’s what I came up with:
- Keep it for around 30 minutes. Attention spans are short, so short and focused conversations go a long way.
- Be consistent. I release every Tuesday at 3:00 am ET. This schedule not only lets my listeners know when to expect new episodes, but it also helps me normalize my stats. I know how each episode does because I have some anchor information to point to.
- I’m obsessed with quality. There’s a bottom to audio quality. Anything above that is good, but I try to go the extra mile. I have good recording equipment and I asked my guests to record locally so that I can splice the 2 best-quality tracks together and not have to worry about interruptions or drops in internet service.
- Good content! I prep myself and my guests prior to our interview, which is not live. This leads to better content overall. My guests are awesome too, of course.
This advice aged surprisingly well. My episodes have crept up to 45–50 minutes, but consistency, good quality, and good content go a long way in making your podcast stand out, even 7 years later. After all, around the same time, Seth Godin described podcasting as, “the generous act of showing up.”
I think the only thing I’d add today is to have a clear mission statement — know who you serve, and how you serve them.
When my listenership started to dip 3–4 years in, it was because I lost my way. Much like Scrooge, I forgot what my podcast was really about, and why people listened to it.
Luckily, it didn’t take me the rest of my life to realize the error of my ways.
I course-corrected and saw incredible growth. Now I get more downloads in a month than I got in those first 9.
So what can you learn from this? No matter what trends come and go — TikTok was just starting when I launched my podcast — a dedication to quality is timeless.
Tell great stories, produce quality audio, and serve an audience that needs service. Keep your content focused.
You may not see viral success, but you’ll have sustained growth with an engaged audience.
At least, that’s what my ghost of podcast past has taught me.
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