Adventures in Podcasting - Adventures of a new podcaster - well, of a new podcast host - with Marisa Eikenberry

Adventures of a new podcaster - well, of a new podcast host - with Marisa Eikenberry

05/22/22 • 38 min

Marisa Eikenberry is the co-host of Long Distance Work Life.
Marisa is the web developer at the Kevin Eikenberry group, and she has been editing their podcasts Remarkable Leadership since 2016 and Talk Like a Leader since 2019.
Marisa goes into detail of how these shows are recorded, her process with the hosts and the differences working between shows, talking about how much editing she does for both shows, what she looks out for when she’s listening back, etc So this will be of interest to those of you who are starting to podcast and wander what is involved in working with an editor, and get some ideas of what to look out for when working on a show. (And I realised how much I enjoy talking about editing.)
As well as those business shows, Marisa is also part of the editing team that turns Twitch streams into podcasts for GodSquad Church.
10.52 mins
The podcast Long Distance Work Life started as a way of promoting the group’s new book - well, actually, Marissa had been waiting for a while to get her co-host Wayne to do a podcast. Once they decided to start the show, they thought of ways in which to differentiate themselves from other shows covering similar topics.
The amateur-expert dynamic or teacher-student is a fun one to listen to, and Pilar has experience of that in My Pocket Psych, where she plays the “voice of the public” to occupational psychologist Dr Richard MacKinnon. (Pilar also mentions The Story Grid, as an example of this.)
Marissa is having a lot of fun with this, asking questions that she knows other people have, but also those that she’s unsure of (for example, what’s the difference between remote-first and remote-friendly)
16.35 mins
Our guest is really enjoying working with Wayne Turmel, his co-host.
On top of that, she now feels a complete part of the podcast community, something she’s never felt even though she’s been editing podcasts for a long time. She used to say she was “just an editor”, which now she realises was not being fair to herself. This raises questions like who makes the podcasting community, etc.
Recording for this show has changed her mindset. For example, she’s more regularly on LinkedIn, mindfully asking questions about podcasting and networking with other podcasters. She now feels like she can be part of those conversations.
22.00 mins
Marisa has been listening to podcasts since 2014 (she mentions the comedy podcast My brother, my brother and me) including ones on podcasting, like Podcasting Business School.

Pilar mentions The Audacity to Podcast, Podcasters’ Roundtable, Buzzsprout’s Buzzcast (here’s my affiliate link to Buzzsprout hosting) and Libsyn’s The Feed.

27.05 mins
Marisa mainly listens to podcasts with more than one host, or a host n conversation. Something she’s struggling with at the moment is taking up enough space in the conversation and also delivering the intros and outros, which would be easier if they weren’t also releasing the video version. (Pilar forgets her calls to action to...)
Past guest Myriam Hadnes talked about how she’s also learned to take the space with her guests, as a way of giving guests something to bounce off of.
It’s getting easier for Marisa with each recording, having less awkward pauses, adding to the conversation and asking better questions.

Connect with Marisa on LinkedIn.

Pilar mentions The Audacity to Podcast, Podcasters’ Roundtable, Buzzsprout’s Buzzcast (here’s my affiliate link to Buzzsprout hosting) and Libsyn’s The Feed.

Connect with Marisa on LinkedIn.

Previous Episode

Adventures in (almost) completing my 300th episode

In today's episode, Pilar shares her process in creating a 3 part episode 300 for the 21st Century Work Life podcast.
This is another solo episode, but I've started interviewing again. And I have you, the listeners to thank for this. In voicing in the last episode my inability or reluctance, to reach out to podcasters I wanted to talk to, I realised how silly that was, so I reached out to one of my favourite podcasters, he replied within minutes, and I'm recording with him in June!

04.10 mins

You might remember that I recorded the last episode in both Audacity and Zencastr, to generate a transcript in Zencastr. I published that with the show notes so that you can have a look. It's not bad at all, but the main thing is the lack of punctuation. So it's not bad if you wanted to publish it, though you would need to do a bit of work on it, maybe an hour or so, for the half hour audio.
Let me know if you are using any transcription tools and how that's going.

06.02 mins

In the last episode, I shared how I was preparing to record he 9 interviews of 21st Century Work Life. Now I've released the first two parts of that episode but I still need to work on the third.

Recording those interviews was like being at a party, so something to consider when doing something like this, pick people you like!

The interviews were so interesting that I decided to release them as a different show, as a different podcast. So in the end I didn't use the transcripts from the conversations. As I was going to release the interviews, I needed to edit them. So as I did that, and picked up the bits I liked as I went along.

I opened different Audacity projects for each of the six questions, and cut and pasted 30sec- 2min segments.

I worked with a Google Doc, making notes and writing bits of script.

When that was done, which took about 2 sessions of 4 hours, I went through all the bits and pieces and found the ones that went better together. I laid them out one after the other.

Then I wrote the bits of script in between. I recorded those bits and then cut and posted those into the projects. Part I went quite well as I'd put everything in one project, and it lasted about 45min .

11.10 mins

But episode 2 was a different story. I had 3 projects for the episode, each covering one of the questions that made up that part. And when I listened back to it, to make some show notes and check I hadn't made any mistakes, I found out I had jiggled things around and was introducing the wrong guests. So that was fun!

But I've really enjoyed it. I do enjoy editing, playing with people's words and creating new sentences.

In putting together a show like this, with different voices, you need to develop a sense of rhythm to gauge how long the pauses between guests should be, when you have a series of them speaking one after the other.
As one of the questions in the interviews was what they would like to see in a show like 21st Century Work Life, it's made me rethink my approach to the show after hearing 10 people give me feedback!

Get in touch if you would like some coaching and advice yourself or connect on Twitter @Inpodcasting
If you want to support this show and are looking for a media host: I recommend Buzzsprout, and for web hosting, I recommend Bluehost (affiliate links).
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Next Episode

Podcasting is personal

While on her break way from base, Pilar ponders on the nature of podcasts as "personal chronicles".
I hadn’t planned a show for this week, but I made an effort to keep to a regular schedule. I’m actually not at home, so the audio will sound different and the set up is not as comfortable.
The trigger for jumping behind the microphone was listening to Daniel Aragay in Haciendo el Sueco, where he talks about his time in Sweden. Recently he commented on a Twitter conversation, after a person shared a strange experience when he stayed with a Swedish family a long time ago.
As podcasters, we have the opportunity to set the record straight when people are talking about something with no access to the context - in this case, Spanish people talking about life in Sweden. In some cases, we can act as “culture bridges”, giving access to people from our country of origin to another culture.
We decide how much of ourselves we bring into our podcast, although it’s a shame when some hosts decide to leave most of themselves out of the conversation. Podcasting is such an intimate medium, that it seems like a missed opportunity. But there is no right or wrong.
Listeners also have a preference, with some enjoying those shows where they really feel like they get to know the host, while some prefer to get the information in a straight forward way.
By the way, my friend Simon and I are putting together an audio course. We’ve been working on the material as a text-based programme, but when we got to record some additional audio for it, we ended up with something that sounded more like the audio version of the course. We realised that the material would work as an audio-first course, delivered by both of us together, so we’re giving that a try.
Going back to the theme of podcasters bringing a lot of themselves and their lives to the show, I’ve recently come across Beyond Retirement, where the host started the podcast when she was about to retire, and now she’s retired. She’s talking to people at the same stage of life as she is in, and with a similar mindset. (I really like in her show how she has an interview with a guest in one episode, and then releases a solo episode with reflections on the interview.)
A podcast can be a “personal chronicle”, a kind of memoir. This show is a bit like this, and it also gives me the opportunity to talk about podcasting.
When we bring ourselves to the show, our listeners get to know us, and this is an example of “asymmetrical intimacy”, where listeners feel like they know us very well but we don’t really know them.
And don’t forget to let listeners know how they can get in touch with you! You can get in touch through the contact form here.