Adventures with Craig Wealand: Working with a co-host and building a community around your podcast

03/11/22 • 60 min

Yay, episode 20 and I'm celebrating by bringing in my first guest, Craig Wealand, host of Aprender Inglés con Reza y Craig, a podcast that teaches English as a foreign language. I co-hosted En clave de podcast with Craig, and we learned loads, about podcasting and about the podcast-sphere in Spain, where Craig is based.

Craig's show is aimed at mainly Spanish speakers with an intermediate or advanced level of English, who want to improve it. They cover grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, they give listening practice...

15.05 MINS
Feedback is so important for a podcaster and Craig's show gets a lot of it. Their listeners tend to get in touch when they have a question or a suggestion for a topic. Pilar gets lots of feedback for Gastronostalgia, but it's all from friends and family, so she's waiting for the listener pool to evolve.
19.36 MINS
Pilar wants to know what Craig's recording set up looks like, as Reza goes to his house to record. By the way, Craig is very proud that they've never missed a weekly episode in all these years! During the pandemic when they recorded online, the challenge was to get good audio quality at Reza's home, because he's not set up for recording.
Craig has a set of PR40 microphones and some Samson Q2Us for guests. He used to have a DBX 286s audio processor, which blocks out some of the breathing sounds, but now he uses a Rodecaster Pro. He also has a portable set up.
They sit at opposite sides of the desk, to avoid bleeding from one microphone to the next. They rely heavily on facial and body gestures to guide the conversation. The whole experience is a social occasion for them, and you can hear that in the conversation.
30.45 MINS
Craig runs the final mp3 file through Otter.io, and offers the transcript for his Patrons. Pilar wants to know how much work Craig does on the text file to correct the script, which also has some Spanish words of course. As an English teacher, he corrects a lot of the punctuation! Craig does the quality control as he's working on the transcript.

39.06 MINS
Craig recently hit episode 400! And they've committed to another 400 episodes more!
It's important to celebrate the different milestones as you progress through your podcast, because it's not easy to podcast consistently, but it's difficult to come up with different ways of marking these episodes. For episode 400, they talked about the different verb tenses.

48.13 MINS
Given that they were recording in March 2022, Pilar wants to know how Craig deals with current affairs in the show, when things happen that are very much on the public's mind. They try to avoid them as they risk not making the show evergreen. However, they did record some episodes specifically about these events after people asked for them, like Brexit or the pandemic.

Pilar asks Craig whether he's ever thought of giving up the podcast, he hasn't! Even during difficult times, they've managed to make that weekly commitment.

To end the episode, Craig shares a memorable moment, when he met a loyal listener from Chile when he visited Valencia.
Connect with Craig:

Or look for Ingles podcast in your podcast app, or visit the website https://www.inglespodcast.com/ or connect on Twitter, where he is @mansiontwit .

Get in touch with Pilar through www.adventuresinpodcasting.com
Or connect on Twitter @InPodcasting
Sign up to the Adventures in Podcasting newsletter here.

Pilar asks Craig whether he's ever thought of giving up the podcast, he hasn't! Even during difficult times, they've managed to make that weekly commitment.

To end the episode, Craig shares a memorable moment, when he met a loyal listener from Chile when he visited Valencia.
Connect with Craig:

Or look for Ingles podcast in your podcast app, or visit the website https://www.inglespodcast.com/ or connect on Twitter, where he is @mansiontwit .

Get in touch with Pilar through www.adventuresinpodcasting.com
Or connect on Twitter @InPodcasting
Sign up to the Adventures in Podcasting newsletter here.

Previous Episode

Adventures with listeners, guests, tech problems, and the intrusion of video

In today's episode, Pilar talks about meeting listeners, recording and tech problems xxx and I've shared a couple of things that are happening outside the English-speaking market.
The other day I went for lunch with my friend Pinar, who has a podcast in Turkish and has recently received some great feedback from listeners, asking her when she was going to release more episodes. She felt guilty... This is a great motivator isn't it? And interesting that although we do podcast for ourselves, we do feel accountable to those people out there who enjoy the content.
Her wine podcast in Turkish is Juliette'in Kadehi.
It's important to find something we enjoy during the process to drive us through creation. Pick topics you love, take this into account when you plan your show. You'll need these moments to drive you through the quieter times and keep you podcasting.
Pilar met a listener of the 21st Century Work Life podcast the other day, and she recorded with someone who listens to the show, and referred to what she'd learned from it during the interview. It's great to be reminded that what we put out there will be of use to someone else, that there are people who have never heard what we have to say.
07.51 Adventures with the tech (of course!)
During our first recording with a guest for Gastronostalgia, my guest stopped being able to hear me. So any time I wanted to ask a question, I had to do it through my co-host Tomas, as if he was an interpreter. It was not very enjoyable.
By the way, it's interesting to know what kind of interviewer you are. I'm a conversationalist, that is, I aim to have a conversation with the guest; Tomas is more of an interviewer, with questions leading the piece.
We've started bringing guests in to be able to reach more listeners, and freshen up the show a bit, and reward our listeners with a bit of variety - and different kinds of recipes!
As podcaster, Pilar doesn't like using video during the recordings, but it's important for some guests, and co-hosts. Ask your guests, but also communicate your preference.
It was also great to go to a studio where they're not using cameras when the client is dialling in - just like in the good ol' days, when this was being done via ISDN (not Zoom or Teams) and we didn't have to worry about the camera pointing at us while we tried to immerse ourselves in the audio medium.
19.04 mins A couple of news items
The Ondas awards for podcasts took place in Spain, and most of them come from the big producers like Podium, Spotify, Audible... however, there was also a special award for a podcaster that's been around for a while. Here's the list: https://www.premiosondas.com/premiados_ondas_podcast_2022.php?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2022-02-25
If you want to listen to some Spanish, Pilar and her friend Craig have a show that's now ended, called En clave de podcast.
There's also a podcasting conference in Cairo on 5th March.
Any questions and comments, do pop over to https://www.adventuresinpodcasting.com/contact/ or connect on Twitter @Inpodcasting

Next Episode

Adventures with Myriam Hadnes: Nurturing guests, mapping out episodes and a different view on sponsorship

Myriam Hadnes is the host of the Workshops Work podcast, where she talks to guests about facilitation and collaboration. We also talk about the role the podcast has taken in developing her business and community, sponsor breaks and how she uses a visual map to guide people into her show.
Workshops Work was part of her business communication, and a year and a half into her podcast, she actually changed the name of her business to match the podcast.
Her first guest was her mentor, who also introduced Myriam to workshops. She then reached out to her close community and friends.
The show structure has become freer now - Myriam has gone from scripting all her questions and following the script, to sending some questions through to give "the illusion of preparation" and be able to follow the conversation.

17.50 mins

Through podcasting, Myriam has also learned "the art of taking space", a concept she came across through improv. By being vulnerable and sharing her own perspective, she supports her guest helping them to play with the content, instead of being responsible for creating the content for the episode. Being of service to the other person is also something that comes from facilitation.
Myriam edited the first 25 episodes herself, which is important to do to get a real sense of your own presence and the conversation dynamics. "We don't want a thinking break to be confused with a tech issue." She used to take 4 hours per hour of episode.

27.30 mins

When conversations are long, the episodes are split into two shows, as Myriam asked her audience about their preferred length - they said 40 minutes and that it would be good for longer episodes to be split into two. This shows there's all kind of preferences, and it's worth asking your audience.
32.36 mins

A few years ago, Myriam went to a conference and was so dissatisfied that eventually, after being prompted by a guest, she set up her own conference. She invited her guests to do something at an event, where they would do something that had never done before.
The first 24 hour festival took place in November 2020, and now it's evolved into this whole thing, the Never Done Before community and events: https://neverdonebefore.org/

40.50mins

Myriam talks about how she decided to get her listeners used to "sponsors breaks" since the first episode so that, if at some point she could sell sponsorship onto the show, the audience would already be used to it.

46.50 mins
Myriam has a wonderful visual map on Mural for her episodes. You can find it here: https://bit.ly/podcast-map ,
Finally, Myriam talks about what she likes best about having her show: those moments when her and the guest forget that they are recording a show and have memorable, or incredibly fun conversations. Some of her favourite moments are her conversation with Meg Bolger, and Howard Gray.

You can connect with Myriam on LinkedIn, and also check out her site Workshops Work.

If you want to hear from me (Pilar) in between episodes, you can sign up to the Adventures in Podcasting newsletter here: https://www.adventuresinpodcasting.com/newsletter/