We are launching our Season 10 of the podcast on Friday, 1 August. This season is again filled with many more exciting entrepreneur stories but what I have tried to create is a more angle or topic-focused episode while retaining the original flavour of the podcast.
In the past I used to begin with the entrepreneur’s story but these days, I start with a topic or angle.
The angle or topic development is something I work on fastidiously with my guest during our preliminary call. We anchor our episode around a topic because I want listeners to derive value from an industry perspective.
I started experimenting with this topic-driven episode in Season 8 and 9 and I believe that it’s a more robust episode. While I still honour the guest’s background and story, the episode gets more fascinating as I enter the story from a point of view first and move to the guest’s personal story.
Essentially this gives my episodes a seamless two-part coverage in one hour: one, a highly-relevant topic that we can discuss at length and two, a look into the guest’s entrepreneur origins, strategies and lessons learnt.
Podcasting is a lot of experimentation. I usually try out ideas with the help of my guests and I am grateful they allow me to take the lead. This is why my preliminary calls with guests are critical. We have to nail a topic before we get down to recording.
Without a topic, an episode is like a ship without a direction.
As you can see, podcasting isn’t just about interviewing. It’s about creating an episode that’s worth listening to.
What do you think of this new format where I start with a topic? Leave me your comments on our Instagram or Facebook.
Plus, do you know that I have written an ebook that shows you how you can start a podcast successfully and not fizzle out by the third episode? Check it out!