Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1291: Starting a Podcast

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

This podcast is all about how to start a podcast of your own.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time another drive to work. Okay, so 1,200-some podcast in, I've decided to talk about how to make a podcast. Now, I did do a podcast once on specifically the making of driving, I'm sorry, of drive-to-work. Making Magic is my article. Of Drive to Work. But that was more specific, how do I make Drive to Work?

This is, are you interested in making a podcast? Well, this is my talking about how to do that. I feel 1,200 podcasts in, okay, maybe I feel confident enough to talk a little bit about making a podcast. Now, one of my caveats I'm going to start with is that a number of things I'm going to advise aren't necessarily things I do. So I just want to be up front that some of my suggestions, my podcast has some quirks to it, that are not what I would recommend necessarily doing. It's what I did out of necessity for certain reasons. but as I get to it today, you will see. There's a number of things I'm going to suggest

that it's not how I function, but it is me giving advice. Okay, so first and foremost, I will give you all the piece of advice that was given to me that got me to first making podcasts. So I go to San Diego Comic-Con every year. I've done a lot of podcasts on that.

For a while, every Saturday night, Kevin Smith, who, as a director, He made clerks, small rats chasing Amy, dogma, Tusk. He's done a whole bunch of films. He would talk every Saturday. And one of the things he said was he had started a podcast. And the advice he gave is he goes, anybody can start a podcast. Get a tape recorder.

Boom, you're a podcaster. And he inspired me. The reason I ended up making my podcast to start with was I always wanted to make a podcast. I thought it was a cool idea. My limitation was time, and as everyone obviously knows, my creative solution to that was, oh, well, I have to drive to work every day and it takes half hour to drive to work. I will use my half hour driving to work to do a podcast, which is what I've done, which is proven to be, for me, useful because I don't have the time outside of that. Once again, like I said, a lot of my podcasts and how I do it is based on necessity. Okay, but first and foremost, if you want to do a podcast, you can do a podcast.

anybody can be a podcaster. It's not hard to be a podcaster. Pretty much every smartphone nowadays. And I record on my phone. I mean, I have a little headset, but I mean, I recorded it on my phone. This is no fancy thing. I mean, I would suggest if you get seriously into podcasting,

you probably want to have better audio equipment that I do. I do not have the best audio equipment. I clearly, the weakness of my podcast is my audio is on the bottom end of quality. And that is because I'm mostly just using my phone. my headphones. Like, I'm not, I'm not, uh, I'm not an audio file and, but I will say if you want to make a podcast, it, it is worth your while spending some extra energy. Most people, for example, don't record in a car with ambient noise everywhere. You know, what you want to do normally is find a place where you can talk that the sound is quiet. Some people actually soundproof the room

that they're in. In general, when you want to do a podcast, uh, it's, it's not by the way you need very advanced recording technology. I think the phone is fine. my biggest problem is not really the phone is that I'm driving in a car and I don't have the means to sort of there's lots of noise around me that doesn't make things helpful so if you want to do that

you want to get a relatively nice quiet space if you could get a microphone you can use your phone I actually don't think the phone these days the quality is pretty good okay so first and foremost if you want to do a podcast

you have to have the need and desire to do a podcast that is first and foremost second um if you want to do a podcast you need to decide one of two things are you doing a podcast for yourself or are you doing a podcast for others and it could be a mix of the two um i enjoy doing my podcast but fundamentally it is designed i'm not just entertaining myself i do a podcast because i know there's people who listen to it um now like i said i as we get into um some of the other categories i have a few legs up in some other categories that help a lot um

But the reason I ask you to say, are you doing it for yourself or for others? And there's nothing wrong with doing it for yourself is some of the rules that I'm going to lay out vary depending upon whether you're trying to find an audience. The more you're doing it because you think it's fun and you're having fun with your friends and you're just enjoying the act of doing it, the less some of this stuff matters. The more you're trying to seek out an audience, the more of this stuff matters. So I'm going to talk a little bit assuming you're trying to get an audience. but I want to be clear. If you want to record yourself and you and your friends and talk about whatever and have fun and maybe you guys listen to it back or a few of your friends listen to it, that is fine.

Podcasting does not have to be, I record something and millions of people listen to it. I mean, obviously that's the top tier of podcast. Even my podcast, I have tens of thousands, but I'm nowhere close to a million people who listen to me. So it's okay to just do it because it's for the fun of doing it. Okay, but let's assume that you want people to listen to you. there's a little more things you have to think about. The goal, if you're just doing it for yourself, you can do whatever you want,

if you're just doing it for yourself. If you're trying to find an audience, let's get into the next period of things. So, first and foremost, you need to figure out what your podcast is about. It needs to have a focus. It's not that you can't move around within it. I obviously, you know, my focus is magic design.

I'm the magic head designer. So I talk about designing magic. Now, do I vary off? Hey, today's topic is podcasting. That's not exactly designing magic. It's adjacent because I make this podcast, which is based on making magic. But the point is, you have some wiggle room

within whatever you do. You want to pick your general topic. You want to talk about that topic. The reason the topic is important if you're trying to build an audience is you have to be about something. There's not a lot of podcasts that are just, I talk about stuff.

Like, what do you talk about? Why should I come here? And that the theme is the thing that will draw people in. I'm talking about a thing X. I like Thing X. Maybe I'll give it a listen. I do think it's really important

for you to have a focus for your podcast. Like I said, there's some wiggle room. No one's saying that you can't deviate from your focus. But you want to sort of deliver something that fits expectations. So when people come to listen to you, they understand correctly what they're getting.

Number two, you want to figure out who you're doing the podcast with. I heartily recommend you do it with at least one other person. Now, I break that. I do it by myself. Now, again, I do it by myself mostly because I'm driving to work. And there's no one else in my car.

I have had other people actually in my car. They've been on my podcast. And nowadays, I do a lot of interview podcasts, but I do those at home just because it's a lot harder to do them in the car. And people like interviews. So the reason you want another person is it's a lot easier to do messaging and, like, banter is a lot easier than monologing. I do what's called monologing.

It's just me talking by myself. There's no one to bounce off of. Monologing is very hard. Not impossible. Like, I have a lot of background and doing stuff like stand-up comedy. Stand-up comedy is monologing. I mean, there's certain art forms that are about one person presenting. They are tough.

Having another person makes things a lot easier. There's someone to bounce off of. The pressure is not on you all of it. a time. You're not constantly talking. And, you know, one person only knows so much. Multiple people know more. Should you do more than two people? Now, there are very popular podcasts that have more than two people. I think two is kind of ideal. I think that if I was going to make a podcast and I didn't have the constraints I had right now, two people is the ideal thing to start with. Now, two is harder than one and you have to organize. But I think if you're enjoying doing the podcast,

getting together and doing the podcast, I mean, it's work, but it's a lot of fun. Two, I think, is what I would call the default for a podcasting. I think that makes the best podcasting. You get rapport back and forth between people, you get two different personalities, and you sort of just, there is a lot of, there's a lot of fun that comes from people responding to one another that you miss in a single person. The reason I'd be getting over two starts getting is you just start getting crowded. I've seen podcasts with three work

I've even seen a few podcasts with more than three I think it starts getting a lot difficult once you get over three three is viable four and five just starts for example it becomes hard for the audience to know who's talking and have context so

but anyway you want to figure how many people and it's fine like I said I think doing a podcast with another person is great on many levels one it's a social activity to do with them two I think it is easier to do a podcast with somebody else now that said

you need to be focused on what you're trying to do. You need to understand what is it your podcast about. What are you talking about? And there's two things when picking a topic. Number one is it needs to be a topic you know. Like the whole reason that people will come to listen to you is you have things to say that they don't know. Why am I talking about magic design?

Oh, well, I'm the head designer of Magic Gathering. I've designed 40 plus magic sets. I've been on 100 design teams. I've literally been doing this for 30 years. Like, okay, I probably have, I probably know things you don't know. If you're interested in magic design, hey, I have more experience doing magic design

than any person on the planet. Okay, maybe I have something to offer. The second thing is, is the topic that you have some expertise in something that people are interested in hearing about? Right? Maybe you are an expert in... I don't know what you're expert.

You're an expert in, you know, the undersold of shoes. Is there an audience for the undersold shoes? Maybe there is. There's a, ooh, I love rubber shoes. Maybe there's someone who loves that. I don't know. But you want to make sure that whatever the topic is,

if you're trying to find an audience, that there is an audience for that topic. Not every topic inherently has an audience. Although, the one of the things I do find because of the Internet is, you know, if you want to find an audience, something that you might be very, very narrow. Maybe there's a whole horde of people that are really interested in the undersoles of shoes.

And maybe you could do the undersoles of Shoes podcast, and you have a lot of listeners because there are people fascinated by, ooh, what kind of material? Like, it doesn't fascinate me, but there are people out there. So, odds are something that fascinates you. There probably is an audience, although it depends. Some topics are a little more than others. I chose magic design.

A, okay, I mean, it's my area of expertise. But B, oh, there's millions of magic players. Okay. I just need to, I just wanted, you know, I'd be happy if I just got in the tens of thousands of listeners, which I did. And like, okay, well, there's millions of magic players. I just need a small portion of them to listen to this. and so that is important having a topic that you sort of

that both you can talk about and once again I'm at 1,200 podcasts here it need to be a topic I really knew now not every podcast goes to 1,200 I do two a week and I've done it for a long time and not all podcasts have to run that long but be sure that you understand you have a topic that you can really

go in deep on because if you're going to do a bunch of podcasts you'll need to do that and it is fine by the way you can do research a lot of really good blogs not blogs uh podcasts come from people getting in the topic and then doing extra research on the topic a lot of my i mean i happen to do this is what i do for a living so i'm talking about what i do day and day out um so i don't need to do as much research i do by the way i do some research if you're going to talk about a certain topic some i'll look things up

i'll just refresh my memory i mean it's not that i i don't do research i do um but i need to do less research than average just because okay i'm talking about the things that i do for a living but let's say you're really like I know for example murder podcasts are super popular it's not that they know all the details of every murder that ever happened but they'll study and they'll learn and go oh here's a really cool case that happened in whatever and here's the weird thing that happened you know you can do research on your topic no one is saying

that you have to know the topic up the top of your head so if you pick something that you like and you know only so much about it you can learn more about it that is fine one of the fun things about podcasting is you learning about something and then share what you learn and that is great so no one is saying you can pick a topic that you just know cold off the top of your head. But it should be a topic at least that you have the means to study and learn more about

and that you think there's enough topic on. The other next thing is what I'll call Finding Your Voice. So this is something they talk about. I learned about it when I first did writing, also learned about when I did stand-up comedy. The idea essentially is if you're communicating with people on a regular basis, you want them to think of you as you, as a person, and that part of what it means is that you have a universal voice to how you talk, meaning that people come familiar with you. Like, for example, if you are used to reading my column, making magic, if I showed you

a snippet of writing, you should be able to tell me, oh, yeah, that's making magic, no, no, that's not making magic. Like, I have a voice. I sound a certain way, and same with my podcast. Now, be aware, there are different media. your voice in different mediums will come across a little bit differently. I don't think necessarily if you read me or listen to me, I sound that different. I mean, I actually have a certain, my general pattern in the way I think about things is the same.

But, as I'll get into, the mediums shape a little bit of what you're trying to do. So that is important. But anyway, the next piece of myself I'll give you is you can start recording podcasts before you start sharing podcasts. Now, just so happens, the very first podcast I did, my test podcast, was in fact what turned out to be my first podcast on Tempest. I didn't know when I was recording it if I didn't even do a podcast. I was just checking it out. And if you actually listen to my first podcast, I think I've opened to the fact that I'm trying this out. It went well.

I went with my first podcast. I will say just as a note, I have a background in doing theater, in doing improv, in doing stand-up, in doing public speaking. I have a lot of skills in talking to an audience. So, hey, my first time out, yeah, I managed to do something that I could publish. A lot of that was I had a lot of practice, even though I hadn't done a lot of podcasting, I had done a lot of public speaking, and so that translated well to me doing podcasting. There's nothing wrong with you taking time to find your voice and find your rhythm, as they say. And part of that could be, hey, record podcasts that don't go out.

You don't need to put a podcast out to the world, so you're happy with the podcast, and that is fine. You know, I, the other thing, by the way, is I tend to have a very raw podcast. And what I mean by that is I turn my tape on, I talk for 30 minutes, I turn my tape off, I don't edit. That's the style that I have. Now, part of it is necessity.

I don't have time to edit. But part of what I do is if I make a mistake, I just own up that I make a mistake in the moment. If I need a sip of water because I'm thirsty, I will drink a sip of water. If a car cuts in front of me, I mean, regular systems will go, I'll go, safety first.

I'm like, okay, I got to stop focusing you for a second. I'm going to make sure that I'm being safe in traffic. And so there are things that I do where I'm very up front in what I do. Some people like a more of what they call polished podcast. That is where they record stuff and they go back and they edit it. And the things the O's, the ums, and the things that they don't like, they can take out.

You can control whether you want from raw to polished how much you want. I will say the more polished it is, the more it requires work on your end. Raw takes the least amount of time, but it's also the trickiest to do. For example, if I make a mistake, do you know how I fix my mistake? The next day I re-record my podcast. I just do it again, which is not the most if, I mean, I'm doing my way to work, and luckily I have four drives to work every week, and I only have two podcasts I have to produce. So I usually get ahead a little bit on podcasts, and that allows me to experiment things.

Or sometimes I'll record a podcast and end it and I go, you know what, I can do better than that. I'll just do it again the next day just because I think I've learned enough from doing it day one that I can do it better on day two. And I'll be honest, this isn't the first recording of this podcast. This has been a tricky one. And so I'm, this is a podcast that I've been trying out for a little while. When I have space, I've been experimenting with it.

And I've been massaging it and trying to find the best way to say it. Because this is not an easy podcast. I mean, a lot of, a lot of my podcasts are talking about something that I do a living. I mean, I don't really podcast for a living. I mean, I podcast sort of as part of my job, I guess. But, and a lot of what I'm talking about comes from listening to other podcasts and then doing my own podcasts. Okay. So now, you have found a topic, hopefully one that has an audience. You have found other people to do it with. Hopefully you've got some basic equipment. You've got a quiet space to do it. You've started to find your voice. You know, maybe you've done some practicing so that, you know, people can, um, People can hear, you know, you get a sense of how you sound. Okay, so now let's get into how do you make a good podcast. What are the elements of making a podcast? Now they have the component pieces to make a podcast.

What exactly makes for a good podcast? So first and foremost, there is a guy named Marshall McLuhan. So I had a study, I went to school, I studied communications, that was my major. And they made you read Marshall McLuhan. So Marshall McLuhan is his most famous quote. Oh, for Woody Allen fans, there's a scene in Annie Hall where he's standing in line and the guy ahead of him is like a professor of media or something. And he quotes Marshall McLuhan, the guy he quotes his guy is Marshall McLuhan.

And then Woody Allen says, that's wrong. And Marshall McLuhan happens to be in line and corrects him. The guy in line is Marshall McLuhan. So Marshall McLuhan is all about media. He's someone who studies media and the impact of media. I studied, I think. I don't think he's alive anymore. Anyway, Marshall McLuhan, his most famous quote is,

The Medium is the Message. And what that means is the mere act of the way you're communicating with people impacts the way communication works. And I've said this earlier. I write a column. I write a blog. I record a podcast. Each of those things is very different from the other.

It's not that I can't convey similar information. I can and I do. But the way I would give information, on my, in my article versus on my blog versus on my podcast is very different. So let's talk a little bit about a podcast

because today it's all about podcasts. Podcast is what they call an audio medium. What that means is you're hearing it. And you're not just hearing it. Somebody is talking to you. And there's a very different nature of how you read something

versus how you listen to something, especially a person talking. So if you are recording a podcast, you are, there's a great oral tradition going back to like around the fires, you know, in ancient times of telling stories around the fireplace. Like, that is how early history was communicated through human language. Now, eventually we started writing things and got printing presses and, you know, there are other ways to do that.

But there's something very primal about listening to other humans. And so podcasts tap into this audio medium. First and foremost, it is very personal. One of the reasons I talk about how you want to have a voice, you're not some omniscient narrator or something. You're, you know, when you listen to my podcast, it's Mark. Mark is talking. And a lot of people, the thing that will come to happen is as you record podcasts,

as people listen to you, they will come to get to know you, and it'll feel very personal. Now, obviously, everyone listening to my podcast doesn't actually know me, But there is a sense of knowing me. This is a sort of a parasocial thing that happens in media. But the point is, there's a very intimate quality that happens when you're talking. And so a lot of what you want to do is you, the person talking, want to talk directly to the listener. Not all listeners as much as any one listener.

Meaning, when I talk, I want you to feel like I'm talking to you. You have a listener. I'm talking to you. obviously I reference the fact that many people are talking to me so I do that but I'm trying to make language meaning there's a difference between me talking to an audience and me talking on a podcast because me talking on a podcast is a lot more like me talking to my friend than it is like me talking to an audience once again the medium is the message and one of the reasons by the way that having a partner in a podcast is really good because you can

talk to your partner. But one of the things that goes on, and one of the things you'll notice how I do is, I am talking to you, individually you, not group you, individual you. I understand many people are listening to me, but I'm trying to make connection with you the listener.

And so that is really important. You're making a podcast, you are being personal. A, in the means by which you're talking, you know what I'm saying, like in a podcast, you are talking directly to the listener. You're talking to the listener.

And each individual listener, not the listeners as a whole. For example, when I go and I'm doing Q&A at a, you know, I'm doing a panel or something, and there's a large audience. There, I mean, I might be, if it's Q&A, maybe I'm talking to the person asking the question,

but in general, I'm talking to the audience at large. It's a different dynamic. And once again, it's someone who just does a lot of speaking. The thing that's really interesting about podcasting is it has this personal quality. It's one of the reasons I think it really took off. It really feels like this person or these people are talking to you. Okay, part of the way you do that is you want to be very personal.

That the podcasting medium is a very personal medium. So one of the things that I do is I share a lot of personal information. I mean, pick and choose, by the way, I will stress. Being a podcast doesn't mean that everything that's yours is not, you know, you get private things. You don't have to share, you should share things that make sense to share. I will share details about my family, for example, but I don't share every detail of my family. But, for example, the idea that if I drop my son off at college,

I start by saying, hey, I just drop my son off at college, you know, there's a reason I do that. I don't have to. I don't have to tell you that. I could just say whatever, I'm pulling from the curve or whatever I say, but I always sort of say, hey, just to remind you, I'm a guy driving to work. I had to drop my son off.

You know, I mean, regular listeners, I've driven all my kids to different places on my podcast. Rachel, I used to drive her to school. Rachel would be on the podcast. Sarah, I had to drive her to camp one summer and we did a bunch of podcasts. Like, you know, hey, I am actually driving to work. And that's another thing about my particular thing is it's not a gimmick. A lot of people seem to think like, oh, I'm in the studio and I have traffic noise.

No, I'm literally on my way to work. That's why it's different amounts every day. That's why when a bread truck overturns, you guys get an hour episode. Because, you know, if there's a bread truck overturned, you guys get an hour episode. because, you know, if there's traffic, well, I talk more. But there's a personalness to that, and that's important. That part of what makes the podcast to podcast is you feel that this person is sharing with you on an intimate level. And once again, I need to stress.

There are things about my family that are private that I don't need to share. I'm picking and choosing what I share and how I share. That's very important. But I am choosing to do personal things. And, for example, I have done some podcasts. were very personal. I did a podcast about my dad after he died. I did a podcast after Chris Rush after he died. And both of those, I was in tears. Those were sad things. You know, and that's okay. Like, I think one of the things to me that makes podcast, podcast is the intimacy. I think

you want to really be you. You can show emotions, you can be who you are. I think that is important. I think it's one of the things that make people connect to you. And that's another big thing about podcasting. People get very personal on podcasting. One of the things I learned about studying about podcasting a little bit is people get very loyal. They find a podcast they like and they listen to that podcast. Not that people can't listen to many podcasts, a lot of people do, and not that people can't skim podcasts. There are podcasts that people just listen to once in a while.

But people tend to get very personal with their podcasts and they tend to go, okay, this is who I listen to and I'm going to listen to all of it. I have 1,200 episodes and the number of people who come up to me and said, I've listened to all your episodes. I mean, that is some dedication. I mean, I didn't really get into time. My episodes are short. One of the things I guess I should have talked about earlier is when you do your podcast,

not only you want to figure out the structure of it, I should have mentioned, you want to figure out the time of it. I think you want your podcast to be roughly close to the same amount of time so your audience comes to expect the commitment that you're asking of them. Mine are roughly half an hour. Why? That's how long it takes me to drive to work. I don't think it has to be half an hour.

I think it can be 15 minutes. It can be an hour. It can be two hours. I do think the longer you are, the bigger the ask of the audience. So if you're trying to get an audience, be careful how long it is. But, you know, I think it's important to establish something that people can get used to. Not that you can't ever break that pattern. Like I said, I had the hour-long episode where the food truck overturned.

But that was a special exception and not the norm. As people understand what the norm is. The other thing is that as a... Because you're talking and you're a person, the power of stories comes in. Like I said, one of the most powerful things that a human can do when people can do when talking to another human is tell stories. And so you'll notice I'm really big on sharing stories. I'm really big on, I could, and note in my podcast, I could talk in the third person some

of the time, but I try to where I can't talk in the first person. Now, it just so happens a lot of stuff I'm sharing. I actually was there when it happened. Some people, you might be, you know, if you're doing a murder mystery podcast, well, you weren't there for the murder mystery, you know, for the actual, so there you're talking third person. You weren't there. But where you can, I think you want to be first person.

And I think if your topic involves first person, that is more powerful. Like, for example, if you want to listen to magic design, hey, I'm sure there might be other people that talk about, like, they look at magic arts and give their opinion on the design. Which is great. That's not what I'm doing. I'm giving behind the scenes. I'm like, why do we do this? Well, let me tell you what I was thinking when I designed it. You know, that is content nobody else is giving you.

No one else knows what I was thinking when I designed something. Or, you know, I'll bring on other designers. It's like one of the things I've access to is, not that the other designers can't be another podcast, but I have a high percentage of, you know, I know all the designers. I have, you know, there are a few exceptions, but most major magic designers have been on my podcast.

If you want to hear, you know, the people, and not just on my podcast, I brought people on, and then we talk about the set that we made, or they made, if I didn't make it with them, although much of the time I did make it with them. So that, you want to tell stories. You know, you want to involve people,

and you want to, there's something really compelling about structuring things in stories. Now, I'm not going to get into how to tell a story. That's its own thing. Maybe one day I'll do a podcast and telling stories. But the important thing, the real short version is there's a beginning, middle and end. There's a protagonist, probably you. Basically in the story, the protagonists, often you, want something. There is something in their way that keeps them from getting that thing. Either they never get it or they overcome it. That, that Basically, that's the, basically the, that a writing teacher's like, get a, get a character, put them up a tree, throw rocks at them, get them out of the tree. That was sort of what a story is, or leave them in the tree sometimes.

Okay, so, be personal, tell stories, and the audience exists, meaning one of the cool things about having an audience is you can interact with the audience. Now, I have other means to do that. I have my blog. I have social media. it is really good to listen to your audience. And that, once again, your audience shouldn't dictate what you do, but your audience is really good for talking about what they enjoy and what they like. If you self-publish yourself, I don't do this, so it's a little harder for me.

You can see how many people listen to an episode. So if you have an episode that's very popular, you can see that. You can see how many people downloaded it. Now, part of that also has to do with listening. Another important thing when you podcast is it's really important to communicate in your title what exactly you're doing. I wouldn't get cute senior titles. I would say, I'm talking about this topic.

So people know what it is and know whether to listen to it. Assuming that you list your podcast cleanly so people know what they are, you will really get a sense of what they like and what they don't like based on who listens to things. Now, once again, part of that might be

you properly identifying what it is. But assuming you do that, I can go back and I don't get my dad all that often because I don't post my own thing. So I get my dad to every once in a while, but I get it way more frequently than one thing. I can and I have looked at, oh, what are the podcast people really like?

For example, one of the really interesting things was during COVID, I did the thing where I just interviewed a lot of people. I wasn't driving to work. And early on in COVID, I'm like, well, I don't know how COVID's going on. I'll use this as an opportunity to interview people. I don't get to interview people in my car very often. But I did a lot of interviews where I was interviewing the person, meaning I was just like, this topic is all about you, the person.

Now, they were all people related to magic. And the topic was, let's learn about you and how you've interacted with magic. But what I learned is, every once in a while I do a podcast where I have a guest on, and we would talk about making a magic set together. And those were way more popular.

That, yeah, people do like to listen about magic celebrities. It depends on the celebrity how much they want to listen. But you don't like even more? Me and a celebrity talking about the actual making of a magic set. So I started doing, instead of just having designers on and just, you know, just talk about their lives is I'd have them on and we'd talk about a set we did together. And those were infinitely more popular because, you know, I could have Richard on just talk about Richard in gaming or I could have Richard on talk about Alpha, the making

of Alpha, super popular. So, and that's what I learned is that not only do I have guests on, but I need to have focused topics that the audience wants to hear about specifically. Those do better. And I learned that by getting the actual day. data. So use the data. The data is very valuable for you. Okay, guys, I am at work. So let me, let me sum up here what I have to say. If you want to do a podcast, do it. Get a recorder, do it. I do think there's a lot of things you want to think about. You want to think about your topic and theme. You want to think about who you're doing it with. You want to think about the duration. You want to think about your voice and how you're going to talk. You want to think about

your equipment and a quiet space to do it in. And feel free. to record episodes. You don't need to post everything you record. And that includes later on, not just early on, but later on, if you record something and don't like it, don't post it. You're not obligated to post things just because you recorded it. And then, as you're doing it, lean into the medium of the audio medium of podcasts, be personal, be real, share stories. And remember, talk directly to the person to listen to you. Talk to them. You know, you want to, you want to, you want to create a connection. And there's a, one of the cool things about podcasting is podcasting can get very personal.

I know that because I talk to listeners when I meet them. So anyway, this is my, my, I really thought it was nice to sort of go back and talk a little bit to people that might be thinking about doing a podcasting. The reason I started this whole podcast was because Kevin Smith's encouraged me to do so. And I'm encouraging you to do so. This sounds fun. If you think you might like enjoying a podcast, do it. Go record it.

I'm not, that doesn't mean necessarily you will end up being a podcaster. It doesn't mean you'll end up necessarily having an audience or a big audience. But podcasting can be fun unto itself and who knows, you know, I wasn't sure and now I, I have a pretty popular podcast. So, um, now given I, I, I will admit, by the way, I had a few extra legs up, you know. I, I was the head designer for a million dollar product. So not everybody has that. So be aware, I had a few things a little easier probably than the average, my, the average listener does. So, okay, guys, but I'm now at work.

So we all know what that means is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.