The Lazy Genius Podcast - #250 - How I Make This Podcast

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

In this 250th episode, I’m going to tell you how I make this podcast. I asked y’all on Instagram what you wanted to know about the behind-the-scenes stuff of the Lazy Genius space, and a lot of it was podcast related. I’ll answer most of what you asked in today’s episode. Later in the spring, we’ll do a broader business episode in case that interests you, too.   Helpful Companion Links Preorder The Lazy Genius Kitchen (out May 3rd!) and claim preorder bonuses here! Check out the three Lazy Genius shades of Olive & June nail polish (and take the new quiz!) Get on the Latest Lazy Letter mailing list Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Amazon presents, Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hi there. You are listening to the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is our 250th episode. You guys, that's a big deal. I mean, it's kind of a big deal, right? I love how we have arbitrarily assigned years that are basically in increments of 10s, 25s and hundreds is super important, but I will take it. 250 is an amazing number and a lot of episodes. And I

just so happy that you are here for them. In this 250th episode, I'm going to tell you how I make this podcast. I asked y'all on Instagram what you wanted to know about the behind-the-scenes stuff of the lazy genius space, and a lot of it was podcast related. I'll answer most of what you asked in today's episode. And then later in the spring, we'll do a broader business episode in case that is what interests you. Now, the irony of this episode, you guys, is that at this time, I, okay, so I record, I record in my home office, all right? And it is a converted garage. Like it's, you know, back behind my house. Across the street from my house, my neighbor is actually building a new garage and it is very loud. I have covered my desk and all the things and as many,

as many soft things as possible to absorb the sound. But you are going to hear occasional hammering. I have tested, I can still hear the hammering. So there's just no getting around it. Again, the irony that there are excess sounds on a podcast episode about how to make a podcast? It's just fantastic. Okay. Now, before I get into the specifics of making the podcast, I want to tell you about the three women on the lazy genius team and what they do, because that is a huge piece of the behind the scenes of the podcast. So Leah Jarvis has been with me since March of 2018. So we are coming up on four years of working together. She started out doing a few administrative tasks like answering emails and scheduling stuff

and kind of helping me with the machinery of newsletters and the website, stuff like that. Well, it did not take long working with Leah before I realized how good she was at creating content at helping me come up with ideas and finessing rough ideas I did have into something more polished and clear. She's also great at design, which I kind of left into. So she did some of that too. Leah basically did everything I did not want to do for years. Now, when I hired her, she already had a full-time job. So her work for me was on the side. But then a couple of years ago, she decided to quit that job

and work freelance full-time, a decent percentage of that being for me. So that was amazing and also kind of wild and scary because I'm like, oh man, this chick just quit her job to work for me. This business thing better pan out. So for a while, Leah did every. everything because Leah was good at everything and she was the only one on the team. But as we will know, if you try and do everything, you will kind of end up doing nothing. And at the very least, you will sacrifice what matters most for trying to do it all. As a new business owner, I fell into this with Leah. I failed her, you guys. I failed her. I basically asked her to make everything matter because she was the only one to do it. We were surviving.

we were doing okay. But I was not a good boss in seeing what was happening. After several conversations, we realized that what matters most to her about her job and what she's best at is creativity. And yet she was in the weeds managing email and schedules and non-creative details because there were and are a lot of those in this business. We launched the lazy genius way, the book together back in August of 2020, a time that was chock full of creativity and details, and it about killed us. Now, we let a lot of things go, and it's still about killed us. There was just too much to do. And the things that we both were excited to do, the creative things just didn't have enough margin to get done, especially for Leah. So last summer, we were like, dude, we got to hire somebody.

So as Leah and I talked through all the things that have to be done and addressed and dreamed up in this weird internet work that we do, we quickly realized we needed to hire two people, not just one. We needed a community manager, which we knew, but we also needed an operations manager. As we distilled all the work that is done in this business into job descriptions, there was an extra job description for an operations manager. we needed someone to take away all of the administrative machinery, analytical, systematic jobs from Leah so that she could focus on just the creative stuff. So last summer, we started the hiring process. We interviewed some incredible people, some of whom might be listening now. You guys were amazing. Honestly, it was, it was astounding at how competent and amazing the lazy genius community is. Because, listen, y'all, I did not post the jobs anywhere but here. It was just, just to our email list, maybe like a quick link on Instagram. I think I might have mentioned it once on Instagram.

We had hundreds of applicants, truly incredible ones. And as we went through the applications and did interviews and all the things, it became pretty clear to me that this community is amazing. And also that the next members of the Lacey Genius team needed to be Leslie Fox and Latoya Montief. And fortunately, they agreed. so Leslie is the operations manager of this business. She is a wizard. She has degrees in like aeronautics or space engineering or something I very much do not understand. She loves spreadsheets and planning and systems and money and it's

fantastic. She also is a truly lovely human who knows how to get stuff done while preserving and honoring the humanity and the people doing the work. She has just saved our butts. Leah and I both started calling her Queen Leslie within the first week of her joining the team because we were bowing down at how much space she gave us to do our jobs. She's just the best. Latoya is our community manager. And it's kind of annoying how good she is at knowing how to respond to people, how to know what people need, how to create environments where people feel seen and connected. She is amazing. She is currently doing kind of some R&D for a membership community that will happen sometime. in the future. She handles Facebook and a lot of her emails. And she basically does all of the

forward facing human things because she's so incredibly good at it. She's also an event planner in her day job, which I did not know when we hired her. So that has been amazing as we have been putting together book launch stuff. Okay. So what do I do? If they're all doing all of those things, what do I do? I cast vision. I create content, including this podcast. I connect with you, and then I develop relationships with other people who work in this weird internet world. So Leah makes every idea that I have prettier and better. Latoya cares for the people who engage in that content that come here for those ideas, right? And then Leslie makes sure that nothing falls apart. It's just a sincere privilege to work with them. And we have a tremendous

chemistry. We work really well together. I know that I'm the bosses. I say that, but I really do you think it's true and it has changed this business for sure. It's just been amazing. Now, another thing that's amazing that I want to share with you is that part I said before about developing relationships. So working on the internet is a weird job. It has become more normalized for sure, but it still has some very strange and unique challenges and characteristics that are as annoying as it sounds, hard to understand unless you're actually experiencing them. I think that's why you see a lot of podcasters and authors and influencers become friends. If you watched my Bakes with Bree, Brie and Kendra Eat Stuff on Instagram a couple weeks ago,

you saw the tipsy version of this little speech. But that's why you see a lot of people on the internet becoming friends. It's like meeting someone who gets it, who gets you. I hesitate to even talk about it because it can very quickly sound exclusive, which I absolutely hate. But the best way I can kind of describe it is it's like going to a party and you meet someone who loves throne of glass as much as you or who has a kid with the same temperament as yours or who is the only woman in her office just like you are. And you have something that immediately connects you. The same is true with work on the internet. It's just a relief to connect with someone who

understands kind of the weird things that you go through. Now, one of the people that I have connected with over the last couple of years is Sarah Gibson Tuttle or SGT, who is the founder of Olive and June, the nail polish brand that turned me from a person who didn't care about nails to a person who does a manny every single Sunday. I'm still not even comfortable with the word manny. That's how new all of this is to me. So SGT and I, we have organically become friends over the last two years. And I genuinely love her. Like we talk about hard life stuff. She sends me pictures of her nightlife LA outfits. And I'm always in sweatpants when she sends them to me. It's kind of a joke. We are very much an odd couple, to be sure. But she cares about people and specifically the people

who love her brand, Olive in June, which is why I love supporting her. But one of the crazy extras that can come from developing friendships with people on the internet is stuff like the Lacey Genius Olive and June collab that released just a few days ago. You guys, it's the stupidest thing because I'm not the person in high school that people would have pegged to have her own nail polish color. But here we are. I have three. There are three new lazy genius colors, you guys, three. There is TLG, which is my favorite neutral purple of all time. Purple is a neutral, you guys. Start small, which is such a great name for a nail polish.

Start small. It's a rosy tan that is just a great place to start. Get it for anyone who is kind of new to nail polish. And then the third color is called You're Doing Great. And it is an orangey red that is a pep talk in a bottle. I have been wearing it and hiding it from you guys on Instagram because I can't take it off. Like, I don't want to. It is a magical, magical color. These are my three favorite colors that Olive and June has ever made. Truly, truly. And the fact that they're technically lazy genius colors is, it's just ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. There is also a quiz that we develop together that helps you pick your six best colors when you order your Manny system. Because if you have heard an Olive and June ad before, which this is not. I'm just telling you about something cool. But when you order a Manny system through Olive and June, it comes with either one polish color or six.

And I always encourage people to get six because it's kind of disappointing to just get one because it's so fun, but you only have the one color. So we created a system, a quiz for choosing your nail polish colors. And it is magical. It is magical. Anyway, I'm telling you, because I want you to know that there is a TLG color and a quiz and so many fun things. But also, that is kind of one of those strange behind-the-scenes things that can happen. in this business that kind of came from this podcast, you make friends with a founder and then you wear your own name on your nails. It's a really weird, it's a really weird life, you guys.

So now that you've met the team, and I've told you about the lazy genius, all in June collection, because that's very exciting. Now let's talk about how I specifically make the podcast. We'll be right back. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life.

You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. So every quarter, Leah and I have a podcast planning meeting. We block off about an hour or two, and we, We plan episodes for three months at a time. Now we have some episodes that we like to repeat because y'all seem to like them a lot, like the What's Saving My Life episodes, for example. That's next week, by the way. We also look at the dates of the episodes and think about what you all might be struggling

with at that time. What kind of topics would be helpful at the beginning of May or the end of November? What might you need reprieve from or help with at a certain time of year? over the life of this podcast, so many of you have said, Kendra, you're in my head. And y'all, we legitimately plan that way. We try and get in your head. We try and think about what episode would be super helpful during a certain time. That is very much on purpose.

Now, I'm realizing that how Leah and I plan the podcast is kind of like making a monthly meal plan. We do not plan chronologically. We plug in the obvious things first. So, like, what are we going to do the week of Christmas? What are we going to do the first week of the year? What are we going to do the week the lazy genius kitchen releases? And then once those are plugged in, those obvious ones, that would be weird if you put something just like how to organize paper or Christmas Day.

You're not going to do that. Then we take our brainless crowd pleaser episodes like What's Saving My Life and we put them in appropriate places. Then we kind of have a content version of a meal matrix. we have certain categories we want to cover regularly. So we look to see how long it's been since we've done a food episode or a time management episode or an organizational episode. We'll also pull from what's kind of like our dinner queue,

which is a list of ideas that we get throughout the year from our own brains, from your emails and suggestions, and from what Latoya senses from all of you as she hangs out in the online communities, we pull from that list to fill in the gaps. And then we step back and we go, is this a good mix? Is this a good order? Sometimes we'll notice that we have like five weeks in a row of just kind of heavier episodes. So we insert something lighter.

Like we'll switch a couple things. We tinker until we feel good about it and then we're set. But just like a meal plan, none of it is set in stone. Leah and I meet once a week for a content call. and usually at the end of every month during one of those calls, we confirm that the next month's episodes are still a good plan. Maybe we sense that something else needs to happen instead. Maybe something is happening culturally that the planned episode just feels insensitive toward. Maybe your books are on the bottom of the ocean and you need to do an episode about how you're

dealing with the boat situation, you know? That was last week. So we're never locked into like a quarterly plan, but we don't usually change much. For the most part, what comes out of the quarterly planning meeting stays. Also, what stays is the pounding of this construction across the street. You guys, it's just killing me. Okay. Now, each episode goes through a four-part process. Okay, we break it, we write it, we record it, and then we get it ready. Now, breaking an episode is basically figuring out what it's about and loosely outlining the order of what you're going to say, what you're going to include. We could come up with the idea how to organize your paper, which is actually a real episode. I've said it twice, but it's a real episode. And I know I can lazy

genius it. I know I can lazy genius organizing paper. But knowing an episode title and knowing you could do it is very different from knowing the actual episode. I have to work out how to explain not just how I would organize paper, right? But how you might organize paper based on what matters to you. So breaking an episode is a discovery process. There's a lot I could say about any topic. But what actually matters most in this? How can I communicate it clearly? What is the right order to explain it? Depending on the topic, that process of breaking an episode can take anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours per episode. Next up is writing the episode. Here is where I will put a very popular question. Are the episodes spoken off the cuff, spoken loosely from an outline,

or written out? Friends, they are written out. Every word I'm saying is written out. Here are the two very important reasons why that is. Number one, I am a verbal processor and you don't want me to just riff for 20 minutes. We will not land in a very coherent place if I, I do that. Earlier episodes were Rift. And while they were good, they were fine. They took a lot of editing and re-recording, which leads me to the second reason why I write my episodes. I hate editing. I hate it. I hate it. And I do it myself. I could hire it out, but by writing a script, I don't have to. I just read the episode. But here is a very important element to this writing process. It's going to sound a little unhinged, but here we go. I write the episode as I talk out loud. So after an episode is broken,

and I know where I'm going, I open my laptop, I create my new Google Doc, and I talk out loud as I type. I speak casually as though I was riffing on mic or maybe talking to you on an Instagram story. And I type as I speak. And I do that from the beginning of the episode to the end. I'll step away for an hour or even a couple of days. And then I'll come back and I'll read over it and make sure that I didn't take too many rabbit trails or that everything I said was clear. I'll make a few edits here and there, just clean it up. But ultimately, what you're hearing week to week, while written and read word for word, is about as close to my spontaneously talking as you can get. The script is just my insurance policy against having to spend a lot of time editing. Again, an activity I very much do

not like. So yes, the episodes are scripted. Now, how long does it take me to write an episode? About one to three hours. I talk and type, but I will also pause. I'll make sure I'm following the outline. I'll maybe change the outline completely because I'm realizing a different order would be better now that I'm talking it out. Again, I'm a verbal processor. So yeah, I pretty much talk to myself for a couple hours to make these episodes. That's how they come to be. Then the next step is to record it. Because the whole thing is written, recording takes about as long as it takes you to listen. Sometimes I will cough, I'll stumble over a word, I'll find a typo and I'll need to go back because I spoke the typo out loud. But I'll just stop the recording, go back to where I was and then keep going.

That part is relatively easy. And since I use the same garage band project to record literally every episode, the settings never change. The theme music is always there. The audio is set. And I have a finished episode pretty quickly. Then I upload the file to our internet machine. It's what I call it, because I don't understand all the like platform words, where Leah takes over. And she completes that fourth step of getting the episode ready. She uploads it to our network server. I think that's what you call it. She inserts the ad markers. She creates the show notes with all the links and stuff. She creates an episode post on the website. And then she schedules it to publish on whatever Monday the episode is set for. So that is about 20 to 120 minutes to break an episode, one to three hours to write an episode, 30 to 40 minutes to

to record and upload an episode, and then another 20 minutes to record and upload the ads for the week, which I didn't mention. So for my personal time, that shakes out to about two to six hours per episode. I'd say that the median, I don't know if it's median or mean, but whatever that middle number is, if you know math, that probably holds true. Each episode probably takes about four hours from start to finish. Now, not every episode goes through this process in a straight four hours. That rarely happens, actually. I will usually break a couple of episodes at a time. I'll write a script or two at a time.

And then I'll record everything that's ready all at once. Or at the very least, I'll spread the episode work across a whole day or two. It's just really hard to generate a good episode from beginning to end in one fell swoop. Usually they need some time to breathe. One final podcast question. How far ahead do you record episodes? The answer is it depends on. on the season, not of the year of my energy. Typically, we're recording week to week and are maybe a

week ahead ahead of time, though. Or they are in a very easy rhythm where it's actually not stressful to record week to week, right? It can go both ways. But that season of recording week to week is about to shift for me. I have some upcoming book stuff where I'm going to be traveling, doing extra projects, and I'm going to need to get ahead a little bit. I will not have room to generate a new episode week to week. That means that this week, including this episode, I will generate three episodes at once. You'll listen to this episode on February 21st, but I'm recording it on February 10th. So I'm a week ahead of schedule.

But I'll record next week's episode for February 28th today too. I need to start batching more than usual because my six. schedule is more unwieldy than usual over the next four months. That's why next week, technically, even though my neighbor's garage will have been built probably, you'll still hear the hammers. So I'm going to batch. I'm going to a batch because things are going to be busy, right? I'll break a few episodes at once. I'll write a few episodes at once, record a few at once. And I get more done when I batch because those three tasks require different kinds of creativity and energy. So doing one kind at once is quicker than finishing one episode from start to finish

and then another episode from start to finish and so on and so on. I really love making this podcast and I hope I get to do it for a long time. We have not run out of ideas yet because life is so full of so many intricacies and stages. I mean in 2020, we threw out a lot of our existing podcast plan when the pandemic hit because we were literally pivoting based on what we were all experiencing. That's why we have episodes like how to clean your house when everyone is inside it, how to plan your time when time makes no sense. We continue to pay attention to what you need, what's going on the world, and how we can serve you better and better. Because that's the whole point of this work. I want to make your life better by showing you new ways to do stuff, see stuff, think about stuff,

see yourself differently. If this podcast wasn't genuinely helpful to you, I would stop doing it. I'd go get a job at William Sonoma, selling cookware to people or something. But as long as this is helpful to you, and as long as I have the energy and calling to do it, we will keep making this podcast. And I am so glad you listen. That's a great place to stop. Thank you genuinely for listening to these 250 episodes, no matter if this is your first or you've heard. all 250. It means the world to me. As a reminder, I have a newsletter called the latest Lazy letter that has thousands of readers who say it's their favorite newsletter they get, which is such an honor, you guys, because I get some really great newsletters. So thank you.

If you do not already subscribe, the latest Lazy Letter will go out next week, and we do a giveaway for new subscribers every month. I'd love for you to check it out this month and see what you think. Also, don't forget to check out the Lazy Genius Collection with Olive and Jee. June, if you haven't already. These colors are magic. The Manny system is fantastic. I'm so excited about this quiz. It is creating the easiest way for you to pick your six colors.

I just love it so much. We are lazy, genius, and nails, you guys. We're doing it. Okay, thank you again so much for listening. For subscribing to this podcast, to the newsletter, and for cheering me and this space on in so many beautiful kind ways. Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you are living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it?

I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcast. podcasts.