Show setup

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What this is

Everything required to bring a show into existence: format and positioning, cover artwork, video and social templates, a branded layout pack for editing, hosting and distribution to the podcast directories, integration with your website, and a calibrated pilot run. It happens once. After it, every episode is a routine that runs on rails, which is the entire objective. A show that requires a series of decisions every week is a show that stops.

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The format conversation

The most consequential hour of this piece, and it is not about equipment. We work out who is on the show, what it is about narrowly enough to be recognizable, how long an episode runs, and—the one that matters most—how often. That last answer should be the cadence you will still be keeping in eighteen months, not the one that sounds ambitious at kickoff. Every other week sustained beats weekly abandoned, and we will argue for the slower answer more often than you might expect. We also settle the positioning. A show about your industry in general competes with everything. A show about the specific thing your ideal client is quietly worried about competes with almost nothing.

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What we need from you

A decision on who hosts, and their genuine commitment to the cadence. We can host the show and interview you if needed—many of our clients prefer this approach. An existing brand system for the artwork and templates to extend. If you do not have one, the visual identity work comes first, because artwork invented in a vacuum will not match anything else you publish. A few hours across the setup period for format conversations, artwork review, and the pilot recording. A short conversation about your recording setup. We are not precious about equipment, but audio quality is the one production variable listeners actually notice, and it is cheap to get right at the start.

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What you will have

A show that exists—artwork, a feed live in the major directories, a website page, templates for video and social, and a per-show configuration recording every decision so that no episode requires re-deciding anything. And a pilot episode that has been through the full process end to end, so the first real episode is not also the first time the machine has run.

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How long it takes

About four weeks, with syndication directory approval accounting for some of it and being outside anyone’s control.

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The kit we recommend

You don’t need a studio. You do need to not sound like a conference call. Go all-in Apple where you can, cables included, and keep everything USB-C. Fewer adapters means fewer things to go wrong five minutes before a guest joins. Supplement with an Elgato kit—the Wave 3 microphone, a Key Light Air, and a Facecam MK.2. The whole set runs roughly $300 to $500. A Rode Wireless Micro is a good alternative if you would rather be free of a desk. Editing happens in Descript, which we handle. If you can stretch to an Apple Studio Display, do. We are serious about this one. It saves you years of small quality problems that are tedious to diagnose and impossible to fix in post. The part that costs nothing and matters most is light. Put a natural window in front of you, a lamp behind you for depth, and kill the overhead. Overhead lighting is the single most common reason a well-equipped setup still looks wrong.