Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You) summary

Introduction

Everybody Has a Podcast, Except You, by Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy. Start a podcast about what you love and build a loyal audience. Do you dream of sharing your voice with the world? Have you ever wondered how to turn your passion into a podcast?

The first family of podcasting, the McElroy brothers, started with no special skills. Yet they built a massive following and a successful career. This guide reveals their secrets to creating a podcast from scratch. You'll discover how to find your unique topic and engage listeners.

Learn the essentials of recording, editing, and growing your audience.

find your podcast idea

Find Your Podcast Idea. So you want to start a podcast. But where do you begin?

Think for a moment about what you're obsessed with. What lights you up when you talk about it? What is it that leads you down countless internet rabbit holes? For Justin McElroy, it was workplace training videos.

For you, it may be the mating habits of moths. Whatever your passion is, enthusiasm can't be faked. And it's this genuine inspiration that will engage your audience. The key message here is: make a podcast about something that obsesses you.

Once you've chosen your topic, do some research. Find out what else is out there on the same subject. Podcasting has become mainstream, and there are now some 850,000 podcasts available globally. So if you've chosen a well-known topic for your podcast, there's a very good chance someone had the same idea.

For example, your topic might be the reality show Survivor. If your research uncovers several similar podcasts, it might be time to go back to the drawing board. Or instead, you could push to find a novel angle. Because even more important than the topic itself is your unique approach to it.

So while there may be five other podcasts about Survivor, you could focus on a new angle. You might explore the strategy behind the show and how it's changed over the seasons. When trying to decide on your angle, draw on any specific expertise you have. For example, Justin and his wife Sydney built their show about strange medical history.

They built it on the strength of her experience as a physician. If you've got particular knowledge or training, use it. Once you've got your topic, it's time to refine it into a one-sentence pitch. You'll want to make sure that people can understand what your podcast is about in one line.

Then they can tell their friends about it. A McElroy brothers podcast can be summed up by the tagline, three non-celebrities try to con their way. They try to con their way into a major motion picture. That single line is informative enough to let you know whether you'd want to listen to the show.

Now that you've come up with a topic, angle, and one-line pitch, stop to ask yourself two questions. First, are you willing to devote your most precious commodity, your time, to making this? And second, would you love to listen to this podcast if someone else made it? If the answer to both questions is yes, you're onto a winner.

Stay tuned for the nitty-gritty of pre-production.