My podcast tech stack

Starting a podcast? Congratulations!

Comment below with your podcast link (if you’ve already started), I’d love to follow the journey.

Sections I’ll go through:

• Why I started a podcast
• The equipment I use
• The software that I use
• My process for publishing

Why I started a podcast

I started a podcast on water. Looking at the intersection of management, policy, and technology — all as it looks at the world of water.

It’s called LiquidAssets, you should sign up for it. :)

Why?

Because, there is so much talk on how:

• “Water is the next gold”
• “We’re taking water for granted”
• We’re going to be fighting the next wars over water”

Big problems, right? I didn’t understand the fundamentals of the problem. And I felt a little uneasy about being an entrepreneur in water, but didn’t know how to solve the issues.

If I don’t understand then I’m sure a lot of other people don’t understand either.

So, I set out to interview the folks who control water (the policy and corporations), and folks who are building cool tech in water (the entrepreneurs).

OK, back to you.

It’s important to have a why.

A why you’re going to publish a podcast and release episodes, but at the same rate don’t get caught up in the intricacies.

There’s a balance to hitting publish versus spending too much time planning.

Here’s a hidden hack to get past that. You get the fixed time of a season (8–10 episodes). After that season, you can pivot if it’s not working. Heck, you can stop publishing and say that you at least had a season.

Don’t worry about starting off on the wrong foot, the goal is to start.

Benefits of having a podcast

Meeting cool people. The very physics of having a podcast puts you front and center with some of the most amazing people in the world. Folks that are leaders in your industry (or exemplify the behavior that you’re interviewing for). i.e., you don’t have a podcast in water but you interview immigrant founders.

Going deep on a subject or topic. You get to intimately explore the behavior you’re interviewing for and/or topics you’re trying to unearth. I think of it like digging, you’re intersection with this podcast is distinct and unique. Your background, interview style, your ability to talk about the subject is you — and you have as much as a story to tell as do the guests.

Lets get into the specifics, because that’s why many of you are here.

Podcast ‘hard’ equipment

Mic. I use a Blue Yeti Mic, you can find it here on Amazon.

Camera. I still haven’t figured out a good camera setup, so for now I’m still using my Macbook Air camera. But, I did realize that a big part of it comes down to the lighting.

Lighting. So, you typically want a 3-point lighting setup (this may be a bit difficult when you’re recording on the go). This set-up will give you depth so your image looks cleaner. I got these 2 lights, I’m thinking about getting a larger light with a diffuser, and then a colored light for behind me.

Here's a great resource on 3-point lighting.

The software

You now have your setup. Make sure you have a solid internet connection and there are no distractions.

Let’s get to recording!

Recording software.

Riverside.fm. All the way. Why?

• Riverside.fm has an app, so your guests can sign into the studio with either web or a phone / tablet
• Riverside records locally on the phone or computer, so if you (or your guest) have any connectivity issues, it’ll save your recording.

Once I’ve recorded the episode, let’s head to Descript.

Editing software.

Descript is like Google Docs, but for video editing. You don’t have to do any of the crazy tracking and scanning to find just the right spot and then delete words. Descript does it all through a text editor.

They’ll transcribe your text, and then give you a ‘word doc’ so you can edit your video. Pretty cool.

You can not only edit the long-form podcast, but you can also use Descript to make Instagram Reels, TikTok videos, and YouTube Shorts.

Check out their explainer video below.

Publishing software.

Spotify for Podcasters. Anchor.fm was acquired by Spotify, and it’s super easy to upload an episode on there. You can sign up here.

RSS Feed. Once you create an account on Spotify for Podcasters, they’ll generate an RSS feed for you. You just plug that into Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts (and many other platforms). But you’ll use Spotify for Podcasters as your origination point on posting the episodes.

Ghost.io. I use Ghost’s pre-loaded podcast publishing templates to store my show notes, transcripts, summaries, and a ‘singular place’ where I can store all my episodes. I’ll eventually grow this website to store more information, have resources around water, and throughlines on the conversations.

Album art. Use Canva to make your album art. Probably the easiest way to use generative AI if you want to create something interesting.

Spreading the word

You’ve got your episode recorded, some Reels made, posted on YouTube, and uploaded to Spotify. Great!

Extra credit things to think through:

• What types of assets will you give your guests? So they can help share your podcast, and more importantly of the awesome things that they‘re talking about
• What’s your posting schedule? Keep it reasonable, so you can post episodes within your timeline. The worst thing to do is to have an erratic posting schedule.
• How will you help spread the episodes? Do you have a LinkedIn or Instagram that you can post on? An email listserv that you can send it out to?

That’s it! Happy podcasting and best of luck!

This is day 37 of my #90DayOfProse challenge.

The meta image was generated via Midjourney via the prompt “a friendly hedgehog recording a podcast, hyper realistic”.