New Beginnings…And a New Podcast

If you are wondering why I’ve been so quiet for the past 10 days, it is because I have been feverishly working on a new project.  This week it is finally coming to fruition!  For a long time I’ve thought about doing a podcast, but it seemed so daunting that I never actually tried it.  I remember listening to my first podcast sometime in 2008, but never really got into listening to any others at the time.  Then several years ago I became aware of a few folks in my life that were listening to podcasts regularly, and one eventually started her own podcast in 2015.

At that point I had a thought that it would be fun to do a podcast – but about what?  With whom?

2019 has been the “year of the podcast” for me – during my commutes to work I almost exclusively listen to podcasts now.  There is so much great content out there, I could easily spend HOURS every day listening to podcasts and never get bored because of the wide spectrum of subject matter being created and distributed every single week.

A few weeks ago I posted something here at Cootiehog that made me finally realize what topic I would be interested in podcasting, and who I wanted to do the podcast with.

I shot an email to my friend L-Train (now known as Lori), and within minutes she had responded back that she was interested.

I immediately got to work researching everything related to creating podcasts.  What equipment to have, what services to use, how to promote.  I registered a website domain and began creating the preliminary social media accounts necessary for building community around the podcast.  I set about starting a spreadsheet that listed out potential topics for the podcast – and with some help from others managed to come up with a list of 100 topics that we could discuss.  100 episodes, y’all.  That’s almost 2 full years of weekly content.

Once I confirmed that this could actually work, I bought the microphones we’d need.  I downloaded the software to use for recording.  Denis designed a logo for us.  I found royalty-free music to use on the episodes.  I built the website.  I signed up for a 3-month trial with a podcast hosting company.

CootieGirl and I recorded some test episodes to make sure the equipment all worked properly.  She had a blast and definitely wants to be a guest on the show at some point (she even contributed some episode topics and just might be designing a podcast “mascot” character that we’ll use on social media).  I sent the test episodes out to a few people to get feedback and it was all positive.

This was gonna work.

Last night Lori came over and we recorded a two-minute podcast introduction as well as four episodes.  The introduction went live last night on our hosting program, and will hopefully show up on iTunes in the next week or so.  Visitors to our website and our Facebook page are able to listen directly, while those on Twitter and Instagram merely need to follow the provided links to access the episodes.  Our plan is to release a new episode every Friday morning at 6 a.m. sharp. L-Train and I have committed creating episodes at least through the end of December, at which point we’ll figure out if it’s working or whether we want to move on to something else.

For those that follow me here, I hope that you’ll visit my new venture. We had fun recording the shows last night and I really do think that it’ll be a fun, light-hearted podcast worth listening to.

Website: The Friday Five Podcast with Lori & Jane
Facebook: The Friday Five Podcast with Lori & Jane
Twitter: FridayFivePod