Running a Podcast [TEASER]

[00:00:00] Hi everyone! Hello! Just to let you know... Look at the hawker, where's it you? Just to let you know that for the next couple of weeks we've got merch available. It won't be available forever so if you want it go and get it.

[00:00:21] Thank you. Where can we find it? That's coming later. You'll have to find out! You'll be able to find it through the links in our socials. Enjoy the episode. Good luck editing that together. Hello everyone! Sorry for the sound quality.

[00:00:45] Once again I'm recording on my phone because I have a little message for you that I forgot to put in the main episode. So here we are back again. We are obviously having a break right now, we're having our summer break

[00:01:00] but we have been uploading to Patreon quite a lot because basically it requires a lot less work. It's a lot easier but we're just going to keep going post a little teaser of our Patreon content.

[00:01:16] So this is an episode that Meg and I recorded a little while ago about kind of the behind the scenes of the podcast and how it all started and how we keep it going.

[00:01:27] So if that is of interest to you, that is an episode that exists on our Patreon page. Alright thank you for your patience, we will be back soon. I don't know what series 4 is going to include but it's going to be good. Alright have a beautiful summer everyone.

[00:01:47] So sorry I interrupted you on that. I interrupted you for that tangent sorry. We were talking about the running of the podcast. Yeah so we went for this business meeting this morning and thought it might be an interesting thing to talk about

[00:02:05] how the podcast came about and what it's like to run one because it's only been in recent months, I mean we've been doing this for like a year and a half. And in fact longer and it's changed dramatically from what it started as.

[00:02:26] And to the point where we leave the house to go have talks about things that we're doing because it's not just record and release anymore. Yeah it's there's merch now. There is merch now. So why don't you start about why you wanted to start it?

[00:02:46] Yeah well I like talking. She loves to yap. I love to yap. I like to yap with purpose though that's a clear distinction. So I love listening to podcasts, I want to work in radio, I currently volunteer in radio.

[00:03:05] So I do that once a week, one day I'll be paid for it I don't know. And I don't know why but we spoke about this in our very first episode

[00:03:15] so I won't go over it too much because we've spoken about it a lot but I love children's TV. I love watching the really well made stuff, the stuff that's a bit unhinged the sort of weird curiosities that no one remembers, I love all of that.

[00:03:32] And I really really thought that when I had this idea I was like oh that's perfect, that's my two interests. I feel like I'm the right person to make something like this. And I thought it's probably been done before.

[00:03:45] I mean even if you know, even if it has there's like a million podcasts where tech bros talk about crypto and gaming. It doesn't matter you can do what you like. I mean if it has been done before I can't find any evidence of it.

[00:03:58] No that's it, that's what I was going to say. Like I looked and I was like no this must have been done but it hadn't been. Or at least not like a UK specific one.

[00:04:09] So I thought yeah that's perfect and if I don't do it someone else will do it and it's two things that I'm really interested in and I think that this is just what I'm supposed to do. So how did you feel when I approached you to get involved?

[00:04:33] I don't really remember but I'll edit this out if you like but I do remember thinking like so when we first moved in, Elsie went through a bit of a rough time.

[00:04:50] And so she just finished uni and then moved to London in the same year in a lockdown. Yeah during lockdown time. And everything was a bit up in the air and she got a job which she was almost immediately furloughed from

[00:05:05] and then had to essentially find another job and there was a period of time where she was kicking around the house feeling a bit purposeless. Yeah well there were, yeah the way I think about that time is like all the time that I was at uni

[00:05:24] I was terrified of graduating because you know you pushed out a little bit. And you know I hate the idea of being a burden to anyone or whatever. So when lockdown put everything on pause I think a lot of people think this.

[00:05:41] It was kind of like a cushion. You know like obviously people have different feelings about it and mine are mixed like there were some awful times but also it kind of neatly separated the two eras of my life and I don't actually,

[00:05:59] I can't picture how it would have looked otherwise you know. It was like a nice break you know. So yeah so Elsie then got a job but we did encourage you to go to the doctors and get your mental health a bit more sorted out.

[00:06:17] Yeah I was really difficult to live with. The thing is I think that the three of us have had periods of time where we've been the most difficult person to live with. For you it was hormonal birth control. Hormonal birth control. Can I tell the story?

[00:06:34] It actually wasn't. It was just the injection. I don't think I was that bad on the patch but the injection was horrific. Can I tell a little anecdote about that? Yeah you can. She would see a baby and she would start crying. Or anything cute.

[00:06:47] I realised that this birth control was not for me and I didn't want to go back on it but once it's in you it's in you for three months. And I expect... Well you know what a baby is nine months.

[00:07:00] As it was wearing off I basically experienced withdrawal from it. So I remember this time where Laura came into the living room and I was crying for no reason. I didn't even feel sad. I hadn't seen anything to make me cry. I just was crying. It was horrendous.

[00:07:16] And Laura says it was a very tense time to live with me. Yeah so back to the question that you asked. Where I was going with this was that when you approached me about the podcast I didn't even think about saying no.

[00:07:30] Even if I hadn't wanted to do it. You were like thank god she's got a hobby. Yeah I would... No and to this day I say that everything I do is for you because I want it to succeed because I want you to succeed.

[00:07:44] And you need to get a mega everyone. You do. So I'll admit when we started doing it I wasn't as into it as I am now. But I was never going to say no because I wanted you to have a project.

[00:07:59] It was like a couple of hours out of your evening. Well I remember and obviously it's different now but I remember saying to you yes we can do this but I was still at uni when we started recording.

[00:08:11] I was finishing my masters and didn't have time in the day to commit to editing stuff as well. So I said I'll do it as long as you do the research and editing and I'm happy to show up and be someone to bounce stuff off of.

[00:08:25] Which was kind of the original model of the podcast was that... You knew the OG listeners now. Yeah the OG listeners know. The original model of the podcast was that Elsie knew everything and I knew nothing

[00:08:37] and I would be basically like audience in learning things as everyone else was learning things and we quickly discovered that it worked so much better if I knew stuff as well. We also discovered that it doesn't work you being an audience insert

[00:08:52] because our audience is so much more knowledgeable than we are. Yeah when we started gaining an audience that wasn't just our friends and family we realised that people were listening because they already knew not because they wanted to know, it was because they wanted to reminisce

[00:09:11] and they were refreshing their memories but they knew already so there was no point in me pretending to learn things. So it did develop. And then we kind of went for about... So we recorded the first episode I remember in like... It was like July or August 2022.

[00:09:36] Yeah that's right and then it came out. And it didn't get released until January. Yeah I sat on it. And then for a while we recorded like... We had a one week turnaround. Oh my god yeah. It was insane.

[00:09:52] Why did we think that was no podcast to do that? Yeah it was insane. It was like record edit release. It was really... I think we did it for a few months before we decided to do it like four times.

[00:10:05] I maybe wasn't working full time at that point so maybe that's why I was able to do it. Yeah I think... Yeah no you won't have been. Well you might have been. I don't remember. Elsie is deputy manager now and she wasn't deputy manager at the time.

[00:10:20] I mean either way I was on Universal Income. Sorry Universal Credit. Not Universal Income can you imagine how much we would get done? So yeah so you had more time anyway.

[00:10:31] So we moved it to fortnightly which is a lot more manageable when the two of you have got full time jobs. But at this point I still wasn't doing very much anyway. And then Laura listened to an episode and decided that she wanted to become an...

[00:10:48] She got FOMO. She didn't listen to any and then one summer she listened to all of them. Yeah. And she was like oh you guys sound like you're having so much fun can I be in? We are.

[00:11:02] And then essentially what happened was around October, September October last year you... I remember filming this TikTok with you. It was a TikTok, Elsie had an idea for was like how we set up. And we've got the same setup to this day if you've seen that TikTok.

[00:11:24] It's insane it's just a soundproof blanket on our living room floor. It is a bit insane and we've got these very lovely high ceilings so it does help to dampen the sound. Yeah and you said that you wanted to start putting...

[00:11:41] Like because we had an Instagram account and you would put stuff on every week that something would come out but we weren't really dedicated to it and I wasn't really that dedicated to it up until that point.

[00:11:51] Yeah it was posting once a week to say this is out. Yeah and then you were like I want to start making TikToks. Like I really want to make a go of this but you were getting very stressed out about making the content.

[00:12:05] My friend George said the way to crack the algorithm is to post three times a day. Yeah. And I was like well I don't even have thoughts three times a day. How am I supposed to have ideas three times a day?

[00:12:19] I am grateful to George for pushing this but I don't think that's true because we've cracked the algorithm and we don't post three times a day. We post two maximum. One's enough.

[00:12:29] In fact I find that if you post too many it distracts from the other posts so if I want one thing to do really well I'll only post that one thing.

[00:12:39] So yeah so Elsie was like I want to do TikToks but she was getting so visibly stressed about it that I was like okay fine I'll start doing TikToks. I think George had said that and then within two days I was flapping that I wasn't doing enough.

[00:12:54] Yeah chill out. Especially to begin with we weren't even posting every day. Because now we make sure something goes up every day. We do clip a lot of the content which makes it easier for us because sometimes we do edits and stuff

[00:13:10] and we used to do a lot more when TikTok didn't have no licensing for Universal. It was a lot easier to use. Oh yeah. So we started posting a lot more. And then we found that so we have our own jargon for all of this kind of thing.

[00:13:30] We don't really know what anything's called. I've worked in social media before and I don't know what anything's called. So when you see our faces and we've got like the little green screen effect we call that a talkie. It's a talkie. Like a film from the 20s.

[00:13:44] Yeah because sometimes we post edits, sometimes we post clips, sometimes we post talkies. Yeah and we call everything that goes on on the social media girl stocks. Girl stocks yeah the stats how many people were reaching that sort of thing. That's girl stocks.