You have an idea for a great podcast. But now you have to figure out how to talk about it so that funders will want to get behind your project. Allison Behringer, the creator of Bodies, explains what you need to know to start pitching – and keep pitching – until you find the right partner…and what you need to consider when it comes to creating a budget.

I’m Tanzina Vega, and this is Werk It: the Podcast, a compilation of some of the best moments from the live event.

This presentation was part of I Know How to Do That, a series of hands-on workshops led by leading hosts and producers where they shared tips, stories and knowledge about all aspects of podcasting.

 

Allison Behringer: Hi everyone. I'm Allison Behringer and I'm the host and creator of a podcast called Bodies. And I guess I'll advance the slide here. Great. Tough thing about these things is like you can't edit yourself. Right. Like a lot of us get to edit our own voices. Can't do that now. So I'm a little bit nervous.

 

I'm going to tell you about how to pitch, how to make a budget. And because we're all storytellers here, I thought that I would tell you my own experience pitching Bodies and a few takeaways along the way. Like what I learned from each stage, what I messed up on, what I learned, and did right and then kind of how that culminated into eventually finding a partner for Bodies. There's going to be a few like cheesy activities because I used to be a teacher and those are fun. Some concrete takeaways and I'll also be including screenshots from different parts of my deck and different parts of my budget. So by the end of the presentation you'll have seen most of the pages from my pitch. Okay so I would say the biggest thing if I hope that you could take one thing away from this is like if you have an idea start pitching it now because it's going to take a long time to refine your pitch and it's going to take a long time to find the right partner for your show. And so if you are here I'm imagining that you have some kind of idea whether it's like a little blob of an idea like a big already planned out idea. So activity number one. For 30 seconds. Turn to your neighbor and tell them your idea for your show.

 

Okay and if you haven't switched, switch.

 

Ok cool. Thanks guys. BRING IT BACK. BRING IT BACK. So two learning things here is one you need to be able to explain your idea in 30 seconds.

 

And two, when I first started with my idea for Bodies. I was very precious about the idea, it was like someone's going to steal my idea someone is going to take it. And then I got this piece of advice. And this whole presentation is full of advice mostly from other fellow Ladios so I'm sure a lot of people in this room have been part of the people who have helped me with this. Someone told me they're like look: Unless you're doing like an investigative piece, that aside you have an idea you have a new unique way of framing this you have a unique personal story. Talking like you have to just start practicing and so you're not doing yourself any favors by keeping it to yourself. So hopefully two learnings there. Cool.

 

So I'm basically going to take you through the different people that I pitched, the different partners. And I think that if I had pitched KCRW the eventual partner for Bodies -- if KCRW was partner number one I probably wouldn't have been ready. And so I think that just speaks to you like you have to just start pitching. So partner number one, I had gone to this event and I met an editor and I reached out to her for coffee. And at that point I had two ideas I had this idea for a variety magazine show and then I kind of had this idea for women's health show which if you listen to the first episode of Bodies is inspired by my own personal experience with painful sex so I kind of talked a bunch about this magazine idea and I was like well I was the second idea really. And I told her my story and she was really captivated by it and I was like I don't really think the magazine story is any good or the magazine podcast's story ideas as much is very good but I'm interested in this other idea what are your next four episodes and I was like ‘I don’t know.’ My advice here: Be persistent, network your butt off, and have at least three episodes planned out.

 

The episodes that I planned out  -- none of the three episodes that I planned out when I was pitching early on were were the episodes that became the show. That's fine. These episodes don't need to be the episodes that you end up -- you know that that become the show. You need to show that you are thinking your idea and start the reporting. Partner number two. A few weeks later later I had had coffee with this person and they said you know get some more episode ideas. I was applying for a job because at that point I was just freelancing and trying to make money as I was chipping away at this idea for Bodies. And I happened to bring up in the in course of this job interview this idea for a show and the woman who was interviewing me was really interested in that and she was like, ‘Oh well do you have. This is really interesting. Like do you have a pitch deck, do you have a budget you can share with me?’

 

It's like yeah yeah totally yeah yeah I'll send that in a couple of days. Yeah. And so I went home and started furiously trying to figure out how you do this.

 

And as many of you know if you've googled how to pitch a podcast there aren't really many resources available. And so what I instead pulled from was mostly documentary film. There's a lot of resources about how to pitch a doc film and also I'd spent some time in the tech startup world and drew a lot from that. So looking up like how to pitch a company and how to make a pitch deck for a company and so I kind of pulled in a lot of that as well.

 

The other thing that I learned in this experience was this company asked me to sign what's called a mutual NDA I was like I don't know what that is. And that's basically an NDA that that two people who are going to maybe do business together enter into to basically say like, ‘hey promise me you won't go and blab my stories. OK I promise I won't divulge your company secrets.’ And so they asked me to sign one of those. And I got to thinking like, ‘I should probably have one of these for all the all the companies that I pitched to.’ Maybe this is excessive. I don't know I'm just telling you what I did. But I ended up kind of adapting that mutual NDA. And you can you know you find these online or talk to anyone and actually from that point on ended up anytime I pitched a company I would ask them to sign this mutual NDA. And so here you can see. And actually I don't know if you guys can see it. Up there but on the left slide.

 

So these are two screenshots from my deck and on the bottom right I say this document is a proprietary pitch deck of Allison Behringer like I'm making this up but it seemed like something I should but on there. And you can also say if you've listened to the show.

 

What I have written there about like what Bodies is that's not really actually what it became and this isn't that compelling. “Bodies is a highly produced story driven show that expands our understanding of women's health to include sex, mental, health, beauty, and pleasure. Each story is a journey to answer a question about one's body.” That's like that's kind of the early idea but that's not what it's become and later you'll see a slide of the of what I eventually pitched it as. So to kind of summarize this part: be persistent, network your butt off--a theme for sure--use resources from documentary film and startups or any other context where you feel like people are pitching. Make a budget, and dream big. This was also part of this first pitch they were like ‘make a budget and I was like OK.’ And I mean the budget was pretty astronomical. I realized later but I mean it takes a lot of time and resources to do the kind of ambitious work that I think we all want to do.

 

And then the other note I have in here is make a proposal and that's basically just like. I had a pitch deck and then I also had a two or three page Word document where I just kind of wrote everything out. And then make a mutual NDA.

 

So a lot of people asked me like, ‘Who do you pitched to?’ And my answer is like kind of everyone I could think of. And so I just started making lists of all the people and all the different companies that I can pitch to. And I thought about public radio stations. I thought about for-profit media companies. I thought about podcast companies. I thought about going the non-profit route, grants. And so our next turn and talk. For ten seconds just quick brainstorm. Like all the places you can think of also like think outside of WNYC and like obviously WNYC is great. But like think of all the other places that you could possibly pitch your show idea to, go!

 

Ok cool. So bringing it back.

 

I'm sure you guys thought of a lot of great ones. So.

 

The thing that we're all already doing is point number three which is ask for help. And I feel like if another takeaway is just constantly ask and talk to people because I feel extraordinary grateful to all the people who have consulted and like helped and suggested ideas for that. So just I took a quick screenshot. I have all these different columns on Trello. I don't know if anyone uses that but these are just basically like all the different places I was thinking of pitching to and it's a lot longer than that. And I mean this was I also made this two years ago so you know don't take this you know make your own list with all the new companies out there. I think what's also important and Rekha (Murthy) talked about that this morning if you were at her session early this morning about designing for a show is just like start talking about, start making the thing. And so talk about it with your friends, start reporting, researching, recording like this is completely the hardest part. You know we can all like make nice pretty pitch decks. But the hard part is actually doing it's like just a reminder to do it. So.

 

Oh I just wanted to share this as another case study is. I tried pitching to a brand and this was a tampon company and I thought they kind of aligned with what Bodies mission was and I thought, ‘hey they're interested in the podcast space. I've heard some of their ads.’ And so I decided to do that. And kind of my takeaways here was like include case studies for how this might work because in this case you're talking to people who are running a startup and not making they're not in the podcast business. And then also to know that industry numbers. So these are two slides that I included in my pitch deck to this company. And you know I have kind of like case studies here and what I did was actually like. Pull audio clips and then insert them into my deck so they could hear what it would sound like. And then on the right this is a now outdated study. But we had some folks from the Infinite Dial report here earlier and this was just some stats that I pulled about my audience and demographic list.

Another slide about practice. The other thing I learned about teaching is you have to repeat yourself. Some just repeat this because I think it's really, really important.

 

And so then I pitched a fourth place, a fifth place, and then went back to the first place. And as I'm talking about these partners that I pitched to there was also a lot of e-mails that I sent out. So these are the people that I sent pitch decks to. And so the thing to take away here is like tailoring each pitch to each partner. Like I know that one of a piece of advice we always get when we're applying for jobs right is like make sure your cover letter and even your resume is different for each job that you apply to. So I was I kind of took that thinking and I had folders in my computer where it was like each different company and how I was adapting each different pitch. So I had them organized that way.

 

The other thing was so I'll just show you these these screenshots. So the other thing about making a compelling pitch deck I think is translating it to visually. So again this is like the old Long Shortest Time logo but you can kind of see how is pulling in different podcasts that I thought would be similar to mine. And then also in each pitch deck I would include a slide as you see on the right where it’s like why is this a good fit. And this is where I tried to demonstrate to the company that I knew what they were looking for knew, what they needed. And I'll jump to this one. I was also pretty blunt about the fact that I thought this could make money especially when talking to companies that really needed that were driven by ad revenue. So you know like, ‘It's the right time. Let's face it there's been a commodification of feminism, which isn't all that cool but that means at the right time for Bodies. And here's all the sponsors that you're gonna get.’ So I was pretty straightforward about that. And then OK so here's kind of my takeaway so at this point: Everyone said no by the way. These are all no’s. And I think at this point I was just to give you a sense of the story I was maybe five months into pitching. And it was great because with every ‘no’ you get feedback about why it was a ‘no’ and that it's not a ‘no’ to your idea. Right. It's just like it's not a good fit for whatever reason or you know I think early on my pitch wasn't ready like it wasn't good enough at that point. The other thing: keep making the things though as you're trying to pitch keep making the thing. So a few things that I did was thinking about building my team. And this was an informal way in terms of just talking to collaborators many of whom I met at Werk It back two years ago and other people in the community. I snagged the social handle handles for Bodies podcast. I mean there's nothing on them for a very long time. I also got the dot com. I made a landing page so that when I started emailing people and cold emailing them they could go to a landing page that said like be the first to listen. Sign up for my mailchimp, which ended up being quite valuable later on.

Company 6. So. And by the way a lot of another question I've gotten is like how did you get in touch with these companies and I think that it all has just been getting to know the people in the community and thinking about like OK I like know someone at this company or my friend used to work there how can I connect to people. And we call it networking. But you know I think it's really about just like forming friendships with one another and then saying like, ‘hey I've a good idea I think that your colleague will hopefully want to hear this idea.’ So, pitched a company six and they were interested. I felt like they were the most interested that I had gotten and they asked me to get way scrappier with the budget. So I like trim trim trimmed down my budget. And by the way I'll talk more specifically about budgeting at the end. And the thing that company 6 asked me for was a sizzle reel like a sample a sample of what Bodies would sound like and I hadn't made anything. And I don't know if Andrea Silenzi is in the room. Oh, Andrea!

 

Ok so I'm just going to share this story. I hope it's OK.

 

She's nodding. But again I didn't know how to do this. I had never done this before and Andrea had been really generous with her time and advice and so I called her up to ask her some information about how she had pitched Why Oh Why and she sent me her sizzle reel and I transcribed it.

 

And I listened to it probably ten times and I tried to figure out how she had structured it and then how each part was functioning and then I pulled it apart and then tried to figure out how I could do that for my concept and my idea for Bodies and so I think that that's just an example like asking asking for help.

 

I think that's another huge takeaway here. And what I did for if you listen to Bodies is the first episode is my own personal story and I really leaned into that and I think if your podcast idea has a personal aspect to it in talking to a lot of people I think it does. I would say really lean into that I think that helped me a lot in telling this story was just like, ‘Yes so this is what happened with painful sex for me’ and really just getting right into the nitty gritty of it all.

 

And then let's see what else here.

 

OK I'm going to a little bit out of order here. But the other part was talking about building a team and like putting on the page here is who I'm going to work with. And Caitlin and I did end up working together but I ended up working with a lot more people. But I think this was another great thing on your pitch deck include who you are going to work with. You know obviously check in with the person they're not signing their name in blood but at least get some interest from that person. And I wanted to share with you all some clips from the sizzle reel that I made and hopefully maybe it's helpful.

 

In doing your own. So let's see if these will work. [audio cue] About two years ago something happened to my body. I had started dating someone. Things were going really well and then a couple months and sex started to hurt. It would start as a slight burn and then pain like something was just ripping on my insides. [end audio cue]

 

That's the first one. And you can hear there's like a little bit of scoring my friend's little brother did it. You know hide like helped him find an apartment in New York so he felt like he owed me one. And so that was just kind of like introducing it. And then hear something a little more towards the end. So basically what the structure of the sizzle reel I told my story in an abbreviated form. And then I kind of used that as a and then I kind of introduced the show within it. So no. [audio cue] And the bigger questions like, ‘Why don't we know our bodies better? Why are these answers so hard to find?’ The podcast is called Bodies and it's about all those times when our body was doing something we didn't understand. It's the journey to figure it out for ourselves. Like when chronic migraines are handed down mother to daughter. [end audio cue]

 

And then what follows in the tape is three different story segments and this was again these three stories were part of my first three episodes that I'd included in the pitch and I'd call those people and just asked the to tape sync themselves briefly explaining you know just to get segment's you just want to get a taste. Allow people to get a feel of what the show will be like. So what you hear after my story I say, “Okay bigger questions” and then I do probably 20 seconds each of some different stories. And then I wrapped up with this.

 

[audio cue] And for those of us who call ourselves women the answer about our bodies often lies at the end of a long confusing path, lined with people telling you, ‘just deal with it. It's in your head.’ Well it is in our heads it's in our lives and those we love and in our bodies. [end audio cue]  So that was kind of the the sizzle reel.

 

Inspired by Andrea. OK so here's kind of everything that I learned from partner six, partner six, I learned so. Sorry. Oh she just asked, “how long the sizzle reel was?” And it was a little over five minutes. Thanks. That's a great question. Thank you. So just to sum up. Number six make a budget, get scrappy. Oh don't put all your eggs in one basket. Because I was really thinking partner 6 is interested in me like really thinking it I was like oh yeah partner number 6 and then they ended up passing it just wasn't the right fit. Which is totally fine. Make the sizzle reel, start building your team, ask for help, get feedback, and keep the faith. I'm just gonna put this one up while I tell the next story because at this point I've been pitching for a long time and friends that started as say like, ‘you know I think maybe get a full time job. I think Bodies should just be the thing that you like do on the weekends like I don't really think you're going to get funding for this.’

 

I'm like. ‘No it needs funding like I know that I know that if this gets out there like it's going to be a thing.’ And so.

 

When partner #6 eventually said ‘no.’ They were really kind, and like, look this isn't the right fit for us but you know really believe in Bodies and wish you the best. Like let me know if if I can help in any way. And so I responded to this person and I said, ‘Actually I would I would love to jump on the phone with you for a few minutes on Friday and just get your feedback on my pitch.’

 

And she did that and she was really great and gave me some feedback that I incorporated. And I said you don't have to ask you one more thing like a pitch. I've pitched everyone I can think of. I can't I don't know who else to talk to. Do you have any ideas? And she said no, I mean I think you've got them all you know because I told her and she was like actually do you know the Independent Producer Project and KCRW, do you know Nick White? And I was like, ‘no not really.’

 

And she said well why don't I introduce you? And so I don't know. I think we all reflect a lot unlike the little pieces of luck that kind of catapult you forward and that just like. That little piece of luck of being like, ‘oh wait is there anyone you can think of?’ So she then introduced me to Nick White at the Independent Producer Project at KCRW. And at that point I had the sizzle reel, I had the pitch, I knew how to explain Bodies in five minutes. And I think for them it was kind of the right time. So here's kind of the the learnings from them. And here's just two screenshots of the first two pages of the pitch and on the one on the right you'll see that the description there if you listen to the show is like a lot more similar to to what Bodies became. And I'm just also going to show a few more screenshots of slides just to kind of give you a sense of what it turned out to be. I also had a slide about the format. And I also had that you'll see the slide on the right. Talks about it just like a quick it goes through my story and then the next page of the deck was five that you know the next five stories.

 

So we don't have so much time so I'm going to jump to budgeting. So I just wanted to give you this screenshot so I mean I think the biggest thing about budgeting. I walked into this as probably a lot of us in the room like I had no idea. I had no idea. And you can see at the bottom like all the different tabs I have like big dreamin, realistic, scrappy, v5 and like it goes up like v10. So I think that just you know you just have to keep trying different budgets are going to work for different places. I think kind of my what I tried to do was iterate -- have saved separate versions and I did like I had to google numbers sheet and just had a bunch of different things and I would copy and paste and start playing with the different columns.

 

I think for, for probably for most of the projects in the room people will be your biggest expense. Factor in your personal investment for me when I was getting into the scrappier range I thought about factoring my freelance work and okay if I work on Bodies 80 percent of the time what other freelance work can I bring in. And I mean I think that I went into this knowing this was going to be a big investment. Like both personally, financially, professionally, like I was going to be investing a lot of myself in this.

 

I think the other thing is be flexible with your budget but not too flexible. What are your non-negotiables? And for me it was like getting the right people on the team and being able to pay especially my editor for example like as close to market rate as I possibly could. Here's a quick screenshot from my budget and you'll see that I thought up top. And here's just kind of how I framed and in each different version there's different layers or I kind of played with the different numbers. And this was the biggest expenses obviously.

 

And then here's another section and you can see like hotel (stay with friends or $80 a night) or flight so you know you kind of play. I kind of had broken into these columns and then you can play with each of these things.

 

Production. The other important thing is like have a build-in, a 6 percent, 7, 8 percent contingency of the bottom you can see. OK I have like three more minutes.

 

So I also just wanted to share some reflections. I wrapped up this season of Bodies about a month ago and have spent a lot of time going through my budget and figuring out like how much do I actually spend versus project. I think the biggest learning was I projected this would be a it would take eight months to make six episodes and it took nearly 14. Not including all of the time. This was like 14 months of almost full time production.

 

Add at least $10K to any budget that you have probably even more and yeah be prepared to make some personal sacrifices and make sure that you can adjust your personal finances and you know save up before you take the dive here.

 

And then so to wrap up the biggest takeaways get used to rejection. Make your pitch personal if possible. Ask for help. Practice, get feedback, iterate. I think I learned the most from going into bars and trying to pitch Bodies and then figuring out how people respond and the question they would ask like just as a quick example. A lot of people when I would explain Bodies they would say ‘Oh so it's about like body image?’ I was like, ‘No it's not about body image.’ People kept thinking that it was about body image. And so then I was like ‘Wait how can I explain this better so people don't think that it's about body image?’ But I think that the only reason I was able to get to the slide that I showed you at the end was because I had gotten feedback from a lot of people and use that to kind of condense and and adapt my pitch.

 

Keep making the thing while you're pitching so that when someone is ready to write you a check you're ready to receive that check. And just to quickly add in because some people have asked me about this. I ended up making a pilot with KCRW as kind of a test run so I pitched a budget, I pitched the whole season like ‘OK we'll give you a portion of your budget to make the pilot.’ I did that. They evaluated after that and KCRW shoutout to KCRW Independent Producer project they're amazing. And if you are looking for a place to pitch definitely I can share their contact information. They're great place really supportive and really supportive partner.

 

And then yeah I think the final thing is just like have faith and believe in the thing that you're making. Because if you believe it should be out in the world it should be out in the world. That's the last cheesy thing that I'll say. But yeah I think we'll open it up for questions.

 

There's mics on either side of the stage. Come on down. Oh yeah. And if you could just tell me your name and tell everyone your name. Sure.

 

Question: Hi I'm Natasha. I came down from Boston. Hi everyone. I was really impressed by your commitment to your project. It sounds amazing. And also the thoroughness with which she went about the whole thing. What wasn't clear to me was why you needed that to get going, why you needed that budget right from day one? And given that you'd already produced a radio show, how come you didn't just sort of get a recording especially since it was a personal story? And you could do a pilot basically for a very lean amount of cash. Right. I didn't understand. Yeah why did the $60,000.  Yeah and why that was pitching at all or why you needed a partner?

 

Answer: Yeah. No that's a great question. I think that. I had. I felt like this was something that was the vision that I had for Bodies was a very produced show that was going to take a lot of research and time into it. And. I don't know I think that like I just had the sense that there is some. Companies should be giving money to women led podcasts about women's health like there should be money invested in that.  Yeah. And I think that to your point like. You know. The pilot was two months and you know I was working full time on it. Like I really didn't have the means. To support myself without investment. And you know I had to pay an editor, a sound designer and also just a quick note on that budget line that you saw. You know I had budgeted the equivalent of like a $68K salary for six months. The project took 14 months. I ended up paying out other people so you can imagine kind of what I ended up netting in the end myself.

 

So I think you should budget in a lot of money for yourself because you're going to be spending all your time on this and you should be paying yourself and making sure it's sustainable. So I think like the short answer to your question is my vision for the show was of the high production value and I knew that I couldn't make that by myself on weekends.

 

Question: Amazing presentation. I was curious when you're presenting, do you think it's more important to kind of come from a story presentation style a narrative or more data and hard facts story?

 

Answer: Story. Yeah yeah.

 

Question:  Hi I'm Jenny. I had a question about you said that you incorporated documentary and startup like pitching styles. When you were pitching companies and I was just wondering specifically what those are?

 

Answer: Sure. Yes so. I think that like being really concise, being really visual. And I think my pitch there was maybe eight slides in it so something that's really short and like when you're thinking about a pitch deck right you're not actually like going and setting up your laptop and clicking through to someone that you're sending this to them as a PDF. So it should kind of get across everything you need and just to kind of run down like what's the quick elevator pitch, what's the format, who's your audience? Kind of hitting those main targets. Does that answer your question? Yeah yeah yeah.

 

Question: My name is Rae Solomon and I'm from Denver. If that makes a difference. But. So I have a couple questions the first one is just really specific and practical. You said that to figure out who to pitch to you worked your network, you made friends. Yeah specifically like what is the title of the person is there are there titles to look out for when you are trying to figure out precisely who you want to invite for coffee?

 

Answer: I think a lot of companies now it's like new show develop new show development. I’m trying to go through. There was no consistent job title. And I think I mean the story that I'm telling happened two years ago and I think we all know like a lot has happened in the podcast industry to formalize a lot of that stuff. So there might be yeah like, new show development, development editor anything like that. Yeah.

 

Question: And then my other question is when you're doing a show like this where you start with your personal story and then you need to start relying on other people. Do you include in your pitch and how did you once you become known a known entity. I assume it becomes self-generating and people come to you, it’s much easier. But when no one knows what you're doing and you're just sort of describing it, how do you get people, how do you locate the stories and get people to agree to talk to you before you are a known entity? And is that an important thing to put in the pitch that you're going to generate stories?

 

Answer: I didn't include ideas for methodology in my pitch. I think that I did in explaining to people and trying to get people on board. I again relied a lot on being like, ‘Hey I have a painful sex story. Let me tell you about it.’ And then people are going to tell me their story. So I think that by making it really personal people were willing to talk to me about it.

 

Question: Hi my name's Hathaway. That's my first name. Can you give us the major budget categories? And with the people which is obviously going to be the biggest, what people do for your podcast and do you pay people that you interview things? Yeah.

 

Answer: No, I do not pay people that I interview. But there was one story in which the main character also helped produce the story. So in that instance the person was paid. So I can speak to my my team. What ended up being the major top line budget things there. So it was myself. I worked with kind of a main editorial adviser, first Kaitlin Prest and then Sharon Mashihi. And then I also had. I also really wanted to just include more editors so I also had my friend Abigail Keel, another friend Camila Kerwin who were also editors and they would give two rounds of edits each episode so I thought that was a great way to bring more people in. And then there were also in different episodes like for example the final episode of Bodies was about menopause. No one on the production team is over 40 so we hired a woman in her 60s who also was the editorial adviser for that one. Other big budget considerations, composers so I work with the composer Dara Hirsch, amazing she writes original music for Bodies and so that was another big budget expense that was per episode. So editorial advising was on a hourly basis. We did a flat rate for composing per episode. A lot of tapes sync expenses. Also working. And yeah well see what else. So the biggest obviously I would say like 80 percent of the budget was paying people for their time. The other category was production costs like a Dropbox account, hosting on the web site that was quite small. There was travel expenses. Which we were able to keep pretty tight and then kind of other miscellaneous production costs. Here we'll go to that I'm sorry. Then back to you. OK.

 

Question: Hi I'm Gabrielle from Los Angeles. I have two questions. Maybe you just want to answer them short or time permits. So the first one is I believe that the first time I heard Bodies was on The Nod. So thinking about the partnership with perhaps other podcasts or with other hosts who are reaching audiences perhaps that maybe you know Bodies isn't currently reaching? So like what that process was like how that decision came to be? It was really awesome sort of your  Bodies on The Nod because I wasn't expecting it. And then the other question I had just sort of thinking about the sort of like the additional cost that you don't really think about, right? And I think for me, so I’m based at Crooked Media now but thinking about independent work, I'm always scared to think about like what are these costs that I’m not yet anticipating? Is it really going to be a significant hurdle for me? How long does sort of the process of sort of landing a sponsor or a home network take? So maybe just sort of brief thoughts on those would be helpful things and think about.

 

Answer: Yeah. So the first question how did I think about the partnerships. So yeah I mean I think that the best way to get more listeners is to go to other shows and Kalalea the woman who tells her story so eloquently in episode 2 she knew Eric that she knew Eric. So she actually did that outreach and so and I think also there was some awareness of Bodies at Gimlet perhaps and so but that Kalalea did that and she was the one who initiated that. And then at that point coordinated with KCRW to be like, Kalalea has this connection and then brought in KCRW to help like kind of with that cross-promo. And then the second question was about like things that I didn't realize at first. I think it was really just time like I really, like I said I thought the project would take eight. It took fourteen. And just kind of all the time costs that go with that. So I think less about like line items that I missed and more about properly anticipating how much time it would take.

 

Question: Yeah. Okay. Hi. Oh sorry. What would you say are three must answer questions in any successful podcast pitch? Questions when you're developing your pitch. What are three questions you have to answer to ask yourself?

 

Answer: I would say let's say that's a great question. What is what does the format of the show? I also I thought like okay this is a limited run series this isn't something that can be made every week. What's the format? Yeah like knowing, having your first couple of episodes planned out. I would say the second thing. And then I think. The other question to ask yourself is like can I explain this in 30 seconds? And will people understand me and understand what the show is?

 

Question: Yeah hi my name is Mimi and I had a question about the budget. I'm a very DIY, out of my backpack gal. Yeah. So I'm like paying people like 25 bucks to edit an episode. I can trade you something for this. You know I'm really DIY-ing it so when it comes to like me making a budget I have no clue as to what the like industry standards are. Yeah I like the idea of me coming to pay myself like that's not a question I've ever like encountered before so how does someone like me. Do I just need to do the research? I'm going to obviously get your email so I can ask these questions too but yeah.

 

Answer: I think it was just a lot of like asking around and I should have put a link on it but there was this really handy calculator we can like translate annual salaries to hourly to day and just like asking around how much does this cost? And I think also I mean it sounds like you're very entrepreneurial and like trading and stuff and that. That has a lot of value to it. You know will people will your best friend's little brother write music for you because you like help them find an apartment kind of thing. So I'm not sure if that answers your question. But like lots of trial and error and just like asking asking around and also knowing like we all know that one of the best ways to figure out like what your hourly rate is is like pitch a super high hourly rate and then someone comes back to you and say no that's ridiculous and then you know like okay I shouldn't go so high next time. So just kind of doing some trial and error and seeing like what is realistic for people.

 

Question: Thank you. Yeah hi I'm Carmela and my question is about the interviews that you did. Did you always like do them in person or what was your like standard with that?

 

Answer: Yeah I wanted to do all of them in person because of some really tight production deadlines at the end. I ended up doing one episode entirely by tape sync and then another episode was like half by tape saying in person but there was some. Yeah. I try to do all of them in person as much as possible. Okay I think that's all the questions. If you want to talk more I'll be around tomorrow and feel free to reach out and yeah. Thanks.