Establishing a freelance podcasting career with Caroline Winter

Caroline Winter: And really the first thing I would say is clarity beats enthusiasm. So everyone’s enthusiastic about starting a podcast and, you know, getting into it and turning on the microphone and saying some words into it, but knowing exactly what you are talking about and your focus is, is probably the biggest thing.

Who’s it for? What problem are you solving? Why should someone give you 10, 20, 30 minutes of their time?

Rachel Smith: Hello and welcome to The Content Byte, a podcast for freelancers who use their words to make monies. I’m Rachel Smith, a freelance journalist, copywriter, and content producer. I’m also the founder of Rachel’s List, a jobs board and community for Australian writers and other creatives.

Lynne Testoni: And I’m Lynne Testoni. I’m a journalist and content writer as well. Rachel and I are your weekly co-hosts, and every week we bring you all kinds of tips, tricks, and some fabulous guests to help you make the most of your freelance business.

So this week we’re going to talk about podcasts, which is not an area we’ve covered a lot, which is surprising because we both love them so much. Rachel, what do you think about podcasts?

Rachel: I know, well, I definitely love them more than I used to. We’ve been podcasting for a long time. We were just talking off air about one of my favourite podcasts with our guest.

But yeah, I’m very picky with how many I listen to. Because I don’t have much time and I don’t have a dog to walk. So that changes how many I listen to, I think. As for having our podcast, I think it’s brought us so much work and visibility that I really recommend them to everybody as part of a content strategy now.

Lynne: Yeah, I agree. And I think that writers and journalists have a lot to offer to the podcasting industry, but especially because we’ve done a lot of interviewing and things. And whether sometimes that’s using the audio to create content or just making sure that any content strategy is well-rounded and covers all mediums. Because I think audio is often forgotten.

And we have a great guest on today, Caroline Winter. And she’s a former radio journalist, turn podcast agency owner.

Rachel: Wow. Amazing. Caroline’s career is so interesting and inspiring. She’s creating some really important work in this space and hopefully making a viable career at the same time.

So we’re going to talk to her about all of that. I can see her laughing off camera.

Lynne: Yeah, that’s. It’s the big question, isn’t it?

Rachel: Sorry, I didn’t mean to take pot shots at your career of choice.

Lynne: Yeah. She’s the founder and partner of PodTalk podcasting agency. And she’s also a freelance reporter and producer.

Yeah, and a journalism and media trainer for ABC International development and Adelaide University.

Rachel: Wow. Incredible. Well, let’s get her into the hot seat. Welcome, Caroline, to The Content Byte.

Caroline Winter: Oh, thank you both for having me. I feel like we’re going to talk about podcasts, and you have so much experience, both of you.

Congratulations on so many years with The Content Byte.

Rachel: Thank you. It’s what, seven years – we were talking about this off air? Yes, and I was saying, gosh, it seems so lovely to do those podcasts that are just like six episodes and then you’re done.

Lynne: Yeah, I know. I think we did 50 episodes last year.

Rachel: oh my gosh.

Lynne: That’s a lot.

Rachel: Yeah.

Lynne: But Caroline, our paths crossed a while ago when you first started podcasting, and I wrote a story about your podcast, which was called, Sick as a Dog. Do you want to talk about Sick as a Dog? It was such a good one.

Caroline: Oh, thank you. And it was so lovely to talk to you about it then.

And thank you for the opportunity to talk about it again because I actually could talk about this for hours, so I’ll try and keep it brief. But Sick as a Dog, is an eight-part serial of half-hour episodes and it was looking at the crisis in the veterinary industry. Uh, so the vet industry has an extremely high suicide rate.

One in four vets take their own lives.

Lynne: Oh my goodness.

Rachel: It’s awful.

Caroline: Yeah, I know, and the way that the podcast idea really came about for me is I’d been seeing the odd news story here and there, but as we know with news, it’s fairly short and most were skimming the surface. And I just kept asking myself, but why?

And I thought, well, if I’m asking, but why, I’m sure other people are as well. And so I wanted to dig a bit deeper and understand why it was happening and what could be done. To change it really. So I applied for some funding. It was, this was a few years ago now, 2021. I applied for some funding through the Meta Walkley Foundation, which at the time was offering grants to various projects.

And I was very fortunate to be successful. That really kicked off 18 months of travelling across Australia into vet hospitals, into clinics, to conferences, parliaments, and more importantly, the lives of vets and vet nurses and, the family and friends of vets who had taken their own lives and the end result was hundreds of hours of recordings, hundreds of hours of scripting, voicing and editing.

But the creation of this series was extremely rewarding for a bunch of reasons. I think most journalists will often say that they’re driven by making things, telling stories, or making content that they know makes a difference. And that’s really aspirational. It doesn’t always happen. It can be a bit of a unicorn at times.

But this podcast really was one of those things, and it ended up being the catalyst for the start of a charity called Sophie’s Legacy, which was established by Gary and Kate Putland, whose daughter Sophie took her life when she was 33. And they so very generously agreed to be in the podcast.

They’d never spoken to media before, but you know, that personal lived experience kicked it off and Sophie’s Legacy is going really strong today, making waves in parliaments and across the community. So yeah, I’m just really proud to have been even a small part of that.

Rachel: That must have been incredibly difficult on so many levels to, to do that, to work on that podcast.

What did you learn about why it, why it’s happening? Like, I just think there must be so many reasons. I guess, yeah.

Caroline: Yeah. You’re a hundred percent right, Rachel, and I think that was one of the things that when I got partway through it, I realised there was no silver bullet to fix it. Mm-hmm. It’s something that has existed for a long, long time.

I spoke to vets who’ve been around 20, 30 years and had, you know, experienced losing colleagues. In this way for the same reasons. So I always say it’s a complex set of issues that require a complex set of solutions. And it’s multi-pronged. It’s a very high pressure environment.

And that starts at university. There’s kind of a … I wouldn’t categorise everyone, but like an A type sort of personality that goes into being a vet. They’re perfectionists, they are high achievers. They care deeply. And so they go through these intense courses for five or six years, depending where they are in Australia, come out and they are thrown into this world where they’re balancing, you know, the need to make money for a vet practice as well as saving lives, saving animals, managing owners, um, pet owners, and you know, the responsibility there.

And so the mental health and wellbeing toll is just huge. It’s just, yeah. And so things are being done, uh, in practice in some cases. Governments are now starting to wake up to it, which is good, but it’s really just been this sort of, I guess, hidden kind of dirty secret that has existed in the industry for a long time.

And, you know, for anyone who’s a pet owner, and I’m a tragic dog lover and, and dog owner, um, it really hits hard. It’s one of those, you know, I’ve been a journalist for 25 years and it’s not often I cry during interviews, but these were those moments where I just, you just get so immensely, uh, deep into it.

And yeah, I think because there’s no easy fix, you know, but I felt like this was something that I could do with my skills.

Rachel: Absolutely. And that’s one project you’ll never forget. Did it open your eyes to, you know, the possibilities of doing podcasts for clients and that sort of thing?

Caroline: Yeah. Look, the business had been running previously.

My partner professionally and in life, Drew, started the business just a couple of few years before, and so this was really great to be able to step in under the banner of Pod Talk and create this series. This isn’t the traditional work that Pod Talk does, so this was what I describe as a narrative series.

Lots of interviews that, you know, rich sound music, lots of editing, multilayered editing and soundscaping. But what it did do was it, it’s brought, I guess, another element to the business.

So we have had clients. Since then that we might do projects that are just a little more involved or require slightly, you know, different structures.

The podcast land is so wide and varied, um, and still a bit of the wild west that really anything goes. So while the traditional structure of what we do for our clients is interview-based and it’s, you know, really well curated, rich information-based interviews, but Sick as a Dog was that narrative style and was very different.

But it showed me what else is out there and what. Not just what I was capable of, but what we could potentially offer to clients who were interested in that too.

Rachel: Mm-hmm.

Lynne: Oh, so interesting.

Rachel: Yeah.

Lynne: Now you have a background in what I’d call serious radio, like large companies and the ABC.

Was it hard to go into that your own business, and do you miss having all that big [infrastructure behind you,

Caroline: I think there’s two short answers to that, yes and no.

Lynne: Yes.

Caroline: But there’s a slightly long answer, so I’ll give you that as well. Look, I think for anyone starting any business, it really doesn’t matter what it is.

It is challenging for a bunch of reasons. You have to just become a bit of an expert in everything and in all the things that you’re not necessarily an expert in. So, realising suddenly what it means to not have a tech department or an accounts department or admin support, all of those things, which, you know, all let you focus on the thing that you actually do.

And obviously in our case it’s storytelling and content making. And I will credit Drew because he’s incredible in those areas. He established the sorts of elements that you need any business to get going. So setting up a Xero account for our accounting purposes, the interview booking system so that we could book clients into our calendars, organising all the equipment that we use to record and edit on.

And he really troubleshoots most of that, most of the time. So you realise that that takes away from the thing that you love, love to do. And I guess the other element is building clientele can be hard work. When we were at the ABC um, you can pick up the phone and just say, hi, it’s, you know, Caroline from the ABC I’m doing a story on X. Would you like to be involved? And nine out of 10 times, the person on the other end of the phone would say, yes. It’s so different in your own business, most times the answer is no.

That’s really the law of sales and you just keep needing to persevere and keep knocking on the door, hone your message, know what you’re selling, and know what someone wants to buy from you.

In saying all of that, on the flip side, the freedom that comes with running your own business is incredible. Just having that choice or that flexibility over the work that you do, the clients that you have and how you might want to run the business. So once you’re established and going, I think they outweigh all the negatives.

Rachel: I have to just go back to that infrastructure thing. I mean, I’ve been a freelancer for 25 years and I still miss being able to pick up the phone to IT and go, come and fix my computer, or come and fix this weird box that keeps popping up. Like for two years, I’ve had a box popping up on my screen and I just have to cancel it about 20 times a day.

And I have not fixed that. There’s no one else to fix it, so it just keeps popping up. But anyway, I digress.

Caroline: I could send Drew over for small things.

Rachel: You could send Drew over. We’ll have to talk about that off air because maybe I might need Drew. Okay. Well tell us about some of your other projects and how they came about and whether you come up with them or people approach you.

Caroline: So I guess I’ll go to what projects that we do and how they’ve sort of evolved. So our first and our longest client is Agriculture Victoria, and we’ve been working with them for years now. Drew has a rural broadcasting background and so he’s become the voice, I suppose you’d call it, of Ag Vic talk, which is now in its 10th season.

So there’s clients like those, as well as one that we both do a series for, which is, the Central Adelaide Local Health Network. And so we’ve done a range of podcast series for those. They’re all interview-based, like I mentioned before, mostly one-to-one conversations.

Drew and I are the hosts. We interview various people and, and help tell the story of that organisation, but there’s also been opportunities to do other things and to sort of expand how and, and who we are working with. So I had the opportunity to work with Jack Riewoldt and Shane McCurry. Jack is a Richmond footballer. For those who don’t know who he was…

Lynne: I didn’t know. So there you are. Thank you for that.

Caroline: Totally fine. He was captain of Richmond for a long time, and Shane McCurry is an amazing leadership coach. They’re both in Melbourne. Mm-hmm. And they brought me on as executive producer of their podcast called Two Am I, which is a focus on modern leadership.

Each episode the guys would interview a different guest about their story and their ideas around leadership and we’d ask the guests to bring in two special items, so they would almost act like anchors for the guests to talk about. Kind of through them and go deeper into their stories. So even though I’m in Adelaide and the team are in Melbourne, they brought me on as executive producer and editor.

I used to do that remotely and I guess that’s one of those amazing things about podcasting particularly that you can talk to people all over the world and it doesn’t need to be in the same room. So that was a really great experience.

Another important project for me at the moment – and this is a volunteer project because it’s something close to my heart – is called The Widow Diaries, and that’s on behalf of First Light Widowed Support, and that’s an organisation for young widowed people in Australia.

I’m a young widow myself. Um, I was widowed in my thirties, my late thirties, and many, many years later I found this organisation and it’s just amazing.

And so last year we finally, you know, found some time because, you know, everyone’s time-poor. But we are into the second series of that. So the projects are wide and varied in that sense, but I guess when it comes to conceptualisation, it’s a bit of both.

Sometimes we have clients who know exactly what they want, and many of our repeat clients that we’ve worked with for years, have a format that they know that they like, that they just want us to stick with. And then we have clients who might want a podcast, but they don’t quite know what it is going to sound like.

So we work with them to understand who their audience is, what kind of content or story they’re telling, and then from there we’ll help map out a structure and a plan as to what it could sound like.

So again, varied, but also, you know, allows us to be creative when the need arises, which is a nice balance.

Lynne: Definitely amazing. So for somebody who’s podcasting for the first time, and I know there’s quite a few people – it’s a bit like they used to have a novel in their bottom drawer, now they’ve got a podcast in their head. So what are the things that they need to understand before they even think about starting?

Caroline: That’s such a good question and you are quite right and really anyone can give it a go, which is exciting. Um, but I think that people often ask themselves either why didn’t it go, well, why didn’t it last? Uh, what did I get wrong?

And really the first thing I would say is, uh, clarity beats enthusiasm. So everyone’s enthusiastic about starting a podcast and, you know, getting into it and turning on the microphone and saying some words into it, but knowing exactly what you are talking about in your focus is, is probably the biggest thing.

Who’s it for? What problem are you solving? Why should someone give you. 10, 20, 30 minutes of their time.

So knowing who you’re talking to, we often talk about defining your listener or understanding your audience. It’s the same. No doubt in writing and publishing in, you know, so many of the, the different sort of media careers that we, we span.

One of the things which we’re talking about a moment ago is it’s a long game. It’s just a long game. You need, you need to be committed, and even when you really don’t want to, you need to turn up because your audience is expecting you. You both have been doing this now seven years. You’ve created a great following and your audience expects you to turn up and give them some more amazing content when you promise that you would.

So, being consistent and sticking with it. And the reasons behind that is that it builds authority slowly and deeply. So if I don’t keep doing this, why would you come back and trust me if I’m not going to turn up every Tuesday at 10am when I told you I would? You are also building trust. And I think that’s one of the biggest things that we are missing in so many parts of life at the moment.

So in terms of the content that we read or watch or listen to, building trust is everything. And if you’ve got 10 rusted-on amazing listeners that love your content, that’s great. That’s a great audience. The thought that you might chase tens of thousands, it’s a great aspiration, but it’s also not realistic.

Caroline: I think one of the other things probably is hosting is a skill. You know, you don’t have to be the most amazing presenter, but you do need to understand how to not just ask questions, but ask good questions. And as you would both know, listening, it’s far more important than talking. And that’s really key.

And the last thing I would say is preparation. So just, you know, know what you’re going into your podcast to say, what’s your structure look like? How do I get into it? How do I get out of it? What am I trying to achieve? With the beginning, middle, and the end. So yeah, you can have all the great podcasting gear in the world, but if you don’t have the intention and want to stick with it, that’s often where people come unstuck.

Rachel: I love all that advice. I want to go back to what you said about clarity, because I think that is a huge part of it. Like if you are not clear, I think our tagline right from the start then, or maybe it came very early, it was, you know, for people who use their words to make money. So we knew immediately what we were talking about and who we were talking to. And that has been, that’s just stayed that way for seven years. But yeah, you do see podcasts that kind of fall by the wayside because they start on one topic, then they run out of ideas or ways to, you know, move with it or drive it.

Lynne: It’s hard  work.

Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like how do you choose a topic that you know has got enough leverage in it, I suppose.

Caroline: You make such great points and look, one of the things that I had to think about quite deeply late last year, uh, I was designing the new podcasting and audio storytelling course for Adelaide University.

So there’s been a merger here in South Australia and in second semester of 2026, they’ll be offering this course. And then they said to me, here’s a blank page. We’d love you to write this course, and I was so excited. Oh my goodness. Yes. Then terrified equally at the same time.

Wow. And even though you know your stuff, it wasn’t until I started putting – I was going to say pen to paper, but typing on my keyboard – that so many of those really basic and foundation things came to light and I was reminded of that.

In this course we’ll get students who have never made a podcast before, and they might be, they might be an engineering student or an urban landscape student, so they might not necessarily be from media. So how do they know what it is that they’re going to talk about that will sustain the audience?

And that was one of the questions that I really asked myself. And we’ve sort of done a deep dive in the course. And I think really the important thing is to know what it is that you can be an expert in. And it doesn’t mean that you have to know all the things, but you have to be passionate about it and find the right people to talk to about it.

And this was a great quote from Rachel Corbett, who’s head of Nova podcast now, but from some time ago. If you’re going to start a podcast and you’ve got your idea or your topic, write down 10, maybe 20 guests or episode titles that you think would work under this. And if you can’t get to that, then it’s probably a dud and it’s okay to be hard on yourself and go, you know what, maybe that’s not for me.

What, what else might I, might I be, you know, interested in or good at or, or that I can focus on? So yeah, understanding that at the very start will stop that, you know, turning on the microphone each week or each month, whatever it is, and just. Staring blankly because you’ve, you’ve sort of run out of things to talk about.

Lynne: interesting.

Rachel: That’s where having two journalists as co-hosts can kind of…  you can help keep bouncing off each other and go, who do we get on this week?

Lynne: Yes.

Caroline: Fantastic.

Rachel: I love the dynamic like that. We’re much more professional.

You’ve come from a radio background, then you started your own agency. What were some of the surprising or really unexpected lessons you learned from starting the agency? I’m wondering if pricing came into it at all. Or, you know, knowing how much of your time, what’s your time worth? It’s like, you know, yes. Maybe on a podcast it can, it can kind of expand.

Caroline: Uh, that’s probably the biggest one.

I think I heard a previous guest of yours not so long ago talking about this. Knowing your worth. What do I charge out? And particularly when you’ve been inside an organisation and they pay you what they pay you because that’s just kind of what it is. And suddenly you’re out there going, I know I’ve got all these skills, but ooh, is that too high?

What are other people charging? Am I going to overprice or am I going to undercut myself? So that definitely was one of the trickiest things, just to find that nice sort of space price-wise that was going to be cost effective, but also, wasn’t going to mean we were going to be working for almost nothing.

Caroline: I think we’ve done that well. Drew and I have a lot of experience between us. We really rely on that as the backbone of what the agency does. And you know, really proud that our strategy is that we have been doing this for decades. We know how to host, we know how to interview, we know how to structure.

So when a client pays for our service, that’s what they’re getting. And I think we’ve spoken a lot with comms teams, so internal comms teams with organisations over the years. They’ve said, oh, you know, we want to start a podcast and it would fall naturally to the comms team, but they’ve all just gone, oh, I’m not sure what this is going to involve.

And then they’ve tried it and realise that it’s actually, to your point, Lynne, earlier, it’s actually a lot of hard work. And how can we go to a specialist. And, you know, kind of offload that to them. So pricing’s definitely one.

And I think it’s also been one of the other things has been about psychology. So the psychology behind it. We are obviously producing a product, but it’s also understanding what a client wants. Again, inside an organization like the ABC or any commercial stations that I worked with previously, it was obvious what the brief was. We were making news. It was a 7pm news bullet on the ABC or it was a radio bulletin or a radio current affairs story. It was very obvious what it was.

But understanding the psychology of a client. A client is everything. So they come to us and they want a podcast. Okay, what is it that you want your podcast about? Who is it that you’re talking to? Who are your stakeholders or your audience?

How are you going to grow it? You know? So actually helping them find their voice before. You know, turn the recorder on at all is quite a different and a big step away from working for a program inside an organisation. So yeah, that’s probably been the two biggest ones I think.

Lynne: So interesting. So I mean, you’ve had a quite a long and highly awarded career in radio journalism.

Has that given you a big advantage, you think? What about people who are new to audio? Because you did talk that podcasting is a bit of the wild west. Is it good to come in with no experience or expectations?

Caroline: I think that there’s an element of that sometimes, for sure. And you know, you’ll often listen to a podcast or a piece of content and then find out that this person has no background at all in that and I think that’s really refreshing.

I think on the whole though, for me, my radio background has been a huge advantage. And the reasons for that would be that radio trained me to be disciplined when it comes to interviewing. Writing all the things that you would expect. You know, I think in story arcs, beginning, middle, and end.

So a lot of the time you’ll listen to something and I’m sure that you’ve in time read many, many things and it starts somewhere, but it’s got, you know, sort of a lemon of a middle and it doesn’t really go anywhere. So just even understanding that simple structure is important. One of the big things, particularly for audio, is pace.

So pacing a conversation or when you’re mixing a narrative podcast, understanding where music should go, when a sound effect is useful, when a pause or some silence is going to work better. And being comfortable with silence is an important thing too. Instead of needing to fill, fill the void every time.

I think that for me, broadcasting taught me that structure and I’ve been able to apply that to podcasting, which kind of lets me bring the heart and the creativity, which is something that in part was missing for newcomers. You don’t need a journalism degree.

I like to think that you understand facts and can discern between what is editorially sound and not, but the big thing that you need is curiosity. So be curious about the thing you’re talking about, about the person that you’re interviewing, knowing that they’ve given their time to be on your show.

You know that you are happy to have a chat with someone, but you can also go off on a tangent, but know how to bring it back.

But being curious about the thing is really important. I mentioned preparation before. That’s key. And don’t be afraid to be over-prepared. I always say, you know, prepare a script or prepare a structure, and if you throw it out midway, that’s fine too. But you went in with a plan, and you need empathy.

I think really with audio, the intimacy and the beauty of being in someone’s ear, it’s a real privilege, but it is you and them. Just one-on-one. And you need to be able to lean in at times and sit back at times and, and knowing when that’s appropriate. Yeah.

Rachel: Gosh. Listening to you about the story arc, it makes me wonder, it’s how, if our scripts do that, or if they have like a messy middle that then goes off nowhere.

Caroline: No, they totally do. I do. Not that I was grading you while I was reading.

Rachel: That’s okay. I wanted to just ask you, um, about, you know, you mentioned preparation and I always remember going on Kim Kerton’s podcast and she gave me this whole onboarding document that discussed the podcast and then the question she was going to ask me.

And it was all beautifully designed and everything. Yeah. And we just do, as you’ve seen Caroline, we just give you a simple script just for some rough ideas of what we might ask. I mean, what’s a good balance in that? Do you do a big onboarding document for your guests and does that help put them at ease and, and know what’s coming or what would you suggest?

Caroline: Perfect question. And I would say that what you have provided me as a guest, on the other side has been perfect. So you’ve given me an idea of what the show is. If I hadn’t happened to have listened, which obviously I do, but what the show’s about, who you are, I can see what, how you are going to frame the conversation.

And then you’ve given me some questions as pointers and then how we’ll round out. And I think for most people, and you know, I found this so much at the ABC because we were often speaking to people who had never been interviewed before. Yeah, just kind of, yeah, breaking it down a bit for them and taking the fear out of it.

I mean, it’s one thing telling your story and Sick as a Dog is a good example. Gary and Kate had never spoken to the media, and I was about to get them to speak about the most vulnerable and horrendous time of their life in losing their daughter. And so knowing how to do that, knowing how to approach someone and give them parameters is really everything.

And so different to interviewing an expert or a politician who, you know what? They do this all the time and you can throw things at them. So I think there is a bit of a balance for our clients that we work with in those sort of really heavily knowledge-based interview-style podcasts. The client will provide us with a brief and that brief for us because we are hosting and we’ve got all the journalism skills, so we know how to ask questions and structure it and edit it.

But they’ll give us a brief of who this person is. Some provide questions that they would like, and then we go away and, and fill it out and make it our own. But they’ll also provide that to the talent, to the guest, which means that the guest understands what this is about.

But it’s important. For us on the other end when we first speak to that, you know, that person that’s about to be interviewed and just make them feel comfortable. Have you done this before? Okay. Just so you know, you can stop and start if you need to. Um, is there anything in it that doesn’t make sense? Uh, is there anything off limits?

So it’s a bit of a caretaker role as much as anything else, because really at the end of the day, it’s about getting the most out of the person you are talking to. And if they feel nervous or worried or any of those things, then you’re just, you’re not going to get the best out of them, and you want to showcase their story as best that you can.

Rachel: I wanted to just quickly ask you about awards, because I think some of your podcasts have won awards. Does it help when it comes to finding new audiences?

Caroline: It’s an interesting question. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it. Look, I feel fortunate to have won awards for my podcasts and my previous radio and TV work.

Uh, I think though much of the time, those awards have been for stories that matter. So stories that have brought change or stories that have touched people in a particular way. I think awards at the end of the day are more for me or more for the organisation that I’m working for, but it is a lovely recognition of the work that you’ve put in outside of whatever rewards you get from doing that work.

I probably have to ask our clients, but I don’t know that it positions us any differently other than to say that we are good at what we do. And we’re confident about it. And it’s taken me to 50 to be able to say that out loud and feel comfortable saying it as well. But, but yeah, I think that’s probably where awards matter more.

And it means that I front up at a meeting or with a new client and I know that I’m confident. I know that I know my stuff, and you know, because someone else told me and they gave me a trophy for it.

Lynne: So I’d love to talk about podcasting as an income stream because do you think podcasting for clients can work and or are there some.

Are they sort of a linchpin of a whole big content strategy? So getting authors to turn a podcast into multiple opportunities like talks and courses or corporate, work like other formats, as well as the audio.

Caroline: Yeah, this is a question that we get a lot. Um, what I will say from the outset is for us, the clients that we work with, we create the content for them and they will then distribute it and market it how they see fit.

And so we often talk to them though about measure of success as opposed to monetisation. So I think there’s two different streams there in terms of monetisation in particular, so that obviously it generates income, sponsorships, , adverts inserted as you say or having spinoffs from your podcast.

So that’s the introduction for people. But now they can, you know, go and see you on stage. And we’re seeing some of that, or a lot more of that these days of the bigger podcasts and shows are doing the rounds, and you can go and see them and do their podcast live, whatever it might be, whether or not that translates to dollars aside from buying a ticket to see that person.

But I think we think we need to think about that differently these days that it’s part of that content strategy and not the only way that you are going to be seen or heard or potentially make money. It is notoriously hard to monetise. And the statistic is so for, you know, someone who’s out there plugging away at their podcast if they want to make it big and end up with one of the big commercial stations and under their umbrella. They need to be showing before they’ve even knocked on the door, that they’re getting 10,000 downloads a month per episode.

Rachel: Right.

Caroline: And that’s huge. That’s just enormous. You know, even when you’ve been doing something as long as some. And so the measure of success, which is the thing I like to talk about as opposed to that, is what is the value of your podcast? Is it that you have an outlet to talk about the thing that you’re passionate about? Is it that it’s content that you can provide to your clients, your stakeholders, your audience, to tell them more about what you do or to discover more about the industry that you’re in, is measure of success than 100, 300, 400 people listening per episode.

One of our clients mentioned this to us years ago. They said to us, I had whatever it was, three to 400 downloads of an episode. And they said, do you know how hard it is to get three to 400 farmers in a room to hear that speaker or to hear that content? So that was a measure of success and value for them.

Caroline: So I think, there’s definitely different ways to make money and make an income. But I think if that is the purpose to start with, it’s probably a dangerous one. And I think most of the podcasts that we now see have evolved into big behemoths have been going at it for years and years and years and, you know, recording in closets and on mobile phones.

Lynne: Famously Leigh Sales and Annabele Crabb used to record in their linen cupboards.

Caroline: Yeah. So, I would say know what your measure of success is, what is the value that you are looking for in your podcast, and if it is income, absolutely find a way to do that.

But otherwise, choose a measure that’s going to work for you.

Rachel: I think that really puts it in perspective, doesn’t it? I think that’s something we had to learn, wasn’t it Lynne? You know, what does this actually bring us? It’s not money, so what does it bring us? And it brings us two very separate kind of outcomes, but really good ones, you know? Yeah. For our own businesses. So yeah. But that was something we learned as we went along, I think.

Lynne: Exactly.

Rachel: Yeah.

Lynne: That’s great.

Rachel: So is this an exciting time for podcasting? Because we hear there’s too many podcasts. The market is saturated with podcasts, but what do you think of the podcast landscape and what’s coming?

Caroline: Oh, I was having this conversation with two podcasting friends just the other day actually. I t ebbs and flows and certainly in the last couple of years heard a lot of layoffs in America, particularly where the podcasting is huge and some of those really bespoke agencies that suddenly aren’t making it anymore.

I do though think it’s an exciting time for podcasting overall. Australia is behind in a good way. Some of the rest of the world have been podcasting for a lot longer. And I think what we are doing is we are learning from what is happening in some of the European countries, the UK and the US. I think the point though is while it has been the Wild West and will probably continue to be so at some stage.

Depending on if you’re a new entrant and you are just hanging out with some mates and talking about, you know, guitar strings, because that’s your topic, it is maturing. So we are moving from volume, I feel, to quality and I think that that’s a good thing. The barrier to entry is low, so as we’ve said a million times, anyone can do this to some extent, but the bar for success is higher.

And that for me is great audio quality. So making sure that it’s not a scratchy kind of connection, that you can hear your guest and your talent and your host really well, that if you are using your editing and you’re mixing, making sure that it’s on point. There are enough YouTube videos out there to learn how to do these things well.

I do get quite frustrated when I listen to something that sounds like it’s going to be great content and it’s even from journalists who’ve been doing this a long time and the audio quality just doesn’t hit the mark. I think that the audiences are more discerning, and you know, you’ve got seconds to hook them. So you got to make sure that everything’s right, sort of straight out the doors.

I think though, one of the things that’s really important and will remain this way and will continue to grow this way is niche. So podcasting is about being niche, you know, that’s why broadcasting is radio.

We try and hit lots and lots of people, big audiences, but you know, the point of podcasting is that if you are an expert in macrame underwater that’s great because there will be an audience for you. It may not be huge, but it will be niche and you will be able to target, you know, really, really specifically.

Caroline: I think there’s a great movement – and this is part of our business model – for internal podcasts for corporates and businesses. We started doing a couple of those, just messaging and having a connection to your people inside an organisation in a way that they’re happy to listen.

Might only be five minutes, might be, you know, a bit longer depending on finding the right topics and the right talent. But I think that that’s a really big space – branded storytelling, which we’re seeing a fair bit of anyway. And those podcasts are being really clever when it might be an advertiser who is, you know, branded in there somewhere.

An agency’s come up with a clever idea. I want to say it was Toyota or Subaru, but they did a podcast around long car drives, and it was really storytelling around that. But it was actually just branding their podcasts for their business. Um, so I think there’s a lot of those that I think we are being swamped a bit by interviews.

I’m not, not taking away from this interview style. So the chat cast kind of podcast that doesn’t provide good information, that doesn’t know its audience – this is not The Content Byte at all – we’re being swamped by those and they will eventually die out because the audience is, you know, a few friends and your mum and dad.

But I would love, love, love to see limited-run high-production series in greater frequency. That’s the thing I love most as a listener, and as a creator. But you know, that’s really investigative, it’s taken time to find voices we haven’t heard and to investigate topics that we otherwise don’t know about.

Lynne: Yeah. So interesting. Love that. Wow. I was also going to touch on media training because you do a little bit of that. So what does that involve and how do you find your clients? Is that through the university?

Caroline: No. So it’s media training, not as you know it, I suppose. So it’s not in the traditional sense of training people as media performers, such as people in corporates or business. My training is specifically for journalists, so I started doing training towards the end of my time at the ABC. I was in the training team and looked after hundreds of news journalists and program makers, and I also learned at that time how to be a trainer.

And so sort of built my training chops for want of a better term, and my facilitator, chops. And so having moved away from the ABC as a full-time or a part-time employee, I have been able to do various training and facilitation outside of the organisation. I now though am somewhat tethered to the ABC, and its international development arm that the ABC has funded by DFAT and it sits off to the side, but it’s a really specific program that is all about building media capability and sustainability in countries like Timor-Leste across Indonesia, across the Pacific. Last year I also went to Vietnam and I’ve provided training over there for various things, either to train journalists there or to be trainers themselves for their own people in country.

I did podcast training in Vietnam. I’m about to head off to the Solomon Islands in a couple of weeks. I’m just back from Fiji. We were doing a content project on youth farming, so that has been incredibly rewarding work, and I feel very fortunate to have diversified my skills as a journalist to move into that space. And then in addition to that, the university asked me to create that course. And so I’ve been doing some tutoring as well with Adelaide Uni. So just building those skills out past traditional storytelling.

Lynne: So Caroline, we’re ending the podcast now with our new fast three questions. So are you ready?

Caroline: Okay, I’m ready.

Rachel: Okay. First question. Favorite tools you can’t live without

Caroline: headphones. And I’m wearing earbuds today, so I feel terrible, but I do actually have really great headphones. First thing I tell a journalist, a baby journalist, and an established journalist. Whenever you are doing anything, collecting sound, doing interviews, editing, whatever it is, headphones, headphones, headphones, and a good set if you’ve got them.

Lynne: Oh, fantastic. Yes. I got really nice headphones, new headphones for Christmas. Oh, I’m very excited. They do require

Rachel: batteries though.

Lynne: Yes. they’re plugged in.

Rachel: Yes.

Lynne: So question two is one habit you have that genuinely saves you time.

Caroline: I don’t know if this is a habit more than it’s a tool, but it definitely] saves me time. So, someone put me onto this, it’s called Toggl Track.

So as you would know, freelancing and having different clients in different projects all over the place, managing time is a huge part of work life, but also being successful. So knowing how long a job might take you and how you might quote appropriately.

Like it actually gives you all of that information in terms of, this is how long I spent on a like-for-like project. Now I know that I actually underquoted or over quoted because I worked for 50 cents an hour or whatever it might be. Tracking time for invoicing is just so much easier just having this sort of clarity.

I like colour-coded things and Toggl does that really well and really just keeping across how much I’m actually working every day and every week. Because as a freelancer, it’s not a nine to five clock-on clock-off you know, working nights or weekends or bits here and there. Yeah. So, that’s been an absolute godsend.

A hundred percent.

Rachel: I love Toggl. I used to use it for a specific client a couple of years ago, but you can export the reports for clients that want the time. You know, kind of like a time sheet I suppose, but it’s very handy.

Caroline: Really, really handy. And there’s a free version, so you don’t need to sign up or anything else, which is great.

Rachel: Yeah.

Caroline: Fantastic.

Rachel: Alright, final question. One thing you wish you’d done sooner in your career.

Caroline: Oh, so many things.

Rachel: It’s a big one. Big question.

Caroline: Just, it is a big question for me. I think I’d wished I’d let go earlier. And what I mean by that is that I didn’t worry quite so much about climbing rungs on a ladder.

Just enjoying more of where I was while I was there. Even though journalism was where I wanted to go from when I was about, you know, 15 or 16. I was discouraged because there was a lack of jobs, but as I’ve now learned, there’s always a lack of jobs in journalism. So no, I wasn’t going to get a job. I should go and do accounting and banking.

I don’t know what that was about. But the pull fortunately was too great. I went back and studied when I was 24 and landed my first job at the ABC in Albany as a radio presenter. And the rest was history. But I think because I felt I started late, I was frantic about doing all the things radio and TV and news and long form and I wanted to work at the ABC, but also for commercial stations.

And so I chopped and changed, which was great and it’s given me lots of different skills and contacts and all those things. But I think I learned later in my career that holding on too tightly to a plan of where I was going almost stopped me from taking opportunities as they crossed my path.

Lynne: Maybe not enjoying where you were.

Caroline: Yeah, definitely. And kind of feeling like I hadn’t quite finished where I had been before I moved on to the next thing. My dad always would say to me, when I’d go for a job that I didn’t get, you know what, what’s for you won’t go buy you. I used to say, and it sounds really obvious, but it actually has really helped me over the years to realise that that actually was the case, that when I stopped holding on so tight, the good stuff found me.

Rachel: I love that. Wow. Wow. What a great conversation.

Lynne: Such a great conversation. We’re both feeling very inspired, aren’t we, Rach?

Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lynne: Thank you so much, Caroline. Thank you. So good and I think it’s got a lot of people out there excited whether or not, obviously all our listeners listen to podcasts, so there you are.

But I think a few of them might be thinking about it, but it just makes them think about the medium and that has to be a good thing.

Caroline: Yeah, absolutely.

Rachel: Yeah. And all the advice that you gave about starting one, all the things to think about, it’s just so important because it’s a massive time suck.

I’m going to put that out there. It takes a lot of time.

Lynne: It does.

Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. But

Lynne: also lots of fun and very rewarding.

Rachel: Yeah, and very rewarding.

Lynne: Absolutely.

Rachel: Caroline, this has been brilliant. Thank you so much. We will put all the links on where to find you in our show notes and we’ll see you all next week.

Caroline: Thank you both.

Credits:

Connect with Caroline here: https://www.podtalk.com.au/ 

Listen to her work here:

Sick As A Dog https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/sick-as-a-dog/id1675843578

The Widow Diaries https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-widow-diaries/id1820862923

Our People (CALHN) https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/our-people-central-to-healthcare/id1686295859

AgVic Talk https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/agvic-talk/id1528428798

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au

Thanks (as always) to our sponsors Rounded (www.rounded.com.au), an easy invoicing and accounting solution that helps freelancers run their businesses with confidence. Looking to take advantage of the discount for Rachel’s List Gold Members? Email us at: hello@rachelslist.com.au for the details.

Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co