Launching and Growing a Successful Podcast: With Alastair Budge
Nov 13, 2023
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Alastair Budge, a successful digital entrepreneur, shares insights on launching a podcast, creating engaging episodes, the role of podcasts in language learning, business challenges, the power of personal branding, the importance of finding a niche, the struggles of solopreneurs, persistence, and customer feedback.
Creating engaging and challenging podcast content through real-life stories and topics.
Importance of consistent self-promotion and marketing to grow a successful podcast.
Identifying potential hits by persistently improving and inventing while finding the right market and audience.
Deep dives
Creating Engaging and Educational Podcast Content
Alastair Baj, the host and creator of English for Curious Minds, discusses how he came up with the idea of creating a podcast that offers interesting and educational content for English learners. He saw a gap in the market for a podcast that focuses on real-life stories and topics, rather than the more common fictional stories. Alastair explains that he aims to provide content that is both engaging and challenging, with a focus on depth and factual accuracy. He also actively seeks feedback from his audience, allowing them to request topics and shape the direction of the podcast.
The Business Side of Running a Podcast
In this episode, Alastair Baj explores the business side of running a successful podcast. He discusses his background in entrepreneurship and how he leveraged his business knowledge to grow his podcast. Alastair shares insights on how he determines if a business project is working well and discusses the importance of setting realistic expectations. He also emphasizes the need to continuously promote and market your product or service, acknowledging that gaining traction and building an audience takes time and consistent effort.
Continuing to Evolve and Expand
Alastair Baj discusses his plans for the future of his podcast, English for Curious Minds. He mentions his successful foray into creating a fictional podcast series and expresses the desire to continue producing fiction-based content. Alastair highlights the importance of staying true to his unique approach, creating content that combines depth, storytelling, and educational value. He acknowledges the need to continuously improve and expand his product offerings, such as through fictional courses and engaging storytelling. Alastair also values the feedback and engagement of his audience, ensuring that he continues to provide content that resonates with them.
Promoting Yourself as a Solopreneur
In this podcast episode, the importance of promoting oneself as a solopreneur is discussed. The speaker reflects on their own experience of being hesitant to promote themselves and shares insights on the need to overcome this hesitation. They highlight the value of self-promotion in growing one's business, and the potential benefits of collaborations and interviews. The speaker emphasizes the importance of recognizing that even small conversations can provide valuable insights that may resonate with someone, and how learning from feedback can lead to improvement and success.
Identifying Potential Hits
Another key point raised in the podcast is the concept of identifying potential hits in business. The speaker presents the idea that success comes not from persistently doing what's not working, but from persistently improving and inventing. They reference Derek Sivers and his experience with building a successful music distribution service. The speaker emphasizes the importance of finding the right market and audience, seeking feedback, and recognizing the signs of traction and demand. They highlight the need to be open to moving on when an idea does not receive positive signals, and to focus on finding the unique problem that one is uniquely qualified to solve.
Today my guest on Stolaroid Stories is Alastair Budge.
Alastair is a successful digital entrepreneur who, in 2019, launched English Learning for Curious Minds, a podcast for learners of English that helps people improve their language skills while learning interesting things about the world.
At the time of writing, Alastair's show has been downloaded over 5 million times in 189 countries. Clearly, Alastair has created something people want.
How did he do that? Was he just lucky?
I invited him on my podcast to talk about the business side of launching a successful product. Alastair shared insights into his business journey, past failures and his future plans as a digital solopreneur.
You can listen to the interview on my podcast or watch us on my YouTube channel.
