How to Start a Podcast: The Complete Guide

Hey Friend!

Today, I have a complete guide on the 11 steps on how to start a podcast. This post delves deeply into the tactical side of podcasting. If podcasting has been on your heart, this will make it more of a reality.

How to Start a Podcast – Walk in Someone Else’s Footsteps

One of the number one mistakes I made when I first started in entrepreneurship 13 years ago was that I wanted to figure out a way to do everything on my own. I asked others. I threw spaghetti at the wall and went to YouTube University to try to figure things out. The result was that it took over a decade to actually have my breakthrough. And I believe that if I had just invested in someone who could show me the way, I could have walked in their footsteps and followed along. It would have been so much easier for me. Me trying to ‘save money’ actually ended up costing me so much more money, over 10 years of trying to do it all myself.

If you want to start your podcast, check out my Clarify Your Calling course. In this course, you learn all about what you will call your podcast and who it will be for. You might already know what you want your podcast to be about and who it is for. If this is you, go to Podcast Pro University. This course will teach you all those components of putting your show together. It will teach you how to launch it into the world so that you can make an impact and make an income from it.

In the meantime, here is today’s guide to get started before you dig deep into the courses.

Step 1: How to Start a Podcast begins by Planning

At the very beginning, you have to plan your podcast. The main steps of planning your podcast are:

• Understand what equipment and software you need.
• Defining the name and the tagline of your podcast. We call this the TSO: the tactical, specific outcome statement.
• Getting really amazing podcast cover art.

Step 2: Set Up Your Podcast on Your Podcast Hosts

This step is basically like getting your house ready to go for when you have episodes recorded that you are ready to upload. I teach you how to do this step by step in the tech tutorial of Podcast Pro University, but the basic parts of step two are:

• Set up your own podcast media host. If you ever want to download the software and access a list of all the resources I use, you can view the list in my Resource Library.
• Understand the RSS feed and where to publish your show. Understanding how to use the RSS feed allows you to automatically share your podcast to all the different places it can show up.
• Link your podcast to iTunes and Apple Podcasts.

Step 3 of How to Start a Podcast: Defining Your Episode and Niche

What are you going to podcast about? What is your content plan going to look like? You will map this out; step 3 allows you to do that.

I have my students develop three content pillars that align with their TSO: the tactical, specific outcome. That way, everything is clean with a clear niche, and nobody is confused. When you listen to one of my students’ podcasts, you pretty quickly know that it is a Stef Gass student. It is well put together, with all the I’s dotted and all the T’s crossed. It has another level of professionalism.

Content mapping is a really important part of that professionalism so that your episodes make perfect sense with what you are trying to bring to the world. Your objective for the show needs to come across in every single episode, in the naming of titles, how you portray yourself, and how you speak.

In step 3, we cover all of this. We define the episode content and niche, as well as the length and frequency of the episodes. You decide how often and how long your podcast will be.

Lastly, you create a podcast catalog. You can look at my catalog in my community—it is in the guides. You can also search for any topic I have podcasted before to find the episode you are after. My students get a template for this catalog and can plug and play to create their catalog.

Step 4: Plan Your Episode Layout

In this step, you figure out all the different pieces of the podcast episode. You have the introduction, the review or testimony that you might feature on the show, and then the actual episode content. What are you going to talk about? What are the actual tactical tips you are going to bring? In my course, we do a deep dive into this. I give you templates for all of these things so that you know exactly what you are supposed to say. You can have a plug-and-play script for so much of it and take the confusion and the frustration out of it.

Then, you need to decide whether to do solo shows, guest interviews, or a combination of both. You also need to decide whether to include sponsorships, affiliates, or a CTA (call to action) in your own offer. Then, you add the background music and create the podcast trailer.

Once you get all of this done, it feels like it is really happening!

Step 5: Record Your Episodes

Step 5 starts with setup, storage, and organization. You do not want to have a podcast five years later without a clean operational system to organize and manage your podcast episodes, recordings, and notes. So, you need to set up your organization before you have episodes that need to be stored. In my course, we set that all up together.

Once we have all the operations set up, we can learn how to record our episodes. This step examines how you record the episode, how the equipment plugs in, and what software you use to record. You also need to learn how to edit your episode using the software. In my process, you can use two different software options; you choose the one you like best. 

I also teach you all the little things inside the recording that help you export an episode with SEO and metadata so that your podcast can be found and bring people in, creating an audience for the show.

Step 6 of How to Start a Podcast: Guests and Interviews

If you are going to have guests on your show, this step helps you figure out how to find the right guests. I teach you in my course how to schedule your guests in using Calendly and how we set up an intake form for them. We look at the legalities of having a guest on your show.

Once you have your guests scheduled, you learn how to record an episode with a guest because this is a different process from recording a solo show. We use a different software for this. We look at the interview, the follow-up, and the promotion of an episode where you feature a guest. It is very simple but includes some steps you must go through.

Step 7: Editing Your Episodes

This step is included in my course, but if you are not going to take the course, you need to learn how to edit or pay to outsource to get your editing done. You can also decide to have an unedited show, which is also an option. Once you have edited your episode, you need to learn how to upload it to your host. All of this is covered in this step.

Step 8: Writing Show Notes

When you create an episode, you have something called show notes. These notes are simply a small, simple description of what a particular episode encompasses. We have a few relevant links in these notes that are mentioned in the episode. This step is pretty straightforward!

Step 9 of How to Start a Podcast: Launch Your Show

At this point, you have your podcast planned, you are all set up on your host, your art is done and up to standard. You know how to edit. You’ve recorded your trailer and your first three episodes. You know that your episodes are going to land well for your listener because you have been strategic in how to title them and what the content should look like. You’ve confidently sat behind the mic and recorded. You have confidently edited out anything that didn’t align with you.

You are now ready to launch your podcast out into the world!

This is where you need a really incredible launch plan. Inside my course, I have that plan, and it is ridiculously simple! This plan has ranked people. I have even had students hit New and Notable using this plan. Students have hit the top 100 in their category. I have had a couple who have hit the top 10. The plan has given people 10, 50, and sometimes even 100 new reviews on their show.

If you are not going to take my course and follow this simple launch plan, you need to have a launch plan of your own. You do not want your podcast to come out into the world without a big bang and without some incredible energy behind it to boost the algorithm of your show.

Launching your podcast is one of the most critical times in your podcasting journey. It is when you get the most notoriety and can be featured in the highest rankings because there is so much activity happening on your show at once. The launch plan I offer shows you exactly how to capitalize on that launch.

Step 10: Promote Your Show and Episodes

After you have launched your show and consistently release new episodes every week, you need to promote it. This includes setting up a content calendar, having an episode-weekly promotion plan, and, if you want to, creating audio clips, marketing for social media or Pinterest, and creating an email blast for your episode. These are all fun ways to market your podcast, which are all included in my course.

Step 11: Evaluate and Adjust

Podcasting is a long game. If you are willing to withstand the test of time, you will grow and be successful because 90% of podcasters quit in the first six months of starting a podcast. Why? Because it is not a vanity metric. It doesn’t feel good all the time to sit there and drill in, do the work, and show up, but it is always worth it when you truly commit to something over the long run.

In step 11, you review your podcast statistics and your analytics. You dig into additional market research to see what works for your show. You could do some small tweaks over the first 6 or 12 months to get your podcast to the level that you know it can be.

Step 11 is in my course, too, and if you are not doing the course again, you will have to figure out this. How do you evaluate and adjust your podcast so that it can continue to grow? You are going to learn. And grow. You will get better and further along, and you don’t want your podcast to stay stagnant. You want to move with what the audience wants and flow with what the analytics are showing you and prove true. And that is simply what we do in this step.

Let Me Be Your Guide and Make an Impact

When you join us on these courses, you get support in implementing these steps as you start a podcast and join my student community. In this group, you have people who help you and other like-minded, faith-driven entrepreneurs to run this race.

Let’s start that podcast so that you can start showing up in the world in a more seamless way that is going to be sustainable for you in the long run.

I pray this blesses you!

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LISTEN TO RELATED EPISODES:

Scared to Start a Podcast? 4 Mindset Shifts to Make

4 Things You Need to Know Before You Start a Podcast

Huge Podcasting Mistakes to Avoid When You’re Getting Started

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The UGLY Truth About Starting a Podcast in 2025