Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello plus members. So today I'm going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to speak completely off the cuff. If you speak off the cuff, then it means that you haven't really prepared and you're just speaking what's in your mind. So I am speaking off the cuff. Ad-libbing is another way of saying it, completely ad-libbing, although I do know what I want to talk to you about, and this is basically pulling back the curtain on the E-Lan podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:37

If you pull back the curtain on something, then you reveal it I think the phrase comes from something like a magician or on the stage. So a theater performance or a magic performance always has a lot of things going on behind the curtain, things you can't see that help to create the illusion that you do see that's presented to you on the stage, and so if you pull back the curtain, then you get to see how everything works. You get to see what's going on backstage and behind the scenes. Often a sneak peek might be the phrase used, or behind the scenes is the phrase used, or, in this case, pulling back the curtain so you can see how things are done, how this podcast came to be. So I wanted to start this podcast, probably about at least six months before I actually did, and the reason I didn't start it earlier was because my partner said no, don't do that. He completely discouraged me because, as has been the nature of my life, I've always got too much going on.

Speaker 1: 1:51

I am a self-proclaimed ideas person. I always have lots of ideas. If you have been following me for a long time and you know a lot about what I've been doing, then you'll know that I don't just have the English like a native brand and YouTube channel, but I have multiple channels and have done multiple projects over the years, and you know I also have young children and now a cat, and so I keep myself very, very busy. I have an idea usually and I just start a new project, and so this is great in many ways, but then you can very quickly become overburdened. A phrase that comes to mind is too many plates. I'm trying to spin too many plates. Have you ever seen someone spinning plates? It's where they place a plate on top of a stick and they spin the plate and it balances. The spinning motion allows it to balance on top of this stick and once the plate stops spinning, then it will fall and break, and so these, like circus performers, will spin many plates all at once as an act, a performance, to show you how clever they are.

Speaker 1: 3:04

And we often refer to juggling life's responsibilities and the many projects and things we have going on. We refer to that as spinning plates. So I'm often spinning many plates and my partner says to me whenever I go to him with a new idea, he says well, if you say yes to this project, if you do this project, then you're saying no to something else. Essentially, if you start a new plate spinning, then another plate is going to stop and it will fall and break. So you can do a new project.

Speaker 1: 3:39

But what are you going to sacrifice in order to do that project? Will it be time with the children? Will it be your health, your sleep? Would you stay up an extra few hours to give what you need to this project? Is it another project, another channel? Is it your students? What will you give up? And so he presented this to me at the point where I said I'm going to start a podcast and he said so what are you going to give up? If you're going to do a podcast, what's going to stop? And I thought, actually, you're right, I don't really have any time to give to a podcast, so I delayed it, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was just sitting there in the back of my head. You should do a podcast, I want to do a podcast, let's do a podcast, just do a podcast.

Speaker 1: 4:30

So I started recording and actually I recorded the first three or four episodes, produced them, did all the editing and didn't release them for a few months after that. And then I just got to a point where I thought you know what? I've been thinking about this for months and months and months. I still feel as passionate now about the idea as I did before. I really want to do it and I've already got three or four episodes ready sitting there in my hard drive and no one's listening to them. So why don't I just put them out there and just see what the reaction is? And that's when I just started. I said to my partner I know you don't think this is a good idea, but I'm going to do it anyway. My heart is full of this podcast project, so I must see where it takes me. And of course that was over a year ago now.

Speaker 1: 5:26

So when I first started it was just me and I thought the idea for the podcast would be everything to do with British culture, just talking about British culture. And so I would have an idea like oh, I'll talk about pets, our relationship with pets, I'll talk about British gardens, I'll talk about the seaside, and for each episode I just made a list of bullet points what do I want to talk about with the seaside? And so I would write a list of donkeys appear, sand versus. What's the word Gravel, not gravel. What's a pebble, a pebble beach, and yeah. So I just made this list of bullet points and I would add lib. So it wasn't scripted, but there were bullet points that I wanted to touch upon for each one, for each episode, and I didn't make a transcript either in the first instance, and then, after about three or four episodes had been released, I decided I was going to carry on with it for a bit longer.

Speaker 1: 6:41

But I realised very quickly that every other podcaster in the English language arena were offering transcripts and Everyone was asking for transcripts. So I thought, okay, I'm going to have to do transcripts. That's quite a big job writing a transcript, especially for a podcast that's ad-libbed, where there are mistakes and mumbles and just random things coming out of your mouth, it's much harder to write those transcripts. So this was me entering phase two. Phase two was the development to start creating transcripts, which taught me a lot about the usefulness of ad-libbing, especially when I know I have to transcribe it, and it also made me realise that I don't have enough time to be consistent with this podcast if I'm now also adding transcripts into the mix. So this was at the point where I hired my first podcast team member, so I had a chat join who would help me with my transcripts. So I would do some work, he would do some work and between us we made sure that the transcripts were written and present and correct.

Speaker 1: 8:10

I also, at this point, wanted to ensure that I had proper music for the podcast, because there's always issues with licensing and copyright and things like that. So I thought do you know what? I'm just going to have someone create a little jingle. That's mine, so there's never a problem on that front. So I contacted a student of mine, actually someone I used to teach when he was a little boy and I was teaching drama and speech and communication, and he was wonderful and I remember that he was a musician as well. He's now a young man and I'd seen on Facebook that he was offering his services as a musician and so I got in touch and I said have you ever written a jingle? Would you like to write me a little jingle? So I guided him and instructed him, hired him. He wrote me a jingle and it was fabulous and that's what you hear now and I think, the inspiration I gave to him. I said I want this to have a bit of pomp, like British pomp. I want it to sound a little bit like the Great British Bake Off. So if you're familiar with that program, then have a listen to my jingle and you'll see the connection, because that's what I wanted it to feel, like the Great British Bake Off. So we got the music.

Speaker 1: 9:33

I hired my first team member and we decided to add transcriptions into the podcast mix. The problem was I did not have enough time. As much as I was getting help, I still didn't have enough time and, being a perfectionist when I was recording these podcasts, it was taking too long because I'd stop, cut things out, start again, stop and reword something and then the editing took a long time. So at this point I entered stage three, or phase three, of the podcast, and this is where I started to write my scripts in advance. So, rather than bullet points and ad-libbing and you might notice this as you go through the back catalogue, the earlier episodes, I think you can hear that they are ad-libbed and you can hear that transition into a scripted podcast. I don't know, does it bother you, do you notice? Maybe not, but anyway, I thought by scripting in advance that would also help with the transcript, because it wouldn't be much different and all you'd have to do is make a slight adjustment. But then, as you had the script written, you already had the transcript written.

Speaker 1: 10:47

Now this added on a lot of time on the front end of the production, so it would take me hours to create a script that I was happy with. But then when I was recording it, it would be a much faster operation and then editing was much faster as well. But by this point I realised that actually quite a bit of time is spent on the admin of having a podcast, so uploading it, doing the titling and the descriptions and all the kind of back end metadata to make sure that your podcast appears in all the different streaming platforms and things like that. And so this is when I decided to bring in a podcast manager. So, even though the podcast was making no money whatsoever, I was already adding a second team member to help me to manage the podcast so I could keep it consistent. At this point, I also introduced the plus memberships and this was to help me to cover some of the costs of production. So thank you very much, because you're one of those people who does help towards the production costs.

Speaker 1: 12:01

Then we entered phase four. So after a little while I had the realisation that actually this podcast was helpful, was useful and people were actually listening to it. I mean, you can see from the back end of the podcast how many people have downloaded it. You don't know how many people are actually listening to the entire thing. You know people might download it, listen to it for a few seconds and go. No, this is not for me. But I was seeing consistent numbers. Thousands of podcasts were being downloaded and I was starting getting people messaging me saying I listened to your podcast and I really enjoyed this and I really enjoyed that. And so it occurred to me oh, people are enjoying this, this is a useful resource. Okay, and that was a big moment for me getting that kind of validation that all the effort and all the money that I'm putting into this resource has been worth it.

Speaker 1: 13:01

And so I decided that I needed to take it much more seriously, and to do that I needed help in the script writing Because my hours, as of October, my working hours, my working days, have basically been cut down by 50% because I'm now doing most of the childcare, so I'm not working half as much, but I've got just as much, if not a little bit extra work to do in looking after my course students, managing the courses, business and doing the marketing, running the YouTube channel and now running the podcast. There's a lot to do on part-time hours. So I did my final hire, which was for a script writer, someone who collaborates with me to make fantastic scripts which I hope that you will agree, are very educational, fabulous at expanding vocabulary and touch on some really interesting topics. So that brings us up to here and now. We've just released as of today when I'm recording, we've just released our 100th episode and I'm now looking to the next phase. What's the next step? Well, continued improvement. I keep listening to feedback and checking the data and trying to work out, doing lots and lots of research, trying to work out how to best serve you, my listeners, because that's what it is all about. So continued improvement of the podcast.

Speaker 1: 14:52

We are going to move into a slightly different setup. So up to now we've been doing an episode every Saturday along form public episode and then a bonus episode on the Sunday for you guys, so that you get something extra special From now, although it will take a little while to filter through to what you see on the front end. From now, the idea is that we continue with the series, your English Five a Day, and so every day of the week the working week you have new vocabulary, or at least you dive a little deeper into vocabulary. Maybe you already know. So we cover some vocabulary five new pieces every day, monday to Friday, and then on Saturdays you have a longer episode.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Now I'm not completely certain, we haven't completely signed off on the idea, the decision, but the idea is that the Five a Day podcast will culminate in the long form podcast that you get at the weekend, and all the vocabulary you've learned throughout the week will be included in that Saturday episode, so that you're not just relying on going to the transcript and the vocabulary list to find out what things mean. You've already learned or been introduced to it throughout the week in podcast form. You'll still get the transcripts, you'll still get the vocabulary lists, but you'll also now have an audio explanation and additional examples of that vocabulary in use. So hopefully this repetition will help the vocabulary to stick. And that is the name of the game. That's why we're here. We expand our vocabulary, improve our listening skills.

Speaker 1: 16:44

What I'm thinking may happen is that this long form culmination of vocabulary episode would happen every two weeks and in between times we have something different. So every other Saturday we have a collaboration or I have a guest on and you hear a two way conversation going on, because that's also useful and then on Sunday something completely different again. So you'll have something every day of the week. How exciting is that? And I'm looking at all my plates spinning going. How am I going to keep it all going? But that's for me to worry about, not for you to worry about. So, yeah, I just want to make this better and better, provide consistent value and try to grow the podcast to reach more and more people and eventually end up as one of the leading podcast resources for English language acquisition.

Speaker 1: 17:43

Oh, and the other thing that I really need to do at some point in the future is to solve my recording studio issue, because, you may or may not know, I record in a little shed at the end of the garden. It's a very, it's a lovely, it's a studio, but it's a garden room. Basically it's got a flat roof and it's made of wood, so when it rains I can't record because it's so noisy. This episode, for example, should have been recorded five hours ago, but it was raining and in fact it's been raining all week, so it's really put me behind, which is problematic when I have so much to record. So in the future, I hope to have enough means to create some form of soundproofed space and a proper little pod studio where I can record sound and, ideally, video, so that I can get these episodes out to you without delay. But that's something to achieve in the future.

Speaker 1: 18:42

For now we're heading towards the winter, so I hope that you will just stick with me, keep listening, feel free to send me feedback, stay warm, enjoy the Christmas holidays if you celebrate Christmas or the winter season and yeah, thank you from the bottom of my heart. That's all I have to say. This was a very long, very long, just ramble really. This is why I don't ad-lib anymore, but thank you so much for listening. I do appreciate all your support and here's to the next hundreds and hundreds of thousands of episodes. Thank you so much for everything. Until next time, take very good care and goodbye.