My Creative Process to Start a Podcast

BIG NEWS: I’m launching a podcast next week! 

Introducing: Dog Moms Do Business, the podcast where two lifelong friends find sisterhood in business, life, and being crazy millennial dog moms! 

I could go on and on about the joys of starting a podcast with your best friend of 20 years – and I probably WILL at some point! In creating the concept of this podcast and bringing it to life, Jasmine and I have had a blast reflecting on our own lives, businesses, relationships, and the sisterhood we have built, but what we are most excited about now is the community we can build and conversations we can start moving forward!

Our hope is that other creative, entrepreneurial dog moms can find sisterhood with us through our unfiltered, down-to-earth approach to conversation. That we can provide inspiration, connection to possibility, and permission to be your quirky, silly self in this world. 

This project has been in the works for quite a while now, and now that we are finally preparing to put it out there for the world to hear, I want to tell you more about it, and the journey undertaken to get here.

You see, this isn’t the first podcast idea I’ve had, or even the first podcast I’ve recorded! 

My journey in podcasting:

In any creative journey, I believe a vital part of the process is all of the not-quite-right ideas that get scrapped or changed along the way. The creation of this podcast has been no different, in that there have been many ideas over the years that I have wanted to bring to life, but that ended up not really “fitting.”

I’m giving those ideas the credit they are due in my own creative process, starting with Big Ass Breakthroughs.

This was a concept for a podcast I created, in which the listener can listen to me coach an anonymous client in real time. I approached it like I was pulling back the curtain on the coaching process, and honestly, it felt AMAZING in the process. I recorded a whole season, and in that time not only did I capture a ton of impactful content, but we also created some real breakthroughs in the coaching I did with the clients on the episodes.

But then, I listened back to it… and something didn’t feel quite right. 

While it felt great in the moment, listening back it felt performative and “prove-y” — in other words, I felt like I needed to perform at my best and like I had something to prove to my listeners. It may have been my own insecurity talking, but I had this gnawing fear of feedback that would pick apart the beautiful, organic process that is a coaching relationship and conversation. I knew that I would be highly sensitive to any criticism that came from a project I felt was so personal to me and my client. Because of this, it felt unsustainable for me… so after recording a whole season, I decided that I wasn’t comfortable moving forward with the concept.

Then, I considered a solo podcast where I would interview different guests on different topics, still in the realm of coaching and entrepreneurship. I wanted the value to come from organic conversation, either as a trusted coach or as a familiar friend, without concern about necessarily “providing high value content” to the listener. Again, I didn’t want there to be anything to prove.

I ended up moving on from this concept at the end of the day because I felt like everyone is doing podcasts in this interview style, and I frankly just don’t enjoy the “interviewer” role. I just want to be in conversation.

Having worked through and left behind numerous ideas like these over the years, I found myself having a conversation with my best friend, Jasmine, about entrepreneurship in our stage of life, when one of us said aloud, “This would make a great podcast!”

Something just clicked.

The Concept: two best friends of 20 years who are both entrepreneurs, both partners of entrepreneurs, and obsessed dog moms just… share the stuff we talk about anyway!

The Name: It didn’t take long until we stumbled on the name “Dog Moms Do Business,” and it made us both sparkle.

Something I love about our dynamic in this podcast (and in life), is the different strengths we both bring to the table. My interest in this podcast is for deep, real connection with each other and with the listener – it satisfies my urge for creating sisterhood and community, having the “behind the curtain” conversations about business and life, and exploring the edges of personal growth in real time on air. 

Jasmine’s interest, as a former teacher and now course creator, leans towards education, sharing tools, and women-led business ownership. Together, our strengths shine and our history as friends brings the humor and fun that make this podcast (imho) special. We cover topics that range anywhere from storytimes about each other to how we deal with “shit-hits-the-fan” moments in business, to our romantic relationships, to our spiritual tools and paths, to the roles our dogs have played in our lives and growth.

We recorded our first season in the spring. The recording process was fun and effortless. And then we both got swept up in life changes and travel – I got pregnant, and we both snowbird-ed away from Phoenix for the summer… so production got put on pause.

This turned out to be a gift for our creative process.

We came back together, listened back to the episodes with fresh ears, and laughed our butts off at the many moments we forgot were captured on air. We knew this was worth investing our time, resources, and commitment to move forward with it, both for the payoff of working on something together and for the community we believe we could build.

And Dog Moms Do Business was born.

How does one actually “start a podcast?”

First of all, JUST HIT RECORD. 

We started with a brief brainstorm on the kinds of topics we could talk hours about without thinking, and we picked a variety of them to dive into in the first season. 

For us, that included:

Our “buckets” of topics formed quickly, and so we dove in!

We reached out to a bunch of our business friends and partners to see if they had any extra equipment (mics, a Rodecaster) that we could buy from them or take off their hands – and as it turns out, we found supplies pretty quickly without breaking the bank!

We decided that we would keep it simple format-wise (for now) and not to complicate things by producing video for every episode (except when we introduced the dogs!). We thought a fun, private video for our audience would bring a little “surprise and delight” factor to those pup-centered episodes. Other than that, we decided less was more and chose to stick to audio-only.

After the season was fully recorded, we bartered help from a consultant on the process of putting together all the pieces:

All of this was possible because we chose an idea that resonated with us, and HIT RECORD. 

So, now what?

We officially launch on Wednesday, November 16th (which is NEXT WEEK, for those of you reading this blog on the day it was published).

If you want to get in on the fun and support the podcast, here are some of the ways you can join our Pod Quad! 

I seriously can’t wait for you to tune in and join our pack! (And yes, you can count on the dog puns to keep on comin.)