Shaun:

Well, I am Sean Behrens. I host a podcast called Expat Life Germany, and obviously I host it in Germany specifically for expats in Germany. And I'm originally from South Africa, but I've since become a German myself. So I've been down the expat route. I'm now, I guess what you could say, an immigrant since I've pretty much settled here after 12 years. And I just loved the, uh, expat scene and I still love the expat scene and was, yeah, so I decided to start an expat podcast.

Steph:

Excellent. And your podcast is how we connected. I'm not so silently looking to move to Germany and so I'm obsessively finding other many resources and I found yours and the interviews, oh my God, the interviews on your podcast are so good.

Shaun:

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. It's been quite a mission to source people, source guests, and I guess the beginning of these kinds of things is always a little slow and difficult to find guests and you start with your circle of friends and just kind of hope that you move broader and broader.

Steph:

How many episodes are you at? Are you at 10 already?

Shaun:

13.

Steph:

13. Okay. So yeah, so now you've got a nice catalog. So when you reach out to people, they'll go and listen and be like, oh yeah, I want to be a part of that. So that's—

Shaun:

That's true. The first few guests, I was reaching out to them when the podcast didn't even exist. There wasn't even a website. I asked this one woman who did a TEDx talk. 'Oh, so exciting you did a TEDx talk. I'd love to have you on my show.' And she's like, 'Oh, what show?' I'm like, 'Yeah, that's kind of the thing. There's not a show yet. Would you be on it?' And she was very gracious and accepted immediately. And I even told her in the call, I said, 'That's kind of crazy that you would just say yes to a show that doesn't exist yet.' It was a great, great experience.

Steph:

And that's the thing about podcasting right now is it's blowing up in many parts of the world, including from what I hear Germany, and we'll learn about that very soon. And so when people hear podcasts, they're like, 'Oh, I want to be on a podcast. That's very new and hip and all that kind of stuff.

Shaun:

And I think people are more open to it because a lot of podcasts don't have the video aspect and a lot of people are very comfortable with just the audio. Although quite often I get from my guests afterwards, they go, oh my God, I can't believe I sound like that. I sound like such a dork or whatever they say. So it's still hard for them to listen to themselves afterwards. But I think it's easier than also the video. So I think people are more willing to come on podcasts.

Steph:

Definitely. How in touch are you with the podcasting scene in South Africa and the podcasting scene in Germany? Are you in touch with both of those worlds?

Shaun:

I have zero idea of the podcast scene in South Africa. I just haven't listened to it. I've thought about looking for some South African podcasts at some point just to hear what things are like back home. But my podcast list is so long, you know, my weekly listening is quite intensive. So I really need, I need to make time if I want to go and listen to some South African podcasts. So no, no idea about podcasts. When I left 12 years ago, podcasting still wasn't really taking off. It was around, but it wasn't really taking off. And I didn't listen to anything back then. In Germany, I listened to I listen to some German podcasts, one or two German podcasts. I, of course, listen to the Expat Cast, which is a podcast by another expat podcaster, Nicole.

Steph:

Nicole, yeah.

Shaun:

And that's a great show too. So that's kind of the extent of my German podcast listening.

Steph:

I've heard that podcasting in Germany is starting to take off, but I'm not super sure of how in real life the podcasting community is there. Have you connected? Are there any groups that you're in that meet in person, or are there any conferences or anything?

Shaun:

There are. There is a big conference every year called Podstock. It's a German conference and that is growing this year.

Steph:

And— Podstock?

Shaun:

P-O-D-S-T-O-C-K. So like Woodstock except Podstock. And it's quite international. I know there's some international people that come out there, but it's specifically focused on German language podcasts. And that is apparently growing. And there's also, you know, I listen to— there's a group of people that call themselves Podcastnik. They're a bunch of Americans and also Germans, I think, who run a group of podcasts For example, The Bohemian is a podcast by one of the guys called Travis. They've also got the history— I can't remember exactly what it is. It's a history— I'll send you the link for the show notes, but it's called the History of Germany or something like that. And then they also produce a German version, Amerikaner für euch, which is American history for Germans. So they're pretty big as well as a podcast network. And Travis actually came out to Podstock. I'm in touch with him, so I'm kind of in that I wouldn't say I'm in the community, but I'm in touch with Travis now. And he was— Podstock was just an incredible experience and it's growing. And yeah, it was good to hear.

Steph:

Fantastic. Listeners, I'll get that in the show notes. But why did you start your podcast? Because it sounds like there's a lot of expat podcasts coming from Germany already.

Shaun:

I would say there's not too many expat podcasts. The ones that I know about is, for example, Expat Cast by Nicole. And I only discovered that once I was ready to roll with this one. So it was bad researching on my part. But it is, podcasting is definitely becoming more and more popular here. You definitely notice that people are, whereas a few years ago they didn't even know what podcasts were, people are now saying, what podcast do you recommend? And if I tell them, go and listen to my podcast, they know what I'm talking about. They don't think it's a YouTube video somewhere or something. So I definitely noticed that the concept of podcast is growing. It's becoming more known around. Far as why I started a podcast, I always wanted to be in radio. Like right from a young kid, I just wanted to be in radio. I loved music and I listened to, you know, I listened to radio nonstop growing up through my teenage years and then also as a young adult. So I just always fantasized about being a radio DJ. And then of course life kind of happens in a different direction. And I ended up going into a very businessy corporate career for many years. And eventually I moved to Germany and I decided I wanted to make a career change. And long story short, I recently changed to content marketing, which is, I'm now writing blogs for a living. Doing YouTube videos. And along with this newfound career change, I decided, hey, why, why don't I do what I've always wanted to do? And then I thought, well, that's the logical next step is a podcast. And combined with that, I also love the expat spirit, people who travel to other countries, either long-term or short-term. I just, I think that they've got incredible stories to tell and it takes a very special kind of person to decide that they're going to pack up everything and move to another country. So having been in Germany for 12 years, I'm starting to feel very settled and I miss that expat mindset. So I had two options. Either I moved to a new country myself, which is logistically becoming more and more impossible because I've got two kids, third one on the way, or I start a podcast and talk to expats who have been here for a short while or for a longer while. And it's been incredible.

Steph:

Yeah.

Shaun:

It's been a great experience. Wow.

Steph:0

Okay. You said you grew up wanting to be a DJ. Did you do the college DJ thing?

Shaun:

No.

Steph:

Because a lot of podcasters do that. Okay, did you make any, I'm not sure where you are in the technological line, did you make any like mixtapes or do like record yourself as a kid or teenager and kind of play with it? Yeah.

Shaun:

I used to do all kinds of things like that. I used to record radio shows at home on a really crappy microphone. I used to call sports shows. I hated sports as a kid, but for some reason I wanted, you know, I just wanted to record myself talking, I guess. So I would mute the sound of the sport. We had cricket and rugby. So if there was a rugby match, I'd mute the sound of the rugby match. And I would call the game basically and record it for myself. No one ever heard those tapes. So I was always doing those kinds of things.

Steph:

What are the logistics of making your podcast? Like how, not your entire workflow or anything like that, but like a very big picture view of how you make it.

Shaun:

Yeah. So the logistics are basically, it's actually very easy. And I think that's the great thing about podcasting is people may think that it's very difficult to get in, but to get it, to get a great sounding podcast is not that difficult. You don't need the most expensive equipment. You just need some basic knowledge. There are some key things that you need to know, but essentially I just have a microphone, an audio interface, and a laptop. And that's basically what I use to do my recording. That in itself is very simple. And I think people shouldn't be bogged down by a perceived barrier of entry because actually the barrier of entry is pretty low. You don't need a lot of complicated things. And there's a lot of great resources also, like you have, Steph, that help people understand the workflow and understand what goes into it. Logistically, I think the biggest problem I have is time because I have a family with 2 kids. I have a day job and I have a 3rd kid on the way. So my, my, my trick is scheduling guests takes a lot of work and a lot more work than I expected because there's a lot of emails, sometimes 10, 20 emails back and forth, finding out what you're going to talk about, figuring out what content the guest can bring, and then going through sometimes basically walking through some of the topics and deciding on a date. All of that is very, very time intensive just for each specific guest. And I'm kind of a one-man show, so I do it all myself.

Steph:

Yeah. Do you have anybody do any part, whether it be the editing or the promotions or anything like that?

Shaun:

No, it's all me. It's all me. So it's, it's pretty difficult to find the time. It's a weekly show that I'm running. And yeah, with, with all of that, I've realized, you know, finding time for, for booking the guests and then recording the interview is generally the easy part because that's an hour, hour and a half maximum, and then it's done. But then editing can be real nightmare sometimes, you know, sometimes depending on guests and depending on how the story was structured or how things came out, you might have very little or sometimes hours of editing. I've had one of my editing jobs took about 3 to 4 hours for a half-hour episode, which is crazy.

Steph:

That sounds normal to me.

Shaun:

And I've had other issues where there were problems with I use Zencastr sometimes and there's some kind of audio drift that happens and I'm trying to sync the audio up as it was getting lost all the time through the call was just impossible. So that takes a lot of time. And then the promotion afterwards, posting to social media, and I always write a blog post to go with it. That's all time intensive. So I would say it's almost like a full day's work just to produce a half hour to 40 minute episode. That is my biggest logistical problem is fitting that all in with everything else. And I've been throwing around the idea of maybe going to a 2-year release schedule because of that. But I'll have to see how it goes.

Steph:

Where do you publish? Because I know in different countries there's different platforms.

Shaun:

I'm on Buzzsprout. So I publish to Buzzsprout. They're kind of a smaller one, I think, but they're still in sort of the top 5 publishers. So I publish to Buzzsprout and they're great. Their customer service is incredible.

Steph:

Oh, that's really good to know. Are there local German podcasting hosts?

Shaun:

Yes, there are, but don't ask me what they are. I have a friend of mine, Dominik, who's in a German history podcast in German called Das ACH, and they are hosting on a German publisher, but I never remember the name of it.

Steph:

Gotcha. You chose to do the podcast in English. Are you tempted at all at any point to do it bilingually? No.

Shaun:

My German is very fluent. I speak very good German. I've been here for 12 years and I've learned it actively throughout that time. So I've got a very, very good level of German. Written is not so good. I can write in German, but it just takes me forever to write a mail. But the thing is, I express myself way better and way more easily in English. And I think it's easier for people to listen to when it's natural. I mean, not to say that you can't do a podcast in a foreign language, because I listen to a lot of great podcasts where the hosts are not speaking their first language. For me, It's not really an option. I think my German is not expressive enough and not interesting enough.

Steph:

That's pretty critical.

Shaun:

Yeah, or realistic. I'm not sure. Fine. I've often thought of it as a nice challenge someday to start a German podcast just for, you know, just for fun. But at the moment, I don't have time for just for funs.

Steph:

I hear you. You sound incredibly busy. Are there any local restrictions or barriers or challenges that are specific to your location in Germany that wouldn't exist if you were podcasting somewhere else?

Shaun:

Yeah, I don't think so. I may find out when some authorities contact me one day and tell me I've been doing something wrong with my podcast, then I'll know. But I'm not— none that I'm aware of. It's pretty easy to get online and put out whatever you want to put out. There is an indirect barrier in that your audience in Germany is limited, because if I'm doing an English language podcast in Germany, and I specifically targeted for people in Germany, I only have foreigners as a target audience. What I have found, which was a bit of a surprise for me, is Germans love listening to my show because they say it gives them a perspective of Germany from outsiders' eyes. So that was a surprise to me. But generally with other kinds of subjects, if you're producing a podcast in Germany in English, I would suspect that you would have to make it some kind of, I don't know how you would draw in a German crowd if you were specifically focusing on a local crowd. You would have to have an international audience. Right.

Steph:

When you started this, did you think you would be talking to people just interested in living in Germany, or did you think it would go beyond? Did you think you would like promote to people even just coming in to travel or are just interested in German, modern Germany?

Shaun:

My original goal with this was to focus on the experience of people living in Germany. So people who have arrived in Germany and are currently expats. But as the show has been developing, because I'm still very early on, so I've done 13 episodes, so it's very much evolving with every episode. Sometimes I try something out and it doesn't I figure out something that I want to do differently. As I go along, I'm realizing I want to make it more about life in Germany and not specifically expat life. I want to make it about the Germany experience, basically. So that it would even include people who are just visiting for short periods of time, or people like you say, people who have some kind of relationship with Germany even though they're not here. I've just interviewed someone for an upcoming episode whose life is intertwined with Germany because his grandparents were German and they came over during the Holocaust and they started a new life in United States. And, but, but he's got a love from Germany because of his roots. And he learned German. He studied German at university. He lived in Germany for maybe 3 months. That's interesting to me as well. Like, and it's a bit broader than the concept I initially had in mind. I've been seriously thinking about rebranding the podcast. I don't know how difficult that would be. I need to give it some more thought, but it's become something broader than what I initially had in mind.

Steph:

And that happens a lot. Usually the first 6 months, of a podcast, I hear a lot of people talking about how the project just kind of went off on its own and developed into something other than what they thought. And staying open to that is really important.

Shaun:

Yeah. The thing is, I've developed more of a listener base than I thought by this stage. I thought that I would have— I mean, it's still not huge numbers. It's not massive, but it's bigger than I thought it was going to be at this stage. And I thought I would have more leeway to if I needed to rebrand or if I needed to change the format. But as it turns out, I've got, for example, I've got a Facebook group. And there is now 40 people in there, which to me is a lot. I know it's not, but it's, it's a big part, you know, to entice people to come into a Facebook group. And it's growing. There's people requesting to enter every day, which is very exciting. And as I say, I get good enough downloads per episode. So it doesn't allow me the flexibility that I thought I would have, but I'm still gonna, if I need to do it, I will. I'm still early enough in the process to be able to.

Steph:

Rebranding is not that bad. It's just a matter of keeping the listeners in the loop the entire time things are happening and making sure that if you, like, even if you switch platforms as As long as you keep the old one long enough that when people come over or if you just change the name, whatever you do, just kind of talking them through the changes as they go, people don't mind. Podcast listeners are, they're very loyal as long as they know what's happening.

Shaun:

I'm thinking of doing it sort of on the same RSS feed as well. So it would just pop up potentially with a new name in their RSS feed.

Steph:

That's not a big deal. I doubt you would lose many, if anybody.

Shaun:

And even if I do, I'm willing to take a hit in the listeners so that I can kind of get going in the right direction.

Steph:

Well, and that's the thing, to make it something that people want to listen to, you have to be interested in what you're doing.

Shaun:

Yeah, exactly.

Steph:

Exactly. That's the most important thing. Yeah. So, okay, final question. Knowing that I'm going to be interviewing expat podcasters globally from different countries, what kinds of things would you be interested in knowing about expats from various countries who are in various countries and their podcasting life? What kind of things would you like me to ask future guests? That was a long question.

Shaun:

I need to write down the questions.

Steph:

I would clearly change the question later.

Shaun:

But yeah, I would think for me would be interesting how they source guests, for one. I would also be interested to know how they market to their potential audience because you're kind of dealing with a subset of people living in the country. And yeah, how do you reach those people specifically? Yay.

Steph:

Okay, so remind our listeners where they can find you.

Shaun:

But it's called Expat Life Germany. I have a website, expatlifegermany.de, and Expat Life Germany on Instagram and on Twitter, it's @expatlife_de. And on all the podcast platforms, of course.

Steph:

Of course. Of course. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the Expat Podcaster Show on the Geopats Podcast.

Shaun:

Thanks for inviting me as the guinea pig. This has been fun. So much fun to talk to you. I hear you all the time on your shows, and it's kind of a little bit starstruck talking to you here. Oh my God. The whole time I'm like, oh my goodness, that's Steph. Okay.