Mistakes To Avoid When Starting A Podcast

"The podcast isn't the business. The podcast is the handshake that starts the business."

Nearly half of all podcasts are dead within three episodes, and one in three creators quit their show entirely. Most of them don't fail because the host was boring — they fail because of decisions made before anyone ever hit record. In this episode, I walk through the five mistakes I see businesses make over and over again when starting a podcast, and exactly how to avoid each one.

Key Takeaways

• Niche or Nothing: "Everything and anything" podcasts have no real listener. Define one ideal listener, not an audience, and test every episode idea against them.
• One Show, One CTA: A podcast that promotes every guest's business but never your own is a free marketing channel, not a business asset.
• Customers, Not Sponsors: Sponsorship money takes years of downloads to build. Your podcast's job is turning the right 200 listeners into clients, not chasing 100,000 downloads.
• Start Before You're Ready: It took seven years to build the current setup, and the first, rough version of the show still built the entire business.
• Audio Quality Is Brand Quality: Bad sound isn't a technical flaw, it's a trust problem. People judge fast, and "unedited" isn't the same as "natural."

Chapters and Timestamps

00:00 – Why nearly half of podcasts die within 3 episodes
00:01 – Mistake #1: Starting a podcast about everything and anything, and how to define your one ideal listener
00:04 – Mistake #2: Turning your podcast into free marketing for everyone else
00:06 – Mistake #3: Starting a podcast to make money instead of making customers
00:09 – Mistake #4: Waiting until everything is perfect before you launch
00:12 – Mistake #5: Treating sound quality as an afterthought

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:49

The most successful podcasts all have a niche. They have one message, one audience, and they stick to it every single episode. If you're getting into podcasting to make money, stop right now. Podcast isn't the business. The podcast is the handshake that starts the business. I had to learn everything from scratch. And that podcast, the one that started rough, became an award-winning show and built my entire business. I'm gonna be really honest with you at the start of this episode. When a business owner tells me about the podcast that they're planning, I can usually tell within about five minutes whether it's gonna work or not. Not because I'm psychic, because after working on more than a hundred shows and over a thousand episodes, you see the same mistakes over and over and over again. The same five mistakes basically. Different businesses, different industries, different countries, same five mistakes. And the brutal bit, the data backs this up. Nearly half of all podcasts are dead within three episodes. One in three podcast creators have quit the show entirely. Most of those podcasts didn't fail because the host was boring, they failed before anyone ever pressed record because of decisions made in the planning. So today I'm gonna give you the five mistakes that I see businesses make with their first podcast. If you're about to start one, this episode might save you months of wasted effort. And if you've already got one, wait. Be honest with yourself as we go through them because you might recognize a couple. I'm Neil McKay. I've been podcasting since 2019. I run 7 Million Bikes Podcast where we produce shows for businesses all over the world. And this is Smarter Podcasting. Mistake number one. Starting a podcast about everything and anything. Honestly, go on Spotify right now and just search everything and anything. You will find about a thousand podcasts literally called that. We talk about business, life, mindset, relationships, whatever comes up. That's not a podcast. That's a group chat with microphones. And here's the thing, right? The most successful podcasts all have a niche. They have one message, one audience, and they stick to it every single episode. And for a business podcast, this is even more important because your podcast has a job. Its job is to reach the specific people who might one day pay you. If you run an accounting firm and your podcast is about accounting for small businesses, every single listener is a potential client. If your podcast is about life and success and whatever we feel like, who is it for? Nobody. And nobody is exactly who will listen. Pick your niche, stay in the niche. The narrower it feels, the better it usually works. And I get the fear here. People think if I niche down, I'm excluding all these listeners. You're not. You're excluding people who were never going to become clients. That's not a loss. That's focused. So here's the fix, and it's almost embarrassingly simple. Before you record anything, describe your one ideal listener. Not your audience, your listener, singular. Their job, their age, what problems keep them up at night, what they type into a search bar at midnight, write it down. Honestly, use ChatGPT to help you build the persona. I do this with clients all the time and it works brilliantly. Then every episode idea gets one test. Would that one person care about this? If yes, make it. If no, don't. No matter how interesting it sounds to you, because here's the secret that nobody tells you. People don't listen to podcasts in a crowd. It's one person on a bus in the gym doing the dishes. You were only ever talking to one person anyway. You might as well know exactly who they are. Mistake number two, making a podcast that promotes everybody's business except girls. I had a call with a guy who wanted to start a podcast and he was excited. Which I love, I love when someone's excited, and he says, I'm gonna invite all these guests on and we're gonna tell people about their businesses. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. I mean, I didn't say it like that. I was nice, but I had to stop him because think about what he was actually describing. He was about to give up his time, his energy, his money, eight plus hours a week, to create a marketing channel for other people's businesses for free. Your podcast needs one call to action. One, and it's yours. Work with me, book a call, buy from us. Whatever it is your business does, that's the call to action. Guests are great, have guests, but the show exists to build your authority and your relationships, not to be a free billboard for whoever shows up. And there's a deeper version of this mistake too, which is having five different calls to action. Follow us here, download this. Also, we have a course, also, subscribe to the newsletter, also, also, also. The listener does nothing because you asked for everything. One show, one audience, one call to action. Keep it that simple. Mistake number three. Starting a podcast to make money from the podcast. I've said this for years and I will keep saying it. If you're getting into podcasting to make money, stop right now. Find something else. Anything else? Starting a podcast is not a quick fix to make a lot of money. It's not a side hustle. Everyone thinks sponsorship's right. That's the dream they've been sold. Get listeners, get sponsors, get rich. But sponsorship money needs serious download numbers. And building those numbers takes years. The shows making real sponsorship money are the 1% of the 1%. Now, here's the bit that most people miss. And this is the whole reason business podcasting works. Your podcast doesn't need to make money, it needs to make customers. If you already have a business, an accounting firm, a law practice, an agency, a clinic, your podcast should have one job. Selling your services, not somebody else's ads. Yours. One new client for most businesses is worth more than a year of small-time sponsorship money. So when someone asks me, how do I monetize my podcast? My answer is usually you already have something to sell. Your podcast isn't the product. Your podcast is the salesperson. And the beautiful thing is, when you stop chasing sponsors, all the pressure changes. You don't need a hundred thousand downloads. You need the right 200 people listening. Think about what one client is actually worth to your business. For most of the people I work with: designers, accountants, consultants, agencies, lawyers, one new client is worth thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars over a few years. One client, your podcast doesn't need to and shouldn't be trying to beat Joe Rogan. It needs to convince a handful of the right people that you know what you're talking about. And 20 minutes of you in their ears explaining their problem better than they can explain it themselves, that does exactly that. The podcast isn't the business. The podcast is the handshake that starts the business. Mistake number four, waiting until everything is perfect before you launch. I see businesses spend months, months choosing a microphone, debating the logo, rewriting the intro for the 15th time, and they haven't recorded a single episode. Let me tell you something. The setup I have now, the studio, the cameras, the team, the lights, it took me seven years to get here. Seven years. I started in 2019 with basically nothing. On free software, knowing absolutely nothing. I had to learn everything from scratch. And that podcast, the one that started rough, became an award-winning show and built my entire business. If I had waited until I had all this equipment to start, I'd still be waiting. There would be no business. You will make mistakes. Your first episodes won't be your best ones, and that's fine. That's totally normal. You get better by doing it, not by planning it. And I'm more of a doer than a thinker, which is good sometimes and bad at other times, I'll be honest. But on this one, the doers win every time. Just get started. And here's the practical version of just get started. So it doesn't sound like a motivational poster. You need a decent microphone, a quiet room, free or cheap recording software, and a topic that your ideal listener cares about. And that's it. That's the actual list. Everything else, the studio, the three cameras, the lighting, that's polish that you can add later when the show has proven that it works. Your first 10 episodes of finding your voice and your rhythm, nobody finds their voice in a planning document. You find it three minutes into episode four when you stop performing and start talking. Mistake number five, and this is the one that's gonna be controversial. Treating your sound quality as an afterthought. Because here's my take, and you might agree or you might disagree, the quality of your audio is more important than the quality of your content. And I'm serious, I've been saying this for years. You could have the most valuable content in the world, advice that could genuinely change someone's business. But if you recorded it on a laptop microphone in an echoey room and it sounds like you're in a wind tunnel, people shut it off immediately. They will never find out how smart you are. And for a business, it's worse than just losing a listener. Your podcast is your brand. If your podcast sounds cheap and sloppy, what is a potential client supposed to assume about your actual work? People judge. They judge fast. On YouTube, half your audience can be gone in the first 30 seconds. There is nothing more frustrating to me than seeing a poorly made podcast and seeing a business put their name on it anyway. The fix isn't even expensive. That's the frustrating part. A decent microphone, close to your mouth, a quiet room, and some proper editing, and that's most of it. But you have to treat it like it matters. Because to your audience, it really, really does. And while we're here, let me deal with a cousin of this mistake because I see it all the time. Someone posts proudly, I like to keep it natural, I don't edit. I don't know what accent that was, but that wasn't natural either. That's just a bad podcast. I mean it. Natural is how a good conversation feels, not how a raw recording sounds. Real conversations are full of tangents and ums and false starts, and nobody wants to sit through them, including the people who are in the conversation. The best edited podcasts in the world are edited so well that you can't tell that they're edited at all. That's what natural actually takes. Hours of invisible work. Every podcast you love is edited. Every single one. So the five mistakes businesses make with our first podcast. One, the everything and anything show with no niche. Two, building a podcast that promotes everyone's business but yours. One call to action and it's yours. Number three, starting a podcast to make money instead of making customers. Four, waiting for perfect instead of starting. And five, treating sound quality like an afterthought when it's actually your brand. Avoid these five and honestly, you're ahead of most podcasts before you've recorded. And if you want help getting it right from the beginning, the strategy, the niche, the production, all of that, that's exactly what we do here at 7 Million Bikes Podcast. Go to 7millionbikes.com and hit the button that says talk to Neil. That's me, a real person. We'll have a call and I can talk you through what it means to be able to work with us and I'll give you honest advice whether you want to work with us or whether you don't. And if you've found this useful, please share it with another business owner who's about to start a podcast. You might just save them from mistake number one. Thanks for listening to Smarter Podcasting. I'm Neil McKay, the podcast guy. Cheers.