The Power of the Podcast: Unlock Your Brand's Marketing Potential

Does Your Podcast Suck? Fix Quality Issues With Proven Podcast Production Tips

• Pedal Stomper Productions - Josh Troche

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Ever finish recording and think, “Wow… that was rough”? You’re not alone, and your podcast isn’t doomed. 

In this episode of The Power of the Podcast, we dive into the most common podcast mistakes that even seasoned hosts make and what to do when your episode doesn’t meet your expectations. Whether you're just starting out or deep into podcasting for small business, you’ll learn how to quickly diagnose quality issues, recover gracefully, and turn a failed episode into a valuable learning opportunity. 

We’ll share actionable podcast production tips to improve your podcast quality and ensure you’re creating content that builds trust and supports your broader content strategy. More importantly, you’ll discover how to maintain audience retention even after a less-than-stellar episode because one bad show shouldn’t lose you loyal listeners.

You’ll learn why even pro podcasters have off days, how to prep smarter to avoid common podcasting errors, what to do when guests or tech fail mid-episode, and how to salvage weak recordings by repurposing strong moments. Plus, we’ll cover how to reflect, recover, and stay authentic throughout your podcasting journey.

If you're a small business owner or marketing manager trying to harness podcasting to build brand trust and authority, this episode is your ultimate troubleshooting guide.


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You need to face it. Your podcast sucks. Yep. We've all experienced a time where we have recorded an episode, and then we look at it and we're like, ouch! That wasn't any good. How do you handle that? What do you do with that? Well, that is what we're going to talk about this week. And hopefully, hopefully this podcast doesn't suck. Stay tuned. So if you've recorded more than 3 or 4 episodes, you have probably walked out of the studio or just wherever you're recording and been like, ouch. That wasn't good. Now there's a couple of things that you can look at with that. There's a couple of ways to handle it. And what we want to do today is we want to look at how you handle those things. And I mean, what do you do with it? I mean, really, do you just throw it out and start over again? Well, depends. So first off, what I want to talk about is let's look at professional athletes. And most of us are not professional athletes. But everyone knows everyone can think of a game where the superstar just didn't show up. I mean, they were there. They were on the court. They were on the field. They were. They were at the track, whatever it is. But they just they just didn't bring it. What I'm getting at here is even top tier, unbelievably high performing people have off days. It's going to happen. It will happen. In fact, it's probably better that it does happen so you can learn from it. So the first thing that I want to say is you have to accept the fact that off days are going to happen. You're going to have a day where you're going to walk out of the stadium, be like, I don't even know if I want to publish that. Think about it before you throw it in the garbage, but realize you are going to have days where that is going to happen. So first off, what I want you to the first steps of what I want you to do when that does happen is like, let's go back and look at this. Let's learn from this. I always that people talk about when you fail, you should fail fast because then you learn a lot of things very quickly. When you have a bad podcast, I want to make sure that you learn a lot of things very, very quickly from it. You you take like, why did this go so sideways? What happened? I had someone in right before I'm recording this episode. I had someone in the studio. It was a decent podcast, but it wasn't up to the level of what they normally do. I mean, it's still very. I mean, still good, still something that I'm going to enjoy listening to, still something that we're going to enjoy editing. But it wasn't up to the top tier level of what they normally do. And when they said, yeah, I wrote this out this morning, I was like, because this is someone that typically writes things out days in advance and takes a couple of rehearsals with things, goes through things. They're very smooth. They're very well delivered. This had some hiccups to it. This I mean, it wasn't off, off. But like I said, it wasn't like Michael Jordan scoring 80 points. It was more like he had a 20 point game. Yeah. So that is one of the big things that I, that I say about this is host prep comes down to so much of this. If this is rehearsed, if you know where you're going, if you know what, the next thing you're going to say is going to be, even if you don't have the exact words, you know how to tie things together, you know how to pull it all together. That makes a huge difference. Rehearse your own material. Know your talking points inside and out. I mean, even though we always preach. You're an expert at this. Know where the points are. Know how you want to say those things. Something else. Do some vocal warmups. Read something out loud in the studio before you hit record. So that way you you know where you're at. You're you're using your voice as an instrument. It's not just talking. Make sure you're projecting. Make sure you're using the microphone. Warm up with that. This is once again, I'm going to make a lot of sports analogies with this. If you want to prevent those off days, make sure you show up with an on day. Guests can sometimes be a little bit different. I've had guests walk into the studio that were just the most brilliant, talkative people that give me one and two word answers, and I've seen it happen to so many other people. They, they get these wonderful people and they're like, so tell me how you started. It just seemed like a good idea. And then the they're looking across the table like, what? Can can you elaborate on that? Well, you know, just the timing was right. Will work. Right. But what what happened to people? Guest prep. So getting a feel for how that person is going to work in the studio, maybe get on a zoom call ahead of time. Something of that nature. So you have an idea of how that person's going to react. Now, in the same sense, make sure that you are crafting those thoughtful questions. Make sure that you are, I mean, giving getting that background information that you need to ask those types of questions. Provide them not. I typically don't recommend you provide them with the questions, but provide them with the subjects and say, look, here's the 2 or 3 areas that I'm going to talk about specifically. Once again, you're going to ask the questions in a different manner. We don't necessarily want them with rehearsed answers, but we do want them with very feeling, very, very comfortable with the answers that they're going to give. Something that if you're in the studios, it's not a problem for you, but it can be a problem for many people at home. Double check your audio. Double check your internet backup record. Like look at your recording options. All those things. Task those half an hour before you're going to. If you're doing something remote, test those half an hour before you get on the call. Sign in. Google meets will let you have a meeting with yourself. Go ahead and do that. Have a meeting on your computer with your phone. You can test the settings. You can listen to the audio. You can see those items. Hey, how do I look? Is the lighting off? Is my microphone in the right spot? Do I sound okay? What's my internet like? Those are things that you can do ahead of time. Just log on for a minute or two and then go back to doing what you were doing while you wait for the wait for the podcast to start. It's that type of preparation. Once again, it's these preparation pieces that can help you prevent your episode from going sideways. In that when you're prepared, it becomes much easier for you to expect the unexpected. If things are going smoothly with the stuff that you can control, something coming in from left field that you can't control is much easier to manage. If everything's a mess and something else comes in that's messy. Well, then that's just that's just just is a recipe for things to get ugly. Like I said, we've talked about the shy guest. Guests can transform when when you hit that record button. Have an open ended questions ready for them. Encourage them to elaborate. Create that comfortable conversational atmosphere. The dominant guest. If you got someone that's just like bogging, bogging things down, they can't stay on subject. They they're just dominating the conversation, and they're not letting you ask the questions you want to. First off, don't be afraid to interrupt. But second off, be like, do with like, hey, that's a great point in speaking to let's go adjacent here or okay, let me let me hold you up for a second. I'd like to go back and revisit this other thing. It's no problem to do that. Make sure you're supposed to be in control. Don't worry about like. Like, appearing like rude because it's. It's your show. You're the one that's supposed to be in control. So those are the ways to keep those, like the guest piece from going sideways. As we mentioned, the unexpected pieces like you guys know, in many cases I'm using bullet points from the computer that's sitting in front of me right here. What happens if this goes sideways? Well, in many cases, I we actually have a backup tablet here in the studio. So that was the computer goes down. I can still get the information from a tablet. What happens if there's a camera issue? Well, make sure that you've got a backup webcam. What happens if there's a microphone issue? Make sure that you've got, like, at least like earbuds or something like that. Something else that has a microphone in it. Nothing else. Make sure that like headphones, like the set that I have on, you can find headphones for like 25 bucks. Have a set of those stored away. That way, once again, if something goes sideways, you've got something that you can grab, you can plug in and you can be ready to go. Now, internet connection can often be another separate deal. If your internet connection goes sideways and you're recording, like in something like Riverside or whatever. Riverside is a pretty good job of compensating. But sometimes if your internet connection is just dropping out all the time. It may not work. Look to see if you can hotspot your phone and use that as an internet connection. If you're I, this is why we typically say don't podcast from out in public. I realize there's some times where you have to be in an airport. You have to be someplace, whatever it happens. But do your best to make sure that you have a backup for some of these things that can go wrong. And additional, like I said, an additional webcam that you can throw in a bag is like 20 bucks may not be the perfect webcam, but it's there. Same thing for lighting. We have some backup lighting in the studio if we need to. It's all those little things that add up. We've also because we've got 10,000 cables over there for anyone that's been in the studio is seen the, the all the wires that we have here. We've got backup HDMI cables, we've got backup audio cables, we've got backup XLR cables for like the microphones. There's an extra mic in here in case we get a microphone that goes bad. There's backups for so many things. Make sure that you feel confident and ready. So that way, like I said, if something goes sideways, you don't have to worry about it. What happens if you start out the episode and you realize this is just sideways? This is bad. This is just no one's. I mean, I don't know if I can release this. The sooner you realize that, the better. In many cases, if you realize that with a guest, take a couple of minute breather. I mean, stop, stop recording. Take a 5 or 10 minute break and realize, hey, I'm going to, we need to reset. I don't think I started that outright. Get up. Walk away from the computer. Gather your thoughts. Do things like that. Take, take. Like I said, take that two minute break to reset things that can. So many, in so many cases, make it so you can, like I said, restart and start now on a better foot because now you know what to expect. The other thing is like, if you're deep into an episode and you think, oh, we've got a really weak spot on this. Shift gears. If a person's not talking well about a topic, move to a different topic. Go someplace else. Look at something different, but really look at how you can transition out of that topic. That's don't force it. Transition out of that topic into the next topic. It may be the number one thing that you want to talk about, but realize that, hey, you may need to go another direction with that. Additionally, I always say like, know what some of your core strengths are when it comes to podcasting? If it's asking questions, if it's if it's the charisma that you have, maybe it's your voice, maybe it's I mean, any one of those pieces lean on your strengths. If you feel it's going sideways, make sure that the one thing that you do really well is still going well. The other things that you don't do as well, it can help cover those up a little bit. An example of that is if you have an area that you specifically are, know that you're good at talking about. Make sure you talk about that a little bit more. So let's say you do an episode and it's it's UX. It's the one that sucks. It's just the worst thing ever. I mean, we've all had those episodes were just we to as soon as we're done hitting record, we we stop and we pause and we think, oh, I don't know what to do. This, this. Even challenging recordings have good material to them. You may not be able to do it. I mean, you may not be able to release the entire podcast, but I am sure that there are snippets in there that are still very, very, very good. Go find those snippets. Go use those snippets. Maybe there was just a subject in your podcast that was like you say, look, we're going to record for half an hour and you recorded for your podcast is normally like, let's say 25 minutes long. You recorded for half an hour and there was ten minutes. That was just garbage. Look, you may have a 12 minute episode this week. It's okay. Don't just put out, like, terrible material just to be. Don't. Don't think I have to be this amount of time. If it's only good for 12 minutes. Only put the 12 minutes out. There. There's programs that will remove awkward pauses. Stuff like that. This is where when we say, look, this is. Call us to help you edit that down. We'll figure out what what sections need cut out to make this a usable podcast. Again, if you have technical issues, depending on like let's say the internet cuts out halfway through, we can edit around that. You can edit around that. There's ways to do that. With audio, there are and I've talked about this in another podcast. There's all sorts of tools now to help. If your audio like let's say there's some background noise, there's some ways to get that background noise out of there. There's some ways to pull some of that information from that. There are you can get help with these items in order to take something that may not have been quite what you hoped for and turn it into something a little better. The last thing that I want to talk to, to talk to you about, well, it's going to be the second last thing because I've got a bigger conclusion here. But really is when podcasts go well, everyone's like and that went well, but no one thinks about why it went well. Because when we're when we have a bad one, we're like, that went sideways and we get stuck on why it went sideways. I want you to make sure that when you have a good podcast and you have a bad podcast, you spend equal amounts of time thinking about those after the fact and saying, look, why was this good? Or why was this bad? There's got to be some self self-reflection there. Well, I can't talk today. Maybe this is my podcast. That sucks. Look at it. Take that honest assessment of what went wrong and what you can do to make it better. The other thing is seek feedback. I want to put a caveat in there though selectively. We've all got those supportive friends that oh no, no, no, no. The podcast is great. You need a friend that is going to give you the straight truth. It needs to be a trusted colleague that you know, has your best interests in mind and isn't afraid to hurt your feelings a little bit because they know in the long run that is what you need. Find someone that is willing to say the hard things to you. I had someone the other day say, hey, look, I'm asking you this because I know you'll be honest with me and the response I had to that was kind of tough. I gave it to him straight up, and it was they kind of looked at me like, ouch. That hurt. But that was a good thing. So make sure that when you get feedback, you're getting it from people that are giving you honest feedback. Because and I'm going to tell you, your mom's probably not the one that's going to give you the honest feedback. She's probably going to be the one says, oh no, you were wonderful. Make sure that you set up a plan to whatever the feedback you get and the self-reflection you do. Make sure you are setting up a plan to implement changes from that. If you get this self-reflection, if you get this honest feedback and you just okay, great, thanks for the feedback. And then just go about your merry way. What was the point? So make sure that you are doing things to integrate that feedback that you're getting into the podcast. Now I tell people this should always be an evolution. Don't make big sweeping changes in one shot. If you get some feedback like, hey, maybe, maybe talk a little slower. Don't suddenly talk in a slow tone like that. No. Just adjust some things a little bit. It's small adjustments. It's. It's a bunch of small adjustments that make the biggest difference. Big adjustments come across as inauthentic. And authenticity is, you know, have I mentioned authenticity before? If you've listened to more than this episode, you realize just how much I will hammer on that because it truly is that important. So what do we want to look at here? And this is kind of my final thoughts with this. Like the bigger picture with this. Because really podcasting isn't about this episode. It is about all of the episodes. It is about your podcasting journey. There's going to be good episodes in there. There's going to be bad episodes in there. That happens. So the one thing that I want you to do, remember that one less than perfect episode, in fact, a couple less than perfect episodes. They do not define your entire podcast. There are some episodes of podcast that I listened to where I was like, wow, that was amazing. And there's others was like, okay, that's okay. Without the bad, we don't get the good. Now make sure it's not atrocious, but keep that in mind. What you need to do is focus on making sure the overall quality and consistency of your show. Is there. Show up every week or every other week as often as you're doing it. Make sure you're showing up for that. Make sure you're showing up on time. Make sure you're doing the right things. That is that that is the number one key. It is that consistency. The other thing I want to say is make sure you are learning from it. Move on and make it actionable. Keep providing that value to your audience as long as they see you improving. They will keep showing up. They are going. The other thing that I. The last thing that I want to say about when your podcast sucks, is it going to make people stop listening to you? Probably not. The likelihood is pretty slim. Your audience is really going to appreciate that authenticity. And when you have a killer episode, they're going to love you for those. That is the really that like the biggest piece to this that I want you to take home. Your audience is going to appreciate the fact that you are vulnerable enough to say this was less than perfect, but I still wanted to put it out there for you guys. That being said, what are your what are your thoughts on this? If you've had an episode that is, let's say, less than stellar. Let me know. I would love to actually go out and listen to those less than stellar ones and say, look, what do you think happened there? How do you think you can make it better? Have you made it better? Because that is always the big question. Do me another favor. Leave us a review. We'd love to hear from you on the reviews. Things of that nature. Those help us out immensely. Subscribe. Share. Sharing all the platforms, all that other happy stuff that everyone else asked you to do. With that being said, you know exactly what's coming next. I want you to do me a favor and take care of yourself. You can take care of someone else too. I will see you very, very soon.

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Josh Troche

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