I create a lot of resources which go on my website alongside the podcast, so, for example, a 10-year planning template, rejection tracker, all of these kind of tools that I've created alongside. They're all free at the point of use as well. I'm very, very clear that this all must be completely accessible to everybody, regardless of circumstances.
Claire Waite Brown:Joana also had a comment on payments in True Fans, saying I think one of the great obstacles for many people to pay for podcasts is the fact that you have several steps to donate or pay for an episode or a monthly membership. So having a paying method on the platform where you listen to your podcasts is amazing. Welcome to Creators from True Fans. I'm independent podcaster, Claire Waite Brown.
Sam Sethi:And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.
Claire Waite Brown:Each episode, we'll chat with an independent creator, whether a podcaster or musician, about their creative experiences.
Sam Sethi:And we'll answer questions from independent creators about the TrueFans features that can help them with discovery, interactivity and monetization.
Claire Waite Brown:We'll get interactive and see what our listeners have been saying in the comments and super comments.
Sam Sethi:And discuss what's happening in the wider world. That could be a benefit to independent creators.
Claire Waite Brown:Hi Claire, Hi Claire, Hi Sam, how are you?
Sam Sethi:Oh, very good, Very good. Did you melt Nearly I?
Claire Waite Brown:actually cut my hair. Oh, okay, that helped. Okay, on with the show this week. Our featured podcast is called In 10 Years Time and it's from Tricia Duffy and myself and Tricia had a little chat, so here's that interview to tell you a bit more about it. I'm here with Tricia Duffy. Hi, tricia, how are you? Hello, thank you so much for having me. You're very welcome. Start by telling us, please, the name of your show and what it's all about.
Tricia Duffy:The name of my podcast is, In Ten Years' Time, how to Live a Creative Life, and it's all about how we can use long-term planning and vision-setting tools to help us be more content in the moment and encourage everybody to live with more creative balance.
Claire Waite Brown:however that looks for them Very interesting kind of up my street Indeed.
Tricia Duffy:We are two little peas in a pod, in a podcast.
Claire Waite Brown:So tell me why you started it. Where does this?
Tricia Duffy:come from. So I made a big change in my own life to live with more creative balance, I don't know four or so years ago, and I started using this tool, this 10-year planning tool, to understand how I was going to shift the balance of my life particularly related to creativity, but other things as well and after about 18 months or so of using this tool, I wondered whether it was something that I could share with other people. They might get benefit from as well, and I'd written a couple of articles about it, and so I decided to record a podcast, and I first of all started it by walking along the street, recording into my phone my thoughts and ideas, and then I would transcribe that, using, you know, an automated technology, into a script, and then I would sit at my desk and record it into a podcast. And I sent it to a couple of friends see what they thought. And they were like, yeah, it's really really good. And a couple of them said what about the whole 10 year thing? Don't really understand that. Why is it 10 years? Couldn't it just be about creativity? I was like, yeah, I'm not sure. So I went away again and left it, and then, after about another six months, I thought, oh, it's definitely a book. It's not a podcast, it's a book. And so you know these schemes that you can do where you pay like $30 or something, and it gives you a little script about how you write a book in six weeks if you follow their stages.
Tricia Duffy:So, first day, you say, right, what is your book about? Why do you want to write a book? Second day who's your person? Who's going to read your book about? Why do you want to write a book? Second day who's your person who's going to read your book? Third day now you've identified the person, go back to what you wrote on the first day and, really, what's the book about?
Tricia Duffy:So it takes you through a process, and I didn't write a book in six weeks, but what I did do was I mapped out all the chapters of a would-be book that was called, in 10 Years Time, how to Live a Creative Life, and it really brought these two ideas together, which is, if you have a long-term plan, you are better able to execute and be more aligned and more authentic in the moment today, and you can allow that to help you understand what your creativity and your learning and your passion might be.
Tricia Duffy:And so again, then I set that aside because I was doing a master's and I was a little bit busy and it was another six months or so after that, so this whole thing took a long time to get born. I thought, no, it is a podcast. And ha, ha, ha ha, all of those chapter headings, those are the titles for my podcast, and now I know how to research them and I can make them better. So it made the whole thing a lot more structured and my podcast is released in seasons, with a theme for every series, which are research-based. So it's a solo podcast for five episodes and one interview that brings the whole theme together. So that was the journey of how it came about.
Claire Waite Brown:Yeah, and it's very practical. You're actually giving the listener the tools that you've used, tools that they can use. I'm thinking here was that first book in inverted commas, series one, and then, when you wanted to do more seasons, you came up with new ideas.
Tricia Duffy:So it was probably series one, two and three. The first series was the overall concept of in 10 years time and how to use those devices, and you're right, I create a lot of resources which go on my website alongside the podcast, so, for example, a 10-year planning template, rejection tracker, all of these kind of tools that I've created alongside. They're all free at the point of use as well. I'm very, very clear that this all must be completely accessible to everybody, regardless of circumstances. Yeah, that was probably the first three. So the first one was the overall. The second one was about challenges that we might overcome things like imposter syndrome and you know, circumstantial challenges, that type of thing and then the third series was about amplifying our creativity. So that was the first three, and probably, if I'm honest, looking back on it, at some point during that third series of search, I did wonder whether I had anything else. Maybe I'd finished the topic and that was the end of it. But my listeners are very engaged and they feed back to me, and so I started to see a little trend of DMs and emails saying I really liked your episode about this. This is my challenge, though Is that anything you would research? And so that started to arm me with other ideas and kind of things that I might look into. So that really fed my next series, which was all about creative communion.
Tricia Duffy:And then the fifth series, which I've just recorded, actually is about maintaining our creativity. So how do we keep on keeping on, which is something that I was suffering from myself, having kind of done those four, how do I keep going, how do I kind of reframe, how do I add new elements to it? And likewise with my songwriting as well. And I'm just researching now six and seven simultaneously. I'm doing them together and they have themes of the science of creativity. I'm very, very interested in this emerging theme of neuro arts and how important it is for our cognitive function to have aesthetics and music in our lives. And then the seventh series will be all about the ethics of art. So I will get back into things like money and then to kind of freedom of expression and when it's okay and when it's not okay. And they just came obviously as the next things I need to research. No idea what the one after that will be.
Claire Waite Brown:I was quite surprised that we were up to seven in the first place.
Tricia Duffy:Yeah, no one's more surprised than me.
Claire Waite Brown:But with that and I'm going to get onto the practicalities of podcasting now you've already explained to me and I can see that once you've got these ideas, it then involves research, producing actual practical advice and then resources, as you said, but also you and I know that generally the acts of recording and editing and marketing podcasts takes up a lot of time, and I know that you have a consultancy business and you're a songwriter and you're a performer. How do you fit all of this in? And you're a performer, how do you fit all of this in? And do you have any like processes or softwares or anything that you've found that helps with fitting everything in?
Tricia Duffy:Well, the main way that I fit it in is I made a decision to only release three series a year. I don't think that I could do any of the other things that I do and that would be quite a sacrifice for me if I was trying to do a weekly drop, because, as you well know, a podcast is a hungry mouse. Possibly if I only did interviews I might be able to make that work, but the research is a lot of work. It's months of work. That's the USP of your show. That's the USP Exactly. So I think it's a sacrifice that's worth making. I mean, I would be completely full time, all hours, godsends, doing this, if I didn't do it in chunked up series.
Tricia Duffy:So each series has six episodes, five of which are research and they're the time consuming ones, and there's one interview. And obviously I do research my interviews, as you do as well, really thoroughly. But that's a couple of hours research versus days of research. So I script, I plow through psych journals and medical PhDs and all sorts of studies. I do use some AI to do some basic research for me, so, like I can use chat, gpt or Claude to say can you find me three articles in the last year about whatever topic I'm interested in, please make sure that one of them is written by a woman. I ask it difficult things like that, which it struggles with sometimes because women are underpublished. So that simplifies it down. It gives me a little bit of a short list, but then you still have to go and check those citations and make sure they're accurate Because, as we know, ai makes assumptions, so you can't rely on it 100%, but it can at least try and cut down where you might start looking.
Tricia Duffy:And then I just start working on one episode and I have a producer as well, and that is a great, great valuable asset to me. Rachel, my producer works very, very part time. She will wait until I say I've got the first three scripts of the season ready, have a look, and she'll go in going. I just don't buy this Doesn't seem true to me. Is there a different citation you could? This one feels really weak. I think you need to back this up with an example. She's a journalist and a current affairs and a science expert, very, very knowledgeable. Her eye on it is very, very.
Claire Waite Brown:So podcasting in general what is one thing that excites you about it and what is one thing that frustrates you about it?
Tricia Duffy:Oh, what's exciting about it is that anyone can create a podcast, can't they? I mean, it's just absolute magic. I mean, I didn't know anything about creating a podcast and look at me now. I mean I've won two awards and I've been running for over a year. You know a mic and some relatively basic software and a website. I mean, it's hundreds of pounds, it's not thousands. It's really accessible. You can do it yourself. And I think some of the podcasts you sort of happen upon as you start to start looking for keywords when you search podcasts as well, you do hear some really fascinating conversations. So that's what really, really excites me.
Tricia Duffy:The difficult thing is that, like all creative industries, the difficult thing from my perspective and it should be from a human perspective, I guess is that it's so male dominated. It just frustrates me that I see kind of a couple of females Fern and Elizabeth Day, oprah, obviously but other than that you just don't see female podcasters getting the rankings and getting the listeners. It's just so male dominated and I know that's because there's statistics that say that more men listen to podcasts. But these men should be challenged to listen to female voices and female perspectives as well, and we need to kind of work harder, I think, to make them accessible to women so that they can fit them into their busy lifestyles. I mean, my podcast is specifically 20 to 25 minutes long so that it fits in. You can do it on the school run, on the way home, or fit it in on the shorter commute etc. But yeah, that frustrates me. The sexism in the creative industries generally frustrates me and it frustrates me in podcasts equally, yeah.
Claire Waite Brown:You've talked about having a producer and we're talking about time here. Your time is valuable. Does your show receive any financial?
Tricia Duffy:support. So I don't have any formal financial support from any organisations. The way that I make a tiny, tiny amount of money but I'm talking a minuscule amount in comparison with the costs is through donations. So people can buy me a coffee on my website. I find that Brits don't pay for content.
Tricia Duffy:I think there's a massive expectations here in the UK that creative things are free. Research is free. Americans will be generous. They'll send me 20 pounds or even 30, and I'll get more. It's not a money making scheme. I do think that it will make money eventually and I'm committed to keeping going.
Tricia Duffy:I mean, I'm not doing it for the money, by the way. I'm doing it because I believe that everybody needs to hear what I have to say and needs the encouragement, and I feel absolutely passionate and committed to telling every single person that listens to my podcast that they are creative and that they, in 10 years' time, can live a completely different life life if they choose, and that could be in any aspect of their life, not just in creativity. So, and I want it to be free, because I want it to be for the NHS worker who's earning 24,000 pounds and thinks they don't have time, and I want the corporates to pay. That's where I want to get the money, so I've done some keynote speaking. That's where I'd really like to build my income so that I can continue to do this work for free, so that it's accessible for everyone, because a podcast is a medium to be accessed for free if you've got access to devices also. Just a huge value. I think yeah.
Claire Waite Brown:So I'm going to go on to the Podcasting 2.0 question now, because True Fans is a Podcasting 2.0 app and you have said you've been in podcasting for a year, so quite new. Do you know anything about Podcasting 2.0 or Podcasting 2.0?
Tricia Duffy:features. The only thing I know about it is through you. Are you hearing that? I mean no, really not. I'm sort of like blindly carrying on with my process as it was. You were the person that brought it to my attention. I keep doing that.
Claire Waite Brown:One other thing that I thought about while in conversation today was you mentioned your listeners getting in touch with you, which is absolutely fabulous. On TrueFans, there is a comments option, and the only reason that that would be different to people getting in touch with you directly is that other people would be able to see other people's comments. So it wouldn't just be the one-to-one of one listener to you, which they can, of course, do but you could have a comment on the TrueFans app. You could answer it, someone could comment again. So it's a bit of a kind of a social aspect, a bit more of an interactivity aspect. And finally, I say this to everybody While I've been doing my research, I have been streaming one penny per minute to your show for the time I've listened.
Claire Waite Brown:Oh my gosh. It's just an example. Obviously, I listen to a lot of shows for creators, but it's an example of how listeners can, if they want to, set it up, that they will always stream a certain amount of money to you per minute, and then they don't need to think about it. They just press play and the money gets there. So, from your point of view, tricia, when you claim your show on True Fans, which is very easy to do. You will have a tiny amount of money in a wallet. How exciting. That wallet is very easy. Once you get into everything True Fans is doing, you can actually withdraw money from that wallet to Stripe so that it can go to your bank account and you can use it in the real world. So that's just an example of that. That's fantastic. So now that I've lectured you sorry about that?
Tricia Duffy:No, it's very interesting. Thank you, Tricia, so much. It's a pleasure. Thank you for the advice as well.
Claire Waite Brown:You're very welcome. Give us a quick rundown of your contact places please.
Tricia Duffy:My website is in10, that's T-E-N. Yearstimecom in10yearstimecom with the word 10. On social media, I am in10yearstimeofficial on Instagram and Facebook and I can be emailed Trisha at in10yearstimecom Directly. I always love to hear from people and I have a music profile as well, which is little law l-o-r-e brilliant.
Claire Waite Brown:Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Sam Sethi:There's a little bit extra from Tricia at the end of this episode of Creators, where she talks a bit more about her scripting process and making sure she doesn't sound like a robot reading it out. She does.
Claire Waite Brown:This week you can easily find In Ten Years' Time on True Fans, where it is featured at the top of the homepage and in the Podcasts. We're Loving list also on the homepage and that's something we do for every show that we feature here on Creators.
Sam Sethi:And I think it's the best way of finding it.
Claire Waite Brown:If you'd like to chat with us about your independent podcast or your music, send a comment or super comment in True Fans to any Creators episode by clicking on the speech bubble icon or on the comments tab.
Sam Sethi:Now, claire, this week's question what have you chosen to ask me?
Claire Waite Brown:Well, I've come to you with my own question this time because while I was chatting with Tricia, Tricia has events she puts on events part of In 10 Years' Time and I know that True Fans has a tab called Events. So thinking this could be useful. If you're already in the app, you want to go see what events Tricia may have spoken about, how does the podcaster put something in that Events tab so people can find their event?
Sam Sethi:So Tricia would have claimed her podcast and got access to her admin dashboard, and in the admin dashboard there will be an events tab as well, and in there she can put the name of the event, she can put the start time, end time, the date, location If she puts a location that links to a Google map when you click on it and she can also put in a URL to a payment mechanism, maybe on her website that she's got or a third party that she uses.
Sam Sethi:So, very simply, she can then click publish and then that will appear on her podcast page next to her episodes and other information. Now, if she didn't have a payment mechanism let's say she hasn't got a third party one if she leaves that field blank, we then, as true fans, will use our stripe back end and allow the listener to pay for the ticket using their credit card, so apple pay, google pay or, if she chooses, she can toggle it and say I'd rather receive the money in sats, please, and. And. So you, as a true fans user, can pay her in sats from your wallet to her wallet for the ticket. So there's a lot of features also that you can put in their description, short descriptions. You can put in things like keywords, so there's lots more you can do.
Claire Waite Brown:So please have a little play, but events are great more you can do so please have a little play, but events are great, brilliant. So that's a link to trisha's own site. So that's got to be good for kind of backlinks for your website.
Sam Sethi:If that's what you need um bit of seo in there is there yes, so the title, the description will be picked up, and so that's very good.
Sam Sethi:Now, of course, you can have multiple events. So let's say, trisha's got, I don't know, five days that she's doing in one venue, or she might have five days that she's doing at five venues, and again, it doesn't really matter. By setting the location you can determine what that is. Now the other thing that the industry is working on is a way to include that in your rss feed so that all apps can populate with the event. Now the way that's working is you would have a single line podcast colon events, just like you have many other tags within podcasting 2.0, and your host would allow you to enter the details. So, again, you don't need to be technical. It should then be just simply filling in a form, clicking publish, as you would with your episode, but in this case you're publishing your event feed that sits inside your RSS feed, and apps like TrueFans will then look for that tag, look for the URL and there's a list of all of your events, and then we will also populate those into your events tab in your podcast page.
Claire Waite Brown:That would be a super cool way to do things. That seems like a really obvious and rather useful addition.
Sam Sethi:It is indeed, Claire. It's time for the fan box. Have you heard from any of our listeners since the last episode?
Claire Waite Brown:Yes, I have. We've heard from Clayton M Coke, whose podcast, the Cashflow Show, was our featured podcast last week, and Clayton said thank you, clare Waight-Brown and True Fans for acknowledging the importance of podcasters and podcasting and allowing the Cashflow Show podcast not so easy for me to say to share our views on the platform. If you are a lover of podcasts and want to support and reward the creators that make them, then give us a listen on True Fans. Very good.
Claire Waite Brown:Thank you so much, Clayton. Joana P R Neves from Exhibitionistas podcast has been in touch regarding the iOS app and says congrats. I just downloaded the app and super thanks for putting me on the banner and the podcasts you love, much appreciated. I have wrapped up my second season and released the last episode yesterday in which I gather my thoughts and ethos, but what may interest you is that I also try to educate my listeners about engagement and financial support in this last episode. So I mentioned True Fans from the angle of independent podcasting, financial support and both of you in relation to our interview episode on creators. Thank you so much, Joanna. We really appreciate that.
Sam Sethi:Indeed, yes, no, it's great, and you know what I love about it is one of the things that podcasting two years ago didn't have was the ability for people who listen to shows to leave comments like this. So it's so good now that it's becoming more mainstream, more the norm that people go oh yeah, I'll just go onto that app and I'll leave you a comment. So, yes, that's great to hear.
Claire Waite Brown:And it's lovely for all independent podcasters to read those comments as well. One other thing actually Joana also had a comment on payments in True Fans, saying I think one of the great obstacles for many people to pay for podcasts is the fact that you have several steps to donate or pay for an episode or a monthly membership. So having a paying method on the platform where you listen to your podcasts is amazing.
Sam Sethi:Yeah, this goes back to should we have a podcast app and then a Patreon account or a podcast app and a memberful or a buy me a coffee account? And I think people are going to wake up soon to the idea that having it integrated where your listeners are currently listening to your episode is probably the best place to do that.
Claire Waite Brown:Yeah, brilliant, it's like comments. If you can comment in one place and you can add payments in one place, then, yeah, it's going to be so much easier for the listener. And that's it for our Fanbox, sam. What do you want to talk about this week from the world of podcasting in general?
Sam Sethi:to me was a story about Netflix getting into podcasting. Now I know that James and I on Podn ews Weekly Review have talked about Netflix and they have some podcasts already, but I think they're beginning to understand that their biggest competitor is YouTube. Spotify is getting into video and, of course, podcasting 2.0 apps are getting into video as well now, and I think Netflix, again, podcasting 2.0 apps are getting into video as well now, and I think Netflix are going. Hmm, the game is not about providing a hit show and then nothing. It's about keeping people's time and attention on your platform so they don't drift off to someone else's platform. I think what they're looking at now is including podcasts as a way of saying okay, I just watched that film, great, I've now seen my series. That was wonderful. Oh, I'm a bit bored. Now I'll go and listen to music on Spotify, or I'll flick over to YouTube and go and watch something else, or I'll go to true fans and listen to creativity found. So there's all these other places that they could lose your ears and eyeballs to, so what they're trying to do is keep you in the walled garden of Netflix. So, yeah, I think it's something to keep an eye on. I don't know.
Sam Sethi:When we talked about YouTube getting into podcasting two or three years ago, everyone poo-pooed the idea oh, they won't do anything, they're rubbish, they'll never get there. Unfortunately, they are a behemoth with deep pockets and so on. Netflix, and of course that means that they can pay top, top creators to come to their platform. They can generate traffic that way and of course, that means for us, independent podcast creators. We need to look at what's going on in those closed walled gardens as well, because it can affect where our listeners and our audiences as well.
Claire Waite Brown:Now with YouTube. However, now I did this when this first happened. I do it for both of my shows. I have my RSS feed connected to YouTube. It's a no brainer. I don't need to do any extra work. Presumably I get a little bit more attention there. And going back to SEO again, as we've been talking about this week, you know it's a big search engine, so is that going to be the same for Netflix? Because if that were the case, then yeah, of course I have my podcast on Netflix. If it comes from the RSS, then I've got nothing to lose.
Sam Sethi:We don't know if they're going to ingest RSS. They normally start off with doing that, so that's how all of them do it. It's free access to 4 million podcasts. It means that they can do that very quickly and very soon after they turn that off, they then begin to hide it, deprecate it once they've got enough content. So yeah, again, I suspect that most independent podcast creators will submit their content to Netflix via their RSS feed, no extra work required.
Sam Sethi:The question is, what will it do for you in the long run? Will it generate any more listeners? Probably not. Will it generate you any revenue? Probably not. Will it give you any more?
Sam Sethi:I don't know SEO, maybe a fraction if people are looking for things. Netflix have just updated their search engine inside of the Netflix app, so you can do it not just on title or author, but you can do it on mood as well. So, oh, I just fancy something that's very lighthearted Now. I don't know if that'll just be for TV and for films, or they'll extend that, when they do podcasting, to a wider podcast. I suspect the podcasts they want, though, are not audio based podcasts. I suspect the ones they want are video based podcasts, because we generally listen to Netflix on our or watch Netflix, I should say, on our TV, and so I suspect the video podcasts that are on YouTube are the ones they really want to come over to Netflix. So yeah, not a big thing that I think is going to help or affect the independent podcast creators, but just something to be aware of.
Claire Waite Brown:Yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, if it did happen that way, you could at least put the telly on, put your own show on Netflix and take a photo of it, yes, yes and say, look, I'm on Netflix, yes, yes and that's it for this week. Claire, our audio is recorded and edited using a riverside and we're hosted by our friends buzzsprout you can support this show by streaming sats from your true fans wallet or leave us a super comment or, better still, become a monthly supporter of this show.
Sam Sethi:If you'd like to advertise or sponsor this show, please email me, sam at truefansfm, for further details.
Claire Waite Brown:You can find out more about how to use the features of the True Fans platform by listening to our sister podcast Fan Zone, which does include an episode on the events tab. And if you're keen to learn more about Podcasting 2.0 in general, check out my course-based podcast called Podcasting 2.0 in Practice, which aims to simplify what might seem to be a complex topic, but, believe me, it really is much easier to implement than you might think. Don't forget, you can keep listening to hear more from this episode's featured creator.
Tricia Duffy:And then I do a rewrite and I find better citations and references and better ways to bring things to life. And then, yeah, and then I record them. I read, I read my scripts. Obviously they are in my tone of voice. It feels very natural and very me. But, yeah, I read my scripts. Obviously they are in my tone of voice. It feels very natural and very me. But, yeah, I read my scripts and except for the interview, which is obviously an interview and a free-flowing conversation, it does sound very natural your script.
Claire Waite Brown:It does feel like you're just chatting to me. I mean, I know that you've done the research, but it doesn't feel like I'm reading from my script.
Tricia Duffy:I work really hard at that, though, because I need to be able to say it in my tone of voice and have it feel really natural, but it has to be backed up. I can't just do it off the top of my head, because I wouldn't have to hand the quotes and the documents and the statistics and the things that I need to have to hand, so the only way I can safely do it is to script it.
Claire Waite Brown:Absolutely, and I like what you said about your producer because you do not run the risk, then, of this being the Tricia Duffy opinions show. Yeah.