Day 8: 30 Days, 30 Episodes - Behind the Scenes of The Life Shift

I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to this little experiment that I am doing. And it's not so little.

It's actually 30 days, 30 episodes of the Life Shift podcast. This is a bonus series in which I'm going to show up every day.

I'm going to take a look at my little list that I put together with my own ideas, some chat GPT ideas, ideas that you all are sending me. If you have any ideas of things for me to cover this month in November of 2024, go ahead, send them to me on social media.

Or you can email Matthew Life Shift podcast.com Ask me a question. My goal here really is to kind of set a little bit of a habit for myself.

So this is every day I'm showing up after work usually, and I am recording this, I'm editing it, putting it out, trying to get a nice cadence going, not trying to pre record. I really want to try to do this every day in this month and show up and just be real in the moment. So we'll see if I can make it.

So this is day eight. So far, so good. It's been really interesting, I hope for you. My goal is.

Well, I already said what my goal is, but another goal is that I want you to maybe know a little bit more about me, since the Life Shift podcast is really about me holding space for other people's stories while interjecting pieces of my own. But, you know, here we are. So today I am tired. So it is Friday and it was a long work week, and it was a long week just in general.

So I thought I was just going to share a little bit about the Life Shift podcast process and the production and all the things that I do. I do it all myself, in case you didn't know.

So I started this as a school project and I've been teaching myself how to do everything since I just recorded my 165th episode with a guest. So I guess that means I've recorded with that many people. That's kind of crazy.

And along the way, I've really set up a schedule or a way, way or process, I guess is a better word of how I do this podcast. It is audio and video, so if you've never watched the videos, Those are on YouTube.

You can head over to the Life shift podcast on YouTube and you should be able to find these videos and you get to see the reactions. I know some people like to watch those versus listen.

But I do look at the Life Shift as a audio first podcast, and so I really spend more time on the audio production of it. At the beginning, I reached out to people and connected with them, asked them, you know, do you have a pivotal moment that you'd like to talk about?

Have you reflected on it? Have you narrowed it down?

All these questions that I would go into started with people I knew, eventually started talking to people on LinkedIn and getting connections that way. Since October 2022, I have not actively sought out a guest, so I consider myself really lucky.

But it does mean that I get a handful of pitches from people and podcast pitching agencies pretty, pretty regularly, like every week. And that means I need to work a little bit harder to kind of process those and go through them and be kind.

Because we are dealing with people's stories. There are. They come in kind of buckets. There's the bucket of like, it's clear that this particular pitch was sent to every podcast that ever exists.

And you've never even heard of my podcast. And you're essentially just copying what's on the website.

Then there's like, the ones that are like, they've clearly listened to the episodes, they've narrowed down in their email. It's like, this is the Life Shift moment. Here's what's changed in my life.

All this, like, detail where it's kind of clear you've listened to the way that I host the Live Shift because it's different than others. It's not a typical interview show.

It's not unique, but it's not like your typical, like, here are my five questions and we're going to go down that route.

Then there's the ones in the middle where it's kind of like, I think you understand the show, but you're also pitching your person as if you don't understand the show. So it really just depends on how I'm feeling, what I'm reading, the vibe that I'm getting from the interaction, if I go forward.

So in any case, if I determine that, like, the person is great, I have this little intake form that I have them fill out this intake form that gives me all the information I need.

If I look through it and it looks good, then I send them a calendar link and they can schedule when they want to record, which works best for them with certain parameters of my own schedule. So that's after work or on a Saturday.

If it's the in between, then it's going to be a little bit of back and forth in the email, asking about the pivotal moment, sharing a little bit about mine, those kind of things. And that that's kind of probably. I'd say that's the majority of trying to get people to narrow this down and go back and forth.

I think if people pitch themselves, typically they're more aligned. It's more the agencies that don't do as much of the work.

Now there's a couple agencies that I work with regularly, and they understand what I'm looking for. And so their pitches are right on the mark and they understand exact exactly what I need. So that's really helpful.

Thank you to those of you that are doing that. And if you are interested in the show, I take any kind of pitch, so please reach out. I'd love to talk about potentially having you on the show.

You know, every story is important. And then there's the emails that are not so nice, and they're clearly not into my show or listening to it. They're just kind of blanketing.

And sometimes I delete those and sometimes I respond and just let them know that they're not aligned. But this person sounds great and they'd probably be great on another show, and that's okay.

But like I said, Since October 2022, I haven't had to look for a guest, which is really such an honor that people want to be a part of this show. So we go through that. They schedule out. I.

I have my calendar open for 90 days from today's date, essentially, so they can schedule out as far as they need to with the understanding that currently this is November 8th, and so I'm recording episodes that won't come out until January now. So we kind of think about those and make sure that they' story.

You know, everyone's story is kind of evergreen, so I guess that doesn't matter too much. It's really the people that think that they can use it as a promotion tool, more so than just a conversation. And so those. We kind of have to.

They kind of just don't want to be on the show if they can't promote. So that's fine. We want to tell stories. We want to make sure that there are people listening that feel alone in their circumstance.

And maybe by hearing this guest story, they feel good. So on the week of recording, I send an email to my guests and here's all the parameters. We use this platform called Riverside, which has been.

I've been using it since episode one. There's only one thing I recorded on a different one And I immediately came back to Riverside.

So all these episodes, all the bonus episodes, all the other things that I've done, I've used Riverside, and they've just been such a great platform. And what that gives me is it gives me good audio and good video, assuming that the guest has those options, but it avoids.

What you might be familiar with, based on the pandemic and working from home, is that zoom lag when the Internet kind of goes out. Riverside avoids that because it's recording locally and uploading at the same time.

So I get really good quality video and audio, assuming that the guest has good inputs from their machines. So that requires some good Internet, that requires a decent computer, that requires headphones, those kind of things.

And so if you ever hear episodes that sound a little off, it's probably because the guests did not have those particular things. And I, you know, I weigh the weight of the story a lot more than the quality, but I try to make it sound as good as possible. So we do our recording.

We schedule 90 minutes. Typically, the episodes will wrap up around 60 minutes, but I want to give that cushion.

I want to get comfortable with the guest, and then we just have a conversation. I don't know if you know, but I don't do research on my guests, and it sounds really terrible, Right.

But what I found is that if I know too much, then I kind of preconceive what the episode is going to be about, the avenues that we're going to go down. I might have questions that I just keep in my mind or have written down, and it's just not going to be the Life Shift podcast.

So my guests are aware, and I let them know that I don't do research because I really want the conversation to unfold in the way that I think the universe intended it to. I tell my guests that if I ask them something crazy and they don't feel comfortable, they should let me know and not answer those questions.

It's never happened yet, but I do want to make sure that people feel comfortable doing. So we record the episode. Wherever it goes, it goes. And they've just been so fulfilling.

I mean, I hope you find the same when you're listening to these episodes. So then we're done. And I tell them, like, what I'm going to do afterwards. But I get the files.

I edit the audio in Logic Pro on my MacBook, and I run, you know, different compressors. And sometimes I use some software like Alfonic. And what else do I use?

Some things to make it sound a little Bit better or to balance the audio a little bit more.

I use DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro to do the video, kind of edit that just a little lightly, you know, probably for filler words like and, you know, and those kind of things. So I do a lot of that. Then I get those files ready. Usually they're ready like eight weeks before they come out. So I have them good to go.

Then I use a tool called Opus Clips which will I can put the entire video in there and then it will identify some clips that I can use on social media. I also have some other things that I use on Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays leading up to the episode.

So I create all those in Canva and you, if you follow me on social media, you've seen each of those and you kind of see this regular cadence. All these things I also share with my guests. I give that to them the week before their episode. I'm like, here's your Dropbox link.

You can do whatever you want with all these clips. These are ones I'm going to use. I use a tool called Notion AI to take the transcript and help me write some show notes.

Although Captivate, which is the hosting platform I use for my audio, also has a great AI tool now too that will help me with titles and show notes that go in there. And I combine the bios from my guests in Notion AI. I also ask IT to write those AI developed poems.

So if you follow me on social media, you've probably seen those poems.

It helps me create a Spotify playlist that goes with each of the episodes, kind of in the genre of music that the guest likes to listen to when they're feeling their most themselves. And the songs should align with the theme of the episode. A couple other things I do in there that all builds off of the transcript.

So it's just taking the information that we've already shared out loud and it's kind of repurposing it in a really great way.

And so I try to use these tools because one, I just love technology, but two, I have a full time job so I'm trying to find ways to not cut corners, but cut corners, right? I think in a way that can help me create things so that more people will want to listen to the episode. So I create all those social media pieces.

My video and my audio is already done, but not because with the audio I then before we finalize everything, I go back and I identify like a little hook. So you probably heard the beginning opening of every episode has A little like teaser, if you will.

So I have to pull that from the episode and then I finalize the audio MP3 for that once I'm ready to load it up. I have a hosting platform called Captivate, which is a great one that I just moved to earlier this year. Shout out to Danny Brown for helping me.

So great and so helpful. But this platform, you know, you.

Basically what you do is you upload your MP3 there, all the information, and it distributes it to Apple, Spotify, I don't know all of them. Good, good pods, I can't tell you. There's so many Apple music everywhere, Pandora, and it sends it everywhere.

So all I have to do is update that particular hosting site and it loads it everywhere it needs to be. So that's a wonderful service. It usually like, I think I schedule it and it's. It's up on all the platforms within like 10 minutes or so.

So this episode, I'll probably. Right when it shows up in your feed, I probably uploaded it a couple minutes before.

Spotify seems to load the fastest, but it'll get to Apple Podcast pretty quickly. And then a lot of these other programs pull from Apple Podcasts, so I do that. Then I upload to Patreon.

So I have a handful, 25, 26 people on Patreon that are helping support this because as you hear, I do a lot of things and I just, I'm so thankful. Some people give me $3 every month, some people give me $5. Some really generous friends of mine give me $20 every month.

And all of that helps to cover all the costs of these different software programs. So I load everything to Patreon. They get the episodes early, so I make sure to put those in there.

Then I load everything to YouTube, the video version and upload all the different criteria there. Most of it kind of matches across the board, so it's not too, too crazy. And then it goes out into the wild day of release.

I email my guest, thank them, of course, give them the Apple Podcast link, give them the Spotify link, give them the link to that playlist that I make in Spotify with the music that goes along with the episode. The episodes obviously in the playlist as well. I give them the website address. Oh, I update their website when it launches too.

And then I give them an embed code so they can put it on their own website. And then it's out in the world.

And I hear from people behind the scenes on social media telling me that they listened to the episode and it really impacted them. I see reviews and ratings on Apple podcast.

If you haven't done one, please take the time to write a little review that I would love that five stars would be fantastic. But do what you need to do. Thank you for, for that. For all of you that have done that.

I think there's like a hundred and something reviews on the podcast and I think I'm averaging out of five. There was a three star once, but we're not going to talk about that one.

So then that happens and then I hope that the stories make it where they need to go and the ears that needed to hear that. And the nice thing is that it'll be out there forever. So now I think I've released 155 episodes. I have 165 recorded more to come.

But like that's almost three years now and so someone could be listening to episode one for the first time if you do. The sound sounds a little, but hopefully I'm getting better. You can see all the tools that I use.

If you are interested in supporting the show, please either join the Patreon or I have a PayPal or those kind of things and happy to take any contributions that I can push towards some of these new tools. I actually just downloaded a new tool called Captions which is like AI Focus. So don't panic.

It might not actually be me, it might look like me, but it might not be me just to play with this weekend. So that's really all about the production process of the Life Shift podcast.

I'm sure I missed something, but in case you're wondering what the life of a of a solo podcaster looks like for an interview show, a weekly interview show, that's what it looks like for me.

I don't know if it's the same for everyone else, but hopefully through listening to me talk about it as much as it sounds like a lot of work, I hope I also kind of show you that I'm just really passionate about sharing these stories and my why for the Life Shift podcast is so strong because I know that 8 year old version of Mat, who had just lost his mom, really needed to hear other people's stories of people that had experienced the loss of a parent and like survived and thrived.

So I hope that each episode is finding the ears that need to hear it and they feel less alone in their journey or they feel inspired or whatever it may be. So thank you for coming along on this little 30 day, 30 episode experiment that I'm doing for November 2024.

Today was all about what I do behind the scenes, but hopefully that gives you a little bit more insight into who I am and the passion that I have behind this project. I will be back tomorrow on Day nine. No idea what I'm going to talk about. So stay tuned and I will see you tomorrow.

For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.