Interviews With Dreamers, Pioneers, Visionaries & People Who Challenge The Status Quo

Name: Umesh Kumar

Podcast Name: Big Ideas With Mesh

Podcast Premise: An Interview style podcast dedicated to interviewing dreamers, pioneers, visionaries, and people who challenge the status quo. We will be delving into their story, their dreams, and ultimately their vision for the future.

Listeners: Entrepreneurs, People who work in SME's seeking a change, People who work in corporate jobs and looking to set up their own businesses or need inspiration.

I have always been fascinated by podcasting but finally launched my own due to spending months in Lockdown back home in the U.K. I have been an avid podcaster listener for over 5 years, but decided, now was the time to launch my own, leverage my network and give back to the wider community through the interviews. My goals and motivation is to shine a line on interesting people, making their corner of the world a little bit better. Showcasing their talents, skills, and vision for the world is what I love to do. My podcast has both an aspirational and inspirational focus for our listener base. I have been thinking about podcasting for a few years, but once I made the leap, from idea to publishing my first episode took 4 weeks.

Season 1 of my podcast was realised as one episode per week but not with season 2, I realise two interviews a week on Wednesday's and Saturday's. It takes about 3 hours for me to produce a episode including the 1 hour interview itself.

I block book interviews over a weekend and make sure I make time each day to dedicate to the podcast. It is more than a hobby now, and more of a way of life and an extension of me. I spend about 10/15 hours a week on my podcast, whether that be editing, marketing, researching guests and interviewing people. My podcast is completely self funded and I am working towards making it revenue generating for season 3.

I currently have not taken any sponsorship. I have some offers for season 3, but I have been focusing on learning, developing my craft, making mistakes and finding my feet in the podcasting world. The sponsors who have reached out, came through contacts and people reaching out via social media. I also have a podcorn account, so I can search for my own sponsors for when I am ready to launch that part.

Podcasting has been amazing as both a tool to keep me busy, creative and meeting new people virtually, but has also been a fantastic lead generation tool for my business and in building my personal brand too.

I use Buzzsprout as my hosting provider and they have been fantastic to use. I use Squadcast to record my remote podcast interviews and then edit using a mixture of Descript and Audacity.

I find a lot of my guests by leveraging my own network, getting recommendations on social media and having a Matchmaker.fm Pro account, as a lead generation tool.

When I prepare for an episode, I research the guest on all social media challenges, read an articles, books or listen to previous videos/podcasts they have been on and then start writing down typical questions and themes I would like to explore during our time together. 90% of my guests have been remote interviews due to the pandemic and lockdown restrictions but I have also managed to record 3 in person interviews too.

The podcast is on all major podcasting platforms, so people can find me organically or via my website, www.bigideaswithmesh.com
I also find social media to be very useful to market my show, especially when creating targeted advertising campaigns on Facebook and Instagram in particular. I seem to pick up my audience through listener referrals and people sharing my podcast episodes with their network.

Podcasting can be done on a show string budget but taking some time, care and attention and also having a modest budget to invest in things like good artwork, a good mic and useful software will really pay off in the long run as it makes the production value and quality of your podcast show much higher than most new shows. This really helped me stand out. I invested in creating a good intro/outro and also paid someone to create dedicated social media templates for my show. I also would highly recommend following Alex Chisnall, and joining his Podpreneur Facebook group. I also would encourage people to have their own podcast website and use Podpage as it has been brilliant to have my own space to showcase my show.

You can find the podcast here:

Website: bigideaswithmesh.com
Instagram: instagram.com/bigideaswithmesh
Twitter: twitter.com/ideaswithmesh
Email: Hello@bigideaswithmesh.com