Seeking Sustainable Inspiration from Japan through interviews with "Good People doing Great Things" from across Nihon

I grew up in Hawaii, but have lived and worked in Japan for over 27 years. Engaged with the travel, tourism and small business communities in the Hiroshima area of Japan for many years led me into consulting, strategy and branding work. Being confined to home moved me online to connect with others and seek out inspiring stories and insights from people across the land of the rising sun and share it to an international audience. My aim in doing the podcast is to inspire, spark new ideas and motivate listeners to apply some of these ideas and insights to their own work, travel and lifestyles.

Most of my listeners are in Japan, closely followed by North America, and India. Some listeners join from other areas of Asia, as well as Europe and Oceania.
 

I'm an avid listener of podcasts as I take sanity walks to reconnect to nature and stay healthy, the ideas and insights of these shows keep me focused on future possibilities.

Initially, I was just trying to stay busy with research, networking and helping promote others who I knew were also struggling to keep going, but it has grown into so much more meaningful than just staying busy.

The podcast started in June 2020, a few months after I started the livestream video interview show series as a way to increase my audience and create more value from the insights of the interviews.

The first episode took about a week to release after trying and failing a few times, I am still not great at the editing, but definitely learning from my mistakes and taking in the feedback of listeners to improve.
 

I release an episode at least once each week, but sometimes I can upload episodes a few times a week depending on my workload. I don't have regular work coming in now, so I am able to dedicate myself to interviews a few times each week. I aim to keep going at least 1/week once my work picks up again.

My podcast costs about $20/month for hosting, editing, transcriptions, marketing and it is mostly self-funded, although I really appreciate my supporters and I am able to cover those costs due to their monthly subscriptions.
 

I hope to build sponsorships as I am starting to offer bonus tracks, edited and ad-free videos and other perks to members. At the moment I have about $30 each month in regular sponsorship across YouTube, Patreon, and BuyMeACoffee.

I haven't gotten any podcast-specific sponsors yet and just under 900 downloads of the podcasts each month, and I hope once I pass the 1,000 benchmark I will be able to get a few more sponsorships.

I think there is so much benefit in career development, networking and even self-development through podcasting as I feel closer in some ways to my audience than through video sometimes and I feel that connection as a listener with other podcasters in my ear too. I have had some great responses and leads for future topics and guests from my listeners as well as wonderful comments about how much they appreciate the series.
 

I'm using captivate as a podcast hosting platform and been very happy with the engagement from the staff and support if I have trouble with anything. I am enhancing the video audio on IMovie on my mac computer, but need to rely on the quality of the guests' mics which is often hit and miss. I'm starting to ask guests to do a recording on their side and wear headphones so I can have a clean audio to work with, but this is a big ask for some people who struggle to even connect for the interview via computer.

All the interviews are done live and I have used a variety of software and platforms from skype and icamm to happs to streamyard and restreamio which multistream the broadcast out to all my social media channels at the same time. I get the most engagement from a live audience on facebook and twitter and the best quality on youtube and twitch, but smaller audiences there. Recently, I've been approved also for livestreaming onto the LinkedIn platform - although the quality is poor, there is good engagement there if my guest is an active user of that platform.
 

40% of my listeners access via Apple podcasts, and over 75% by mobile devices, and slightly more listeners are using iphones than android. I send out posters made with Canva via instagram, facebook, twitter, youtube, linkedin with a time and date to try to get people to join us live. For the podcast I use the same channels as well as embed the podcast on my website, share via monthly newsletter programs Revue and Substack, as well as on BuyMeACoffee and Patreon.
 

Choose a quiet time in your day when you have the most clarity & try to emulate the voice styles you like to listen to the most. I have tried various approaches and the more relaxed style intros are the ones I like the best, it is easy to tell when you are distracted or hassled and that won't relay your message in a positive and useful and enjoyable way to the listeners.

One thing I learned the hard way is the output levels- try to match them and not go too loud and soft as most people will have trouble (and get annoyed) if they have to adjust the volume along the way.

I like the classic pod style of BGM in the intro and outro and I use royaltyfree tunes of one of my guests @Hikosaemon - it's a nice opportunity to give him a shoutout in the notes and he always comments how much he appreciates it too.

I like some of the pods that use jingles, but I find them annoying on others, it depends on my mood- this is something to consider if you are using something that makes a bold statement.
 

Thanks for asking!
You can find me on my business website: InboundAmbassador.com
All of my links are on LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/jjwalsh for all of my social media channels and donation/subscription links
Looking forward to connecting with more of you thanks to this interview!