Mission Makers

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► Tell us about you and your podcast

My name is Farah Nanji. My professional background is split between 3 industries; music as a DJ & music producer spinning hypnotic Balaeric vibes, motorsports as the founder of two ventures exploring leadership lessons from things like F1, and journalism writing thought provoking content about all of the above!

Mission Makers is the name of the podcast. It is a deep dive into the mindset and misconceptions of industry leaders in the worlds of music, motorsports and business. 

Our listeners are culture seekers, adrenaline junkies, travellers, creatives, current and future business leaders.

► Why & how did you start this podcast? 

I have been following the podcast landscape since Steve Jobs first referenced the word in 2004. Back then the podcasts I listened to were more DJ mixes. It's absolutely fascinating where the industry has gone and when you think radio is valued at 40bn and podcasting at 1bn, it shows that we are at the start of an enormous boom! I love podcasts as it's like being a fly on the wall getting access to the most precious currency of all; knowledge. I am a certified podcast junkie :-)

The initial goals and motivations of doing the podcast were to empower others with knowledge and demystify common misconceptions for these industries which are so unique in themselves. I wish I could have heard such industry insights when I was staring out a decade ago!

The podcast series was born in Davos when I was djiing and speaking at the World Economic Forum in 2020 amongst incredible world leaders. Who knew Covid would hit so soon after!!

I spent the following 10 months putting together Season 1 and released the first episode on 28th October 2020.

► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?

We release episodes every Wednesday. I produced the bulk of Season 1 before it was released. It usually takes about 1-2 hours to record the episode, then another day in post-production.

Admittedly the podcast has kind of taken over my life in the last month as we are still in the middle of a 6 week launch period. I'm hoping that we've laid enough of a foundation that in the future I can squeeze in recording an interview every week and then have the post-production and publishing process tight across the team. Since live music disappeared out of our world, I have had a bit more time as my DJ life came to a grinding halt for the last year. However I am working full time on my own startup in the motorsports industry.

I have funded the podcast thus far on a shoestring budget. All in all about £1000 has gone into crucial elements like graphic design and having a team of 2 interns working on the project with me for things like videography and strategy. I built the website myself and also take care of all the marketing and social media.

► What do you gain from podcasting?        

Our goal is to bring sponsors in for Season 2 in 2021.

We are already in the top 5% of podcasts worldwide and have featured heavily in the Entrepreneurship + Business charts peaking at #2 in Mauritius, #5 in Cyprus, #12 in Norway, #22 in the UK, #30 in UAE, #47 in Switzerland.

Podcasting brings more awareness into my current projects, and gives me an opportunity to have an amazing conversation with inspiring people in my industries that can inspire others.

► How does your podcasting process look like? 

I use a Zoom H2N handy recorder to record my side of audio, then we use Zoom software to capture the screen of our guest and host. We encourage our guest to use a microphone if they can, even if it's a clip on one for the phone. I use Logic Pro X to clean up the audio and then our videographer uses Adobe Premier Pro to edit the video.

So far Season 1 has been my direct network of the most inspiring colleagues around me in music, motorsport and business. We're going to keep Season 2 as 50% my personal network and 50% guest we don't know. My team does a lot of digging on people we think could be the right fit for the show.

Each episode has a list of questions and themes that we want to extract from our guest, however we use it as a guide and keep the conversation in a natural flow too.

► How do you market your show?

Our listeners find the show through our guests and host sharing to their social networks as well as iTunes and Instagram.

73% of our listeners come from iTunes, 24% from Spotify, 3% from YouTube

Instagram and LinkedIn are the most useful for us.

► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?

Plan your show into 5 distinct phases; research of the podcast landscape, concept of the show, implementation, launch and growth. We spent 10 months doing this but Covid also delayed us slightly as we had plans to film each episode in person and in the beginning we weren't sure how long lockdown would last. Still locked down here in the UK! I would advise spending at least 6 months doing phase 1-5. There's a lot to learn about the podcast landscape and it's changing rapidly. If you want a successful launch, don't go in blind. Having all the marketing assets designed and website developed during the implementation phase will make life much easier for you once your podcast gets up and running. Make sure you get good audio recording material. It doesn't cost that much to invest in a good clip on or handheld mic and even if you can't get Logic Pro X or Ableton, Audacity will do a good job of cleaning up audio. Spend a couple of YouTube tutorials learning how to make your audio sound nice and create a killer trailer. Unless this is your full time job, I also recommend doing podcasts in a season format so you can have a month or two break to record material for the season ahead and get ahead of time. It also makes your selection process for guests laser focused on quality.

Listen to other podcast hosts who stand out too to get inspired by their interview process. We did this heavily for months if not years.

Spend time reading demographics of the users in your chosen genres. Nielsen Podcast Insights - A Marketers Guide (2018) is a great document with fascinating insights.

There are always plenty of talented students looking for good media placements so be open to hiring, you can't do everything!

Also set some benchmarks to get yourself and your team motivated whether it's reaching the top 1% of podcasts or getting onto new + noteworthy. It feels good when you smash those goals!

-www.internwise.co.uk and LinkedIn were great for recruitment

-www.thepodcasthost.com has amazing articles on the landscape and production process

-www.pixabay.com has tons of royalty free music if you can't get a music producer to design a catchy intro jingle for your show. It's super easy to pick something from there and merge it over a layer of your vocal recording introducing the show.

► Where can we learn more about you & your podcasts?

mission-makers.com / @missionmakers on Instagram / farah@mission-makers.com / apple.co/3oBOdbw