A podcast committed to demystifying happiness through interviews with laypersons and professionals alike

I am a 31 year old Canadian woman with a background in art, warehousing, dog food manufacturing, and a bunch of other random jobs. I graduated highschool late, due to a serious crack addiction, couldn't afford a post secondary education, and spent the first part of my adult life trying to catch up. Then I got sick with fibromyalgia and sarcoidosis, which slowed my minimal progress right the heck down. I spent a few years wallowing in self pity, as one does, before I launched a freelance art and design business. Throughout this time I kept trying hard to find happiness, let go of self pity, and understand why fulfilment felt so elusive to me. I talked and talked to hundreds of people, before it finally became clear that I should do a podcast.

My podcast is broadly about happiness, but more specifically it is about more. The key purpose and topic of the podcast is exploration of the many ideas, concepts, tools, and philosophies about happiness, mental wellness, fulfillment and contentedness. Through a small amount of self reflection, and a massive amount of question asking, I try to demystify the concepts that alluded me for so long; mindfulness, letting go of outcomes, childlike wonder, and self care are just a few topics that get thrown around often, and are rarely clarified. My podcast is about curating as much information and understandings of these ideas as possible in a way that is readily accessible to as many people as possible.

My listeners, though reasonably few, are surprisingly diverse! I find that I am often surprised by folks that tell me they have listened in! I have gotten feedback on listenership, and been reached out to , by a German man in his late 60s, teenagers partying at a rave, and a vast number of people in between. It blows me away, and to be honest can be difficult when people ask who my audience is for marketing purposes!
 

I started listening to podcasts in 2018, I would be lying if I didn't say it was life changing, even without the eventual creation of my own show. A platform that leans on authenticity really allowed me to see that I wasn't as alone as I thought, nor was I any more lost of confused than a lot of my peers. Nowadays, I find it harder and harder to make time to consume podcasts, but if I happen to be driving (which is significantly less with the whole pandemic situation), I will often play shows and just revel in the joy that the world is becoming more open to genuine, openly displayed conversation.

As I was saying before, the decision to start a podcast was fairly organic. I was having similar conversations with dozens of people, but not hearing much about the topics in media. Even when I did find conversation around them, it was often very jargon filled and difficult to understand, or politically or religiously driven, which is a major turn off for me. My thought was that if I was finding it difficult to access the information and ideas, it was pretty likely that other people were finding it difficult, too. I sort of stumbled onto a niche, and was given a lot of feedback from people that they wanted me to start a podcast, so I did.

I am not going to lie, when I first started my podcast, in early March, 2020, to say I didn't know what I was doing is a huge understatement. With the confidence that only the truly uneducated can achieve, I dove in head first. I made the decision to podcast, and before two weeks had passed, I had already released my first episode. I recorded it on a cheap amazon mic, and a completely unqualified tablet. I regret to say that I destroyed that tablet by demanding well more than it was capable of. The first 8 episodes of my show are unbearably poor audio quality, with the next 14 or so showing my slow learning curve. After that, the sound engineer at Kabby Productions, insisted that I swallow my pride and let him take the lead. The shows quality has improved immensely since that point.
 

Early on, I produced 1 show a week, then 2 shows a week for a while, and have since moved back to a single episode a week with occasional bonus episodes to celebrate special occasions. Time constraints and listening to my body (practicing what I preach) have demanded that I stick to the once a week schedule for now. If things change and I come to a place where I have more resources, that might change back to twice a week, but I can't be sure that it's something that will ever happen.

Thankfully, I don't have a nine to five. The curse of getting sick and being on disability has turned into something of a blessing, allowing my time to be flexible enough to do the many little things that podcasting requires of me. While I do spend time doing graphic design and illustration on the side, a great deal of my available time goes to podcasting in some form or another. Reaching out, scheduling, recording, promoting, creating graphics, updating the website, and a billion other little things take a shocking amount of time! Most of this is stuff I do to support the ability to produce a show that people have told me makes an impact for them, so I press through it. Of course, chronic illness keeps the rest of my time full, whether it is resting, doctor's visits, or self care practices that have become imperative with my busy schedule.

I don't know if I have a specific dollar value on what I spend for the podcast (it canb vary from month to month), but it is upwards of a few hundred dollars a month, when everything is pooled together. Most of my podcasting costs come out of pocket, but I do have a Patreon where a handful of lovely, generous people who share my vision take some of the weight off of me. I appreciate that more than they will probably ever know (though I do try to make sure to tell them!)
 

I haven't taken any sponsorships yet, and it is hard to say if I will. The most important part of my podcast is to promote self-love, self-care, and mental wellness. While I know that there are companies that share those values, a large part of the advertising field is centred around creating a sense of lack, and I want to be very careful not to participate in that, as it is counter to the goal of the show. To be fair, I haven't spent much time reaching out to companies that advertise through exposure instead of manipulation, but I do see them sometimes, and will likely reach out to companies with common goals as the show grows.

That is the secondary reason that I haven't reached out seeking sponsorships. While I know that my show has value to the listeners (because they often tell me), my download numbers are small enough that I can't offer the level of exposure that would justify sponsorship for most companies. With a current average of around 150 downloads a month, I think it is prudent to wait on the added stress of sponsors until I can consistently bring equal value to my end of a sponsorship deal.

With all that said, podcasting has still been of huge value to me personally! I get to talk to people I would never dream of talking to, and learn something new every show. I get to see and explore happiness with experts, who can clearly explain what ideas are and how they work, and then talk to other average people about how all those theories and ideas play out in real life. I have made great friends, learned a lot along the way, and probably most importantly, I am lucky enough to know that I have gotten to be a part of other people's journey toward happiness!
 

The physical tools I use most are my computer, mic & stand, my boyfriend's headphones, and my phone. I have an acer Nitro 5 rebuildable laptop, a Yeti Blue microphone & stand that was donated by a patron, headphones whose brand has rubbed off over time, and a Samsung S9 that my mom gave me when she upgraded her phone.

For software, I use Wordpress for my website stuff, Podbean for hosting, Zoom for interviews, Audacity for recording, Dropbox for private sharing, Ibis paint for graphics, and Headliner for creating audiograms.

If I understand correctly, my process for podcasting is a bit odd to most people. I find guests myriad ways, but one of my favourites is to simply reach out to people I think add value to the conversation. Sometimes I will see an article that resonates strongly, and contact the author, sometimes I reach out to people in Universities based on their credentials, and sometimes I just ask random people that are clearing going through an "emotional growth spurt".

Finding and contacting guests is one of the most time consuming parts of the process for me, but its something I really enjoy. Sometimes people ignore it, sometimes they decline, and the ones who accept start the process of being on the show. The process for guests after acceptance is fairly simple:

We schedule a time for recording (or if the guest prefers, a premeeting), we hop on zoom, I prep them on what to expect, we do the recording and then do a closing "debrief". I request they send me any relevant links and a picture that they feels represents them (a photo of themselves, graphics for their own work, or a book cover, etc.).

After they have finished their part, I cobble it all together. I upload the episode to Dropbox for editing and let my editor know it is there. Once he has uploaded the edited audio, I pull a short (a minute or less) clip from the show, create a graphic from the guest's image using ibis paint, use Headliner to create an audiogram, upload it all on Podbean and then start promoting the episode!
 

To be fully transparent, marketing has never been my strongest point. I've been making a concerted effort to be better with it because it has been feeling rather selfish to refuse to market something I am consistently told has value.

Historically, I have mostly done small scale promoting using just my socials. As I mentioned above, I use headliner to create audiograms, and release them on Facebook and instagram. Podbean automatically releases episodes to twitter for me. I did recently submit my podcast to Apple for promotion, so we will see if they are responsive to that or not.

The channel I prefer most is Facebook, so far, because it is something that is easy to access for me. Maybe it is my age, but I am already on Facebook frequently, so I find it fits in smoothly with my life and feels a lot less like extra work.

Because I am trying to focus on marketing better, I will probably have a better answer to this question in the future, which isn't super useful now, I realize, but if you want, I can follow up with you when I have a clearer answer!
 

The first thing I would tell new podcasters is to decide if you want to podcast just to talk, or if you want to podcast to be heard. The direction you take is very different. Some people podcast just to talk, which is totally cool, that is what I thought I wanted at first. There are lots of reasons someone might do this, for learning or practising, or even just posterity, so that you can reflect on it well into the future. Most podcasters, myself included (I now realize) are podcasting because they have a message or multiple messages they want to share with the world.

I didn't consider this before starting and it ended up making a lot of extra work for myself. If you are podcasting to be heard (IE- become known and possibly monetize), there are a lot of resources that are available only to new podcasts, such as the new and noteworthy feature on Apple Podcasts. It also means that you should do a lot more work ahead of release, ensuring that your quality is high and that you start out by bringing value to the listeners.

The second thing I often recommend to folks considering a podcast that they want to grow is to ask before you start, what makes my podcast worth listening to? While it might be true that you are funny, intelligent, or have an interesting story, the same is true of a lot of other people, and is therefore not overly unique. If you want to podcast about a topic that you are passionate about, that is cool, but if you want listenership, you really need to bring something new and interesting to the table. It is a humbling experience to realize that while our personalities are great, unless we are already known, most people aren't going to listen to your show just in case you are worth listening to. Most people are going to listen to a podcast because it has a fresh and interesting take, interesting and well known guests, or is about a topic that isn't already massively saturated.
 

Website: Theconquestofbliss.com (please note that I could only afford wordpress once so it is a combo website with my art business, just click the heart with the headphones).
Instagram: @theconquestofbliss
Twitter: @theconquestofb1
Facebook @The Conquest of Bliss
Patreon: www.patreon.com/theconquestofbliss
Paypal: @karaokeninja
Tiktok @Theconquestofbliss
Email: Theconquestofbliss@gmail.com