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We hit 100 episodes of the podcast this week.
Incidentally, we were also nominated for the Best Business Podcast category at the NYC Podcast Awards. They’re doing audience-choice awards … it would mean a lot to me if you voted for us. Takes 20 seconds — please vote!
Today I wrote in detail about 10 things I’ve learned making 100 episodes of the podcast.
— Francis Zierer, Lead Editor
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Vote for us to win Best Business Podcast at the NYC Podcast Awards
Reflections on making 100 episodes of a podcast
This past Tuesday, we published the 100th episode of The Creator Spotlight Podcast.
One hundred episodes. 100! Episodes!
We actually crossed the 100 newsletter profile mark one month earlier. I wrote four interview-profiles for the newsletter before we added the podcast. Who’s counting?
I’ve only been podcasting for two years and still have so much to learn about the medium. This issue is a journal entry about what I’ve learned so far.
Here’s the table of contents if you only have time to skim:
What a podcast is … and is not
Education vs. entertainment
Booking guests ad infinitum
How I prepare for a podcast
To video or not to video?
In-person vs. remote
How to be a good podcast guest
Solo hosting vs. cohosting
It takes a village
Making a podcast and a newsletter work together
1. What a podcast is … and is not
Easy way to kill an hour: find a podcaster and ask them “What is a podcast?” I’ve written thoroughly about what exactly defines a creator, but this is a bit of pedantry I’ve avoided until now.
A podcast is anything you can listen to in a podcast app. It comes down to the site of consumption for me, regardless of the conditions under which the audio file was made.
A podcast can be a video, too, but it’s not a podcast if you can’t pull it up on your favorite podcast app, put in your headphones, press play, put your phone back in your pocket, and walk around listening to it.
Podcasts can be single-episode or endless, can be scripted or unscripted, released once a year or daily. AI-generated text-to-speech or three cohosts riffing, completely unedited.
My first episode was a podcast episode, for all of these reasons. But it wasn’t particularly well-considered. At the end of the day, I was interviewing a guest to gather enough information to write a brief profile and publish an excerpt from the transcript.
I was not prioritizing the listener; I was prioritizing the eventual reader.
The behind-the-scenes story of The Creator Spotlight Podcast is about a writer (me) slowly figuring out how to produce a recorded conversation optimized for a listening audience.
2. Education vs. entertainment
When interviewing someone for a written Creator Spotlight piece, I need to gather facts: detailed subscriber growth breakdowns and specific numbers across revenue streams. These details make our newsletters stronger.
A good Spotlight podcast conversation also has these details. But I’ve learned not to overdo it. It’s exhausting listening to a tactical podcast that doesn’t properly interlace these details with entertaining stories.
Plenty of the podcasts I listen to made it into my rotation for their educational value. But if they’re not entertaining — if the banter isn’t good — I don’t stick around.
A good (conversation or interview) podcast is more about follow-up questions, riffing, and chasing the tangents than it is following a strict, fact-chasing script.
Even educational podcasts need to focus on entertainment value. For Creator Spotlight, my highly scientific estimate is that our appeal is 65% entertainment, 35% education. The ratio varies episode-to-episode.
Here’s an episode I think hit that ratio dead-on:
3. Booking guests ad infinitum
The best part of hosting an interview podcast is meeting a ton of interesting people. The worst part of hosting an interview podcast is finding, vetting, and convincing interesting people to come on every week.
Guest selection is more of an art than a science. I look for at least three things in every potential guest:
Do they have the relevant background and expertise? The three core jobs of media are content production, audience development, and revenue development. A good Creator Spotlight guest should have proven expertise in at least one, and ideally two, of these.
Can they chat? There are two factors at play here.
Are they willing and able to speak transparently about their work? Some people don’t want to speak about the details of their business.
Are they charismatic and articulate in their speech? Some people have all that expertise but aren’t great on the mic. Plenty of truly great writers aren’t built for the mic, the camera. This isn’t necessary for a compelling podcast, but the episodes that perform best, without fail, are with guests who are especially strong speakers.
Am I, as the host, interested in them or their work? None of the above matters if I’m not personally excited about spending my workday learning about this person, if I’m not jazzed to spend an hour in conversation with them, if I don’t think my producer will find the conversation interesting as he edits.
If somebody meets all these criteria, I’ll reach out. Then it’s just a matter of whether or not they reply. Follow up. Follow up again. You’ve gotta be stubborn.
I say no to most recommendations and cold emails, and my process is more detailed than I can describe in this newsletter. But I’m always open to pitches — [email protected]!
4. How I prepare for a podcast
So, the guest has agreed to do the show. This is my order of operations:
Book a 15-minute pre-call. Even if I’ve already met this person before, I schedule this call. Non-negotiable. The purpose is twofold:
Build rapport, get on the same page. I explain what the podcast is about, who our audience is, and the topics I want to explore. We start to understand each other.
Begin research. I ask a few exploratory questions and suss out storylines and details that will shape my research.
If we haven’t booked the actual recording yet … book that here.
One or two days before recording, research.
Google them, open up every single relevant tab. Methodically work through the mess.
Listen to any recent podcasts they’ve been on (if applicable) at 2x speed. Identify questions they’re always asked that seem to have canned answers. Sum up the answer so you can use it to push them past routine towards a new answer.
Scroll all their social media feeds for the last 3 months to a full year, depending on how prolific they are.
Write questions as you go!
After the research is complete, send a confirmation email the day before recording.
Include audio/video advice, reminding them that this is a video podcast.
To ensure you're on the same page, summarize the core topics in 4-7 bullets, including anything you especially need them to prepare for (e.g., questions about subscriber growth over time).
Prepare to perform.
A podcast is a performance, a conversation on stage for a delayed audience. Get a good night’s rest, have water and a caffeinated beverage at hand, and note paper. Mute your phone and all notifications.
5. To video or not to video?
The Creator Spotlight Podcast has video for one reason: I was told by a producer from a very popular show that the YouTube algorithm was the single best way to grow a new, independent podcast.
He was right.
It’s taken us a while to find momentum on YouTube. I didn’t even use a proper camera until 30-some episodes in. Our YouTube views this week were up 406% compared to the same week last year.
However! Video creates problems you don’t have with audio-only shows.
As the host, you can control every aspect of your setup:
Video quality: Laptop cameras are fine, but if you’re serious, you eventually need to invest in a proper camera.
I use a Sony ZV-E10 camera with a Sigma 16mm f/1.4 DC DN lens.
Lighting: Better cameras make it easier to nail lighting. But you need multiple light sources. My setup, which you can see in practice below:
My office is in a room with almost no natural light, so I’m starting from darkness as a blank slate. I wish I had beautiful natural light, but starting from darkness makes lighting much easier.
I have two lamps, my laptop, and my external monitor as light sources — I’ve adjusted the placement and setting on all of these.
Set/background: I live in a small New York apartment. You can see the heating pipes in my background. I’ve added plants and a couple of art objects to my shelf, but it’s still pretty bare-bones. I need to do more here eventually!
What a difference 22 months, a nice camera, and good lighting make. Some things never change — I still love denim shirts and talking with my hands.
6. In-person vs. remote
In-person is better for every reason but two. The only two things remotely recorded podcasts have over in-person:
Your guest pool is exponentially larger. I live in New York, and there’s no shortage of great-fit guests for my show, but I don’t want to only interview New Yorkers.
It’s cheaper! I record from my apartment. There’s no need to rent a space, buy a bunch of gear (cameras, microphones, lights), or hire one on-set staff.
But if you're doing video, in-person is better.
There’s no latency to disrupt conversation
You can fully control the environment, removing any burden from the guest to have their own equipment
With a great concept and set, you’re almost certain to reach a larger audience on YouTube
We’re going to move to in-person soon enough. We’ve done it once, when beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk played guest — we rented a studio. But that just taught me that if we’re going in-person, we really need to own it. Refreshed concept, custom set.
7. How to be a good podcast guest
If a podcast is something you can listen to on a podcast app, at the end of the day, it’s nothing more than an audio file. It is the job of the host and the guest to ensure that audio file is high-quality.
This duty primarily falls to the host. A host’s job is hospitality — to create the best environment for the guest and the best product for the guest. But it is also the guest’s duty to execute the recording to the best of their ability; why do it if you don’t want it to be good?
When you agree to a recording block, focus completely on that recording block.
Mute your phone and put it out of reach.
Turn off any notifications on your computer.
Avoid scheduling anything immediately before or after the recording block.
You don’t need a fancy microphone to be a good podcast guest.
If you’re a frequent podcast guest — even if you aren’t, but take tons of remote meetings for your job — you should buy a good mic, though. The Logitech Blue Yeti is a great quality-for-price option.
If it’s a video podcast, take a few measures to show up as your best self on camera. Here’s the basic video setup advice I always tell my guests:
Wear a top in a contrasting tone to your background. This will help you stand out and look better in the video.
Set your camera at or slightly above eye level. If you’re using a laptop camera, place the laptop on a stack of books.
You can see the difference in my screenshots below. My camera sits about 3 inches above eye level.
Avoid backlighting. If you can face natural light, great. If not, and if possible, set two diffused light sources in front of you, behind your computer.
We want to hold the same positions in our frames. Sat in the middle, with minimal space between the tops of our heads and the frame. We should look roughly the same size.
This is something I workshop live with my guests.
8. Solo hosting vs. cohosting
The single biggest competitive advantage in podcasting is the dynamic between cohosts. For an interview show with only one host, episodes (the whole show!) can live or die on the rapport between the host and guest.
Great cohost dynamics work because, as mentioned in item #2 of this piece … for podcasts, entertainment matters more than education. Cohosts mean there’s always a baseline level of banter.
On occasion, we’ve brought in Natalia (Creator Spotlight assistant editor) as a cohost … but not for a while. This was a resourcing decision; there are only two of us working on the publication full-time. We may try more cohosted episodes in the future.
I have around a dozen podcasts on rotation, though I go months without listening to some of them.
Most of the podcasts I listen to regularly have at least two hosts.
All but one of the single-host interview podcasts I listen to are recorded in-person.
From my own listening habits, I’ve learned that single-host interview podcasts are best for learning specific information from or about the guest, and cohosted podcasts are better for entertainment.
Did you know I do another podcast? I cohost Tasteland with Daisy Alioto of Dirt Media. We chat with our guests about media, marketing, and tech. Comes out every Wednesday.
9. It takes a village
Look … I do not know how to edit a podcast. We hired out from the start. Tom McCloud, everybody!
Couldn’t resist choosing this screenshot from the 2026 predictions episode I did with Tom and Natalia a couple of months ago.
That I don’t know how to edit a podcast is a miss. I’m going to have to sit down and figure out the basics eventually — I know I’ll be able to give Tom better feedback once I’ve done it myself. But it’s been a luxury having Tom this entire time.
We put out a call for editors on Twitter, took a look at folks’ portfolios, and had a select few make test-edit social clips for us. Tom won out.
After I’ve finished recording, I send Tom the Riverside link and a few notes, and he takes care of the rest. We riff on title and thumbnail concepts together and he puts the final assets together. He makes our clips. All the motion graphics and animation — all him. Could not do it without Tom.
Shout out to Laura, our designer for the newsletter, who makes all the RSS-feed thumbnails.
10. Making a podcast and a newsletter work together
At the end of the day, we’re still a newsletter-first publication. It’s easier to read a newsletter than it is to listen to a podcast; most of our episodes are just under an hour long, whereas any of our newsletter issues might take 5 minutes to read.
This issue of the newsletter was sent to 376k subscribers. Across all platforms, we had 4.5k listens on our podcast this week — not bad for a podcast, but minuscule in comparison.
The podcast started as a byproduct of the newsletter — I was already doing these interviews every week, so hiring Tom to turn the recordings into podcast episodes and buying a microphone didn’t take much extra work.
Over time, we’ve turned the two into separate products. Early editions of the newsletter were mostly cleaned-up interview transcripts! I didn’t write in-depth profiles until months into my tenure.
The newsletter today is the product of us processing a few core threads, tactics, and factual details from the podcast. People who don’t want to read can just listen to the podcast, and vice versa. They’re complementary products.
(Shout out to Creator Spotlight editor Natalia Pérez-González, who writes most of the profile newsletters these days.)
But the newsletter audience still cannibalizes the potential podcast audience. I haven’t seen many newsletter-podcast combos that don’t have this issue. I’ve yet to crack this one, but to make it to 200 podcast episodes, we’ll have to.
Thanks for listening … and if you never have, our 100th episode is a great place to start:
