June 28, 2026

Start With The Guests

Someone asked me what I would do if I were starting a podcast from zero today.

My answer was basically:

Start with the guests.

Make a list of people your ideal buyers would want to hear from.

Draft a custom invite for each person that explains the idea of the show and gives them a clear sense of what you’d like to talk about.

Send the invites slowly.

Book whoever says yes.

Record the interviews on Riverside or Zoom.

Publish them on Transistor.

Promote the episodes with short clips or audiograms.

That’s pretty much it.

Here’s the thing...

Most people who want to start a podcast get hung up on the wrong stuff.

They worry about the website.

They worry about automation.

They worry about intro music, cover art, transcripts, pre-interview forms, guest homework, and whatever else makes the project feel more professional before it exists.

None of that matters much at the beginning.

Two things matter:

Have amazing conversations.
Have good quality audio.

You can mess up almost everything else and still have a good show.

Bad audio is hard to fix.

Boring conversations are impossible to fix.

So if you’re starting from zero, don’t build a podcast machine.

Book one great guest.

Have one great conversation.

Then do it again.

Yours,

—J