Producing a Podcast for Your Career Center

Meredith Metsker:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker, and today, I’m joined by Paul Maniaci. He’s an assistant director in the Career Design Lab at the Columbia University School for Professional Studies. Specifically, he focuses on coaching students in the Enterprise Risk Management program. Thank you for being here, Paul.

Paul Maniaci:

Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to talk with you today.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, likewise. I’m really excited to have you, because today we’re talking about one of my favorite topics, which is podcasting. I know super meta to be talking about podcasting on a podcast, but specifically I want to cover how you have created and built a podcast for your career center there at Columbia. We’ll talk about the Career Design Labs podcast, which is called Rising To The Top.

I’ll ask about your production process, who you interview, what kind of stories you like to tell, and so on. Because I also host and produce a podcast, I’ll share a bit about my process too, so we can just kind of provide a couple perspectives for our listeners today. Before I get into my questions, Paul, is there anything else you would like to add about yourself, your background or your role there at Columbia?

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, so my main focus is as a coach. I coach Enterprise Risk Management students. The School of Professional Studies at Columbia, it focuses on graduate level students and when I’m not coaching them or advising them with regards to their careers, I do produce Career Design Lab podcast, which we’re going to talk about today, and then I help with other programming and events for the Career Design Lab at large.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. A man of many talents. Before I get into the more specific questions about our topic, I do want to kick us off with a question I ask all of our guests here on the podcast, and that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Paul Maniaci:

I think Career Everywhere to me means that when you’re thinking about what it is that you want to do with regards to your career, that you should be open-minded, and that you should really try and explore the things that inspire you and that interest you and the things that are engaging to you. Thinking of your career as something also that that’s organic and something that’s going to change over time based on what it is that moves you.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. That makes a ton of sense. As we all know, careers are not linear and what we think we might be interested in grade school, high school, even the start of college is not always what ends up happening. I love that point about being open-minded and open to change.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah. Thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. Now I would love to dig into our topic today, which is again, how you have built a podcast for the Career Design Lab there at Columbia. As a little background for the listeners and viewers, the podcast is called Rising To The Top. There are about 15 episodes so far, and it’s hosted and produced by Paul.

You can find it on the Career Design Lab website along with all major podcasting platforms. I’ll be sure to include links to all of those places in the show notes so you can check out the podcast. Paul, to get us started, can you just tell me a little bit more about Rising To The Top? What’s the theme, the format, cadence, audience, all that good stuff?

Paul Maniaci:

Sure. Yeah, I’d be happy to do that. Rising To The Top is a leadership podcast that I host at the Career Design Lab. It actually was created during the pandemic and I created it with my colleague Nicole Arndt. She helped me launch it and was working on it with me for the first year where we really figured out what it was and what we wanted it to become. The reason that we created it was we wanted to have a resource that students could tap into, whether they were coming to meet with us in person or virtually, something that they could listen to on their own, whether they’re in the car or on the subway or wherever they listen to their podcast.

The idea was that they could have this information available to them whenever they wanted to listen to it. As we started to create Rising To The Top, one of the things that became very apparent to us and that was really important from the get-go was we wanted to share lessons from people that have had some success in their careers and have been able to navigate challenges, because we thought that that was something that was really important. It’s great to hear about when things are going well, but I think you can learn a lot from when things are challenging or when you’re struggling and how you can make the most of those opportunities. The podcast is typically 15 to 30 minutes long and it’s a conversation between myself and the interview subject and we kind of do a quick overview of what their career is and they share advice on lessons that they’ve learned.

They talk about the industries that they work in, and they also talk about what it means to be a leader and things that they’ve learned through that leadership process. One of the things that’s really important is that it be a conversation, hopefully an engaging one, similar to what we’re doing today. We didn’t want it to be too formal. We want them to prepare for the conversation, but we want it to be a in-depth conversation that is something that you can follow along with and don’t feel like it’s too rehearsed or too prepared, like a conversation that you’d be having, a well-informed conversation that you could be having with a friend or a family member or a colleague.

Meredith Metsker:

As you know, it’s kind of the goal with the Career Everywhere podcast too is we like to be prepared and know what we’re talking about ahead of time, but in general, keep it conversational, because that’s what feels most authentic and most real and in my mind makes it more effective to absorb the information as opposed to it’s a lecture.

Paul Maniaci:

Right.

Meredith Metsker:

What’s the typical cadence? Is this a regular thing? Is it just kind of as you come across really great people and stories, how does that work?

Paul Maniaci:

The podcast is something that I’m working on year-round. Even during the summer we’re looking to recruit new speakers or new guests and we’re researching different people to be featured. I’m looking at different industries and that type of thing. It’s ongoing. The cadence does differ a bit. We’re hoping to get it on a monthly cadence. That would be the ideal goal. But sometimes things come up with regards to our production schedule or the availability of the speakers, and sometimes we’ll actually end up recording the episodes but then not be able to release them for some time as we have to get clearance talking to employees of companies and they want to make sure that the employees are saying good things about the companies, which I think typically people know enough to do that, but they still need to go through their standards and practices.

That can sometimes delay when we release the episodes. But like I said, it’s something that I work on year-round with my audio technician, Peter Shea from the media team, and he helps record the episodes. I know we’re going to talk about process, but it’s him and I working on these typically. The cadence, we would like it to be monthly, around the middle of the month, but sometimes life happens and it doesn’t get released as such. But we do release several a semester and during the course of the academic year.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, very cool. I can definitely relate to having to work around some PR teams sometimes making sure your speakers have clearance. I’ve dealt with that in past podcasts and past companies, and that can be challenging sometimes for sure, because it’s not on your timeline as much as you would love it to be.

Paul Maniaci:

Right.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. You kind of touched on this a little bit earlier, but why did you start the Rising To The Top podcast?

Paul Maniaci:

We started the podcast because as I mentioned, we wanted to make sure that this could be a resource where students and alumni could come and find information about careers or different industries, and we thought that the podcast would be a way to share this information in a portable way, in a way where you can just grab it and go. Also, realizing that people like to learn and find information in different ways. I think one of the great things with the Career Everywhere podcast is that you can listen to it in your headset or on your headphones, but then you can also watch it.

People learn in all different types of ways, so we were trying to open up the way that we could engage with our students knowing that as hard as we try that, and career services professionals can relate to this, they don’t always meet with us whether on Zoom or virtually or in person. This gives us an opportunity to still be able to share information with them in a different format or modality.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. That makes a ton of sense, and I can definitely, again, relate to what you were saying about a podcast is a great format for outreach, because there’s multiple formats to do it in, especially if you record audio and video like we’re doing now, gives you twice as much content to work with and from the video especially, you can cut short clips to put on social media or on YouTube or embed in newsletters, things like that. It just gives you lots to work with and more at-bats to see what resonates, like what messaging resonates, what format resonates in what medium or what distribution channel does it resonate? Podcasting is really an art and a science.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah. That’s something that we’re hoping to, I’m hoping that we’re going to explore more the visual component of it. Most of our podcasts right now that have been released are just audio. But this allows you to see people engaging, see their facial expressions, to see what moves them. I think some people want to watch a video as opposed to listen to something just in their ears. Like you mentioned, then the way that you can cut the segments too gives you different opportunities as far as how you can repurpose the content.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, exactly. It just gives you more information to work with and you can kind of refine how you ask questions, how you cut clips, all of that good stuff. Again, you kind of touched on this earlier, so that you interview leaders, people who have had success in their careers. Is there more you can share about what kind of people you’re interviewing on the podcast? Maybe some specific examples, things like that.

Paul Maniaci:

One of the things that’s really important, and hopefully I’ll live up to this, but when you’re doing these podcasts, you want to make sure that you can find someone who can tell a story and that doesn’t mind being vulnerable and is happy to share. Actually before I tell you about the podcast, I know you asked me to share a little bit about myself, so I just wanted to add a little more context if that’s okay.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah.

Paul Maniaci:

And just say that I’m a proud dad of two little girls, nine and five, and so that sometimes comes up in my coaching appointments or my LinkedIn posts, and that’s a big part of who I am. I’m a career coach, but I’m also a dad and I’m also a big sports fan. I love the Knicks and I can talk to you about Keanu Reeves all day. Just to give you a little more of a well-rounded picture of who I am. But to answer your question about some of the speakers, so we definitely want to, what we do is similar to how we prepared for this recording today, before we decide to hit the record button on the podcast, we want to make sure that I’m setting up conversations or pre-flight calls with the people that I’m going to be interviewing, because I want to make sure that they can…

People can do really exciting things and have a really interesting career, but if they’re not able to verbalize that or to be able to express that or tell stories, then the podcast is going to fall flat, especially if it’s just something that you’re listening to as opposed to seeing someone talk with their hands or move around or whatever it is that in our regular day-to-day interactions. That part of the piece, that piece of the podcast is really important, the pre-flight part. Then you get a sense of how do they tell their stories? Are they long-winded? Do they talk fast? Do they use their hands? What gets them excited?

Then, that helps prepare for the recording as well. That goes into the process. But then as far as how I select the speakers, other than that piece of it, which comes a little bit later, is trying to find individuals who have had the opportunity to lead. I know that you can lead at a very low level, or I should say at a more entry-level role, and then you can lead like a CEO, so you can definitely lead in all different roles. I want to make sure that I’m clear about that. But want to find people that have had manage teams and the lessons that they’ve learned along the way, because I think those things can be really helpful for other people that want to lead teams.

Then, for those that are being led as well. Then along with that, we try to find individuals that may be working in industries that relate to the academic programs that our students are in. We have a lot of students that are interested in, say finance, or they’re interested in the technology space or they’re interested in the healthcare space, whatever those industries are. Then we try and try and backtrack it to the speakers. I think you asked if I could talk about some of the speakers that I’ve spoken with.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah.

Paul Maniaci:

They’re kind of all across the board, but some of the ones that really stand out are where people allow themselves to be vulnerable and share these hard times that they’ve gone through. I had the opportunity to interview one of my friends who’s a children’s book author and illustrator, and each episode ends up kind of having a theme when you talk to people about their careers and their lives. One of the themes of his episode was around resiliency as he had a difficult upbringing as a kid and he was able to not only get through that, but it helped set him up well as an adult, like the lessons that he learned. In speaking with Jared, the children’s book author and illustrator, one of the cool things that we got to experiment too with was as far as the visual was he’s an illustrator, so I asked him if he could could sketch while we were talking.

That’s another thing that you can think about different ways that you can make the podcast more interactive. He was sketching while we were talking and that added an extra element to that as well. That’s one that I can think of that that has meant a lot to me. But all of the interviews that I’ve done have been, or that we’ve done as Career Design Lab, I think, have had their own merit and their own lessons to share and are valuable to students or even to myself. They’ve all had really good lessons in there that I think we can put into practice.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love what you said at the end about not only do podcasts provide learning for the audience, but it’s also just really great personally as the host when you get to talk to so many interesting people.

Paul Maniaci:

Right.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s kind of like how I viewed myself when I was a newspaper journalist. I used to just joke that I was basically a sponge, that I would just kind of soak in every element of a story or a person that I was interviewing, and eventually I would wring myself out afterwards and get rid of most of it, but some stuff stuck every time. I think it’s the same when you’re a podcast host, you kind of just take different, again, lessons, whether it’s specific to your career or lessons in being vulnerable and how to appear on camera or how to be resilient, how to build a meaningful life and career. It’s really fun and meaningful, I think, to be a podcast host. Anyone listening or watching is on the fence about it, there are personal benefits too.

Paul Maniaci:

You should totally do it. It’s been so worthwhile and I’ve so enjoyed it. As we’re talking, I’m listening to what you’re saying too, and I listened to previous episodes and it’s like the podcast is so, it’s so clear and crisp and it just sounds really good how you’re recording it. I’ve been making notes about some of those things as well.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, well, thank you.

Paul Maniaci:

You’re welcome.

Meredith Metsker:

Kind of on this note, and again, you’ve sort of touched on this, but what kinds of topics do you like to cover and why?

Paul Maniaci:

Some of the topics will relate specifically to particular industries, but then some of the topics will also just come out of the conversations that I have with the speakers. That’s really how the theme gets attached to someone’s career. I mentioned with Jared it was this idea of resiliency and how you work through difficult times. I interviewed someone who works at Google and he spoke about how early on in his career, he learned about the importance of taking calculated risks and knowing when it’s time to move on to the next thing, like when you’re seeing the writing on the wall and you’re like, “Okay, I can see I’m either going to have to come up with a solution or I’m going to have to move on to the next thing, because I can tell that this isn’t the right thing for me anymore.”

Taking risks can be super scary and being vulnerable can be super scary. But the alternative is that if you don’t take that risk, then maybe you get stuck in an untenable situation or you’re struggling when the reality is that could be continuing to move forward. My cousin told me this story, or she gave me this advice maybe like 20 years ago or so. I was struggling doing one of my many internships that I did as a young person, and she told me, I think I was complaining about the internship, because I wasn’t enjoying it. She said, “Regardless of whether an experience is good or bad, you can learn from it.”

That always stuck with me, because it’s this idea that whatever you go through, there’s something that you can take away from it. If it’s a bad experience, you can try and reflect on it and be like, “Okay, why was that a bad experience? Was it the people that I was working with? Was it that I didn’t have the right mindset? Was I not being flexible enough or open-minded? Was I super rigid?” You can try and do a deep dive and figure out why that experience was hard and maybe you were doing all the right things and it was still hard and it wasn’t for you, but then that experience could lead you to another experience.

Then, that experience could be something that’s really worthwhile. Or even if you experience something that’s a challenge, if you’re to face a similar experience down the road or you’re talking to someone else that’s had a similar experience, then that might allow you to then coach them through it or offer them advice or even just support or just listen to their story and be able to empathize.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. Or at minimum, you have a very compelling story to tell in a future job interview.

Paul Maniaci:

Or a podcast.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I’m curious, as you’re kind of deciding these topics, it sounds like you decide on the topics in the prep call with your guests. When you come up with questions, is it like a standard set of questions that you ask every guest, or do you make different sets of questions for each guest, or how does that work?

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, that’s a good question about questions. As far as that, and I think it might be similar to your process, so I’d love to hear how you work on coming up with your questions for your interviews. But yeah, part of it, so that there’s some consistency or so that we can have a through line from one podcast episode to the next, there are some questions that we’ll repeat. There’s a question in there where I ask the interview subject, “Tell me what was the most surprising thing that you’ve learned about managing a team?” Because I think that could be very telling, and that’s also very, I think that kind of captures that. Maybe that changes depending on where they are in their career, but that could be something that could be useful for somebody else to hear, and that’s also a nice jumping off point.

That’s one of the questions that remains consistent from one episode to the next. Since we launched the podcast at the beginning of the pandemic, at that point where people were at home and it was very hard to differentiate between working and not working. It was a super gray area, and there was no work-life balance. One of the things that became really important, if we could say a good thing to come out of the pandemic, was this idea of work-life balance. People didn’t have it before. Now that they were stuck somewhere, they have to try and carve that out or figure out what that was, because they had more time, because they couldn’t go places. That being said, as part of that, and as I started to think about how I was going to survive the pandemic as well as my colleagues and everyone, because everyone was impacted by it, one of the questions that came out of that was, “Do you practice self-care? If so, what does that look like?”

That became an important part of the podcast, and also, when I talk to students, because I think a lot of us can focus, whether you’re focusing on your studies and your classes or you’re focusing on your job, you can be so tunnel vision that you’re putting all your efforts into that. If you just do that, you’re going to burn out and also your quality of life is going to be very poor. You have to be able to separate between even achieving your goals, but also making time for the other things that make you happy outside of your studies or your work. That’s a question that I ask, and people are very thoughtful and intentional around that.

A lot of people have said that, “During the pandemic, I really had to take a step back and figure out how am I going to distinguish between my work and my non-work life, and this is how I’m going to do it.” I’m going to meditate, I’m going to go for a long walk, I’m going to spend time with the kids, I’m going to play with my dog, whatever it is, I’m going to watch trashy television. Whatever it is that makes you happy, you have to make sure that you’re doing that, because your life can’t just be your work.

Meredith Metsker:

That makes sense that that would be an important element to cover in a leadership podcast. It is not just about work, at least it shouldn’t be.

Paul Maniaci:

Two other questions that kind of roll over from episode to episode are, I like to call this the Oprah aha moment. Like, “Was there a certain moment in your career where you decided to pivot?” Some people will have one distinct moment, and then some people will have multiple pivots. They’re just constantly pivoting. But I’ve found that in interviewing, and imagine that you found this as well when you’re talking to people about their careers, there’s a point where there’s a realization and then that sets them off on one track, and then maybe they turn again and maybe they turn again. But there are certain moments that kind of define what it is that you end up doing.

That’s a question that I ask. Then I also have a question where I just ask, “If you were to advise a Columbia student as a student in the program, what would you tell them about how they can make the most of their time?” So that they don’t just focus, it goes back to this idea of like, yes, we want you to do well at school. You’re in a great university. You’re studying because you want to get somewhere, but if your face is just buried in those books all the time, you’re not going to get the most out of your experience. What would you tell them? That advice has been really useful too.

Meredith Metsker:

I bet, because a career coach like yourself or your colleagues, you can only say that so many times to students. They need to hear it from outside sources, especially those who have found a lot of success. That’s a good idea.

Paul Maniaci:

Meredith, how do you come up with the questions that you’re going to ask?

Meredith Metsker:

I like you, it’s kind of a mix. There are some standard questions that I ask every guest. Anyone who has listened to multiple episodes of this podcast is probably picked up on those by now. But typically, I will always ask the guest if there’s anything else they want to add about themselves or their role, just because it’s a nice opportunity for people to share whatever direction they want to take it. Maybe it’s their career journey, how they got to their current role, maybe it’s personal anecdotes about themselves, things like that. I like to open there.

I always ask guests, “What does career everywhere mean to you?” Because that’s the theme of this podcast. Someday, I want to do a compilation video where I cut together everyone’s answers to that question someday. Maybe next year when I’m back from eternity leave, I can do that. It’s those questions at the beginning that are pretty standard. Then, I close out every episode and a pretty standard way too. I always ask if there’s anything else the guests would like to add. That’s kind of a trick I learned in my journalism days.

I always did that as a reporter too, especially if I was interviewing somebody on video or audio, because that’s often where the golden quote would happen, because by then, it’s the end of the interview. The guest is loosened up, and often they will summarize what we’ve talked about. When I ask them, “Is there anything else they’d you’d like to add?” They’ll kind of summarize what we just talked about. I’m like, “Ha-ha, there’s the money quote. That’s going to be my soundbite. Thank you.”

Paul Maniaci:

That’s awesome.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, they’ll either summarize or there will just be some cool nugget of information that I wouldn’t have even thought to ask, so I always like to include, “Is there anything else you want to add?” Then at the end of every episode, and we’ll do this too at the end of our talk, is I do this, answer a question, leave a question thing. That was kind of a fun suggestion one of my colleagues gave me, and that’s been really fun, because the questions have ranged from very deep, like, “What does vulnerable leadership look like to you?” Or, “Who inspires you?”

To, literally, “Is a hot dog a sandwich?” That was a question in one of the early episodes that was from Gene Rhee at the University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business. That was a funny one. We had feelings about it. It generated discussion. Anyway, those are some of my standard questions. The other questions are very topic dependent. I don’t know if you do this as well with yours, but I send questions ahead of time just to give guests and myself an opportunity to prepare, just kind of understand the direction that the interview is going to go. I’m curious, do you send questions ahead of time or do you just go with the flow?

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, so in that pre-flight call that we have before we’re going to do the recording, I come in with the standard, the standard questions, the ones that roll over from one episode to the next. Then if I have some background information on the person ahead of time, I might pull some other potential questions from their bio that seem like would be relevant to whatever it’s that they’ve done or their specialization, and I’ll kind of pepper those in. Then, we’ll talk about that in the pre-flight.

Then after we’ve had our conversation, as you know, and yourself being a journalist, some of the questions also are the follow-up questions. They say something and then they’re like, “Aha, wait, we got to talk more about this.” “What do you mean a hot dog’s not a sandwich?” So then, you continue with that follow-up question. Some of the questions actually end up being populated in the pre-flight interview. Then I will send those to the interview subject ahead of time and just be like, “Okay, I cleaned this all up after our conversation. I think this might be the theme, but we’ll see where it’s going to go.

Take a look at this. Is there anything else that I left out that you want to talk about? Add that there. Give me your feedback. Are there certain questions that you don’t want to address?” Because we want to be mindful of that. Yeah, they’ll have that all ahead of time, so that they can prepare as much as they want to prepare. They’ll just know the questions that are coming before you’re like, “Tell me about this.” Yeah, so that’s helpful for them, I think.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I agree.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah. For us too, right, as far as having a framework or a structure.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s definitely helpful. Usually you can tell when you listen to podcasts which have that preparation and which don’t, because as much as we want the conversations to be authentic and casual, you also want to be prepared. There’s a happy medium there. You don’t want it to be so casual that it’s just like, “Hey, let’s get on a call and talk about whatever.”

No, it’s good to have a topic. It’s good to have just at least an idea of direction just to make sure everyone’s on the same page. You can keep it tight within your ideal timeframe. Okay, cool. On that note, I think that’s a good segue to my next question, which is what does your production process look like? We’ve talked a bit about your pre-production process, but what else goes into creating a podcast?

Paul Maniaci:

Let’s see what goes into creating a podcast. You have to source or recruit your next guests, and then you have to figure out how am I going to be able to get in touch with them? It can be easy or it can be hard. Maybe you get referrals for guests, some guests sent your way that you then follow up off. Part of it is figuring out who you’re going to speak with. Then after you figure that out, then you schedule time for a pre-flight call with them to get a better understanding of what their career looks like in a nutshell and get a better understanding of if I record this person, how’s it going to sound?

Not only is how it’s going to sound, but is it going to be engaging? Is it going to be a story? Is this person nervous? Like when we record it, are they going to be nervous? You try and avoid those things. Do they talk fast or they talk slow? Just getting a sense of who you’re going to be talking with. Then during that conversation, you also figure out this is going to be the theme for the episode. It might be something that I propose based on the interview subject’s bio or their LinkedIn profile, things that they talk about. That might be like, “Oh, they talk about this on LinkedIn.

Maybe they want to talk in more depth about it.” If not, it might just come out of a conversation that we have on the day and the pre-flight call. Then after we have the pre-flight call and we decide that we want this to continue, that we’re going to be recording this, then we need to figure out some scheduling. We look at the calendars. It doesn’t have to be necessarily in that moment, but that’s something that happens to happen. You need to figure out when’s this person going to be available. Then I have to coordinate that time with Peter from the media team, who’s going to be recording it.

Peter Shea is terrific. Two thumbs up, Peter. We have to coordinate that once you available, when am I available once the interview is subject available so that we can all come together. Then to actually do the recording, we use the same platform as you do, Riverside.fm. What ends up happening is similar to what you did with me, when we send out the calendar hold or the invite for the date of when we’re going to be recording, we’ll also send them the link and so that on the day of the recording, they just click on the link and they come on it.

Other than that, I send the questions ahead of time like you talked about, so make sure that they know what we’re going to be talking about and get any feedback from them. We scheduled it, so then we go ahead and we record the episode. I have my audio engineer Peter with me, so he’s doing all the recording and making sure that all the levels are right and all that good stuff, which I think you do.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep.

Paul Maniaci:

You’re like a one-person shop, which is awesome. But yeah, so he, he’s checking on all that stuff and I’m just trying to engage and listen very closely to what the other person is saying. I’m sure you learned this as journalist too, right, you want to ask the question and then kind of get out of the way and let them talk and then see what they say, and then if they say something that you need more information on, then you have a follow-up question. So that, we record that, record the whole thing.

Typically, we’ll record the whole interview, and then we’ll do, at the end of that, we’ll do the intro and the outro, and then that’ll all go to Peter. He’ll send me the transcript of the episode and I’ll kind of go through it. Actually, I think, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this as well, when you’re doing the interview, you’re kind of making notes of like, “Oh, that was a really good moment in the interview. I think that’s a piece that I want to keep,” because we record for an hour similar to today, but we don’t want the podcast to be an hour.

We want it to be between 15 and 30 minutes. We have to start thinking about which parts of the conversation should we keep. We do that through the transcript. I’ll send that to him, and then Peter will edit it together with the intro, the outro, and all the content. Then, we’ll share it. Once that’s complete, he’ll send it back to me. I’ll listen to it. I give him any feedback on that edit. He normally does a really great job. Maybe there’s just somewhere where it’s like, “Oh, I think we need a little more explanation before I ask this, because it’s unclear.” If you were there for the full hour, it makes sense, but if you cut it, sometimes you don’t know where it’s coming out of, so we have to fix that.

But after I listen to it, then I’ll share it with the person that I interviewed and make sure that they’re happy with it. We want them to be happy with it before we release it. Then they have to sign their media releases and they have to, if they work at the type of place where you have to get media clearance or standards and practices, they’ll send it there and then we wait for them to say, “It’s good to go.” It’ll come back to us and then we’ll publish it and we’ll do all the marketing and stuff on our end and share it across the university and on our social media.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. To confirm, Peter, is he like an in-House person in the career center?

Paul Maniaci:

No, Peter works for our media team for the School of Professional Studies. Then, he just happens to support me on this. But yeah, he’s external to CDL and he works on a whole bunch of other media projects as well for the university.

Meredith Metsker:

He has the role of producer during the recording process and he edits the audio, it sounds like.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, cool. That’s really handy to have that in-house.

Paul Maniaci:

For sure. Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I’ve done that post-production part of the process in a couple of different ways. At uConnect, I’m fortunate enough to be able to outsource all post-production to a podcast editing agency. They handle all the audio production, all of the video production. I’m the producer, so I work with them on the general sound, the vibe, the look, the branding, all of that. But they do the actual editing, which is a huge help, because at my last company, I also hosted and produced a podcast and I did all the editing myself. That is so much work. It’s so much work. It’s like a full-time job in and of itself.

Paul Maniaci:

Right.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s like one of those things where audio and video editing, you only notice it if it’s not good. You want the editing be so good, so smooth that no one notices anything is amiss. They just listen or watch and they don’t have any issues. That’s cool that you have in-house talent that can do that. That’s a huge time and money saver for sure.

Paul Maniaci:

Well, it’s also helpful, because the podcast is just one of the things that I’m doing. Similar with Peter, he is helping with the podcast, but then he’s also going to the hot campus or whatever. It’s just one of our many responsibilities. It’s good to be able to just have to do a portion of it, because I just have to coach students and create events and programs and things like that.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, for sure. I would also add that I’ve heard that some other career centers who do podcasts, I’m thinking of Michael DeAngelis at the University of Pennsylvania with his podcast, CS Radio, they have, I think they have a student team.

Paul Maniaci:

Oh, cool.

Meredith Metsker:

Like one or two students who do post-production. They kind of get that experience.

Paul Maniaci:

That’s great.

Meredith Metsker:

Michael gets help with the production. That’s another idea for folks who are watching and listening.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, that’s great. I have had students that will help me with the marketing and creating the marketing content. That’s helpful. Once we figure out what the theme of episode is going to be and the tagline for it, then they’ll create the content that’ll go on uConnect and our social media.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it’s win-win. You guys get the help you need. Students get some real world experience.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah. We had one episode where one of the students found the speaker and was really interested in the speaker’s background. Actually I was just like, “Why don’t you interview her?” She actually was able to say that she had podcast experience too, where she actually got to interview this person and she did a great job. That was something that we did too.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s awesome. Kind of on that note, I wanted to pick your brain a little bit about how you do the interviewing, because I think sometimes people underestimate the amount of skill it takes to interview well, to actively listen, to be able to come up with questions on the spot that fit what the guest just said. I’m curious, how do you think through that? What’s your approach to interviewing?

Paul Maniaci:

To give you a little bit of context, as an undergrad at Syracuse, I studied television and film. I’ve always been interested in the media space. I’ve always liked listening to people do interviews, so I think that’s something too. I listen to a lot of podcasts and prior to getting into higher education, when I was doing those internships and freelancing, as I was trying to work in the film or television industry in New York City, I was struggling so much with figuring out what I was going to do. It’s kind of funny that I ended up as a coach helping other people avoid some of those struggles. But at that time, I started interviewing people.

You can think of it as an informational interview, but I was actually interviewing people that I thought, this was 20 years ago, I was interviewing people that I thought had interesting careers. Back then, I started coming up with the questions. If I was interviewing you Meredith, whether it was today or when you were a journalist, I’d want to know how did you become a journalist and the nitty-gritty? I’d ask you all the questions about that. Back then, I think, is when I got comfortable with asking these questions. I’ve always preferred to ask the question as opposed to be asked the question. Right?

Meredith Metsker:

I’m putting you on the hot seat today.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, exactly. I’ve always been the question asker. That just always came naturally to me. I like to find out what motivates people and why people do the things they do, and especially what is it about the thing that you do that really excites you or that you’re passionate about? I was doing that 20 years ago, and I was just doing it on my own, and I would just go out and interview people that I thought were interesting. I took all that content. I put it on my website. It doesn’t exist anymore, the website, but it was called The Career Cookbook.

Meredith Metsker:

Nice.

Paul Maniaci:

I would just go, I went and I talked to people that were happy in the careers that they had, but they were kind of off the beaten track or path. I talked to someone who was on Saturday Night Live, I talked to someone who was on the Food Network. I would go and talk to DJs. I talked to someone who created pop-up books. These are all things that you really have to dedicate your time to and be passionate about to be successful, because it’s not like, all right, I’m going to be an accountant. I go to school, I get my accounting degree, I take my certification. I’m an accountant. It’s not that linear.

I just have started having these conversations then, and that’s where I became comfortable interviewing, I think. When I’m thinking about interviewing people, I really want to get to the bottom of what is it that excites you or what makes you happy? Why do you do the thing that you do? I try and think of it in that framework or that context, and then obviously I’ll do research on the person ahead of time as much as I can, so that I’ll be able to formulate some of those questions and then be able to ask those questions. I think also being a coach has trained me to do some of that, because you’re meeting with students and you’ve never met with them before.

You’re meeting with them, let’s say for the first time, and you have to get them to talk about themselves. You have to be able to ask them questions and get a response, and you have to be able to be vulnerable and share with them, and hopefully they’ll share back. That coaching has really helped with that as well. Actually, if I can ever figure out how to implement this in my personal life, I’ll be doing really good. But as far as my career, it’s so much easier to talk with students in something like this. Hopefully you could tell that I’m really interested in podcasts, but when you get someone to talk about something that they’re interested in, the level of enthusiasm and energy, it’s palpable.

Then you can have a really good conversation and then you kind of get out of the way. One last thing I’ll say on that, I went to Syracuse. So when I was doing this website where I was interviewing people, I would just reach out to people that I thought were cool, doing cool things. I was very fortunate that one of the alums who went to Syracuse, his name is Albert Maysles, and he’s one of the founders of the documentary film movement as we know today. He just happened to go to Syracuse, so I reached out to him as an alum from Syracuse, and I interviewed him, and it was one of the biggest thrills of any of the interviews I’ve ever done.

He was going around, he was following JFK when JFK was running for president, he was doing documentaries on the Beatles, he was following the Rolling Stones around. Big, really important person, but super humble. He worked into his 80s or until he passed away. But when I was interviewing him, I was doing research on him, and I talked to him about it. One of the things that he said, and that’s true to the documentary movement, which I think is true to what we’re doing as journalists, is, “I think you just have to figure out what is the question that you want to ask, ask the question, and then get out of the way.” Because they’re not here to, they don’t want to know necessarily what we think.

They want to know what the person that we’re talking to thinks. That’s also a tenet of documentary filmmaking. You don’t want to put your perspective on it, you just want to aim the camera at it, and then you see how things unfold. That’s kind of the approach that I take with this to the best of my ability. They don’t want to hear what Paul thinks necessarily, unless it relates to something, maybe there’s some career advice or career development stuff that I can add to that, but I want it to be the experience or the story of the person that is here to talk to students.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I could not agree more about the ask the question, get out of the way thing. I think that’s maybe one of my biggest pet peeves in podcasts I listen to, or even interviews, like television news interviews I listen to, is where the interviewer takes forever to ask the question. There’s things like what I’m doing right now, which is responding to what you just said to transition into the next question. But sometimes people just talk or they interrupt their guest. I’m like, “No, let them talk. Let them answer and then respond.”

Paul Maniaci:

Unless it’s something where it’s like they want to know your opinion. If that’s the purpose of whatever it is that you’re doing, then sure, share your opinion. But if they’re really here to listen about the other person’s story, I want the other person to be able to share their story. Not to say that, similar to today, hopefully there’s some moments in here where we’re on the same page and one thing that one person says leads to another thing, but that’s very organic.

It’s not that I’m trying to steal your thunder or you’re trying to steal my thunder. It should be a conversation where there’s some back and forth. But I find when you’re doing more of a traditional interview, like with the leadership podcast, I want the expert to share their opinion. Then if I have a follow-up question, then they can share more about what they think. That’s kind of the approach. Does that make sense?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

Paul Maniaci:

Okay.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, and as we were talking about the importance of actively listening and asking follow-up questions based on what folks were saying, I think I just want to really reiterate the importance of that, that it’s, of course, you should come in with some preparation with some questions just in case your brain blanks, which will happen sometimes, you have a question to default to, but you should always be open and flexible to asking different questions. Because I always think back to, I think it was like the first interview I did when I was a sports reporting intern at a newspaper back in college, and I was such a nerd.

I showed up to an interview with the women’s soccer coach at my university, and I didn’t have a reporter’s notebook yet. I showed up with a literal binder, so dorky, a binder with lined paper, and I had a list of questions, and I just asked my list of questions. I think back on that experience and just kind of put my face in my hands go, “Oh my gosh, we’ve come a long way since then.” Now I have my list of questions, but as you have probably noticed, I’ve deviated a little bit.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah. I think you just have to be open to wherever the conversation goes too. You can either decide, this is interesting, let’s follow that, or let’s rein it back in. Like, “Let’s get back. I really want to know. It’s a hot dog sandwich. Let’s get back to that. Let’s talk about that.”

Meredith Metsker:

Earlier, you touched on marketing your podcast, so I think that’s a really important part of the process, is getting it in front of people so that they can consume it. How do you go about marketing the Rising To The Top podcast?

Paul Maniaci:

As I mentioned, I am lucky. I have the support of our Career Design Lab interns who will help create the visuals, and I’ll share with them the content. I’ll name the episode and we’ll spotlight what the theme is, and then they’ll help create the content. Then I’ll proof it, and before we release it, we’ll make sure that everything is good to go. But as far as the marketing, we put a banner on our uConnect website, so we’ll put that on the main page. It’ll be one of our scrolling banners, like when there’s a new episode coming out, or if we’re highlighting something. We also have a widget on our website for the podcast.

There’s a podcast page so people can go and find all the episodes that we’ve done. Those are different places where we can market it. Then we also put it on our social channels. We’ll put it on our LinkedIn, we’ll put it on our Instagram. There as well, it could be a story or maybe it’s a post. Then we also share it across the university. Within the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University, there’s a bunch of different ways to engage with students. It might be like I could do a, I don’t this regularly, but thinking maybe doing it for the new term, we could do a podcast media campaign where we could just let them know that we have a podcast and send out a newsletter.

But then the university also has different multiple newsletters that they send out to the students and staff. Whenever I have a new episode, I share it with the appropriate people, and then they’ll publish it in those newsletters. Also, we put it on, we have some screens on campus, some TV screens on campus. When there’s a new episode, we put it on there. Actually last year, for the first time on the Columbia University campus on 116th Street, where all the students are and where the quad is and all that stuff, there was this place called College Walk. For the first time last year, they created a, I talked to the creative team, and they created a poster.

It was actually a poster that anyone who was walking down that path, whether they went to the School of Professional Studies or otherwise, other Columbia schools could actually see it too. We market it in many different ways. Then I also share it with whoever it is that I’ve interviewed, and then they can share it out too. I’ve found with certain people that works better than with others if they have a good following or they just know a lot of people. Those are a bunch of different ways that we do the marketing. How about, how does your marketing work?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. In terms of our marketing, we do a bunch of different things. Like you, we also push out the episode on social media. We primarily are active on LinkedIn, because that’s where our audience is. Then our weekly Career Everywhere newsletter is a big distribution engine for the podcast. Anytime there’s a new episode, like new episodes come out on Tuesdays, the newsletter comes out on Thursdays. I’ll promote any new episodes in that newsletter. It goes out to over 1,800 people now. That’s a big one. Let’s see, what else do we do? We have the new digital Career Everywhere community, so new episodes also get published in there.

Like you, I also share the episode with the guest. I give them a link to their episode, landing page, their featured image, any info they need about the launch. I encourage them to share if they want to. Of course, they’re not required to, but I do mention that usually that helps get more eyeballs and ears on the episode. That’s a few different things we do. I think those are kind of the main ones. But one major thing that has been helpful for us in terms of building the audience has just been consistency.

We publish every other Tuesday and have since January of 2023, and I’m even hoping to do that while I’m on maternity leave the last three months of this year. The consistency, I think, keeps people coming back to Spotify, to Apple, to all those other platforms so that they will subscribe. Anytime a new episode is pushed out, they’re getting notified on those platforms as well. Those are kind of a few things that we do that have worked well.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, no, I’ve seen the newsletters. That’s normally where I see the mention of the new episode. I also found that we’re trying to survey some of our listeners as well, although it’s hard to get a breakdown of who’s listening where. We could see like-

Meredith Metsker:

Yes. It’s so hard.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, I don’t know like are these students? Is this my mom listening to it, or a friend or whatever, my coworkers? It’s hard to know who’s listening, but I did send out a survey to students just telling them about the podcast, and some of them responded, and one of them. Even though it was a small number of responses, one of the things that I found in those who did respond was that a lot of them heard about it from somebody else. That referral piece is really important.

Then a lot of them had said that they had listened to multiple episodes, which is good, so they’re coming back. I know that that’s really important. I’ve heard, and I’ve listened to people talk about podcasts, because I’m really interested in it, and they say that that’s one of the really important things is getting other people to tell their friends about it, and then also to like and subscribe and all that good stuff, leave a review. We put that in our episodes too.

Like, “If you can, fill out our survey and leave a review if you like it,” as ways to just kind of get the word out. Then also something like this, like the fact that I’m on this podcast that might help other people. If they’re interested in what I say, then maybe they’ll come and listen to what I’ve said on my podcast. Kind of getting yourself out there, I hear that’s also really helpful. And getting yourself on different listserv distributions as well for podcasts is another.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, I haven’t done that one yet, but that’s another thing I’m going to try.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. One thing, I didn’t do it quite as much with the Career Everywhere podcast, but the podcast I produced at my last company, the title of the podcast was also really important to the marketing. I was specifically using keywords in the title. It was a customer support audience, so people working in customer support or customer success, and I named it Beyond the Queue: Inside Customer Support. Specifically, I wanted customer support in that title, so that if anyone was Googling customer support podcasts, that one popped up. Even if it was a relatively new podcast, that popped up as a top search result. I think that helped in that podcast’s case.

Paul Maniaci:

Very cool.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I can nerd out about this stuff all day.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah. These are some of the tricks of the trade.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep. For my next question, I want to go back a little bit to what you were saying about measuring who was listening. I think anyone who has ever done podcasting knows that that is difficult, but how do you go about measuring engagement or measuring success? How do you know it’s working?

Paul Maniaci:

That’s a great question, and I’m sure my supervisors in the department will want to know as well. Thanks for asking that. There’s a few different ways that you can measure it, so we can find out how many people are listening to each episode based on the platform. Whether it’s SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, you can actually go and see how many listens you get per episode, and you can do that, you could track that. I spoke with a podcast marketing specialist and she said that that first month is really important as far as that’s how they do some of the tracking.

Trying to focus a little bit more on how many people are listening in that first month when it first drops. But that’s not to say that people might not find it later. You can measure the first month and then you can measure it from month to month, and we track it that way, and we could see, okay, this month had four or lifetime listens is 400 listens or whatever. That’s one way you can measure it, but the tricky part there is who’s actually listening to it? I can hypothesize or I could speculate that the people who are listening to it are probably Columbia students, probably the School of Professional Studies, because that’s who we’re sharing it with, and it’s living on our website.

The likelihood is that they might be the ones who are finding it. But to be honest with you, like I said before, it could be people that know the interview subject that are going in there, listening to it. It could be people that I work with. It could just be random people. It’s hard to know. That’s one metric, but I don’t know how definitive that is. But from that, you can make certain assumptions. For instance, let’s say there’s an episode where you talk to someone who works for a very popular company. If that gets a lot of listens, then I can probably speculate that, okay, it’s because this person works at Google or this person works at Morgan Stanley.

I know that a lot of our students want to work there. The likelihood is that it’s probably our students, or if it’s not our students, it’s people who want to work at these companies. Then you can say, “Oh, this episode was probably a success because people want to work here and they want to hear from people who were able to land that gig.” That’s one of the things you can do. But even though, that’s not foolproof, or maybe it’s the topic that maybe the topic is really, like you said, customer success or whatever, maybe people really want to learn about customer success, and so all the customer success people listen into this particular episode.

That’s one way you can measure it based on just lessons or in your case, I guess, views as well, if you’re doing it on YouTube or Vimeo, wherever you host it. But another way that I like to measure the success of the podcast, and this is something that I’m proud of, and some of this is based on the marketing that I’ve done, and then also just building up the library. You mentioned you have 40-something episodes, which is amazing. I wish I could have that cadence going. Some of it is just like you said, if people know that it’s dropping once a month, they’re probably more likely to tune in, because they know it’s coming and it shows up in their queue and they listen to it.

That’s a great way to build audience too. But as far as the reach of it, I’ve been getting, or we’ll get messages, I’ll get messages on LinkedIn, I’ll get messages to my personal email or to the Career Design Lab email where people will reach out and ask if they can, they’ll say, “We found the podcast Rising To The Top,” and they’ll either say, “I have people that I think would be interested. Would you be interested in having these people on the podcast?” Somehow they found it, so it’s out there. That’s telling, right? That’s pretty regular. Each semester there’ll be people that’ll reach out to me randomly and just say, “I want to be on the podcast.”

Then, I’ll decide if it makes sense or not. But I’ve gotten some of my guests from that, so that shows that people are finding it. It obviously helps that we’re at Columbia University, but people are finding it somehow. Then I’ve also had people that have reached out to me and said, whether it’s a friend or a former colleague, and they’ll say, “I know someone who wants to do a podcast, can they talk to you about how you launched your podcast.” I love talking about this stuff. I’m like, “Sure, I’ll do it.” That’s another way people know that it exists, and so they find it, and then I’ve been able to start talking at conferences about it. That’s another way that I think we can measure the success that people actually want to hear Paul talk about podcasts.

Then also, the other way that I would measure the success of it is the engagement of certain Columbia stakeholders. It allows me to talk to alumni of the university, in the School of Professional studies or otherwise, I’ve been able to build relationships. That, I think, speaks to engagement. I’ve been able to talk to faculty members. I’ve been able to talk to program leads at the university as well. You have all those different people that are interested in sharing their advice to students or otherwise. I think that’s a better way to measure the engagement and the fact that people are finding it and want to be on it, I think says something about it.

That’s how I would do it. Now obviously, if we had millions of listeners, then you’d be like, “Yeah, people are engaged. I’ve got millions of listeners.” But also, I think you have to be very intentional and from each semester to the next, I try and kind of add more to it as far as is the marketing the same from one episode to the next, that consistency? Do they know that every month an episode is coming out?

Do they know that it’s going to show up in the newsletter? Those consistencies that you’re talking about, I think if I can get that going, I’ll be able to continue to increase the growth of it. But I think the engagement is there, it’s just a question of how do I now… I want to see a spike. I want it to continue to grow.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, exactly. It’s how do you scale that initial growth? I take a similar approach to you where it’s that mix of qualitative and quantitative data. Of course, I’m looking at the number of downloads. Sometimes I’ll look at listening time. A lot of that, you can find in the analytics, like the backend analytics section of Apple or Spotify, or if you’re like us, we use a podcast hosting platform. Ours is called Transistor, and it will kind of put all that data and analytics in one dashboard. That’s helpful. It will show me, I think it will show me even age range, different age ranges of who’s listening, where they’re listening from.

Paul Maniaci:

Oh, that’s cool. Is that a paid platform?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Paul Maniaci:

I’ll have to see if that’s in the budget.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s the kicker. It is a paid platform, and I think we’re on the second tier, so I can also put in ads, mid-roll ads in our episodes. I look at that for sure. You can always see the number of subscribers if you go into Apple Podcasts or Spotify. But then like you, I’m looking at the anecdotal evidence too. If people reach out to me about it, like you reached out to me about the podcast. There was one time our editing agency accidentally, there was an error at the very end of the episode.

There was an editing error, and I got an email from a listener about it. She’s like, “Just so you know, there’s a small error at the end.” Of course, at first, my initial reaction was, oh no, I’m so embarrassed. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that happened. We got it fixed. Then later I was like, “Hey, that means she listened to the very end.” I guess that’s a win. Yeah, it’s things like that. It’s people reaching out about the podcast.

In our case, of course, uConnect is a business, so if people want to schedule a demo of our product, they can do that on their website. There’s a form, and in that form is a spot to say, how did you hear about us? Every once in a while, people will say, “Oh, I heard about you from the podcast. I listened to the podcast.” I’m like, “Yes.”

Paul Maniaci:

I’m trying to, one of the things that we’re trying to do too is after we do the interviews, and this is something that I’m going to work on for the upcoming semester, is then how do you begin to leverage those relationships? If you find someone that has a really interesting job, is there some way to have them, how do you build a relationship between them and their organization and our students? Kind of like what you were saying. Yeah. But that’s kind of the next steps.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, I do want to be mindful of our time here. I know we’re already over a little bit.

Paul Maniaci:

Sure.

Meredith Metsker:

What advice would you have or give to other career leaders who may want to launch their own podcast, like you have?

Paul Maniaci:

The advice is just do it. This is the second one that I’ve launched at a career center. The first one, I did on my own without any support, I should say. I had the support of the students working in my office, but I bought a cheap microphone and I had a headset, and I used my computer from home. I had some software that was already on the computer that I didn’t have to pay extra for, and I just did it. One of the great things about podcasting is that you can do it at low cost, no to low cost, I would say.

It’s a great way to have a conversation with students or have a dialogue. Meredith, as you mentioned, I think that’s a great idea, if you have students that are interested. When I was at the previous institution, I recorded some of the episodes with them. If they have a genuine interest, include them in the process, whether it’s creating your marketing, doing the actual recording or engineering, or editing the episodes, maybe they’re helping you recruit speakers, that type of thing. But I guess the advice is that if you want to do it, just do it. Just put yourself out there and try it. Talk to Meredith.

I’m happy to talk to you, talk to someone who’s done it. I found that people that work in this field are very open to talking to other people. If it’s something that you’re genuinely interested in doing, just anything else in life, just give it a shot. It’s super rewarding. It’s fun if you like to, I don’t necessarily like to hear the sound of my own voice, but I do like to talk to people and learn about them. This allows me to do that and not to share it with others. Yeah, I would just say, if you’re thinking about doing it, don’t think about it for too long.

Just do it and figure out if you can do it at low cost. Because if that’s the case, then the answer will probably be yes. Then it becomes more about how do you manage your time? Because if it’s not costing a lot of money, then they can just say, “Okay, when are you going to do this?” Just kind of come up with that plan of, I’m going to do this and this is how I’m going to do it, then refine that. Talk to other people who’ve done it, because you can do it with very little support.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I would agree with that. I was just thinking, maybe Paul, you and I can put together little lists of some of the software we use or the tools we use, our microphones, our headphones, just to give people a starting point, because sometimes that can be a blocker is like, “I don’t know where to record. I don’t know what microphone to get.” Maybe you and I can put together a list that we can share on the episode landing page.

Paul Maniaci:

Sure. Podcasting has become so prevalent that you can go and listen to other people who are doing podcasting. There’s podcasting resources available for free online, and you can go to events or workshops or whatever it is. There’s courses on it. It’s definitely something that’s, not only is it popular, but it’s attainable. If you’re interested in doing it, why not try?

Meredith Metsker:

Sure. Yeah. I think something that came out of the pot or the pandemic era is that people are very forgiving of low production value. Not saying that it’s bad, of course, you want good audio quality, that’s probably the most important thing. But you don’t have to be in a studio. You don’t need lighting. You don’t need a huge production set-up. You just need a good internet connection, decent audio. That could be a mic. It could be, I’ve used earbuds with a mic on the wire before. But yeah, I think I love your advice. Just do it. Just start, give it a shot. If you’re a naturally curious person, this is a perfect medium for you.

Paul Maniaci:

If you work at a career center or at a university, you might be able to ask your media team for support. They’re not charging us for that. That’s one of the ways that they support us. They may have the equipment if you need to go to a physical studio, or they may have Riverside, such as our university does. They may already have the resources that you need.

You just need to figure out, as we mentioned, it can be very kind of lo-fi, and it’s easy to get off the ground. But just think about, I think the most important thing is thinking about why you want to do the podcast, who are your audience is, and what is it that you want to talk about? Then, you can kind of brainstorm through that and work your way through the process.

Meredith Metsker:

Cannot agree more. Start with the why, and then we’ll figure out the rest.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Well, Paul, is there anything else about our topic that you would like to add?

Paul Maniaci:

It’s just, podcasting is a fun medium, and as you mentioned, it’s a forgiving medium. If you have any interest in doing it, just, like we said, just try it.

Meredith Metsker:

Awesome. Love that. Okay. Well, Paul, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you about podcasting or anything else, where’s a good place for them to do that?

Paul Maniaci:

I think the best place would be to find me on LinkedIn and request to connect with me there. Then you can read all my musings on what’s going on with the kids, Keanu Reeves, the Knicks are winning, and other career related and podcasting topics.

Meredith Metsker:

Perfect. All right. Now to close this out, I’ll do the answer a question, leave a question thing that I do at the end of every interview. I’ll ask you a question that our last guest left for you, and then you will leave a question for the next guest.

Paul Maniaci:

Okay.

Meredith Metsker:

Our last guests were Michele Doran and Melanie Murphy of Denison University. They left the following question for you. If you knew that education or salary wasn’t a factor and if no one would judge you, what would you do with your life?

Paul Maniaci:

I guess the question, I don’t know if this is embedded in the question, does it mean that you don’t have to have it necessarily, because I would say, like if I didn’t have to be athletic, I would love to be a professional basketball player. But I don’t know if that, like this is just saying if money wasn’t an issue, but I’d still have to be able to play basketball, right? I’m not great at it. But other than that, I really enjoy doing this.

I think I would love to be able to continue having these types of conversations and hopefully helping people figure out what it is that they want to do or learn something. It would be educational, but hopefully engaging and entertaining as well. Some type of podcast. Because I love talking to people about their motivations and what excites them and how they got from point A to point B. That’s something that I really enjoy.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. So you either want to be a professional basketball player or a full-time podcaster?

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, if I didn’t-

Meredith Metsker:

Or both. Maybe both.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah. Yeah. If athletic ability wasn’t holding me back, professional basketball player.

Meredith Metsker:

There, you can go be on Team USA in the Olympics too.

Paul Maniaci:

There we go.

Meredith Metsker:

All right, well, Paul, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Paul Maniaci:

I know this has been very meta on a podcast talking about podcasts, and I want to ask the next guest, if you’re listening to, hopefully they’re listening to podcasts, if you’re listening to podcasts, what types of podcasts do you enjoy listening to? You can name the type of podcast or specific podcasts in particular. For instance, when I’m listening to podcasts, I like to listen to Conan O’Brien’s podcast.

I think he’s a great interviewer. Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, and I’ll listen to SmartLess as well. Then I listen to some Six Trophies, which is a basketball podcast, but they’re typically related to my interests. But I’d love to know if our next guest listens to podcasts, what are you listening to? If you do not listen to a podcast, then can you share a recent book or movie that you either read or saw that you’d like to recommend?

Meredith Metsker:

Awesome. It’s a great question. I love that question.

Paul Maniaci:

Thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

I’ll share the podcast that I listen to most often. It’s going to be very predictable because again, former journalist here, so I listen to like listen to news I usually go to is the, it’s called the Mo News podcast, M-O, so it’s like a journalist. Former, I think he was former CBS and Bloomberg or something like that. They just kind of cover the quick hit headlines of the day, and I just like a quick overview of what’s going on, so I’m generally aware and then, yeah-

Paul Maniaci:

That’s great.

Meredith Metsker:

… that’s what I listen to.

Paul Maniaci:

I’m going to check that out. Very cool.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Cool. Well, Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. This was a really fun conversation. Clearly we went over time because there’s just so much to cover. But just thank you so much again. I really appreciate you sharing your time and your wisdom.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, it was my pleasure. I had a lot of fun. Hopefully, the listeners will find something useful from this and go make your own podcast, everybody.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, you heard it here, go do it. You can do it. All right. Well Paul, thank you again and have a good rest of your week.

Paul Maniaci:

Yeah, my pleasure. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.