“If you’ve ever thought about creating a podcast or if it’s something you may want to do in the future, you definitely need to listen to this episode!“

Episode 151

with Brandee Gaar and Kelly A McWilliams

Highlights:

• Meet Kelly A McWilliams
• The Path to Starting Your Own Podcast
• Being Consistent Is Not an Easy Task
• The ROI of Podcasting
• Tips for Starting Your Own Podcast

Have you considered starting your own podcast?

Let me guess – you get this great idea of starting a podcast but then all the questions start coming up: how much does it cost; how much time is it going to take me; how’s it going to help my brand; am I even going to be able to fit it into my busy schedule’ what do I even need to do to start a podcast, and so on.

Today, my guest Kelly McWilliams, the podcast host of Wedding Planning Decisions, This vs That with Kelly McWilliams, is here to tell us all about how she created a podcast that is to educate engaged couples. Kelly shares how her podcast has really elevated her brand, her wedding planning company and elevated her in the industry. She uses her podcast to save her time because now she can refer her clients back to past episodes to learn about different things about planning their wedding.

Kelly doesn’t sugarcoat it at all. Yes, there’s so much good that’s come from creating her podcast – but it’s a lot of hard work as well. Kelly is here today to share with us everything she learned along the way about starting your own podcast the right way!

So, if you’ve ever thought about creating a podcast or if it’s something you may want to do in the future, you definitely need to listen to this episode!

Meet Kelly A. McWilliams

“Kelly started her podcast in 2020 during Covid.“

Kelly started her company Kelly Williams Celebrations, Weddings and Parties 22 years ago. She does almost exclusively destination weddings, but she’s in the destination area and only travels for international weddings, maybe once a year. Most of the weddings she does fall in the 150k to 550k budget and they’re almost always two to four days events. 

She started her podcast in 2020 during Covid. She explains that she wanted to do a podcast for probably two years prior to that, but she just didn’t think she could because she had so many fears around it. But after Covid happened, her friend Kimberly was able to convince her to give it a shot, and now Wedding Planning Decisions, This vs That with Kelly McWilliams is in its fourth season!

The Path to Starting Your Own Podcast

“Kelly decided to go with creating a B2C podcast because she found that there were so many podcasts for wedding businesses, but there was a missing element in the B2C.”

The first decision Kelly had to make was B2B vs B2C, meaning will her podcast be about educating other wedding pros or educating wedding couples. She decided to go with creating a B2C podcast because she found that there were so many podcasts for wedding businesses, but there was a missing element in the B2C, and she realized that she could fill that gap.

Kelly’s next step was taking a course on podcasting. She gave herself a very strict deadline and created a map of all the goals she wanted to accomplish in a certain amount of time. She shares that taking the course really helped her decide on the format of her podcast. Next, she took some time to figure out how many different episodes she could do. She started writing down different ideas and titles, and pretty soon she had over 30 different ideas. She realized that if you’re talking about something that you’re an expert in and you have a lot of knowledge about, things are much easier and simpler.

Being Consistent Is Not an Easy Task

“Kelly shares that with all this additional work, it takes her on average three hours on every episode, start to finish.“

There are roughly over 4 million podcasts out there, but less than 200,000 of them are active. Staying consistent is not easy. 

Kelly was quite aware of this when she was starting her podcast so the first thing she decided was to batch-record all of her episodes during the slowest period in her wedding-planning business. Next, she decided to hire an editor because DIY was not cutting it here.

Because Kelly has a different co-host every week, she also needs to do a lot of prep work before and after each episode: sending them the document with all the information they’ll need, forms for them to fill that include their bio and headshot, creating all the graphics to promote the episode on social media, etc. Kelly shares that with all this additional work, it takes her on average three hours on every episode, start to finish.

Her very first season, which she recorded in the midst of Covid, had 26 episodes and she launched her podcast with seven episodes in the books. After that, she took a six-week hiatus, and then she recorded season two which has 12 episodes, as well as seasons three and four. Again, Kelly batch records theses over the course of 8 weeks.

The ROI of Podcasting

“The biggest ROI Kelly got from her podcast were the accolades that she’s received from some major players in the wedding industry: Martha Stewart Weddings, Brides Magazine and Wedding Wire, to name a few.“

Going into podcasting, Kelly knew that it was going to be an expense for her. But at that time, her return was that she was educating her potential clients on making smart wedding decisions. And because her show talks about decisions, it’s affecting the wedding vendors that they work with and their creative partners, as much as it is benefiting their clients and engaged couples in the end. Now, in her 4th season Kelly decided to monetize her podcast through sponsorships.

The biggest ROI Kelly got from her podcast were the accolades that she’s received from some major players in the wedding industry: Martha Stewart Weddings, Brides Magazine and Wedding Wire, to name a few. They’ve all recognized and acknowledged her podcast, and that helped tremendously with her reputation.

If we want to get our word out there, there’s only so much we can do through social media. With podcasting, you can completely control how you send our word into the world and maybe even how it’s received. Positioning yourself as an expert in whatever it is that you’re talking about, also gives you the capability to raise other people up.

Tips for Starting Your Own Podcast

“Kelly’s first tip for starting your own podcast is to identify a gap in the market and fill it.”

Next, take a course in podcasting. Making a podcast is not only recording an episode, there is so much that goes into it and an online course can provide you with tips and tricks, and useful resources. 

Podcasting is flexible so make it your own, do what feels right to you. Co-host or no co-host, script or no script – this is all up to you. And the best part is – you can change your mind anytime you want!

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