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Welcome to Help Me Podcast, a show designed to help you

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launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino and twice

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a week I will release a new episode with different tips and tricks

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for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering to planning

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intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a bite sized

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tip to help you podcast.

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Welcome back to the show. Welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in once

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again today I want to talk about editing a podcast. And

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for a lot of people, editing a podcast can be

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a new skill that you're trying to learn and maybe it's something that you just

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picked up. I just want to talk a little bit about editing, not specifically how

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to do it, but I want to talk about not over editing and not

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editing to perfection. I've heard a lot of people say that

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editing is the biggest time suck when it comes to podcasting. What

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I want to talk about is embracing minimalist podcast

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editing and what I mean by that is not over editing.

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And I think as a new podcast and I can say this

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from experience, that I think you can kind of get sucked into this

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trap of not thinking that you're

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speaking perfect and you want to hide it in editing or you want to fix

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everything in editing and make yourself sound perfect. So that

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way when you release, you think it's the best product and

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there's nothing wrong with wanting to be good at something or to be the best

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at it. But I think there's a point of

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diminished returns with podcast editing and I think there can even

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be a little bit of a beauty in a minimalistic

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approach to editing where you leave in some UMS or you leave in

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some stutters and stuff like that. I think sometimes if you over edit your

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podcast, you can take a lot of the voice or the character out of

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it. And I think there's a few benefits to having a minimalistic

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approach to your podcast editing. The first thing is just simply

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saving you time. We all know podcast editing can be the most

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time consuming part of creating a podcast. And if you're

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in there and you're listening to every single

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word and making sure they sound perfect and removing every

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single or every single filler word, that can add up as

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far as time. And you can easily have a 30 minutes.

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Podcast take you 2 hours to edit if

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you're super detailed. And I remember when I first started editing, I was

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really nervous to edit other people's podcasts and I wanted them to sound perfect

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and I would literally go through it once and edit it and

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then I would go through it again and reedit the first

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edit. So I would do a second pass at the editing and I

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did that for almost a year and I thought that

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I was being perfect with it and removing every single word that I needed

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to. And then I kind of stopped and thought what I

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was doing and I was actually keeping track of how many

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more words I removed. And it was like a handful of words. It was probably

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like five words for a 45 minutes episode. And I was like, Is

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that really worth the time? Is anybody noticing this? So

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what I did was I didn't tell, and maybe not ethically, but I didn't tell

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my clients that I was switching from the

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two edits to the one edit per episode, right? I didn't tell them I wasn't

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doing a second round anymore, which, to be fair, I never told them that I

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was doing two rounds to begin with. But anyways, the point of the

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story is that they never noticed and they didn't say anything.

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And then that kind of was like a hard lesson

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for me. And it was like, wow, I was doing all of

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these episodes twice and charging the same rate,

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and I was just doubling my amount of work that I had for

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myself for, again, the diminished returns,

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there's hardly any more benefit for doing it a second time.

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So that was like the start of my minimalistic approach.

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And nowadays, I think maybe I've

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gotten into a groove of just like, being able to do it kind of without

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thinking about it, but I think doing whatever is best for

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the conversation. Like, sometimes you try to remove an um and

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it's blended into another word, and if you remove

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it, you can hear the cut or you can hear a stutter or something and

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it's like, just leave it, right? If it doesn't come out easy, just leave

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it in and keep moving, because then you don't have to spend time making that

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cut, listening to it five times to make sure the fade is right and everything

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like that, it's like, just leave it in. And I could

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go on and on about how this could save you time, but taking a minimalistic

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approach and only removing the things that really sound not good or

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really interrupt the flow of the conversation, get rid of those things and then

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leave everything else, I think, could be a huge time saver when you're actually editing

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your podcast. Now, the next thing that having this

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minimalistic approach could also help is maintaining

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the human element of a podcast. I think sometimes people go in there

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and they remove every single um. They remove the

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breaths even, or like laughter or

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every single thing that doesn't sound like a

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robotic person speaking. And you kind of like, take the

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human part out of it, right? Like, nobody's really perfect. And

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with a podcast and a conversation, it's not like you're

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doing multiple takes at it, right? You're not having a

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conversation or an interview with somebody until it's perfect. You're just having a

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conversation. So sometimes if you do stumble over your words, I think it is

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helpful to leave that in there to remind people that like oh, these are people

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talking. It's not Siri talking to me, it's people having

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a conversation. And sometimes they trip over their words, sometimes they

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laugh or make funny noises and sometimes it's okay to leave that

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in there. Learning things like genuine reactions or

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a little bit of spontaneity can help give your podcast some sort

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of human element to it. And then

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lastly, I think this kind of goes in hand in hand with

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the human element. But I think if you over edit a podcast you

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can kind of take the energy out of the conversation. Like I was saying before

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with the breaths and things like that, you can

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almost change the energy of the conversation. For

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example, I know sometimes if there's somebody having a

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serious conversation or a serious discussion and there's really long

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pauses, my first instinct anyway is to like okay let's shorten that

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pause. It's too long, you're going to bore people shorten that thing up. But

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by doing that, you're changing kind of the energy of the conversation.

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Because instead of hanging on the word and then

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4 seconds goes by and then they say their next phrase, it's

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like just a normal conversation, and there's no big pause like

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leaving that space, and that pause in there changes the energy

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dynamic of the conversation. And I think sometimes that's

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a good thing to have in there. Maybe sometimes it's not. But having

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again this minimalistic approach at editing I think can

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help you keep the sort of original energy of the

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conversation or to help your listener connect more with what the person's

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saying and sense more of the raw moment. So

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I hope that that's helpful. And maybe you needed somebody to tell you like,

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hey, you don't need to edit that much because if I'm talking to myself

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when I first started editing podcast, within the first year

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I would have liked somebody to come and tell me like, hey, you know what,

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you don't need to be perfect. You can edit

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and make a podcast sound good without being perfect. And I think

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a lot of times, especially for people who have

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perfectionist tendencies, I think you can try to

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make your podcast sound perfect and there's never going to be a perfect

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and if you can spend less time in editing then

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that's going to help you out immensely, right? And not even the other

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benefits of having your conversation sound more natural or more

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human, it's also simply just saving you time

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and allowing you to create your podcast more

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efficiently. And at the end of the day, I think that's a win. And

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hopefully whoever needs to hear this episode today is listening

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and maybe you can loosen the restraints on your editing

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and give yourself permission to not be a perfect editor.

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Take that for what it is and I will see you all in another episode.

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Thank you again for tuning in. We've reached the end of the

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episode and if you enjoyed this podcast or you got something from

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it, you might be interested in my weekly newsletter that I

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send out every Monday morning, full of podcasting tips,

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tricks and news. So if you like this show, you might like this news

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letter. To sign up, just go to the show notes and click the link.

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Thanks for listening and happy podcasting.