Liz Sumner tells the story of how I Always Wanted To podcast came to be, where she finds her guests, and shares her favorite podcast mentors.
Juleyka Lantigua Williams of Podcasting Seriously https://www.podcastingseriously.com/ Twila Dang of Matriarch Digital Media https://www.matriarchdm.com/welcome-1
Arielle Nissenblatt of Squadcast https://squadcast.fm/
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Transcript
Hi everyone. Season 7 is complete and I’m going to take a short break over the summer but before I do I wanted to respond to your questions.
Usually the first thing people want to know is where did the idea for your podcast originate. For me its a combination of a bunch of threads of my life.
For one thing I’m a coach working with women who feel stuck or adrift, often after raising a family and finishing a career. I help them give themselves permission to go after their dreams.
I happen to be living my own version of that story. For years my husband and I joked about buying a place in Europe. We’d speak about it as though it was true, and occasionally fantasize as we looked online or watched House Hunters International, but never sat down to actually plan it out. Nevertheless the idea grew. In 2010 my husband, Michael, surprised me with a trip to Venice for my birthday. We decided to rent a car and tour the Le Marche region of Italy. There wasn’t a lot of information about that part of the country but from what we could tell, Le Marche was as beautiful as Tuscany and Umbria but just not as touristed. Michael planned a route through several of the larger towns. This was supposed to be the first of many excursions to scope things out, see what was possible. On the way to see the Frasassi Caves in Genga we stopped for coffee in a small medieval hill town called Pergola. I thought, let’s just break the ice, talk with a real estate agent, get that first step over with, because of course this is going to take a long time.
There was a small office with a fun looking sign called Casa Mania. We got up our courage, went in and in broken Italian asked whether it was possible to find something in our price range. To our surprise the agent said “Sure” and started grabbing keys to show us several places nearby. Neither Michael nor I had imagined we’d actually see apartment. We looked at 3 in centro, the historic center of town, and fell in love with the first one we saw.
The process to get from that moment to actually living here full time was surprisingly easy and I love telling it so if anyone wants to pick my brain about the process please get in touch. It was basically just one foot in front of the other and doing the next thing that came about. That’s one of the things I’m learning in my conversations with guests is that goals that might seem daunting to one person are actually very doable. You don’t have to be exceptional to go after your dream, you just have to want to.
I tell a story in my very first episode about listening to an underwhelming but successful musician and realizing, hell if he can do it I certainly can. And that’s kind of a guiding principle for I Always Wanted To. My guests aren’t famous or presenting themselves as gurus. They are regular people who’ve made choices that allow them to do some cool things that others long to do.
In the 1980’s, when Oprah was still doing local news, it crossed my mind to be a talk show host. I wanted to be Phil Donohue or Mike Douglas (look ‘em up). I loved the idea of having fascinating conversations and getting people to open up and show what makes them special. I never pursued it. I was in journalism school at the time. I loved to write, but the idea of asking someone famous for an interview filled me with dread. I chose to go into advertising and become a copywriter like my father. But I’ve always loved that feeling of a great conversation where you’re drawing someone out and learning what makes them come alive.
I’m often asked, “Where do you find your guests?” And it varies. I have a sort of inner sense of what topics make me curious. It’s like a geiger counter. Someone mentions something they do and this sensation goes off in my chest like, oh that’s interesting, there’s an angle I hadn’t thought of, there’s something I know nothing about. For example, I was reading the comments in someone’s facebook post and someone had posted that she’s tried Tinder at age 70. Whoa! I tracked her down and waited 6 months before she was ready to be interviewed.
Some of my guests are friends and I know they have great stories to tell. Sometimes I think of a topic I’d like to know more about and I put out feelers asking for someone with a certain experience. There are also services now where people who want to be on podcasts get matched with podcasters looking for guests. I’ve found a few people that way but it doesn’t quite fit what I’m looking for. Often they are professional speakers who have a signature talk that they want to tell on multiple stages. That rarely makes my inner geiger counter start clicking.
The other main thread in how I came to be doing a podcast is that I’m pretty geeky when it comes to technology. It’s kind of unusual for someone of my generation, but I love computers and learning new software. I do my own recording and editing. I have recently connected with an extraordinary group of podcasting experts on the app Clubhouse and with their advice I’ve been working to improve my audio quality and learn more about podcasting as an industry. I’ll list my current favorite mentors in the show notes.
I don’t love every single aspect of the process. Having the actual conversations is by far my favorite part, but making I Always Wanted To has been amazingly engaging and I look forward to my and hopefully your continued enjoyment.
So I’ll be back in September. I might release a couple of bonus episodes between now and then. In the meantime I encourage you to listen to some of the back catalog. You might not relate to every dream. I don’t, but I do love to listen to people talking about what lights them up.
As always if you like the show it would be great if you shared it with your friends, left us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser, and filled out my 5-question survey at lizsumner.com/survey. Let me know when you’ve done it and a send you a coupon code for a free copy of my online course 8 Steps to Launch Your Dream Life. And please email or message me to tell me which episodes you connected with and what topics I should tackle next.
I’m Liz Sumner, reminding you to be bold, and thanks for listening.