Stop Broadening Your Podcast: How Super-Niche Podcasts Win with Susan Thompson – Episode 113

[DRIVING GUITAR THEME MUSIC IN // GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL “LET’S GO” BEGINS]

MARY: How niche is too niche? I’ve had podcasters ask me if it would be bad to narrow down their topic because in their mind they want to reach a wide audience, so they want to go broad. They try to encompass all sorts of people and topics into their show. I would argue, though, especially with podcasting, the more you can niche down and narrow who you want to speak to, the more your listener is going to be as passionate as you are. 

Those are the type of listeners you want. You don’t want every single person who is a podcast listener. I mean, that would be great, right? But like, we’re all unique people. We don’t all have the same interests. The ones that are willing to go down that journey with you and just be as nerdy or dedicated to the topic like you are, are the listeners that you want for your show. 

Case in point, Susan Thompson. She co-hosts a very niche podcast called The Voices of the Ancestors. It’s a podcast about the journey of Georgian songs. Georgian as in not in the state, but the country. And this podcast is for lovers of Georgian polyphonic songs from a female point of view. And that is very, very, very niche. And even with this type of strong focus, there’s never a shortage of episode ideas. 

Susan’s going to share with you their podcasting journey from that initial very start, steep learning curve, the years of podcasting that they’ve been doing. So they’ve had lots of trial and error and how this very unique topic gave them an awesome opportunity. Well, not just an awesome opportunity, it happened multiple times where they get to share their deeply loved subject of Georgian folk songs. And you’ll hear all about that unique benefit of hosting a podcast. 

This is episode 113 with Susan Thompson on the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice.

<< WOMAN SINGS: So so so so let’s go >> 

Susan, thank you so much for being my little last minute guest.

[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

As you know, as podcasting happens sometimes and life and all of that. Thank you so much for coming on the show with me.

SUSAN: Yeah, I’m so happy to be here, Mary. It’s a great, it’s a lovely adventure.

[LAUGHTER]

MARY: I love how the Internet just connects two strangers together like this.

SUSAN: Absolutely. It’s just serendipity. I just happened to be looking at a phone doing the aimless scrolling going, oh, Mary Chan needs a guest, I could be a guest.

MARY: Yeah, you could, definitely. Because, you know, as you said to me, you’ve been podcasting for four to five years. You have a lovely co-host, Holly. I want to know the whole story. [LAUGHTER] So let’s just start right at the very beginning. What was that spark that made you decide that you even wanted to start this thing called podcasting?

SUSAN: So, you know that thing that starts with a C, the COVID thing,… 

MARY: Ah yes. 

SUSAN: …which, you know, it brought lots of, but it also brought some great stuff. You know, we were drawn together through our love, our shared passion for Georgian folk singing. So we both enjoy singing this music from Georgia, the country, not the state. We’d been working together to try and pull together a theater piece which was going pretty well, and we’d given a performance and we’d got some development work, and then suddenly COVID, and it was like, theater is just not happening. What can we do? And a friend of Holly’s said to her, you should be doing a podcast. And so we were having this conversation and she said, do you fancy doing a podcast together? And at this stage, I have told her this since, but I kind of went, I have no idea what a podcast is.

MARY: Right. That was going to be my question for you. [LAUGHTER]

SUSAN: I said, yes. I just went, yes, yes, I do. I wonder what that means. 

MARY: Oh, without even knowing, you were just like, let’s do this.

[LAUGHTER]

SUSAN: Yeah, yeah. You know, I wasn’t a podcast listener. It was, you know, it was just such a weird, crazy time. It was just like, then we talked about it a bit and, you know, once I’d worked out what it was like, I actually went, oh, no, actually, really? Yes. This sounds like a great idea. It’s like, we can do this thing. Because one of the things some people said to us very early on is whatever, you know, if you’re going to go into podcasting, pick something that you’ll be happy to talk about for years and years and years. 

So Holly is my co-host and she’s much younger than I am, so she’s in her. In her early 30s, I’m in my early 60s. And I was like, look, I’ve been talking about Georgian folk singing for like 20, 30 years already. You know, I’m not going to fall out of love with it. I have so much to say. It’s fine. And over the time, we’ve been doing the podcast together, actually, Holly has sort of developed her career and done training and now teaches choirs. 

MARY: Oh wow. 

SUSAN: So things change.

MARY: Yeah, definitely. But in that very beginning, did you have any hesitation? It doesn’t sound like you did.

SUSAN: Well, no, absolutely not. It was like, yeah, let’s do this thing. This is a great idea, you know, and one of the key things, we had a great supporter, Jen, in the States. And she taught, teaches, actually deaf children. And was into podcasts and, and Georgian singing because this, this community of Georgian singers, they’re very widespread. There’s all sorts of people that have found this music and gone, oh my gosh, this touches my soul that I just need to know more about that and do that. 

So we were in touch with Jen and there was this whole community of Georgian singers all around the world who were kind of talking to each other online because you couldn’t do anything else going, I really miss being in a room with real people and singing, this is torture. So, and she was just great. She kind of went, yes, yes, you should do this. And yes, I’ll be your first guest, I’ll be your guinea pig, you can try it out on me. And she was just so encouraging. She really, really helped us get started. 

And she gave us some really good advice as well actually, because I think she’d done a lot more audio work than we had at that stage. But also working with the deaf community, she was really passionate about things being accessible. So she kind of went, yes, you are going to do a transcript right from the get go. It’s like, oh, okay, Jen. Yes, we are.

MARY: That’s amazing.

SUSAN: Yeah, it’s been great.

MARY: What were some of the other pieces of advice that you took to heart from her?

SUSAN: I think not to be afraid of following our passion because, it really, you know, it’s a niche. It’s the niche of a niche. You know, it’s not just this particular form of music from this very small country in the caucuses. We made the decision right at the beginning that we wanted to follow the women, the women folk singers. And that was just because it’s a very patriarchal society. And when I’d started sort of 20, 30 years ago, to get to hear women singing was really hard. You know, there were any number of records that would be there, not even CDs of male groups, male ensembles. 

And there was been very few male ensembles that had traveled to the UK and it was literally like, well, this is a lovely song and I really value you teaching it me, lovely male folk singer. But what does a woman sound like when she sings in Georgian? You know, I just had no idea of what quality the sound would be, whether it was really strong and big or whether it was soft and ethereal. I just, you know, until I just needed to hear a woman singing. So, so yeah, we kind of went, okay, well let’s, let’s, let’s make our job shining a light on the women.

MARY: I wonder too, just because of the society and culture, how much do women voices get airtime, essentially, in that culture?

SUSAN: In that culture, they do get airtime. It’s a very tele-visual culture, so people will frequently, you know, be on TV and be having interviews on TV and their ensembles will be invited onto TV. But if you look through all the groups that are singing, and I’ve had the pleasure of spending time in Georgia with Caroline Biffle, who’s a professor at Manchester University and who was writing a book about. About the folk singers in Georgia and the whole scene and how it developed. 

And that was just so useful to sort of kind of swap notes with her because she would go to a lot of the same concerts I’d go to, or I’d go to one she’d miss. So I’d send her a recording and vice versa. And between us, we kind of went well. It seems to me that about two thirds of the sort of public ensembles are either male or mixed, male and female, and about one third are female, which is, you know, it’s kind of understanding, understandable in that sort of society because, you know, women have a lot to do. They raise families and they go out to work generally.

MARY: Yeah, exactly. You were saying too, to me in that time before we were recording also that you were dabbling in video. How do you feel is important, showcasing the faces of these women as well?

SUSAN: I noticed that people respond to faces, so we always try and have a face on the cover of each episode. So although we don’t do, we mostly haven’t done a video episode because I also have a YouTube channel which, when I’m in Georgia and I’ve been to concerts, I video the concerts and upload them to there. And because the concerts I generally choose to go to are those that the women singers are going to be in. 

MARY: Yeah.

SUSAN: I feel that, you know, their performances and their faces, that’s where they’re going, rather than into the podcast directly.

MARY: I guess, too, that you can hear the performance, you know, in their voice. 

SUSAN: Yeah. 

MARY: You don’t need the video portion of it. Do you feel like you want to dabble more into video? What’s that like for you?

SUSAN: I think the straight answer is no. We’ve come to that conclusion because most of the time we’ve worked within the audio sphere and when we’re putting an episode together, they’re quite different, I guess, because we. Although we might do a guest interview style. That’s one style. But then we also do audio journeys, and that’s a sort of a different sort of a style. But generally speaking, we’re often having to go back through things to make it understandable for a more global audience. 

So you’re talking to somebody about a very niche subject, and they just think, entirely understandably, that everybody knows what cremanchouli is, or, you know, they’ll refer to something which makes perfect sense to them. Sometimes I understand as well, but sometimes I’m going, what? And so we find with the audio, you can go back and you can do a voiceover and go, so cremanchouli is this yodel style that is particular to this region. And, you know, you can give a bit of a context, so it makes the rest of what the person’s saying just much more understandable. 

MARY: Yeah. 

SUSAN: And that doesn’t work in video.

MARY: No, it doesn’t. And if it does, it’s a lot more extra work to get the video piece as well as the audio, voiceover and da, da, da, da, da. Yeah, I can imagine that, too, like, from this recording. Your most recent episode with the Easter trip.

SUSAN: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

MARY: That was amazing to hear. And I feel like I was there with you. 

SUSAN: Oh, I’m so glad.

MARY: Just because, because of the audio background, right? You, you have that. The cars in the background when you stopped over on the side of the road. And, yeah, you were talking about, oh, we’re just…

SUSAN: Yeah. 

MARY: …we’ve got sandwiches here. And I just happened to be eating my morning toast with bread, too. So I was like, oh, I felt like I was eating my bread toast with you and your sandwiches. You, I don’t think I would have that feeling if I was watching a YouTube video, because that visual piece doesn’t immerse you in it, where the theater of the mind does so much.

SUSAN: Yeah. And I think if I would think about trying to do that particular trip, this video brings me out in this cold sweat [LAUGHTER] because, you know, we were invited on that trip and we literally didn’t know what we were going to. You know, we got this lovely invitation by a great friend of ours who leads an ensemble, so. So Magda Kevlishvili, and she leads an ensemble, Mithiebi and a Mere Meri. And she kind of went, do you want to come on this trip with us for Easter? And both Holly and I looked at each other and went, but it’s not Easter. It’s the Sunday after Easter. Oh, no, it’s still Easter. And we were like, well, I’ll explain on the trip. She’s going. 

And even when we got in the car, we didn’t know where we were driving to. So the sort of planning you’d need to try and do a video episode and get a camera in the right place and be able to catch the sound as well as the visuals,…

MARY: Oh gosh yeah. 

SUSAN: …trying to edit it together. And also because it was a mixed group of ages, you know, if you felt that there were certain children that wouldn’t want to be shown, or adults for that matter. Because sometimes, you know, in villages you might come across adults who are terribly shy and reserved and don’t want to be on film that just, I don’t know, it feels too. Yeah, just doesn’t feel right. Whereas somehow the audio just feels much more approachable for people. They’re much less freaked out by a microphone somehow.

MARY: So what kind of tech did you bring with you? Did you even know you were just like, I don’t know, we’ll just bring this. Hope it works. What was that like?

SUSAN: It’s actually reasonably unusual nowadays that both Holly and I are traveling at the same time. But on that occasion I brought a handheld recorder. So I have a Tascam, which is just so great because you can operate it with one hand. And then we both brought phones. And I think. I can’t remember if Holly, we have had another recorder. That’s been great. But actually it’d been great until it wasn’t great. You know how tech works really reliably and then stops. 

MARY: Yes. [LAUGHTER]

SUSAN: I think it decided to stop. So that didn’t come with us that day. So. But we knew we’d got one recorder and two phones to record with. So, you know, that was. We hoped that would be enough. And it was. So that’s great.

MARY: Wow. That’s also a lot of audio to sift through…

SUSAN: Yeah.

MARY: …and edit because, you know, your show had so many pieces, not even just that particular episode, but just your show in general. Right. Weaving in the women’s voices, the traditional songs,…

SUSAN: Yeah. 

MARY: …things like that. And I can. I sort of feel like, okay, there’s voice, there’s audio already. But were you nervous about the tech side, like the recording and editing?

SUSAN: I’m always nervous about the recording side because it’s that fear of what if the battery goes flat? You know, what if it just doesn’t record for whatever reason? And that’s happened to both Holly and myself. And so we always try and take two recordings of everything. I mean, just like today when you set up, you went, right, I’m going to press that and press that. I need you know, I’ve got a checklist of things to do. So. Yeah, so, yes, I’ve been sort of like eight hours drive out of the capital city, up a mountain, knowing I wanted to do a recording and having asked the people if it was okay to do it. And I was there for a week. And every day it was like, we can do the recording today. Oh, no, no, there’s this happening. We’ll do it tomorrow. 

And it was like the final day. And we were leaving in like an hour and a half. And it was like, oh, we’re going to do it now, are we? Oh, okay. You know, I’ll unpack. Let’s. Where’s my recorder? You know, took the recorder. I think I was using lavalier mics. And I got a friend there, uh, who’d also bought some great recording kit. And I just. Will you just record this as well? Because, you know, I’ve got one shot at this. And it’s, we don’t get it. We don’t get it. Yeah. We started the interview. They basically turned up in full traditional dress with their instruments… 

MARY: Oh, wow. 

SUSAN: …kind of almost prepared to give us a performance. So they started with a song, and I’d put lavaliers on people. And I looked down and went, that is not happening. Nothing is happening. 

MARY: Oh no. 

SUSAN: This machine has got batteries in. But what had happened was the lavalier’s batteries were flat. And there’s no. There was no light on that particular tech that told me they were flat or not. Not flat. And it was just like, the minute I got home, I sold them. It’s like, they are. I don’t want anything to do with them anymore. So I was just so grateful to my friend who was there with the recording kit and recorded it all, because otherwise it would have been a disaster.

MARY: Wow. And then the editing part. Now that you have this all recorded, what’s the editing like?

SUSAN: So the editing I hand over to Holly. That’s the sound editing for sure. Because, when we, in the early days, we kind of. We were on this really steep learning curve. And I found. The other day, I found a sort of like a cartoon I’d drawn of a really steep learning curve with us at the bottom. It’s like, particularly vertical. And we just went, right, well, every day is a school day. 

MARY: [LAUGHTER] I love it. 

SUSAN: What are we learning today? And we both kind of tried everything. And I did try looking at Audacity and various editing software. And I just went, this is just not my thing. This makes me so anxious and so wound up. And it’s like, if this doesn’t make you feel like that, Holly, would you do that side of it? I’m happy to, you know, do social media and, you know, the transcript. And there are things that I can do that are fine. They’re my things. But audio editing is not my thing.

MARY: And how did she take that? Was she, like, all gung ho or also nervous?

SUSAN: I think in the early days, partly because it was COVID and it was that weird time… 

MARY: Oh yeah. 

SUSAN: …when… 

MARY: You could sit around and learn and do things.

SUSAN: …exactly. You kind of had time. And so it didn’t seem to, you know, she was up for the learning curve and doing it. And I think she seems to have the mind that can follow that, whereas I just get so cross and wound up by it. So she was okay with that. You know, we had that very upfront conversation. It’s like, you do that, I’ll do other stuff, and that was fine. But there are definitely times when, you know, life gets in the way and things get very busy. 

And we both know that when you go into that sort of editing headspace, you kind of need a block of time to be in it, because just putting it down and picking it up is a nightmare. You know, you just spend the whole time going, now, where was I? What had I done? And so, yeah, as life has changed for her and her career has developed, you know, being able to have that. That dedicated time is. It hasn’t come across. Come up quite so often, and we have dabbled with other things. 

So as well as, you know, we. We have worked with someone to do a video episode which was. I’m really glad we did it. But, you know, I don’t think we’ll be doing that too often. But we’ve also worked with other audio editors, and each time it’s been an interesting experience, and we’ve definitely both learned things from it. But often what we learn is, I don’t know, we’ve been doing this that long now that we both kind of get what we both think about how the shape of an episode and a story should be without having to go into long explanations. And if you’re working with somebody else, it just takes longer.

MARY: Yeah, it’s that initial part of. Okay, now I have to explain all of this… 

SUSAN: Yeah, yeah. 

MARY: …and explain this, and it feels like it’ll just be faster if I did it.

SUSAN: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and we’ve done it with someone who, with Annalee, who’s traveled in Georgia, and that was really helpful, who’s also a singer. So they were definitely on the sort of same sort of wavelength. So that was great. But then, you know, we’ve also used somebody that had never been to the country and isn’t a singer. And it was like, oh, gosh, this. There’s so many things you take for granted when you’re working in such a niche that you just don’t realize.

MARY: Yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s like a second language that you’ve learned.

SUSAN: Yeah, yeah, we know. What works, what’s easiest. Not necessarily. That always works best. What’s easiest if we work together on it. And Holly does all the editing. So that last episode, um, where we’ve traveled through the village, because we were both on that trip together, you know, at the end of it, Holly kind of went, I’m going to regret this, but I’m the best person to edit this. And I just went, yes, yes, you are.

[LAUGHTER]

MARY: It sounds like such a natural fit between you and Holly, like, not just the co-host, but, like, yeah, the editing side and figuring out, okay, who does what tasks. But like any relationship, I’m sure you two have grown as well co-hosting. What was some of the most challenging pieces when you were working together?

SUSAN: I think we both find it quite challenging. You know that thing about talking over each other, and it’s a really fine line in a podcast. You want something to be. To flow, and you want it to be natural, but also you don’t want the listener to be struggling to work out who they’re listening to. Particularly when you’re traveling and you’re going to visit families or singers in mountains, you know, it’s really exciting. We both get really excited. So the temptation to talk and react and be therefore being, talking over each other, you know, that’s something I think we both had to just. Just be a bit, a bit more measured about than we would if we were. If we weren’t creating a podcast.

MARY: And we were talking about, like, life and things and people grow and things like that. So, like, where are you at now with the podcast? Having been working on it for the past four to five years, do you feel like there’s a lull or do you still have that same passion to continue to create episodes?

SUSAN: It’s funny, we keep flip flopping, I would say. So there’s parts of us that like, oh, how many years have we been doing this? And you look at series one and series two and all the different people we’ve interviewed. And that just feels really good. And also knowing that we know that students in universities, use the archive and listen to the podcast and look at the transcripts all around the world. 

So ethnomusicologists and other people. So we really want to keep that. So we’ve got a real desire to maintain the website to maintain that, so it’s available to people going forward. So there’s a maintenance is boring, isn’t it? You know, it’s not really very exciting, but we really value our sponsors and our supporters because they’re, you know, those people that give us some money regularly. That’s what that, enables, you know, for us to pay those boring subscriptions so that we can keep it available and free, you know, because we don’t want students having to pay to listen to a podcast. That’s ridiculous. 

Also, it kind of so goes against what we first set out to do, which is like, shine a light on the women’s voices. It’s like, you know, I want everybody to be able to hear this. You know, it’s made such an impact on me. And if I’d never heard a Georgian song, gosh, my life would have been so different. Yeah. So in terms of ideas for more episodes, you know, I just, I keep a list, and it gets longer rather than shorter. I mean, there is no shortage of ideas. I sometimes say to Holly, you know, when she’s kind of going, oh, well, you know, I’ve got to do this and that and the other, and how do I fit this in? 

And, you know, will there be a space of time to put an episode together and when will we both in Georgia at the same time and things like that. And it’s like, well, yeah, but you never know. If we suddenly got 10 new donors who were subscribers and just, you know, just gave us a little bit every month, suddenly we’d be able to set aside the time to make that episode, wouldn’t we? And it’s like, oh, oh, yes, we would. And so, you know, you can always hold out the hope because you just don’t know who you’re going to touch and, you know, who will hear it and be. Be moved and go, actually, you know, this has really made a difference to me to be able to hear this, and I, I want other people to be able to.

MARY: Yeah, and I feel like, too, that a lot of podcasters, I mean, this is just an industry as a whole, it’s hard to get that feedback right. Like, and when you do get feedback, you’re like, oh, yes, this is the gold mine. The one person who’s finally written in. So how are you getting feedback?

SUSAN: That’s so funny you say that, because, like I said, we started in that theater world and people being, you know, in the same room at the same time, and, you know, and we both thrive on that immediate feedback. So to suddenly go into this podcast world where you put an episode out and sometimes you don’t hear anything from anybody for months and possibly even years. And then occasionally we’ll be at a live event and somebody will come up to us and say, oh, I’ve just, you know, I’m in Belgium. I’ve just got into Georgian singing. I’ve just. Your podcast. I just listened to this episode. Thank you for doing it. And it’s just so amazing. 

So sometimes our feedback is face to face and live. Sometimes the feedback is, you know, the social media stuff. It’s. It’s on Facebook, it’s on WhatsApp, it’s on SoundCloud itself. Because there’s a, you know, a comments function there. Yeah, it’s quite there, but it is sparse, so. Which is why we know whenever somebody writes something, I just cut and paste it and I put it in a document. Because, you know those days when you’re a bit low and you’re feeling, why am I doing this? Because this life is so busy and there’s so many other things. Sometimes I literally read those out to Holly on the phone and go, so, Holly, I think you need to hear some of our listener feedback today. Let’s just read these out.

MARY: That is such a great idea. And I always. I mean to do that. And then I never do. Or they’re all over the place, right? They could be on one social media platform, or maybe you got an email, or maybe you got that. And then. Okay, so you. You’ve got, like, a little document. Do you just, like, you.

SUSAN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this last episode where we went with these groups of singers and we walked around this village and we learned about what a live Easter actually is, and we blessed the village and we sang. And I had lovely feedback after that. And somebody went. So, yes, a bit like, you know, I really felt like I was in the village with you. Yeah, but that’s unusual to get feedback so quickly and so directly.

MARY: I also love the fact that you were talking earlier about how a lot of the feedback is face to face, and it’s so true. Like,… 

SUSAN: Yeah.

MARY: …I’ve heard from so many people where, as one example, they’re a coach, they podcast for their business, and then they went to a conference and they were just talking to somebody else, and then somebody from behind her, like, ran up to her, tapped her on the shoulder and was like, are you so. And so. I recognize your voice. Are you the one from the podcast? And she was like, what? Huh? Huh? Yeah, me. Yes, it is. But what?

SUSAN: Yeah, it’s quite a surprise when that happens, but it does happen.

MARY: Yeah. And that’s why I think podcasting is so unique, because we are. It’s asynchronous, right? We are in our worlds as a listener listening to your show. And yeah, we might be like, oh, yeah, I really love that. But how often as a listener, too, like, do you actually go and make that comment, find the email address or however it is that you send that feedback? So it’s so great to. I find that it’s. If you can tie your podcast into some live version of it or even just put out on social media, like, I’m going to be at so and so event. Will you be there and just connect in real life 

SUSAN: Yes, yeah.

MARY: With these people and have like. Like your. Your theater experience, right? 

SUSAN: Yeah. 

MARY: Get that. That feedback in the moment?

SUSAN: Yeah, no, it’s, that is, it is invaluable. And. And I guess that’s part. It’s not all why, but we. Some reason we presented to quite a lot of universities. I think it’s partly because it’s a subject that gets studied, sort of ethnomusicology. So, you know, in the context of world music, you know, Georgian will be one line of study for people. So we went to Cremona, we went to Italy to present in a couple of weeks. In fact, I think the day your podcast comes out, we’ll be in London presenting at UCLl. There’s a whole conference dedicated to the memory of Nino Kalandadze Makharadze. And she’s somebody we created a memorial episode about after her death just because she’d been such a, I don’t know, such an interesting figure. 

She’d done so much, and she’d been so central to all the singers that I knew when Nino died. Cause I was in Georgia at that time. Yeah, there was just such a sense of loss, and not just a loss of a lovely person, but a loss of her depth of knowledge about folk singing and folk singing in Georgia and the sort of the places she’d been to and the songs that she’d researched and combined with a really modest personality. So she wasn’t. Yeah, she didn’t have that big, showy personality at all. She had a very shy, very modest personality. And yet she’d achieved so much. 

So, like I say, I think the day your podcast comes out, Holly and I will be in London presenting at a conference that’s dedicated to her memory. And we’ll be there and being able to tell the audience about this episode we made, also dedicated to her memory.

MARY: Oh, that is so beautiful. It’s such a beautiful tie in to what you do… 

SUSAN: Yeah. 

MARY: …and your show. And did you ever imagine this was a possibility when you first started?

SUSAN: No, definitely not.

MARY: So then, what did you feel like success would look like in the beginning?

SUSAN: It’s funny, Holly said something to me last week. So she’s teaching groups Georgian songs and she’s doing one off workshops. And we were just sort of chatting, we were getting this presentation ready and we always have to answer the question, you know, why do you concentrate on the women? 

And I sort of went back to, well, when I first started, all I could find were the men. And she said, do you know what she said? I think that’s changed. She said, people now say to me, I can find the women group, the women’s groups more easily. And it’s like, perhaps all those years of you putting YouTube videos up, Susan has started to make a difference. That combined with the podcast.

MARY: Wow.

SUSAN: And we were like, really? That really happened?

MARY: Yes. I bet. Because a podcast has no boundaries, right? Anybody can access it. 

SUSAN: Exactly. 

MARY: And so you’re helping with that representation side of things. Wow.

SUSAN: Yeah. And I think because it’s an English language podcast and we really work hard to, like I say, to produce transcripts and to label things and link things that. And, uh, it’s all in the English language, which is so much more searchable and findable if you’re another English language speaker. Because Georgian’s really not a well known language.

MARY: Right.

SUSAN: It’s lovely, but really hard. So just the effect of putting it out there in the English language and so it’s more searchable and more findable has had an effect. And one of the things I notice is that Georgian ensembles, you know, I’ve kind of come across them and go, why haven’t you got a website? And it’s like, oh, I see in Georgia, paying for a website, it’s so much more expensive. 

All, much of the communication happens on Facebook. Not just social, family communication, but business communication. So, you know, businesses will run their run, uh, everything through their Facebook. It’s a different culture, it’s a different way of doing it. But, you know, if you’re sat in the UK thinking you can Google it, you ain’t gonna find it, or you weren’t going to.

MARY: What about the future then? You know, like, you realize looking back now what impact you’ve had in this community. What’s the future going to look like for you? What are your hopes?

SUSAN: I always say, I’ve got two girls, and they’re in their 30s. But, you know, if I was talking to them, I’d go, don’t curtail your hopes and dreams. So I try and say that to myself, and it’s like, what is my hope for the podcast? And it’s like. Like, I know that there are women singing in villages up mountains that don’t come down to the capital city and perform on the stage, but I know that they’ve got so much to share. 

And the whole, the title Voices of the Ancestors. One of the things we do in each episode is we ask if it’s a guest episode. We ask the guest, what does Voices of the Ancestors mean to you? And the range of responses has been really varied. You know, and if you’re speaking with the Georgian, then sometimes they will answer with a very family direct. You know, it means something about my grandmother or my great grandmother. But then, you know, we’ve asked that question of singers from other cultures who’ve gone, well, I don’t have a direct lineage to Georgian in my family, but that Voices of the Ancestors, you know, can mean such a broad range of things to people. 

So to be able to ask that question of the more remote singers and to be able to solve the translation situation issue. My Georgian is not up to translating. Holly’s has much better Georgian than I do. But the skill of being a translator is I’m so in awe of people to be able to do it in the moment, to read the nuance of the person that you’re speaking with and to be that person between us asking questions and the person we’re interviewing and not get in the way for the audience. Because, you know, as an audience, I want the audience to hear the person that we’re interviewing or the person we’re singing with more than me or more than Holly and more than the translator. So I’d love to be able to solve that. 

We’ve done episodes with lovely people who’ve translated, you know, and once it was absolutely on the hoof, I found myself up a mountain with people and with somebody who has, you know, English, Georgian parentage, but hadn’t spent that much time in Georgia. But I kind of went, you know, this is too good an opportunity to miss this Patty Pladze [SPELLING?], you know, she’s just awesome, and I would love to be able to ask just even a few simple questions. And she said, oh, I’ll help. You know, I’ll do what I can. And she did. You know, she’s not a trained translator, and she just stepped in, and from that moment, there was just this gem she did. Ask her for me, what does Voices of the Ancestors mean to you? 

If I just give you a context, we must have driven for, oh, I don’t know, let’s say, five hours up a mountain. Then we got out, and then we walked along a path through the snow for about another 30, 40 minutes before we got to our destination. So it was remote, and it was a farm, a farmstead with cows and fields and things. 

So when she asked Patty this question, the answer came back. And, you know, to start with, I thought you translated this really right? And what Patty was basically saying was she sort of the voices of the ancestors meant to her the plot in the corner of her farmstead where all her ancestors were buried. They were buried at her farm. And she had this feeling of just being responsible to her ancestors for how she lived her life, for how her children lived their lives, for passing on her love of music. Yeah. And it was just so immediate and personal in a way that I can’t imagine ever getting that answer from somebody I was interviewing in the UK. I’m so grateful to Anna, who was willing to risk, you know, being an interpreter in the moment. That was, you know, it was a great risk she took, and I’m so glad she went for it.

MARY: Susan, I have had such a blast chatting with you. We can go on forever, I think.

SUSAN: I know.

MARY: Maybe that’s just, you know, what podcasters do. We all love to talk. We share such great stories,… 

SUSAN: Yeah. 

MARY: …and so we, you know, we. We’ve gone from the past, we’ve gone future. I want to go more present right now, in this moment. What excites you about podcasting right now, in this moment?

SUSAN: Part of it is I’ve still got that passion to share, to share the experiences that I’ve been lucky enough to have. You know, there are people that I know have perhaps traveled to Georgia once, and their health isn’t good, and they’re not able to get back there. So to be able to share with them something that they love and give them a way of accessing it still, that feels like a great privilege. I’m also sort of. I like spreadsheets. I’m so sorry, but I do.

MARY: Don’t apologize for that. Spreadsheets are, you know.

[LAUGHTER]

SUSAN: But I think part of the part of my brain that likes spreadsheets actually likes the kind of the business side of it. You know, I spent this morning talking about the marketing and the social media side and just thinking through that about how to share it with other people using social media and how to gently but directly propose that we’re on Patreon, we’re on Ko-Fi, you know, and how, you know, if I don’t say that, they won’t know that, so how would they know that it would be really useful? And how excited Holly and I get when somebody buys us a coffee, a Ko-Fi. 

It’s got this idea of, well, you know, if you stumbled across this in a cafe wrestling with the editing of one of these episodes, you’d probably be really happy to buy us a coffee or a mint tea and help that creative process. And so when somebody does and it comes in and, you know, you see it on your laptop, it’s like, oh, wow, this is so great. You know, it really, and it’s a bit like you say when you. You get some feedback on an episode, it has the same sort of feeling. It’s like, thank you. You’ve made a difference.

MARY: Yes, that’s right though you. You do have to say things a few times, especially in the audio world, in order for things to click. So go buy Susan a coffee.

SUSAN: Thank you. Yeah. Holly takes the mint tea. I’m the coffee person.

[LAUGHTER]

MARY: Susan, thank you so much for joining me. I had an amazing time, and I think, you know, if you’re ever on this side of the world or I’m ever over there, we’ll have to physically

SUSAN: Please do.

MARY: …buy that coffee or mint tea. I’ll take the mint tea as well.

SUSAN: Will you? Okay. Okay. Well, I would love that, Mary. And keep doing what you’re doing, because, you know, I’ve looked through your great long list of titles, and I think, oh, I need to dip into that one. Oh, I need to dip into that one. So I’m going to be a listener.

MARY: Oh, thank you.

SUSAN: No worries.

[CHIMES AND ENERGETIC RHYTHMIC MUSIC FADES IN AND BUILDS]

MARY: I love how she says, every day is a learning day. I so, so agree with that. So true. Especially in podcasting, because so many creators like you, you didn’t know something when you started, right? Everybody had. Has a learning curve. You kind of have to go all in and just try and test things out and try it. Otherwise you’d never create anything. It’s like art. It’s very iterative. You try one thing, and then you try something else. The first piece of art you might be proud of, but as you keep learning and growing, you might look back at that one, go, ooh, what was I thinking when I did that? It’s the same with podcasting. 

And then through this iterative art of podcasting that you. You get to do, you get opportunities for things outside of that medium, but still related to podcasting, like traveling to speak about the topic that you are already so passionate about. People tend to forget how much a podcast is your very own calling card. You don’t need a speaker reel and then cold call people or submit your speaker application to an event you want to be on. Podcasting already gives you an outlet to reach these very specific fans of your topic. And you’re applying to speak without even realizing that you’re applying. 

They hear you on your episode on your podcast and already understand how you are an expert in your field and invite you to events naturally. Or you submit your speaker application and they hear your podcast, and it becomes such an easy yes for them. It never, ever surprises me to hear this when it happens, yet it’s easily forgotten about in the industry. When podcasters are talking about success, you know, they always think about monetization or download numbers, because that’s what the industry is talking about, and that’s how a lot of people gauge what success looks like at the very early stages of this industry. But things evolve, and now this very tangible opportunity to talk about your subject on a different platform, traveling somewhere to speak about your podcast topic, it’s a huge, huge success. We need to showcase more. 

So thank you to Susan for coming on the show. I loved her energy. I hope you learned a lot from her journey as well, for your own podcasting journey. I’m so glad that the intro Internet put us together, because honestly, I just put out a random LinkedIn post and she was the first to reply. And I loved her energy. So match made in Heaven. 

You know, Susan talked a bit about recording on location in the mountains. So in the next episode, I want to expand on that, that practicality of recording whether you are in person or online, but especially online, because that is the most common way to record these days, whether you have an interview or not. There are some things that are universal to all podcast recordings. I recently had a client who wanted to launch a podcast, and he asked, why are headphones important? He didn’t really understand why. Like, he saw them a lot now, especially with video podcasting. He saw if there was a microphone and then now when you see headphones on someone it means it’s a podcast. But why headphones? Why do you have to wear them? 

So I’ll dive into the technical aspects on why headphones are crucial for any kind of podcast recording and how to use them or get around them if you feel I know some people say they’re uncomfortable or they’re cumbersome or you know it messes up with their hair or you don’t like the visual aspect of wearing headphones, especially on video podcast. So we’ll dive into all the reasons of why headphones are important when you’re recording your show. That’s next time on the podcast.

[MUSIC ENDS]

<< OUTRO – SHOW CLOSE // UPBEAT DRUMS THEME MUSIC IN- GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL “LET’S GO” BEGINS >>

MARY: Thank you so much for listening to the podcaster’s guide to a Visible Voice. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you share it with a podcasting friend. And to reveal more voicing and podcasting tips, click on over to VisibleVoicePodcast.com. Until next time.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

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