My Five Pet Peeves about Podcasting (After 5 Years of Podcasting)

I've been a podcast host for five years. I host the You Are A Lawyer podcast and am a co-host on the Overanalyzed with Dom & Kyla podcast. I call myself a part-time podcaster because it doesn't take up my whole life. It doesn't take up all my time. Many people freakout about when to record their podcast, but recording the podcast is the foundation of all the work. It’s literally the bare minimum. I have seen a lot of podcasts, either from the ones that I launch for other people or even my own podcast, and then I have a show with a cohost. These are my biggest pet peeves. 

1. Episode notes are not podcast notes. Oh, you have to write the podcast notes. It's a podcast note. Maybe the show description. You have a show with a title. You have tracks on the show, which are episodes. So if you're writing notes about what you're talking about in that specific episode, these are episode notes. The other thing is when people underestimate description, the podcast description is literally the meat, the cheese, the veggies, the whatever in the sandwich. Cover art is the bread. Audio is the bread. The inside, all of that is your podcast description. I know that sounds weird, especially if you've never thought about your podcast description

2. The podcast description is crucial to promoting your show and understanding its reach. For example, if I start a podcast talking about reality TV with my homeboy who was obsessed with reality TV, and I don't say that to y'all, I just say overanalyze podcast.

How does Apple podcast know where to share it? How does Spotify know where to share it? They need your podcast description.

The podcast description says, “Have you ever told your friend about that hilarious show and they said, oh, I would never watch that, and you get them to watch it?” Now the algorithms can begin to work… TV, reviews, reality stars. Now they're figuring out what to say. Right? Your podcast description is extremely important. Now you can make it as long or as short as you want. I've certainly seen some that are multiple paragraphs. I've seen others that are like five sentences. If it gets the job done, it gets the job done. 

Podcast managers exist for a reason. Podcast strategists exist for a reason. 

Once it's recorded, that is literally the foundation. That is literally the floor. The rest of the work begins there. Someone so famous a podcaster might make it sound easy, but there's a lot of work that's involved in making something sound easy. Even when I work with clients and I'm like, you have to review the questions before the recording. You sound like you're reading. It's a lot of skill and practice to sound like you're not reading. 

4. The fourth pet peeve is the cost of having a good podcast. If you decided to Google right now, how much does Alex Cooper make from her podcast Call Her Daddy. It was estimated that her contract was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But then you also have her entire team. Editors, production, people who are pitching the guests, people who are following up with guests, people who are making the social media, all of that part. Yes. We like to celebrate the host that, "oh my god, iHeartRadio picked up their show. Oh my god." 

This is great. The cost of the other people associated with the show is very high. And so I like when prospective clients come to me and they're like, I wanna sound like this. Great. Here's your proposal. Oh, okay. I don't wanna pay that. So the real thing is this is my budget. How good can I sound for this budget? Because we've all seen those, like, janky kind of movies where you're just like, how did this even get on my TV? That is a lower-budget podcast as well.

And that doesn't mean it's because they recorded it on their phone. I'm not saying that the equipment is low budget because you can definitely start a podcast very inexpensively for, like, $25 a month, period. But there's also a reason people are earning $5,000 a month managing podcasts. There's a reason people were paying $1,200 a month for someone to strategize their podcast: if you want to sound and look a certain way, that costs money.

What's a lot of money to you is gonna be different than another person, but it really irritates me when people are like, I mean, just do it. Oh, I won't pay you to do it. I'll do it myself. Yeah. But the two and a half hours I would have spent editing it to make it sound phenomenal versus the twelve hours you spent doing it, wouldn't you rather have those ten hours back? I would. Right? And so there's a reason why you pay experts. There's a reason why you pay people who have more repetitions, more time, more energy.

5. My last pet peeve is that more people don't start podcasts. Okay? If you're interested in podcasting in 2026, please open your phone, record it as audio only, and publish it. I prefer audio-only for new podcasters because there are already enough tasks to hold your attention.

People don't really care that they're not tied together and people are gonna find the video, who find the podcast later, whatever. I promise you, you have something to say. And I work as a podcast manager, editor, and strategist. If I could launch a podcast for everyone, I absolutely would, because I believe everyone has a story to tell. Everyone is unique. Everyone has a different sense of humor. I would love for you guys to all share it. But there's just not an unlimited amount of time and energy, and resources. 

• Start your show in 2026. 

• Start your podcast. 

• Give it a couple of months. And if you're like, "It's really hard," you can outsource the parts that are making it really, really difficult. 

Start the podcast and outsource the other pieces like editing, managing, strategizing, and finding guests if you need to, as you grow. 

I just know there are way more stories that need to be shared, and people aren't doing it. Okay? So get in the comments. Let me know what podcast you are trying to start. Did you like my pet peeves, or did you think they were kind of kinda silly? 

Until the next newsletter,

Kyla