Better late than never is how I’m describing this podcast launch.
You’ll hear me say this in the intro episode, but I’ll mention it again in this blog post. I have been saying “I want to start a podcast”. “I’ve been meaning to start a podcast but I’ve been so busy.” “I keep saying I’ll start a podcast, but things just keep getting in the way.”
This was over the course of FOUR YEARS.
(If you can’t wait any longer and prefer just to listen to the podcast now, scroll down to the bottom to listen or find out where the podcast is available for listening).
Looking back at it, I wasn’t making the podcast a priority. Not that it needed to be a priority back then. In hindsight, I could have structured my days and made time for it. Instead, I made the decision to focus on other things back then.
What made me decide that this year was going to be the year of the podcast launch?
Lots and lots of setbacks. As someone who is big on taking initiative, making progress and moving things forward, it was like dying a slow painful death. Initially, I reacted with anger and frustration and it wasn’t until recently I realized that:
Sometimes setbacks are what’s needed to give you time and space to focus. On the things, you want to focus on.
The Meaning Behind The Name
I wanted the podcast to still be associated with Makinthebacon, hence it needed to have the word bacon in it. The focus on the podcast is to explore more of the tech startup life, women in tech and tech trends which are some of my other passions (hence the word ‘byte’).
I like to think of it as the complete audio version of the Makinthebacon blog interview series. Side note: There are a few video interviews here and there on the blog, which was great practice for the podcast.
A Labour of Love
Just like writing for the blog, working on this podcast has been a TON of work, pretty much a labour of love. From finding people to interview, scheduling interviews, editing (Right now, it’s taking quite some time, but I hoping to get better and quicker with more episodes under my belt), re-editing, listening, uploading, adding in the summary, submitting to podcast directories, etc.
Even as I’m recording the episode, I’m trying to focus on several things at once, what the guest is saying, how to keep the conversation going, what questions to ask next and also be mindful of my “ums”, “likes” and “you know”. Thankfully, they can be edited out.
I’ve noticed that some directories take longer to update than others, so the intro for the episodes on Spotify may be slightly different than the rest and the audio is only coming out of one speaker. The fix is updated on the other hosting directories.
Done is better than perfect. And we can always improve as we go.
The Potential of This Podcast
When I started the blog originally, the goal was to make money directly from it. That did happen eventually, but what’s really important to note is that it gave me a high in-demand skill set and changed my life for the better twice. It brought more opportunities and gave me the confidence to really venture out of my comfort zone.
Monetizing the podcast would be ideal, but I am also hoping it could present even more opportunities and connect me to certain people. I’m not going to reveal anything in this blog post (but expect another one in the not to distant future), but my gut is saying it’s one step in the right direction for me.
With the initial podcast launch, I’ll be releasing episodes on a weekly basis, every Wednesday. However, after that, I will be releasing them every other week to allow some time for interviewing, editing and publishing future episodes.
Please let me know what you think in the comments. I hope you’ll become a fan and tell your family and friends!
If you’re a founder of a tech-based startup, or a woman in a tech-related career and would like to be a guest on the show please fill out the application form for future consideration.
Listen to the podcast on
Read the transcript of the episode below:
Karen Swyszcz (Host) 0:27
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the bacon bits and bytes podcast. So I’m going to be giving another solo episode of myself just sharing with you my background if you’re not familiar, because I realized there are some fans of making the bacon who may be tuning in to this podcast, but there may also and they’re most likely will be actually new listeners tuning in and probably wondering, you know, who is this person, I’d like to know a little bit more about her.
So I’m going to backtrack a bit, talk about the start how when I first got into university, so I started off in engineering because I was led to believe that I should, you know, go to get good grades, go to school, good, go to a good school, and then have a good job. And you’ll be set for life work there for 25 years, to 30 years, you know, and pursue a career in things such as accounting or law, science, engineering, medicine, etc. So I didn’t do very well in engineering. And there were a lot of factors I felt that contribute to it. So it was being away from home for the first time. The very demanding workload, not really getting along with my roommate. And not being able to make friends really well just because I am an introvert. And I do have some social anxiety.
So I ended up switching into science, more so out of panic, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at that point. But it was more so again, just to please my parents because they wanted me to finish school have a degree. And then I guess, you know, having a degree it provided options after university I ended up bouncing around from job went from everything, Personal Training, project management, validation science, working a brief stint in retail, and then eventually working for the government. And I was working for the government, I thought it was great. You know you have that job with the pension, steady paycheck, the benefits, a lot of vacation leave, and you know, things were good. But after a few years, it kind of got very repetitive, monotonous, I didn’t really enjoy what I was doing so much anymore.
So I started the blog, and it became my creative outlet. So initially, it was, you know, I something to help pay for my wedding at the time. But instead, it actually became something more of a creative outlet. Because as a kid, I was pretty creative. I enjoyed writing, I enjoy doodling and things like that. But I think it’s one of those things when you’re older, especially if you’re not, you know, pursuing any creative hobbies or pursuing a creative career that kind of gets put on the back burner. And when you don’t allow time for creativity. I feel as if you know, something ends up missing from your life, your life doesn’t feel so, so fulfilled, and just being adult and adults ends up not being fun. Well, it’s funny, because I never really thought I think being an adult. It’s kind of like hard and it’s annoying, frustrating is all this responsibility. So and you see kids, you see the kids around you and they know they’re having fun, and they’re being creative. And then you’re like, Well, why can’t I do that? Well, why can’t we like just because we’re adults, it doesn’t mean that we have to stop being creative.
So going back to blogging, I’m really glad that I looked into that because it was my creative escape. So I ended up really enjoying it, it helped or rekindled my love for writing. And I learned a lot of skills from it. So actually, long story short, I kind of use that as leverage to leave the government even though I was met with a lot of criticism, but decided to take a huge risk, leave that steady government job and join a startup. And within my one and a half year stint there, I learned more than I learned during my almost five-year stint with the government.
So things were really great. But unfortunately, around 2017, early 2017 I was let go for my job. So I you know, made that decision. Instead of looking for nine to five jobs, I decided that I would go and try and figure this thing out, maybe try and build a business look into providing consulting services for small business owners and in blogging, social media. So doing that and then a few months later ended up getting an opportunity with a college local college to teach through blogging, social media courses. So that’s what I’ve been doing. And I’ve also hosted several workshops have done some talks on like blogging and WordPress.
So coming back to this podcast, I thought, you know, podcasts they feel they’re making the making a comeback, they become really popular again, people enjoy listening to them and I personally also enjoy listening to them in addition to reading stuff on the internet. I like listening to podcasts because it’s a different way to consume information. And I like hearing the conversations between people. So this podcast as I mentioned in the previous episode, it’s taken forever to get off the ground. But yeah, this year I decided to make it my mission to create this podcast and you know, reach a different type of audience and also look into like having conversations with different types of people. So I’ve always been a big fan of technology. I was always been fascinated by it. And I’d like to incorporate more content regarding technology and the trends and then interviewing people from technology-based startups.
So yeah, I think it’ll be really great. And bear with me again, this is you know, my first go at doing a podcast episode so they’ll be authentic, and I hope to get better over time. And of course, I am open to your constructive feedback. If you have any suggestions on how I can improve I’m no totally open to hearing it. So you can either message me on social media, so making the bacon accounts, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, it’s all making the bacon one and if you want to email me It’s Karen at making the bacon dot com. Or you can also message me on the social media accounts for the podcast. So bacon bits and bytes. So yeah, I hope you know, keep on listening. keep on trucking, and yeah, stay tuned for more exciting episodes.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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