Journalist, Media entrepreneur and India’s leading Podcast Consultant Chhavi Sachdev talks about limitation of Radio that led to emergence of Podcasts, Challenges and opportunities for independent podcasters and myths associated with working as a freelancer.

Question from the Episode (Complete Questions list shared at the end)

1. How would you explain Podcast to someone who hasn’t heard of it? (02:35)
2. Why do Radio in India have little diversity in content? (05:04)
3. How did you end up with podcasting? (07:41)
4. How did you learn Podcasting? (09:41)
5. Apart from chronological order, In-what other ways can you structure a story? (12: 03)
6. Any other feedback you received that made a difference to your podcasting Journey (14:07)
7. Alex Bloomberg said you need something new every 45 to 90 seconds to keep the audience engaged. How practical do you think it is? (18:37)
8. How do you balance between letting your guest speak and making sure the answers are not way too long? (20:16)?
9. What are some of the myths or misconception that people hold when before starting a podcast? (24:35)?
10. What impact would high budget Podcast from giants like Spotify and Audible have on independent podcasters, who work with bare minimum budget? (28:59)
11. While the number of podcast creators are growing, the numbers of listeners aren’t growing. Your thoughts? (33:24)
12. You are not very aggressive on social media. Do you think you are missing out on opportunities due to that? (37:08)
13. How did you find clients for Sonologue initially? (38:07)
14. What kind of myths do people have about freelancing. (45:31)
15. Summary of Take Aways (51:50)

3 takeaways from the episode

1. What makes Podcasting special is the idea of choice – Unlike radio, that has limited options and limitations of Location and time, you can listen to podcast anywhere, anytime. Not to forget, the rich diversity of content available for listening. And if you don’t find a podcast of your interest? Why don’t you start one? That takes me to lesson number 2

2. As Independent Podcaster, your greatest strengths are your curiosity and a niche space. As Chhavi mentioned, the big production companies are not interested in niche space because this is not where the big audience is or the big money is. So that leaves you with an opportunity to create content in areas that you are deeply curious about.

3. Being your own boss is a myth – I love the idea of being your own boss, but no matter who you are – An employee, an entrepreneur or a free-lacer, there is someone who always demands your time. It could be your employer or your client. What you certainly choose is who has this control to and to what extent. The tradeoff generally is time and freedom instead of more money. If you can afford to make this trade off, then great.