Podcasting is personal: an interview with Erica Heilman (part 2)
Erica Heilman with dairy farmer Doug Lilley in his barn in Calais, Vermont
This is part two of my interview with podcaster Erica Heilman, producer and host of Rumble Strip. Here’s part one.
This time, among other things, we talk about the highs and lows of producing a show solo, the pressure you feel to grow, and we come back to the origins of podcasting, where the first interview began.
Erica’s recent series Our Show was named best podcast of 2020 by The Atlantic. It’s a collection of shows featuring tape from listeners all over the world, chronicling their lives, thoughts, and fears during last spring’s lockdown.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: That must feel amazing, getting that recognition.
Erica Heilman: Yes it was, it was amazing…still my son said to me the other day, ‘Mom, why don't you have any goals?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, you've been doing the show for so long and you don't have any employees, why don't you want it to get bigger? Like, why hasn't it grown in terms of scale? And why are you still working so hard to make so little money?’
I didn't have any answers for him. So it was beautiful to get that recognition in The Atlantic, but after being number one in some respected periodical [people] expect that the show is going to somehow evolve into something bigger, and be either more lucrative or involve more people or more production or bigger numbers. Or maybe suddenly the show should be interviewing celebrities. And none of that's going to happen.
“The show’s always going to be small and it will always be self-limited in that way. But that’s also what it inherently is.”
It will always be eccentric, it will never be consistent in terms of format or content or length.
I mean, every podcast class you would take now, they would say, ‘Make sure to output at the same time every week and make sure that it's a consistent length, because your listeners want to know what to expect. They want to know that it's going to be this long, and it's going to be about this one thing. And that's how you grow an audience.’
Well, my show is none of those things and it never will be because I don't want to make a show like that.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: This reminds me of what I heard Anna Sale say at a Werk It conference once, which was along the lines of, you need to be making something you very much want to make. Otherwise your interest will wane, and it won’t be any good. And that’s so true. And that’s what gets lost when you hear that as a podcaster you must do X or Y, or it should be more like this or that.
Because the fact is, because of all the things you’ve said, because we are alone, we are doing this independently, if we didn't love what we were doing we wouldn't do it. And in some of the marketing advice new podcasters are given that can really get left on the floor.
My motivation, like yours, comes from what I am interested in, and the shows that have been failures…one in particular I did because I thought I should do it, not because I really wanted to do it.
Erica Heilman: Yeah, me too. Those always feel like a trudge.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: Your show is YOU, it's not about you, but you are completely woven into it and that's what people like about it...and that brings me to this question: sometimes people say, ‘So would you end it?’ or ‘Why would you end it?’ or ‘How would you end it?’
I think about that, but what do you think when you hear that?
Erica Heilman: Lately I’ve wondered, how does one end something, and why does something end? And I do worry a little bit, or my ego worries that I'll miss the exit sign and I won't end when I should have ended, and I'll become tiresome to people, or maybe even tiresome to myself. You and I have talked about this a lot.
“It’s really hard making a show alone. It’s really hard in the sense that you are your own motor and you’re only ever going to be your own motor.”
And so whether you’re interviewing or editing or researching, or pre-interviewing, you're always making, and you have to find it all yourself. You have to line it all up yourself. There's no week or two to just kick back in the cubicle and put on the brakes for a while. And I constantly feel that there's a clock running and you're only ever as good as your last show, and then it’s been two weeks and it’s like, ‘Ooh, it's been over two weeks now….’ And you feel this momentum, and it's tiring after a while.
So that's certainly a reason to stop. I do feel exhausted by it. I sometimes feel like I just want this pressure to go away. At the same time, what else would I be doing? This show is the only thing I know how to do.
I’m never going to have a green job of the future where I, say, solve climate change. And I'm not a teacher or a carpenter. The only thing that I love to do is to introduce people to each other somehow, or to look for the humanity in somebody else. And on some level I just hope that that's useful, and this show continues to be a vehicle that lets me do that.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: And if a relatively new podcaster came to you to ask advice, or someone who was about to start came to you for advice, what would you want that person to think about or know as they plunge into this world that is so much bigger than it was when you and I started?
Erica Heilman: It seems as though podcasting has now become a job option, which I've never seen it as. It wasn’t a career track, and I think a lot of people now are looking on it that way. And maybe in fact it is, because if you go to Gimlet Media or if you work on staff somewhere, then that's great. So I suppose if you don't feel passionate about a given thing, but you like podcasts and you like the idea of production, then go work with a group of people and cut your teeth like that.
But if you want to start your own podcast, do it for love, ‘cause there's just no reason otherwise.
“I find that when I give talks about podcasting, I am disconcerted that very often the first questions and the most questions are about marketing.”
Very often people who want to make podcasts are not as interested in talking about production. They're more interested in talking about success and distribution. And I'm like, it doesn't matter unless you love what you're doing, unless you are passionate about what you're making. There's no point in having a conversation about distribution yet. And it feels like a lot of people are skipping to that step somehow before they love what they're making. And I think you should be willing to work in obscurity for a while. Make it for yourself first.
People say, well, I can't afford to do that. And I say to them, yes you can. You can have a full-time job and make a podcast on the side if you really want to, of course you can do that. Scale the program. But if you really want to do it, you can do it.
There’s a podcaster I know in England who's a full-time welder. And then he makes his podcast on the side and it's a pain in his ass, but he does it. So this whole thing that you have to start with a budget is bullshit. It's just bullshit. Boy, that was a very negative answer to your question I'm afraid.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: I thought it was spot-on. I’ve never had a budget either and like you, I’ve always done my show alongside other work. And it’s always hard and sometimes I feel like giving up. But at the very beginning, after one episode, I got some initial positive feedback from two women I didn’t know. And to hear from strangers out of the gate gave me the confidence I needed to keep making it even when I barely had an audience...I took that feedback and kept it in the back of my mind. Just like on bad days now, I keep listener emails and encouragement in the back of my mind.
Erica Heilman: That thoughtful commentary carries you a long way in the beginning. But if you're concentrating on an audience of 50,000 when you start, it's very likely you won't hear those people. You won't hear the value in what they're saying, and you won't feel the import of having impacted one person. Start there. It's personal. Podcasting is personal, and that means you have to let it be personal.
But there's this strange trajectory of despair when, after you've launched something, you imagine that there's going to be a soundtrack to when you hit launch. But there isn't, it's very quiet.
“You hit launch and then you eat a sandwich and nothing happens.”
And sometimes nothing happens, period. Sometimes with a show, not many people, listen, nobody says anything about it, nobody comments. And then you move on to the next one. And that can be really hard, you know? But then there are times when you get a massive response and still there's this strange pit in your stomach, a feeling of not- enoughness. And there's a part of me that's like, Erica, what’s enough? What do you need here? When can you be satisfied that this is a worthwhile endeavor?
And I think that's just a discipline, an ego discipline. But the people who convince you that it's enough are individuals, they're not numbers.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: Yes, definitely.
And when you’re doing a podcast and working you have to be thoughtful about what your format is, you know? But if you're not willing to do it for three people for a while, because you just have to, and you really deeply want to, then I don't know that I’d recommend doing it.
What I love about the origin story of podcasting is that people were making things for the hell of it. And to be allowed to fail is also really important. And you can't really do that with a big budget.
And what people can get from podcasting’s origin story, if they know it, is just inspiration that you can make things for love and that that's what podcasting was about, and can still be about.
Erica Heilman is the producer and host of Rumble Strip.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be posting more interviews with independent podcasters in the months to come. And of course I’d love to hear from any fellow independent podcasters in the comments.