I started with £25 a week
From £25 a week to a full-time podcast business is the story I never thought I'd be telling.
When I started out, I wasn't sitting on a big budget or a clear roadmap. I had a small weekly spend, a lot of trial and error, and a genuine belief that podcasting could become something real. In this video, I walk you through exactly how that journey unfolded, from the early scrappy days to building a business I actually run full time. If you're at the beginning of your podcasting journey and wondering whether it's worth it, or if you're already producing content but not sure how to turn it into something sustainable, this one is for you.
I share the practical steps, the mindset shifts, and the honest truths about what it actually takes to grow.
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00:00 My podcast business origin story
00:26 Teaching sound engineering in Croydon
01:24 The two-hour commute that changed everything
02:01 My first client: £25 an episode
02:44 Why nobody would hire me
03:12 Building slowly alongside family life
04:22 Quitting teaching and going all in
04:40 Running it together as a family
05:07 Why I'm sharing this with you
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SPEAKERS
Chris Hall-Franzkowiak
Chris Hall-Franzkowiak 00:00
I'm going to tell my story today, from how I went from side business, side hustle on the train into my day job to a now family business that is me and my wife, and it all started in 2016 when we were having about to have our first daughter, Little Ellie, and I was a teacher at a further education college, which is for 16 plus students, people looking to go to university, people looking to get into their careers, could be anyone up into their 20s, and I was teaching sound engineering and music production, and this was a challenging place to teach. It was in a place called Croydon in the UK, and it has societal things going on that make it a just a challenging place to grow up and be a young person. So, there was lots of that that came along with teaching these people how to get to their career, and I started off loving it, really loved it. I was so into being a teacher and helping these people, and I did that for 10 years, but over those 10 years I got pretty worn down by it, and the system, and all of that kind of stuff that teachers go through, but while that was happening, I was having a two hour commute every day, if the trains were running all right, and on that train I would sit there and I'll be producing podcasts, trying to earn a bit of extra money, I got my first job off of indeed.com from a lady who it turns out lived 20 minutes down the road from me on the south coast of the UK needing help with her podcast, and I was doing the audio, the video, the show notes, clips, scheduling it all, all of the stuff for 25 pounds an episode, 25 pounds, so I had no idea, absolutely no idea what should be being charged for this, and this was in 2017 It took me about a year to, from when I started looking for jobs and applying to jobs in the podcast space, because I knew I wanted to get into it. I loved it. I loved listening to them on my training journeys. I knew I had the skills as a sound engineering teacher. This could be my way of earning a bit of extra cash to help us with our young family. No one was hiring me because I didn't have the years experience in the podcast industry that they were saying they wanted, so I couldn't even get that first job, despite having all the skills, so I found that job did not care that it was 25 pounds a week, did not care less, because it was my job, and I was starting to earn money for myself, nobody else was above me telling me anything that I had to do, I had done it. I had secured my first bit of paid client work, and it felt incredible. But I very slowly started building up how much I was earning from 100 pounds a month to a few 100 pounds a month. It was getting us enough as a young family to pay for the nappies that we had to get pay for baby chinos out at a cafe to the point where it was suddenly paying for all of my train journeys into the place I was teaching, I never did things quickly. It took me quite a few years to be earning a decent amount from this, so we had our first daughter then in 2016 We had another daughter in 2019 and my priorities were totally with them, and they still are. I would be earning this money on the side to help have more time and more funds to do things with them. I was reducing the time that I was teaching, so I could have more time producing podcasts, but also days off to be with my young daughters and look after them before they started school two years ago. So, in 2024 I was finally ready and able to quit my teaching job and go all in on the business. Over the last two years of running a podcast production business, my wife has now joined me and we are now running it together. It's the two of us. So, from starting on that first train journey, where I was earning 25 pounds, it took more than nine, nearly 10 years to get to this point. Starting a business from a side hustle is not quick. There are some people who just.. it happens, it goes instantly. That was not my story, and it still. Isn't, but I am so proud and so glad that I persevered. I had that determination, and why am I telling you this? Because I wanted you, firstly, to get to know a bit more about me, who I am, who we are as a business, but also just to show that if you're really, really determined and you want to make something happen, then you absolutely can. You just have to put in the time and the commitment and belief in yourself that you can do it, and all of those things will help you to overcome so many massive barriers to being able to start your own business, start your own podcast, if that's the thing, and grow it into something massive to just do something you love and make something of it, whether you make money out of it or not. Just believe in yourself, because that's what we need more of in this world. We need people to believe in themselves and to be able to go out there and just try. There was no real agenda with this video, no kind of motive for selling anything like that, but if you resonated with kind of my story and where I came from, where I am now. Then I'd love to hear from you in the comments about what your story is, what your journey is to whatever you're doing, and what belief in yourself has got you. Cool. Thank you very much for being with me and listening. And I'll see you next time.
06:41
Bye.
