Every two weeks I chat with great hosts to get insights on how they run their shows. It's a series called Meet the Podcaster. Today there's Jill Salzman and Brad Farris with us. They host the Breaking down your Busines podcast. Enjoy!

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We are Brad Farris and Jill Salzman, and on the Breaking Down Your Business podcast we tackle the most complex small business questions of our day: How do I make more money without driving myself nuts? Why am I not a billionaire yet? How long is that going to take? And is it possible to take over the world armed with nothing but a smart phone and a credit card swiper? We get to the bottom of these mysteries with help from real entrepreneurs. We skip the product pushers, gurus and book promoters in favor of the authenticity of actual business owners calling in from the trenches.

We focus on what we know. Brad runs Anchor Advisors, a small business consulting firm. I run The Founding Moms, a collective of offline meetups and online resources for mom entrepreneurs. Since we both run small businesses we know the ups and downs and ins and outs of what it takes to get through the darn thing. We also really value vulnerability in business and want to highlight that on our show. It’s tough out there for an entrepreneur and people don’t talk about it enough. So we do. (We even shout about it quite a bit on the show.)

You’re the first to notice! We aim for consistency partly because we wanna look out for our listeners who wants to hear from us on a regular basis, and partly because it’s the only way to survive the conundrum of the entrepreneur’s schedule. We release episodes on a weekly basis. In order to do that, we get together once a month and record all of that month’s episodes in one day. We spend the rest of the month editing, prepping show notes, and releasing them. It’s very systematized at this point and it’s something we can’t recommend highly enough to fellow podcasters.

At the start of our podcast, 200+ episodes ago, we used to pick our guests — they were colleagues of ours. Then we ran out of friends. So, we decided that we needed a system to vet our guests. We now have a form where business owners can find a date and time to appear on the show. BUT! We require that each business owner listens to an episode beforehand (we’re not kidding, there’s a lot of shouting) and we require that each guest bring a problem that they’re having onto the show. For the business owners who think, “Oh, I have no problems, my business is awesome and I just wanna show off about it!” they are not for us and self-select out of coming onto the show. The business owners who know that there’s value in sharing their issues — we all have them — are the ones who come on the show and prove to be an interesting listen.

Subject: shouting

TIM! Me again. Remember the host of the Breaking Down Your Business podcast who emailed you a few months ago after hearing your interview with Seth Godin on your show? I was pretty unhappy to have heard you guys talk for well over an hour about business moguls, inspirational folks and people you really admire and you never mentioned one woman. You never wrote back. So I wanted to write in again and remind you that having strong business women on your show who’ve given TEDx talks and have grown organizations to nearly 12,000+ members is a GOOD thing and I’d be happy to contribute. Let’s do this, shall we? Love, Jill of the Breaking Down Your Business podcast

Mics are Shure SM7. Mixing board is Mackie Onyx. Recorded and edited in Pro Tools by Saul The Great.

The microphone. It’s big and fancy and sleek and helps you hear me.

Personality + sense of humor + great content + great editing + staying open to listeners’ feedback so you can change the format if they are bored.

For Jill: Ronna & Beverly. They are wickedly talented, make me laugh in every single episode, and do a fantastic job of interviewing folks but still managing to remain the central focus of the thing. It’s really brilliant.

For Brad: Reply All. Obsessed.

Ask people to review us on iTunes at the end of EVERY episode. It’s no secret. We are not shy.

Record ten episodes and then throw them out. It’s nearly impossible, if you’re just getting started, to succeed in your very first effort. The more you do it, the more you will notice mistakes or “ah’s” and “um’s” that will change the way you record. Certain parts that you think are strong won’t be. Certain parts that you didn’t think would work are podcast gold. Podcasting is a trial-by-doing affair, so the more often you can do it, the better.