Lynnewood Hall, a Gilded Age mansion, stands near the northwest edge of my hometown. For decades, this Neoclassical revival behemoth sat surrounded by acres of wild flora, inciting rumors, dares, and urban myths. Within the past year, a foundation bought the building and started restoration efforts. As soon as I read the Inquirer headline, I thought, “I want to make a podcast about it.” 

This restoration project has so many angles that producing a podcast about it would be a full-time job. I already work full-time. If I devote the time and effort to the podcast that the Lynnewood restoration deserves, I need to be sure I know why I’m doing it before I start. 

When launching a podcast, people often focus so much on the technical side of things that they forget to answer the “Why?” question. Usually, podcasters get an idea and start shopping for microphones. What podcasters need in the early stages, though, is the right motivation.

Defining your podcast purpose can help you sustain your enthusiasm, maintain a consistent workflow, and connect with the right audience for your show. Some motivations can help you and your show thrive, while others may drain you. Over the following paragraphs, we’ll discuss the public and personal purposes for making a podcast and how they fit together to create a meaningful experience. 

Your Podcast’s Public Purpose

Your podcast’s public reasons (ambitions you’d admit in a job interview or to a potential investor) don’t require much explanation. These reasons may overlap, but that’s okay. Using Lynnewood Hall as an example, I’ll show you five simple reasons to make a podcast first. Later, we’ll talk about personal reasons: they have more complex causes but fruitful results. 

1. Marketing

When you make a podcast to promote a business and sell products or services, the podcast’s purpose can be summed up in one word: marketing.

Your podcast can advertise discounts or new products, examine issues germane to your business in greater detail, and invite customers to feel that your business is for people like them. There are loads of great brand podcasts to serve as examples. In the case of Lynnewood Hall, a podcast could explain the restoration plan, its financial costs and community benefits, and promote fundraising efforts. 

2. Creative Outlet

If you’re passionate about storytelling and sound design, podcasting can be the perfect creative outlet. You can experiment with narrative styles and editing, and find an audience with fewer obstacles than you would with radio, theatre or film.

Lynnewood Hall’s history offers creative challenges for fiction podcasters or local theatre companies, to create audio drama based on stories from the mansion’s history. With the right writers and directors, this podcast could explore conflicts in class, gender, and race that are still relevant today. Fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age or ITV’s Downton Abbey would find their itch for historical drama nicely scratched. 

3. Build Community

How do you share ideas, host get-togethers, and promote change? Much like attending a weekly religious service, podcasts are a recurring message that enables you to attract and converse with other like-minded souls.

Lynnewood Hall has attracted positive and negative attention for over one hundred and twenty-five years. Without good messaging, this effort could attract people who feel the money is better spent on affordable housing, and the land would be better used as public green space. But, with a community-focused podcast, the mansion could attract volunteers for cleanup efforts, fundraisers, and educational programs.

In the case of Lynnewood Hall, the foundation recognizes that this property doesn’t exist in a vacuum. They use their Patreon page to show pictures and articles about nearby history celebrations or contemporaneous buildings. A podcast could enhance these relationships and show the connection to local residents while generating interest for future programs. 

4. Education

Teaching others how to do things you’re an expert in can be exhilarating.

In its heyday, maintaining Lynnewood Hall would have required enough people to populate a town, all before electricity and indoor plumbing were the norm. Lynnewood Hall’s restoration project is a living opportunity to teach carpentry, crafts, architecture, gardening, soil preservation, and, in turn, sustainability. 

5. Entertainment

Why not have some fun? Audiences want it: comedy is the top category in nearly every podcast chart. Your podcast can make people feel good and escape their daily drudgery.

As I said earlier when we talked about how a podcast’s purpose can be a creative outlet, there can be a lot of fun in a podcast about Lynnewood Hall. For example, a history quiz show could have guests who are local academics or history buffs. A respectful team of comic improvisers could invent comedy sketches based on the mansion’s history. And you just know that each and every person working on the preservation project has at least one funny story about the daily challenges restoring an old building presents. 

Autonomy, Mastery, & Purpose

Daniel Pink is a writer who has studied motivation for most of his life. As the speechwriter to former Vice President Al Gore, Pink needed to be able to write, sometimes on a moment’s notice, talks that could persuade anyone. His book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, “draws on 50 years of behavioral science to challenge traditional beliefs about human motivation.” What he found has been the subject of animated video shorts, TED talks, and more. Ultimately, Pink argues that most people are motivated by the desire for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. 

Here’s how podcasting makes the most of these three qualities: 

Autonomy

You’re the boss. The work is self-directed, and you set your own schedule.

Mastery

Podcasters challenge themselves by learning new skills and gaining knowledge and understanding. Not only does mastery provide long-term gain from proficiency, but accomplishment also gives your brain an endorphin blast in the short term. 

Purpose

When your podcast affects other people, things, or events outside your sphere, it’s gratifying. Imagine that your podcast raised funds for a project you care about, enhanced volunteer dog-walking at animal shelters, or got a thousand people to all wear the same color on Wednesdays. How would it feel? Pretty spiffy, right? 

As Pink wrote in Drive, “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.” 

Find Your Personal Purpose to Know Your Podcast’s Purpose

Peter A.B. Widener commissioned Lynnewood Hall’s construction out of steel, limestone, and marble to weather decades. The Widener family residence was also a home for their carefully curated art collection, including works by Gainsborough, Degas, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Raphael, El Greco, Titian, Donatello, Monet, and Sargent.

This collection was open to the public from October through June, a habit few people of their peer group would practice. After the Widener family’s eldest son, George, and his 17-year-old son Harry, perished on the Titanic in 1912, Peter A.B. Widener’s health failed. Subsequently, the Widener family divested themselves of their treasures. They donated the art collection to the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and used their wealth to fund a school for disabled children, libraries, public art installations, and Widener University.

Peter A.B. Widener II later wrote, “I am convinced that happiness, real joy in living, does not lie in possessions. It is to be found only in slaving with all one’s mind and imagination and physical strength for a worthwhile objective.” Their love of people far outweighed their possessions and acreage.

What do you love so much that you could talk about it for hours every week to strangers?

What are you so interested in that you’d feel compelled to share it even when you’re tired, or you need to put dinner on the table, or things just aren’t going well?

What can you afford to be generous with? Podcasting isn’t hard, but producing a good podcast isn’t easy. Make sure you know why you want to make a podcast, what you want it to do, and who it’s for. This way, even if your podcast doesn’t make you rich or famous, your podcast’s purpose will enrich your life from the inside out. 

If you’ve tried using our Alitu Showplanner, you may have noticed that the questions help you figure out why you want to make a podcast and who the podcast is for. If you haven’t tried the Showplanner yet, you owe it to yourself to give it a whirl. It’s a free tool that can help you take the first steps in planning a podcast you can sustain consistently for a long time.