In this episode I introduce the podcast and talk about what is coming in the weeks and months to come as well as talk about my first 2 guests. We have a lot of great stuff coming and you can read a little more about what is coming in the blog, or just start listening to my first 2 interviews!
Show Transcription
Welcome everyone to episode zero of the expat podcast. In this episode I want to go over what is happening with this podcast, with the website, and with where it is all going. After this my podcasts will be of a more interview style format, but in this one I just want to establish what is happening and where we’re going, 1 on 1 with you the audience.
It’s been said “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late”.
A few short days ago I could have said that I am embarrassed by how the site looks. However in the last few days things have really come together. I can say that the things I’ve done to get here make me feel great. Keep in mind that things will only improve as we go forward.
The day I recorded my first podcast, I was terrified, and while the audio quality isn’t the best, I think the interview is pretty great. I look back on it now and I think for my first interview it is the best I could have done.
Right now I’m currently editing my latest interview and it is my best one yet. Yes the audio quality does improve, but I think the interview and my guest is amazing. I am super excited to be able to help tell these people’s stories.
That said, I am 1 guy, who is trying to provide something on the scope of what a fortune 1000 company might struggle to do, and my lack of experience in web development is clearly holding me back.
So clearly the dream I had was not going to materialize in the 1.0 version of the site. In fact as development went on it was clear that I would have to keep pulling out features I wanted. So what we have at launch will build to the 1.0 vision I wanted, and it will just take more time. I have a roadmap of things that I want designed to grow the site. Things will be updated as fast as it can be.
In later versions of the site will include a forum where members can build a community. I really wanted this to go live in the launch. I even spend quite a few hours setting up everything to get it looking great, adding different country or city listings so there would be some order to it. Then suddenly a few weeks ago there was an update to the forum software, something critical related to security, and we had no choice but to upgrade.
This broke the theme which we were going to use with the forum to make it look much better than the basic forum. The developer seems to have completely abandoned the software, but surprisingly its still for sale. So we now have 2 pieces of incompatible technology and need to look at other options to find something that will work. My developer is working on an acceptable solution, and it likely will not be working at the time this podcast goes live.
But really all the problems and issues, and overreaching we almost did is not the point of this episode. The point of this episode is to cover what this site and podcast is, and what you can expect from it.
Launching with this episode are 2 other episodes to my podcast. With the podcast my goal is to get people interested in becoming an expat, as well as helping people who are expats have a better and easier life abroad. With the 2 other episodes that go live today I think that you will see what I mean.
In my interview with author and freelancer, Steve Roller, we talk all about how you can work as a freelancer and not be tied down to a job that can keep you from traveling. We talk about the pros and cons of working for yourself and as great as it can be, how it is not right for everyone.
In the 2nd episode I sit down with Dan Zarin, a comedian and business owner, and we talk about what life is like in Iceland, how it is to be an expat living with tourettes and owning a business outside of your home country.
Looking beyond this I also have interviews with people who have left their home country, and how different visa systems work while waiting on new citizenship. I hope to do some interviews with people on how you can travel and live for months at a time without paying any rent.
A lot of the content that I’ll have for the first 5-10 episodes will be mostly for people who are open to the idea of being an expat, but may not have enough information, or just an extra push to help get them there.
After I’ll be speaking more with different expats around the world and share different information useful to expats. Things like information different cities, customs, or cultural things to be aware of.
I’m also working on additional content that I want to feature that I hope to have at least every other month. I want to uncover some parts of the world, or history which a lot of people are not aware. I hope to be able to introduce people to lesser known things about the world we live in.
I want to dig deep into the histories of different places that most of us are unaware of. Look for the first of these in August and the next in September.
On this subject I had a thought while I was editing one of these interviews. I was listening to another podcast called Klepper. He’s a comedian on Comedy Central and they were doing a piece on guns in America. They realized while they were editing the show that they could really change what the story is about by choosing what to include or leave out.
It is something that I had only briefly thought about, and the final product of podcast is only a version of the story. The questions I ask could dictate where the story goes. I don’t want to give a false version of the story so in my editing the only edits I will make will be to clean up the audio. Removing pauses, stutters or anything else that can make it bad to listen to. My goal isn’t to create the story, but to tell the story of the person I’m interviewing.
As long as I’m getting all of this out I also want to include that on both the website and the podcast I will be as apolitical as possible. One thing you will hear brought up in my 3rd episode where I discuss healthcare with my guest, we cover the facts but we don’t discuss anything involving actual politics.
There are too many political parties and political systems with people living all over the world to even try to cover things, and I’m sure there are already places on the internet to discuss all of them. Here we will stick to the facts, and you can go elsewhere for politics. If we see comments appearing anywhere on the site about politics we can and will delete them at our discretion.
I guess I should work better on segways as I don’t have a good transition from deleting comments to talking to great people, so I guess I’ll just get to it.
I really want to have conversations with as many amazing people as I can for this show. If you are an expat, or you have amazing information that can help people travel the world easier please send me a message. If you know someone who would be a great guest of the show, I encourage you to have them send me a message. I’ll put a copy of my email below the show in the show notes so that everyone can find it. If you’re listening to this podcast somewhere other than my website, my website address is the-expat.com and you can find all my podcasts at the-expat.com/podcast
One last thing before I close episode zero. I want to congratulate one of my cousins and new husband who just got married about 2 weeks before this podcast goes live. Congrats to both of you, I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there.
That’s all I have for this episode. You can find episodes 1 and 2 also going live on the launch date, so go give them a listen. Please subscribe on apple podcasts or spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. I also have a newsletter sign up below this where I promise not to spam you. It currently will be going out only twice a month when a new episode of the podcast airs.
