Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin McCann.
Erin, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
In late 2017, I was in a group text with my two closest friends (who also happen to be my cousins), Tammy Cooper and Amanda Reitz. We were creeping closer to the Thanksgiving Holiday and were all looking forward to a chance to spend time together and to decompress from our jobs. There was a discussion about how we felt the need to stretch ourselves creatively, and to start working on something that was really a passion project. The conversation moved organically and Tammy suggested that the three of us start a podcast together. All three of us are big podcast fans, and we’ve known each other our entire lives, and have great chemistry as a trio.
The idea took off. Casual texts turned into planning sessions, organizational structure, and marketing plans. We recorded our first batch of episodes in December 2017 and formally formed our parent company, Red Water Productions, in January, along with establishing a bank account. We released our first episode on February 13, 2018, and have continued to release episodes every other Sunday since launch day.
Our podcast is about the background and history of common superstitions. Our family is Irish and Cajun and both those cultures have a heavy focus on superstition. We thought by focusing on something that was already a part of our lives, the conversation would feel more natural.
We are definitely a work in progress! We learn something each time we release an episode and we love feedback on how we can be better!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Podcasting is fun, but it’s absolutely a side hustle. Right now, we are incredibly fortunate that the podcast is making just enough money to pay for itself, and allow a little bit of extra cash flow to reinvest into better equipment and materials for our merchandise. I think I speak for the whole team when I say we would love to make this a full-time gig, but right now we’re making ends meet, and that’s ok too! This is a labor of love, and we are having a great time in the process.
A very real challenge for us has been the logistics of recording. We live pretty far from each other, about 30 minutes apart for all three of us, so we have to calendar recording sessions pretty far in advance. Our schedules are crazy. I’m a full-time employee working in Public School Communications, I have a four-year-old daughter, and my husband is a firefighter on a shift schedule, so sometimes even finding a day or time to get together to record when no one else is around can be a real challenge!
Another struggle is the reality of what audio productions cost. I mentioned that we are making ends meet – and we are, but to start to really expand our brand, and release merchandise, that will all involve more revenue or sponsorships. We love audio dramas, so we are in the early stages of producing the second podcast from Red Water Productions, with one of our closest friends, but taking on an audio drama is a big project! You need great scripts, great actors, and a big plan on where that story is going to go!
2018 has been an incredible year and we want to balance continuing the momentum, while not getting so far ahead of ourselves that we can’t keep up!
Salt Over Your Shoulder – Podcast – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Brand Integrity is really important to me. I work professionally in Communications, and I knew when we started this production company, and this podcast specifically, that we needed to have a very cohesive idea of who we were and what we were offering.
Since Tammy, Amanda, and I are family, and close friends, we had a natural dynamic that we wanted to translate into a unique experience for our listeners. Groups of three can be difficult, but Tammy, Amanda and I have always figured out how to work together as a unit without anyone being the third wheel. We wanted that to feel authentic to people who downloaded an episode. That’s why, at the beginning of almost every episode, you hear us just talking and catching up, or laughing about something. I usually turn the mic on and start recording before I ever tell the girls we are recording. I want our listeners to feel like they’re inside of our friendship.
We also wanted this to be professional. While we are learning all the time, we didn’t want this project to feel like something that someone just threw together on a whim. We had our logo professionally designed by the talented Andrew Yorke, and we spend hours putting together each episode.
We are reaching a place where we can start to offer merchandise, first to our donors on patreon, but hopefully, soon we will be able to offer merchandise to the public. We don’t have t-shirts yet, but we’ve started the design process and hope to have one or two options available mid-summer.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
It’s a toss-up for the proudest moment so far! It’s either when we launched our very first episode, and I could stream our Podcast on my iTunes account, or it’s when we hit our first milestone of 1,000 downloads. Our next big milestone will be 100,000 downloads!
This podcast has been the most exciting project I’ve ever worked on. We’ve had shoutouts from podcasts that we fangirl over, (I’m looking at you King Falls AM), we’ve had feedback from professionals that we really respect, and I am constantly overwhelmed by the generosity of our patrons on Patreon. These people care enough about what we are doing, that they take some of their hard earned money and support our team as creators.
This is an exciting time to be working in audio, and to be creating. With so many tools and technology available, if you dream it, you really can do it. You’ve just got to be tenacious and patient.
Pricing:
- Buy us a coffee patreon tier – $5/month
- Knock on wood patreon tier – $10/month
- Karaoke with Amanda patreon tier – $20/month
- Salt the merchandise patreon tier- $30/month
- Let us thank you patreon tier – $50/month
Contact Info:
- Email: SaltOverYourShoulder@gmail.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaltThePod/
- Twitter: @SaltThePod
- Other: https://www.patreon.com/SaltThePod
Image Credit:
Andrew Yorke for logo
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