If you’re an avid reader of the Studio Cotton blog or an Instagram follower of ours, you’ve probably seen Liz Mosley’s name mentioned a fair few times. She’s a small business pal of ours, and we love her brilliant branding and design services.
As well as making things beautiful, Liz has a podcast – Building Your Brand: A podcast to support and encourage small businesses in all things branding and marketing.
She started it back in February 2021, recording from the lovely city of Cardiff. Let’s find out a little more.
1. What was your original goal for Building Your Brand?
I work with a lot of business owners who wouldn’t even be classed as small, but are micro businesses – often one person.
Being one of those micro businesses myself, I know that it’s not always possible to invest in all of the things you want to, so you end up having to wear a lot of hats.
I wanted to create a resource that inspired and encouraged those people in all different areas of branding and marketing, and that actually gave them real actionable tips that they could then use to build their businesses.
That was and is still my goal with the podcast, to provide free and inspiring content. I have had such lovely feedback from people telling me how much it has helped them so I think it’s working.
2. “90% of podcasts don’t get past their 3rd episode” – what helped you to keep going?
I think there are two things that have got me to now over 100 episodes of the Building Your Brand podcast. First up is outsourcing.
I made the decision that I would outsource the editing right from the start, and it’s been quite a big financial investment, but I think it has been totally worth it as it has helped me to be really consistent with releasing episodes.
I work so much better if I have a deadline, and so every week I have to have all the content to my podcast editor Lucy Lucraft for her to edit.
Because of us working together, I have created a routine and various processes that allow me to keep up with everything I need to do. I started off creating fortnightly episodes, but for over a year now have been releasing weekly episodes.
I also outsource some of the promotional aspects of it too, and have someone that makes the promotional teasers from the podcast videos, which saves me a lot of time.
I think the second thing that has helped me is how much I enjoy it. From the minute I started podcasting, I was hooked. Although there is a lot of work that goes into creating a podcast, it is so enjoyable for me it doesn’t feel like work, and I think that definitely helps.
3. What has been an unexpected business/commercial benefit of podcasting?
I think something I hadn’t expected was how much podcasting would expand my network and business friendships. I mostly interview guests, and over the years have been able to talk to so many amazing business owners about their specialist areas.
Some of those people have become friends and we have kept in touch, and I know that I could recommend them for work, or suggest collaborations, or ask for help if I needed it. I didn’t go into it expecting that as an outcome, but it has been amazing.
4. How did you make your first £1 from podcasting?
My first £1 came from sponsorship. About a year into podcasting, I knew ideally I wanted to find sponsors to cover the cost of the editing, so I emailed my list to see if any small businesses would like to sponsor the podcast at a really affordable rate to get things started.
I now have much bigger companies sponsoring the podcast for multiple episodes, but I am so grateful to those small businesses that supported the podcast in those early days.
I also had Adobe contact me quite early on about sponsoring the podcast, and that resulted in not podcast sponsorship (not right away anyway) but a long term working relationship with them, which has been huge for my business.
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5. What’s your least favourite thing about having a podcast?
Probably the number of pitches I get from people who are completely not the right fit for the podcast. Some of the pitches I get are perfect, but there seem to be a very high number from white, middle aged men in corporate America, who have clearly never listened to the podcast.
I don’t really get it to be honest, because while it might be kind of good for their SEO (search engine optimisation) with a backlink in the show notes, it would be such a waste of their time as they would be completely the wrong fit for my audience.
6. What aspects of your podcast production do you outsource or delegate?
I currently outsource the editing and some of the admin bits, and then I outsource the making of the video teasers.
I also have an absolutely amazing automated workflow in Dubsado that makes managing guests and sending them all the info they need about being a guest super easy. I reckon that workflow has probably saved me hours and hours of time.
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7. How long would you say it took for Building Your Brand to have a positive commercial benefit for you or your business?
It depends how you would measure this. I am still not making any money from the podcast directly.
At the moment all the sponsorship goes on the jobs that I outsource, but in terms of opportunities that it has brought my way (for example my work with Adobe) it has had a huge commercial benefit for my business. I think I started to see those benefits about a year after starting.
From my experience, podcasting is definitely a slow burn, in the sense that you have to be doing it for a while and consistently to see real results. Also, if you don’t have a huge social media following, I think it takes a while to grow your listenership too.
I think if you can keep going with it, incredible opportunities will come your way, but you have to be patient – it definitely doesn’t often happen straight away.
8. How much would you recommend that a new podcaster budget for getting started, and where should they spend it first?
You can actually start a podcast on a budget, and there isn’t much you need to get started.
I would say the key things are somewhere to host your podcast (I used Libsyn), a microphone (I use a Blue Yeti but you could definitely get something cheaper) and whatever earphones you already have would be enough to get start.
You also need something to record on. If you are doing solo episodes, something like QuickTime Player is fine (you could even do it on a voice memo app on your phone) or if you are doing interviews I would recommend Zencastr which has a free plan you can start off with.
So in terms of budgeting, I would allow about £15 a month for hosting and £69-£100 for a good microphone. That’s all you need to get started. As time goes on you can invest in more tools and better equipement, but honestly you can do a lot without all the bells and whistles.
9. What’s on the immediate horizon for Building Your Brand?
At the moment, I am really focused on growing the listenership, and securing more sponsorship so that I can keep the podcast going for a long time. I am also sharing some of the episodes on YouTube which is exciting.
This isn’t on the immediate horizon, but one of my big goals for the podcast would be to host an in-person event where an episode was recorded with an audience. I think that would be so fun!
As recommended by Liz
We asked Liz toecommend 3 people, organisations or resources that have helped her as a podcaster…
- Lucy Lucraft – my podcast editor
- Frankie Tortora of Doing it for The Kids – she was very generous with her advice about sponsorship
- Dan of Kingsbane Studio in Cardiff – I’ve started recording some of my episodes in his studio, and he has been so helpful and brilliant and it’s really helped take the podcast to the next level
You can listen on the Building Your Brand website, as well as on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Follow Liz Mosley on Instagram and on LinkedIn for regular updates, and head to
If you’re gagging to know more about Liz’s graphic design business, read the Q&A we did with her a couple years back – Course, podcast, branding & GIFs: 12 questions with graphic designer Liz Mosley.
For more insights into the podcasting world, head to (Small) business of podcasts to read more of our Q&A blogs.
