how to start a podcast as a therapist

The no-fluff guide built from 11 years, 2 million downloads, and supporting 240+ clinicians who’ve done it

3

The shower.

That’s where I had the wild and crazy idea to start a podcast in November 2014.

But before I tell you about the shower, I need to tell you about the train.

Twice a week I was commuting into Center City Philadelphia — SEPTA train in, train back — not getting home until 8pm. Five and a half days of clinical work a week. Saturday mornings too, nine to noon.

I loved the clinical work.  But I was gaining weight. Losing hair. And somewhere underneath the exhaustion, a quiet but terrifying thought had started forming:

I can’t do this for another thirty-five years.

Not won’t. Can’t.

That thought scared me. Because I’d worked so hard to get here.  To decide against medical school to become a pediatrician but to get a PhD and become a licensed psychologist.  But the life I was living didn’t feel like the life I’d worked toward.

So there I was. In the shower. When the idea hit to call my new project Selling The Couch.

I jumped out, towel barely draped, sprinted past my wife — who understandably wondered if the house was on fire — and told her the only thing I knew for certain:

“I gotta get the .com.”

Which, of course, left her more confused.

The Selling The Couch podcast had 9 downloads on Day 1. And 79 on Day 2.

Not exactly a rocket ship. And honestly? That’s been the point. From the beginning, I wanted to design a podcast around the life I wanted to build — not get on something moving so fast I’d regret it later.

Elevent years in, that slow and measured approach has led somewhere I couldn’t have scripted. Selling The Couch is now a top 0.5% podcast globally, with over 2.1 million downloads across 87 countries and an Apple Top Career Podcast designation.

As a licensed psychologist and PhD, I’ve built it into a healthy six-figure business — one that’s kind to my nervous system as a highly sensitive person and INFJ, and structured around my family, health, and caring for aging parents.

But the part that humbles me most isn’t the numbers.

It’s the 240+ therapists I’ve had the privilege of walking alongside as they found their voice — including the teams behind Therapy For Black Girls, Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, Therapist Uncensored, and Therapy Chat.

Starting a podcast is genuinely hard. The learning curve is real, and the emotional roller coaster is normal.

What I can tell you is this: it’s opened doors I didn’t know existed, deepened my ability to serve others, and become the backbone of everything I’ve built professionally.

This guide is everything I wish I’d had in that shower.

Table of Contents

The #1 Reason To Start A Podcast As A Therapist

Let me ask you something.

How did your last client find you?

A directory. A referral. Maybe a Google or AI search. Maybe word of mouth.

Now ask yourself: how much control do you have over any of those?

Most therapists building successful practices are doing it on borrowed land — Psychology Today, insurance panels, directories that can change their algorithm or raise their fees overnight. The referrals come in. But you don’t own the pipeline.

And for the therapist who’s moved beyond the caseload — who’s built real niche expertise and is now thinking about courses, books, speaking, retreats — the question becomes even sharper:

How do I scale what I know without burning out or starting from zero every time?

Both problems have the same root.

People hire, follow, buy from, and refer to therapists they know, like, and trust.

That’s not a marketing insight. It’s just true. And a podcast is the most powerful know/like/trust machine ever built for a clinician.

Here’s why.

According to Acast’s 2025 Podcast Pulse report, three-quarters of podcast listeners say a podcaster has changed their mind about something they once believed.

Not informed them. Changed their mind. That’s the depth of influence we’re talking about. 

Half of all podcast listeners trust podcasters more than any other media personality tested — more than journalists, YouTubers, social media creators, or cable TV personalities.

And in a world where AI is making shallow content infinitely cheap to produce, that trust is becoming more valuable, not less. Listeners are gravitating toward depth, toward soulful conversation, toward hosts who actually know what they’re talking about. 

That’s you.

But here’s what most people don’t tell you about podcasting.

You’re not just building a podcast. You’re building a media company — without the outrageous costs.

Every episode you publish is a permanent asset. And with dynamic ad insertion, every single episode you’ve ever recorded becomes an active channel the moment you have something to share — a book launch, a new course, a retreat, a speaking engagement. Episode 1 or episode 300, it doesn’t matter. The people hearing it already trust you.

That’s not a content strategy.

That’s infrastructure.

And clinicians make extraordinary podcast hosts — because your training gives you a competitive advantage over 99.9% of people who ever pick up a microphone.

If you have a master’s degree, you’ve spent at least two years learning to ask great questions, deepen conversations, tell powerful stories, and distinguish between content and process. A doctoral degree means four or more years of that, plus internship, plus possibly a postdoc.

What you do in the podcast studio is exactly what you do in the therapy room.

Just at scale.

imposter syndrome: why the most scared therapists make the best podcasters

In writing this guide, I’ve thought a lot about the Mel of Fall 2014.

Excited. Terrified. Telling a small handful of close friends about this idea, feeding off their enthusiasm at night — then lying awake at 2am with an entirely different set of voices.

Will anyone actually listen to this?

My colleagues are going to think I’ve lost my mind.

What if my family thinks I’m being arrogant — that I think I’m somehow more important than everyone else?

And honestly… do I even have a voice for this?

I want to name those fears directly. Because in ten years of conversations with therapist podcasters, I’ve heard every single one of them.

From clinicians with decades of experience. From researchers with impressive CVs. From people who are genuinely brilliant at what they do and still couldn’t shake the feeling that starting a podcast would somehow expose them.

If you’ve felt this, you’re not broken. You’re not behind. You’re exactly the kind of person who should be doing this.

Here’s what I’ve learned about the fear underneath imposter syndrome:

Fear almost always shows up when we’re about to do something that actually matters. It’s not a stop sign. It’s your nervous system doing its job — trying to protect you from standing out, from being seen, from leaving the safety of the herd.

The colleagues who might judge you? More often than not, their opinions are a mirror of their own unfulfilled dreams. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Not everyone’s opinion deserves equal weight in the decisions you make about your life.

The voice thing? I still wish I had what I’d call a real podcasting voice. I’ve also received compliments suggesting I should do ASMR videos — which, as a then-42-year-old, I had to Google.

What I’ve learned is that everyone hates the sound of their recorded voice. It’s not a sign. It’s just neuroscience. Your listeners won’t hear what you hear.

And the fear of running out of things to say? In my experience, the therapists who worry most about this are the ones sitting on the richest content mines they’ve ever seen.

You have years of clinical wisdom, patterns you’ve noticed, questions that keep you up at night. That’s not a shallow well. That’s a career’s worth of material.

What surprised me most, though, wasn’t the fear of failure.

It was the fear of success.

Somewhere around year two or three, a quieter anxiety crept in — what if this actually grows and I can’t handle it? What if success changes me? I don’t hear people talk about this one enough.

But I’ll tell you what I’ve found on the other side of it: podcasting, done with intention, makes you more grateful over time. Not less. The longer you do it, the more you understand what a privilege it is to have someone’s attention.

In the years since that 2014 shower moment, I’ve had the privilege of walking alongside the 240+ therapists in our podcasting community — first through Healthcasters, which ran for nearly a decade, and now through Haven, a more intimate community for clinicians building content-based businesses. Every single one of them has sat with these same fears before hitting publish for the first time.

In this section, I’m also sharing something I’ve never felt fully comfortable sharing — a video of the exact moment I submitted the Selling The Couch podcast to Apple back in 2015.

I can hear both the fear and the hope in my voice. I’m posting it because I want you to see that the courage it takes to hit submit doesn’t require the fear to go away first.

One framework that’s shaped how I think about the early stages:

Year 1: Get going. Year 2: Get good. Year 3: Get smart.

I’ve seen it hold true across every therapist podcaster I’ve worked with. The ones who struggle most are the ones trying to monetize or systematize in year one. Everyone sounds rough in the first fifty episodes.

That’s not a flaw in the plan — it is the plan. Work on one thing at a time. Focus on the reps. The compounding happens later, but only if you start.

how to find your podcast niche (Mel’s 7-layer dip exercise)

Let me give you the simplest niche definition I know:

A specific person in a specific situation.

That’s it. Not a topic. Not a theme. A person and a situation.

The mistake most new podcasters make is staying too broad — trying to serve everyone and ending up resonating with no one. The 7-Layer Dip exercise is how I help therapists move past that.

(Yes, I named it after the Tex-Mex appetizer. The Texan in me who misses proper Tex-Mex could not help himself.)

Here’s how it works:

Take both the person you want to serve and the situation they’re in. Then go seven layers deep into each — getting more and more specific until you feel genuinely uncomfortable. Then pull back one or two layers.

That’s your niche.

Let me show you exactly how I did this with Selling The Couch.

The Person

  • Layer 1: All people
  • Layer 2: Healthcare providers
  • Layer 3: Healthcare providers in the helping and healing professions
  • Layer 4: All therapists
  • Layer 5: Therapists considering or building a private practice
  • Layer 6: Successful therapists in private practice
  • Layer 7: Successful therapists in private practice who are ready to move beyond it

The Situation

  • Layer 1: Anyone who wants to learn about business
  • Layer 2: Healthcare providers who want to learn about business
  • Layer 3: Helping and healing professionals who want to build a business
  • Layer 4: Therapists who want to learn about business
  • Layer 5: Therapists in private practice who want to build an online business
  • Layer 6: Therapists who want to launch a podcast or course
  • Layer 7: Therapists ready to grow their impact and income beyond the therapy room through podcasting, YouTube, speaking, writing and courses

My sweet spot for Selling The Couch sits at Layer 6 on the person and Layer 7 on the situation.

But here’s the nuance most people miss.

When it comes to individual episodes, I deliberately pull back to layers 5 and 6.

Why? Because the therapist at Layer 4 or 5 — the one who’s curious but not quite ready to buy — is a future client. They’re in your world now. They’re building trust with you. And when they’re ready to move, you’re the person they already know.

The rule I follow: Go deep on your products and services. Pull back 2-3 layers for your content.

That tension is what builds an audience that eventually becomes a community.

A note on staying in your lane:

The clearer your niche, the more confidently you can say no to episode ideas, guests, and directions that don’t serve your specific person in their specific situation. That clarity isn’t limiting. It’s what makes the right listener feel like you made this podcast just for them.

Before you start a podcast:  the one thing that actually predicts success

I’ve watched hundreds of therapists start podcasts.

Some build something that quietly compounds for years. Others publish six episodes and disappear.

The difference almost never comes down to equipment, editing skills, or even how good they sound on the microphone.

It comes down to why they started.

The therapists who stick with it — through the slow download months, through the episodes they wish they could take back, through the seasons when it feels like nobody is listening — are the ones for whom the podcast was never the destination.

It was a vehicle.

For the book they’re writing. The course they’re building. The speaking career they’re quietly assembling. The retreat they want to run. The movement they feel called to lead.

When your podcast is the vehicle and not the destination, slow growth feels like progress. When your podcast is the destination, slow growth feels like failure.

That reframe changes everything.

The other thing I’ve noticed? The therapists who build lasting podcasts have already proven something about themselves before they ever hit record.

They’ve built a practice. Launched a group. Written a workshop. Created something from nothing and followed through on it. They have a North Star — a clear sense of who they serve and what they believe — and that clarity radiates through every episode they make.

That groundedness isn’t something you perform. It’s something you’ve earned.

This doesn’t mean you need a wildly successful practice before you start. It means you need to be someone who builds things and finishes them — someone for whom a podcast will be an amplifier of something already in motion, not a substitute for the clarity you haven’t found yet.

If you’re a therapist in practice, a coach who’s transitioned out of the clinical world, or a clinician who’s already begun expanding beyond the therapy room — this guide was written for you.

It’s also why Haven exists — a community for clinicians who’ve done the work and are ready to build the platform.

If you’re still figuring out the foundation, the most valuable thing you can do right now is build that first.

The podcast will be more powerful because of it.

Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business (Free Workshop)

If you love this guide, please check out our free podcasting workshop for therapists.  It contains even more lessons and tips to build a successful podcast that makes and is personally and professionally fulfilling. 

mel, sign me up

What Makes A Great Niche In Podcasting?

Pretty much what makes a great niche in private practice.

But I wanted to add some more nuances and questions to consider as a future podcaster (answering with a simple yes or no is fine)

The riches are in the niches.

  • Is my podcast topic something I can see myself doing for 10+ years?
    • We want to think in “decades over days” so that our efforts compound over time to download numbers, more business revenue, and opportunities (e.g., being approached by a publisher or paid speaking at conferences).
    • An example of this. I recently had the opportunity to partner with the American Psychological Association (LINK OUT). This happened in year 9.
  • Is my podcast topic related to something that people are already paying me for (e.g., therapy, coaching, consultation, etc.)?
    • We want to do this because your podcast should be an extension of something people are already paying you for. We’re now doing this at scale. Also, it’s much easier to monetize a podcast (e.g., with an online course) if it’s already a topic that you’ve earned income from.
  • Is my podcast topic an area where there’s increasing vs. dying demand?
    • The main benefit is that we want to create a strong foundation and become known as an authority in an area where people are craving information.
  • Does my ideal listener have earning power (i.e., do they have disposable income to spend on therapy, online courses, products, retreats, etc.)?
    • This makes it easier to charge more premium fees and to monetize your podcast later.
  • Are there places either online (Reddit, FB Groups, etc.) or in person (conferences, Meet Up’s, etc.) where my listeners are gathering? Ideally try to find both.
    • This lets you know that people are willing to gather to learn about the topic of your podcast.
    • This can translate to things like speaking at conferences, doing workshops, etc. down the line.

INSIDER TIP: If you go to one of these conferences, visit the sponsor booths as those are future sponsorship or partnership opportunities.

Decide On A Podcast Format

Next, you want to think about how to structure your individual podcast episodes.

  • The most common formats are:
    • Solo episodes: You create an episode on a topic that you know about and what you want to become known for.
    • Interview episodes: You chat with others, ideally on a topic, that you want to learn about and would resonate with your listeners.
    • Round tables: You have a group of people gather (online or in person) to chat about a topic.
    • Coaching calls: You coach someone on an area that you have expertise in (ideally connected to products and services you provide).
    • Mashups: Podcast listeners submit replies to a question that you ask, and these replies are combined into one episode).

Play around with formats especially in Year 1.

See it as a learning process where there are no right answers.

But one recommendation that I would make?

Lean into both interviews and solo episodes.

Then sprinkle in the other formats.

The purpose of the interviews is to help others, expand your professional network, and build strategic partnerships for things like future podcast sponsorships.

And the purpose of the solo episodes is to build authority and trust with your listeners.

If you can do both, you become a trusted resource in the hearts and minds of your listeners.

Pick A Great Podcast Name

Now it’s time to pick a podcast name.

As I shared earlier, the name “Selling The Couch” came in the shower.

The part that I didn’t share?

I sat in front of a computer for weeks and got way too anxious about finding the perfect podcast name.

Here are a few tips to find a great podcast name:

  1. Is the name trademarked (the USPTO site has this search to see if it is)
  2. Is the .com available (we use Hover to buy domain names)
  3. Is the name easy to spell?
  4. Is the name easy to remember?
  5. Does it pass what Donald Miller calls the “grunt test” (a combo of the name, artwork, and subtitle tell someone exactly what your podcast is about)
  6. Is your name memorable? (Imagine a podcast listener is telling a future new fan, “Have you heard the [insert your podcast name] podcast?”
  7. Put keywords into this AI brand name generator called Namelix to come up with a great podcast name.

Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business (Free Workshop)

If you love this guide, please check out our free podcasting workshop for therapists.  It contains even more lessons and tips to build a successful podcast that makes and is personally and professionally fulfilling. 

mel, sign me up

podcast name example: therapy chat

To bring this home, I wanted to share an example from one of our podcasting students.

Laura Reagan is a licensed clinical social worker who had a wonderful idea to launch a podcast to bring more clients into her group practice.

She was also thinking about income sources beyond therapy as she and her partner started to think about retirement.

Laura’s practice is based in the Baltimore and Annapolis areas of Maryland.

So she initially named the podcast the Baltimore and Annapolis Psychotherapy Podcast.

It made sense in theory – dense with keywords, specific to the area the group practice was seeing clients, etc.

But, over time, we ended up tweaking the name to Therapy Chat.

Why?

Because “Baltimore and Annapolis Psychotherapy Podcast” was too hard to remember. It was also hard to read on small screens (most people listen to podcasts on their phones).

It was not memorable.

We want people to say, “Have you listened to Therapy Chat?”

Since then, Laura has been able to gain brand recognition and monetizes her podcast through clients, sponsors, and by creating the Trauma Therapist Network.

As Laura says:

“After nearly 9 years and more than 8 million downloads, I have had more wins with my podcast than I could ever possibly name, but some of them include interviewing the teachers I admire most in the trauma field and creating a thriving membership community of trauma therapists.”
Qualities of a good show description in terms of how to start a podcast

How To Write a podcast description that actually works

Your podcast description is doing more work than most podcasters realize.

It’s the paragraph a potential listener reads — on their phone, on their laptop, in a directory — in the few seconds before they decide whether to hit play or keep scrolling. It’s also quietly indexed by search engines, which means the words you choose matter both for humans and for how your podcast gets discovered.

You have up to 4,000 characters. Use them wisely.

Start here: The Hopes, Dreams, Fears, and Roadblocks Exercise

Before you write a single word of your description, do this first.

Take out a sheet of paper and draw two vertical lines to create three columns. Label them:

  • Hopes and Dreams
  • Fears
  • Roadblocks

Now put yourself completely inside the mind of your ideal listener. Not a general listener — your specific person from the 7-Layer Dip exercise. What are they hoping your podcast will give them? What are they afraid of? What’s standing between them and the outcome they want?

Fill each column with phrases. Real ones. The kind of language your ideal listener uses when they’re talking to a colleague or lying awake at night.

Then look at what you’ve written.

Those phrases are the raw material of your description. When your ideal listener reads your description and sees their own words reflected back at them, something clicks. They don’t just think this sounds interesting. They think this was made for me.

That’s the goal.

Writing the description itself.

A few principles that compound over time:

Write at a sixth grade reading level. This isn’t dumbing down — it’s clarity. The most trusted communicators in any field have learned to make complex things simple. If you want to test yours, paste it into ChatGPT and ask it to rewrite at a sixth grade reading level. Then compare. You’ll be surprised.

Weave in keywords naturally. Your description is indexed by podcast directories and search engines — which means the words you choose affect how you get discovered. Include your name, your niche, and the specific language your ideal listener searches for. But here’s where your clinical training serves you: therapists write case notes that are simultaneously precise and human. That’s exactly the skill you need here. Keywords woven into natural language — not stuffed awkwardly — is something you already know how to do.

Lead with your most compelling credential. Not your degree. Not your years of experience. The thing that makes your ideal listener stop scrolling. For most therapist podcasters, that’s a combination of specificity and social proof.

Insert credibility markers. Publications that have featured you. How long you’ve been in the field. Communities you’ve built. Real numbers where you have them.

Here’s the current Selling The Couch description — use it as inspiration, not a template:

With over 2 million downloads, Selling the Couch is an Apple Top Career podcast for mental health professionals who think differently about their careers and their impact.

Psychologist Melvin Varghese, PhD interviews successful therapists and top entrepreneurs about building sustainable businesses, growing beyond the therapy room, and designing a life that doesn’t cost them their health or their family.

You’ll learn how clinicians get referrals, grow their practices, overcome fear, and stop trading time for income — and follow along as Mel evolves beyond the clinical room into public speaking, book writing, hosting retreats, and writing paid newsletters.

Featured in Psychology Today, Good Therapy, and Psych Central.

Get show notes and more at sellingthecouch.com/stcpodcast

One final principle:

Your description isn’t permanent. You can edit it anytime inside Captivate. So the goal at launch isn’t perfect — it’s good enough to clearly communicate who this is for and why they should listen.

Write it. Launch it. Refine it as you learn more about who your audience actually is.

Podcast Set Ups: Gear Recommendations For The 4 Most Common Scenarios

Next, you’ll want to buy your podcast gear.

Just a heads up, but this is process is both exciting and incredibly anxiety provoking.

My humble suggestion?

Start with a low-cost setup and then upgrade 3-5 years into your podcasting journey if you want.

And take selfies along the way with your gear.

Share it on places like LinkedIn and your email list because your loyal fans and future self will cheer for your evolution (also, it’s a nice selling point for sponsors many of which are on LinkedIn).

Here’s what I would recommend based on the 4 most common scenarios:

I’m The Host Of My Podcast + Will Interview Guests Over The Internet

I’m The Host Of My Podcast + Will Interview Guests In Person

I Have A Cohost For Our Podcast, My Cohost and I Connect Over The Internet, AND We Will Interview Guests Over The Internet

I Have A Cohost For My Podcast, We Get Together In Person To Record, AND Will Interview Our Guests In Person (Up To 4 Total People)

The YouTube video in this section explains this in more detail. 🙂

Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business (Free Workshop)

If you love this guide, please check out our free podcasting workshop for therapists.  It contains even more lessons and tips to build a successful podcast that makes and is personally and professionally fulfilling. 

mel, sign me up

How to choose your podcasting recording software

Before you hit record on your first episode, you need one more piece of the puzzle — software to actually capture your audio and video.

Let me save you nine years of the long way around.

For nearly a decade I recorded Selling The Couch on Zoom. Everyone knows Zoom. Guests don’t need to download anything unfamiliar. And for a long time, it was good enough.

But good enough has a ceiling.

As we started vodcasting — video podcasting for YouTube — the limitations became impossible to ignore. Zoom compresses both your audio and video by default. What your listener hears and what your viewer sees is lower quality than what you actually recorded. For a podcast you’re putting your name and reputation behind, that gap matters.

In 2025 we made the switch to Riverside and I haven’t looked back.

Why Riverside works for therapist podcasters:

4K video and uncompressed audio. What you record is what your audience experiences. No compression, no quality loss — whether they’re listening on Apple Podcasts or watching on YouTube.

A simple link for guests. No downloads, no app installs. You send your guest a custom link and they click to join. That’s it. For busy clinicians who are already juggling full schedules, removing friction from the guest experience matters.

Seamless Calendly integration. Riverside doesn’t integrate directly with Calendly — but the workflow is effortless. When a guest schedules through your Calendly link, you simply drop your custom Riverside studio link into the confirmation. One copy-paste and it’s done.

Multiple studios for multiple brands. This is a feature I use every week and rarely hear mentioned. Inside Riverside you can set up separate studios for each of your podcasts or projects. I have one for Selling The Couch and one for the Quiet Builder YouTube channel — each with its own settings, branding, and guest links. For therapists building more than one platform, this is a significant operational advantage.

AI-powered shorts and editing tools. Riverside uses AI to automatically identify the most compelling moments from your episodes and generate short clips for social media. It also includes AI editing tools that meaningfully cut down post-production time. Less time editing means more time doing the work that actually matters.

Transcription built in. Every episode is automatically transcribed — which as we discussed earlier, is also an SEO asset. Your transcript is what search engines index when they try to understand what your episode is about.

A note on live streaming: Riverside supports live streaming if you ever want to host a live Q&A or guest conversation with your audience. I haven’t personally used this feature yet — but it’s there when you’re ready.

try riverside for free

What Is A Podcast Host — And Why Do You Need One?

Before we talk about which platform to use, let’s make sure we’re clear on what a podcast host actually does.

A podcast host is your podcast’s home base. It stores your audio files, generates the RSS feed that directories like Apple Podcasts and Spotify read, and automatically pushes your new episodes out to every platform the moment you publish.

Without a host, your podcast doesn’t exist in the directories. It’s the infrastructure everything else runs on.

Why I Use Captivate As Our Podcast Host (And Have For Years)

Disclosure: This is an affiliate link — meaning I earn a recurring commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. I’ve used Captivate since around 2020 and recommend it because it’s genuinely the best fit I’ve found for therapist podcasters building content-based businesses.

There are a lot of podcast hosting platforms out there. I’ve tried several. I’ve stayed with Captivate — and here’s why.

They’re built for independent podcaster business owners.

Captivate isn’t a massive corporation with a hundred products and a podcast hosting feature buried somewhere in the menu. They focus on one thing — building the best podcast hosting platform for independent creators — and they keep improving it. For a solo practitioner running a lean operation, that focus matters.

Dynamic ad insertion.

This is the feature I recommend most enthusiastically to every therapist podcaster I work with — and it’s worth understanding deeply.

Dynamic ad insertion means you can run an ad across every single episode you’ve ever published with just a few clicks. When you have openings in your practice, you insert an ad. When you’re launching a course or a book, you insert an ad. When you’re hosting a retreat or opening a waitlist, you insert an ad. When the moment passes, you pull it out — or swap in something new.

Your entire back catalog becomes an active promotional channel overnight. Episode 1 or episode 300 — it doesn’t matter. Every listener hears it.

IAB-certified analytics.

This one matters more than most podcasters realize — especially when you’re ready to approach sponsors.

Captivate was the first podcast hosting platform in the world to achieve IAB Tech Lab Podcast Measurement 2.2 certification. In plain terms, this means your download and listener numbers are verified against the highest industry standard for accuracy and transparency. When a potential sponsor asks for your numbers, you can hand them over with confidence — knowing they reflect actual listener behavior, not inflated automatic downloads.

Video distribution to Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This is a newer feature and one worth paying attention to. Captivate now supports video distribution directly to Apple Podcasts via HLS — meaning one upload creates both a video and audio version of your episode simultaneously. Your video reaches Apple Podcasts and Spotify video viewers while your audio continues going out to every other directory. No extra uploads. No extra steps.

For therapist podcasters who are already recording video — which I recommend from day one — this is a significant time saver and a meaningful expansion of your reach.

A single page where listeners can subscribe on their favorite platform.

Instead of sending someone to Apple Podcasts and losing the Android user, you send everyone to one clean page where they can choose their preferred app. Here’s the page we use for Selling The Couch — simple, clean, and platform agnostic.

A modern website that auto-populates with every new episode.

Every time you publish an episode, Captivate automatically updates your podcast website. No manual updates, no extra steps. Here’s what ours looks like — and it took almost no effort to set up.

Private podcasts.

This is a feature I haven’t personally used yet — but I’ve spoken with several therapists-turned-coaches who use it to deliver content to their coaching clients behind a paywall. Think of it as a mini podcast that lives separately from your main show, accessible only to the people you choose. The potential for this in a clinical or coaching context is significant.

Easy links for marketing.

Every episode gets a clean, copy-pasteable link. That’s it. No hunting around dashboards. When you’re sending a newsletter, posting on LinkedIn, or sharing in a Facebook group — you grab the link and go.

try captivate (7 day free trial)

Why platform agnosticism protects you.

After Apple Podcasts, Spotify is the second most popular podcast directory — and getting listed there is one of the easiest wins available to you.

If you’re using Captivate, submitting to Spotify takes minutes. I’ve put together an over-the-shoulder video in this section showing exactly how to do it.

But here’s the bigger principle I want you to take away from this section.

Don’t just submit to Spotify. Submit everywhere.

You’ve worked hard to create this podcast. The reality is your listeners are spread across platforms — some are loyal Apple Podcasts users, others have Spotify subscriptions, others listen on Amazon Music or have Android phones that default to different apps entirely.

If you’re only on one or two platforms, you’re leaving a meaningful portion of your potential audience unreached — simply because of the device in their pocket.

This is why I’m a firm believer in staying platform agnostic.

Captivate distributes your podcast to every major directory — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and beyond — in a single step. Your episode goes everywhere at once. No extra work.

Why platform agnosticism protects you.

Here’s a real example of why this matters.

In 2023, Apple made a significant change to how podcast downloads are counted with its iOS 17 update. Previously, episodes were automatically downloaded even if a listener hadn’t played them. The update changed that — Apple Podcasts now only downloads new episodes unless the user actively chooses to download older ones. Overnight, download numbers dropped for podcasters who relied heavily on Apple metrics.

The podcasters who felt it least were the ones already distributing widely — because their audience wasn’t concentrated on a single platform.

The same principle that applies to your income applies to your distribution. Don’t build everything on one foundation you don’t control.

This is also a good reminder that download numbers are a lagging and imperfect metric. Platform algorithms change. Measurement standards evolve. What doesn’t change is whether the right people are finding and listening to your show — which is why casting a wide net across every available directory is always the right move.

Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business (Free Workshop)

If you love this guide, please check out our free podcasting workshop for therapists.  It contains even more lessons and tips to build a successful podcast that makes and is personally and professionally fulfilling. 

mel, sign me up

How To Script Your Podcast

Let me be honest about something most podcasting guides won’t tell you.

A word-for-word script is not your friend.

When you read from a full script, listeners feel it — especially on video. The eye movement. The slight flatness in the voice. The moments where the words are too polished to feel real. Ironically, the imperfect moments are exactly what makes listeners connect with you.

Early on I wanted Selling The Couch to sound like an NPR podcast. I love the quality and craft of that style.

What I eventually learned is that those episodes are typically produced by teams of four to fifteen people working for weeks or months. Staying lean and building something sustainable meant finding a different approach — one that could actually be maintained by one person with a full life.

What works better is a two-step process.

Step One: Idea capture happens away from your desk.

Some of my best episode ideas have come on a hike or on the golf course — not in front of a computer. I used to think I needed to be at a desk to be productive. What I’ve learned is that I just need uninterrupted time for ideas to converge.

I gather ideas constantly — from conversations with colleagues, from books and podcasts I’m consuming, from Reddit threads where I can see exactly what questions people are struggling with. When something keeps surfacing, that’s usually a signal it’s worth exploring.

The desk is for organizing ideas. The ideas themselves come from living.

Step Two: The 20-minute outline.

Once I have a topic, I sit down with an LLM — I use Claude — and I approach the outline with a beginner’s mindset. I ask myself: what are the four to six questions someone would genuinely want answered about this topic? Not the expert questions. The honest, curious, slightly naive ones.

Then I have the AI generate a clean bullet point outline based on those questions.

Not a script. Not full sentences. Just easy-to-scan bullets I can glance at while recording.

This keeps the episode structured without making it sound rehearsed.

Try to script one week before you record. Letting the outline sit for a few days means you come to the recording with fresh eyes — and often with a better story or example than you had when you first sat down.

How to open every episode.

The first thirty to sixty seconds of your episode are doing two jobs simultaneously.

The first job is for your listener — you want them to know immediately what question this episode is going to answer. Don’t make them wait. State it clearly, then move into a story. This respects their time and keeps them from skipping ahead.

The second job is quieter but just as important. When your episode is transcribed, search engines use that transcript to understand the context and content of your episode. Opening with a clear, specific question means the very first lines of your transcript are signaling exactly what the episode is about — making it easier for search engines to index and surface your content accurately.

One habit that serves both goals: open with the question, then earn the answer with a story.

Suggested Solo Episode Format

Solo episodes are where your expertise compounds most directly. Here’s the format I’ve landed on after years of testing:

1. Open with a question. State clearly what the episode is going to answer. If you want to be strategic about it, use a low-cost SEO tool like Keywords Everywhere to see what questions people are actually searching — and how many people search them each month. This takes a good instinct and makes it a data-informed one.

2. Share a personal story related to the question. This is what separates a therapy podcast from a lecture. The story is what makes the answer memorable. It’s also what makes you irreplaceable — no one else has your story.

There’s also a deeper strategic reason to lean into this.

Google’s E-E-A-T framework — which now heavily influences what content gets surfaced in search — specifically rewards personal experience and depth.

In a world where AI can generate unlimited generic content in seconds, Google is actively looking for the kind of unique, lived perspective that only a real human with real experience can provide.

This is an area where therapists have a natural advantage.

Years of clinical work, supervision, personal growth, and professional evolution gives you a depth of experience most content creators simply don’t have. Your story isn’t just good podcasting. It’s a compounding SEO asset.

3. Answer the question with three points. Three is the sweet spot. Enough to feel substantial, lean enough to stay focused. Sometimes I’ll stretch to five or seven when the topic demands it — but I always start by asking whether three points done well would serve the listener better than seven done quickly.

4. Close with a call to action. I intentionally line up episodes with relevant paid products and services. An episode on podcast monetization leads naturally to Haven. An episode on course creation leads to our free 7-day email course. The episode earns the ask.

suggested interview format:

Interview episodes have their own rhythm. Here’s the system that’s allowed me to produce hundreds of them without burning out:

Before the interview: Draft four to five questions and send them to your guest in advance. Let them know you’ll likely come up with three to four more in the moment — this sets the right expectation and gives the conversation room to breathe naturally.

The interview itself: I aim to wrap the conversation at the forty-minute mark. This isn’t arbitrary — it leaves me twenty minutes in the same recording session to capture both the intro and the outro while everything is still fresh.

The intro — recorded after the interview, not before. I open with something like: “Hey everyone, welcome to today’s session of Selling The Couch. Today we’re talking about [topic] and I’m joined by [guest]. I wanted to have this conversation because I know many of us are [specific struggle]. In this episode we’re going to cover…” Then I outline the key questions we discussed.

The outro — one, max two takeaways. That’s it. After the guest has gone, I share the one or two insights I’m personally walking away with. This does something subtle but powerful: it models for the listener how to extract value from what they just heard. It deepens retention. And it keeps your voice and perspective present even in an interview-based episode.

The whole system — intro, interview, outro — runs in sixty minutes or less.

How To Script Your Podcast (And Make It Sound Like You)

Let me be honest about something most podcasting guides won’t tell you.

A word-for-word script is not your friend.

When you read from a full script, listeners feel it — especially on video. The eye movement. The slight flatness in the voice. The moments where the words are too polished to feel real. Ironically, the imperfect moments are exactly what makes listeners connect with you.

What works better — and what I’ve landed on after nearly a decade of episodes — is a two-step process.

Step One: Idea capture happens away from your desk.

Some of my best episode ideas have come on a hike or on the golf course — not in front of a computer. I used to think I needed to be at a desk to be productive. What I’ve learned is that I just need uninterrupted time for ideas to converge.

I gather ideas constantly — from conversations with colleagues, from books and podcasts I’m consuming, from Reddit threads where I can see exactly what questions people are struggling with. When something keeps surfacing, that’s usually a signal it’s worth exploring.

The desk is for organizing ideas. The ideas themselves come from living.

Step Two: The 20-minute outline.

Once I have a topic, I sit down with an LLM — I use Claude — and I approach the outline with a beginner’s mindset. I ask myself: what are the four to six questions someone would genuinely want answered about this topic? Not the expert questions. The honest, curious, slightly naive ones.

Then I have the AI generate a clean bullet point outline based on those questions.

Not a script. Not full sentences. Just easy-to-scan bullets I can glance at while recording.

This keeps the episode structured without making it sound rehearsed.

Try to script one week before you record. Letting the outline sit for a few days means you come to the recording with fresh eyes — and often with a better story or example than you had when you first sat down.

How to open every episode.

The first thirty to sixty seconds of your episode are doing two jobs simultaneously.

The first job is for your listener — you want them to know immediately what question this episode is going to answer. Don’t make them wait. State it clearly, then move into a story. This respects their time and keeps them from skipping ahead.

The second job is quieter but just as important. When your episode is transcribed, search engines use that transcript to understand the context and content of your episode. Opening with a clear, specific question means the very first lines of your transcript are signaling exactly what the episode is about — making it easier for search engines to index and surface your content accurately.

One habit that serves both goals: open with the question, then earn the answer with a story.

One final principle on content:

Less is more. Every time.

Resist the urge to teach everything you know in one episode. Three well-developed points will always land better than seven rushed ones. Your listener has a full life. Honor that by being selective, clear, and deep rather than comprehensive and overwhelming.

How To Launch Your Podcast: Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me

You’ve done the work. You’ve found your niche, set up your equipment, and recorded your first episodes.

Here’s what to do next — and what most podcasting guides won’t tell you.

Start talking about it before you launch.

One to two months before your official launch date, start sharing that a podcast is coming. Tell friends, colleagues, and ideal listeners. Build anticipation.

If you want to be strategic about it, start collecting emails from people who want to be notified when you go live. This is the beginning of your email list — and your email list is the one audience you truly own.

For email marketing, I recommend two tools depending on where you are in your business:

  • Kartra — if you want an all-in-one solution covering email, course hosting, and membership sites as you grow. This is the platform I recommend for therapists who are building a full content-based business and what we use.
  • Kit — if you want to start with email marketing only and keep things simple in the early stages.  This is what we started with.

Disclosure: Both are affiliate links — I earn a recurring commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I personally use and believe in.

Build a runway before you launch.

Record six to nine episodes before you go live.

I’ve watched so many therapists launch with one or two episodes in the pipeline because the excitement of being ready made it hard to wait. Within weeks they were recording frantically just to keep up — always one step behind, always feeling the pressure.

When you have six to nine episodes banked, you can launch with three and still have a four to six week cushion. That breathing room changes everything. You go from reactive to intentional — and your listeners feel the difference.

Don’t chase download numbers. Chase the right listeners.

Here’s something it took me years to fully understand.

Selling The Couch will never be a massive mainstream podcast. That’s not the goal and it never was. It serves a specific niche — mental health private practitioners — and that specificity is exactly what makes it valuable.

In a world where AI can generate unlimited generic content, listeners are craving depth. They want specific, experience-backed knowledge from someone who actually knows their world. And the sponsors and companies who want to reach your exact audience? They’ll pay a significant premium to be in front of them.

A small, loyal, niche audience is worth more than a large, distracted, general one.

Downloads are a vanity metric. The real question is: are the right people listening?

Submit your podcast through Captivate.

Captivate makes it simple to submit your podcast to every major directory — Apple, Spotify, and beyond — in one step.

A few things to know:

  • Make sure at least one episode is fully live in Captivate before submitting — not scheduled, but actually published. Otherwise the directories won’t recognize it as an active podcast.
  • The first submission typically takes anywhere from a few hours to several days to appear in directories. Don’t panic if it’s not showing up immediately.

Direct your listeners intentionally.

The data is clear — far more people will listen to your audio podcast than watch your video. Audio is intimate, passive, and fits into the cracks of a busy day in a way video never will.

But here’s a subtlety I’ve noticed over the years.

Once someone has been listening to your audio podcast for a while, something shifts. Familiarity builds curiosity. They start wondering who the voice belongs to. They want to see the face, the mannerisms, the person behind the episodes.

That curiosity is what drives them to find you on YouTube.

So think of audio and video not as two competing platforms but as a natural progression. Audio builds the relationship. YouTube deepens it.

In our newsletters and LinkedIn posts, I link directly to the specific episode on Apple Podcasts. But I also make sure our YouTube channel is easy to find — because the listeners who are ready to go deeper will go looking for it.

Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business (Free Workshop)

If you love this guide, please check out our free podcasting workshop for therapists.  It contains even more lessons and tips to build a successful podcast that makes and is personally and professionally fulfilling. 

mel, sign me up

How To Get More Podcast Downloads Using AI Video Shorts

Congratulations on launching.

When you’re first starting out, there’s already so much on your plate. The last thing you need is another thing to learn.

So let me be clear: it’s completely fine to start with audio only.

But here’s something I wish someone had told me earlier.

Record video from day one — even if you never plan to publish it.

Here’s why. It’s easy to pull audio from video. But you can’t go back and add video to audio you’ve already recorded. Starting with video keeps every option open.

And once you have video? A simple shorts strategy can meaningfully grow your podcast downloads — without adding much to your workload at all.

The Strategy

Create short clips from your podcast interviews and solo episodes. Share them on social media linking back to the original episode. That’s it.

Every short is a breadcrumb that leads a new listener back to your full episode — and eventually, to your back catalog.

Here’s a real example from one of my LinkedIn posts — a short clip that performed well and drove traffic back to the episode.

The Tools

You might be thinking — do I need to hire a video editor now?

You don’t.

If you’re recording on Riverside, you already have everything you need.

Riverside has a built-in AI shorts creator that automatically identifies the most compelling moments from your episode and generates shareable clips — no separate tool, no extra upload, no additional cost.

It’s the reason I recommend Riverside as the recording tool of choice for therapist podcasters who are mindful of both their time and their budget.

If you’re not yet on Riverside or want a more advanced standalone shorts creator, Opus Clip is worth exploring. Here’s how it works:

Upload your unedited video to YouTube as unlisted — so it’s not publicly visible. Then submit that URL to Opus Clip. The AI finds the most engaging moments, rates them across four dimensions, and automatically generates shorts with text overlays and b-roll so it’s not just a talking head.

I put together a behind-the-scenes video showing exactly how we set this up — you can watch it in the section below.

A note on affiliate links: both Riverside and Opus Clip links above are affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools we personally use.

check out riverside for shorts

How To Make Money From Your Podcast (Without Just Relying On Sponsors)

Let’s talk about money.

Most therapists assume podcast sponsorships are the goal — the signal that you’ve “made it.” Land a sponsor, collect a check, repeat.

I understand the appeal. And sponsorships can absolutely be part of a healthy podcast revenue strategy.

Since 2018, Selling The Couch has worked with 15+ companies and generated over $250,000 in sponsorship income.

Today, STC sponsorship packages run $10,000+ per month — and we’re typically sold out for the year.

I share that not to impress, but because I want you to see what’s possible when you build a loyal, trust-based audience first and let the income follow.

But here’s what I learned the hard way.

In the early months of the COVID pandemic, I was too dependent on sponsorship income.

When companies froze their marketing budgets overnight, Selling The Couch revenue took a 35% hit — almost immediately.

That experience permanently changed how I think about podcast monetization.

You never want to build your income on someone else’s marketing budget.

Sponsorship income is real. But it’s rented income. The moment a company pulls back, your revenue pulls back with it.

The smarter play — the one that actually compounds — is using your podcast as a platform to build your own products and services. Because when you control what you sell, you control what you earn.

Here’s how to think about podcast monetization as a therapist:

  • Dynamic ads for your own products and services — every episode you’ve ever published becomes an active promotional channel the moment you have something to offer. A new course, an open waitlist, a speaking engagement, a retreat. Your back catalog works for you around the clock. (More on dynamic ads in the tools section below.)
  • Online courses — your clinical expertise translates directly into scalable digital education. Not sure where to start? Our free 7-day email course walks you through validating your course idea before you build anything.
  • Paid communities — a podcast builds the trust that makes people want to go deeper with you. Haven was built on exactly that foundation.
  • Speaking engagements — a podcast is a living, breathing demo reel. Every episode demonstrates your thinking, your communication style, and your expertise to every conference organizer who finds you.
  • Books — your podcast episodes are a roadmap of your best ideas. The book is already inside the back catalog.
  • Premium services and retreats — for the therapist building something like The Quiet Approach, a podcast creates the credibility and visibility that makes premium offers possible.
  • Sponsorships — yes, they belong on this list. But they belong here, at the bottom, as one stream among many — not the only one.

The therapists who build the most resilient podcast businesses aren’t the ones chasing the biggest sponsorship deals.

They’re the ones who treat their podcast as infrastructure — a platform they own, that serves every part of their business, that compounds in value the longer they show up.

If you want to go deeper on podcast monetization strategies, check out our sponsorship page , the YouTube video in this section, and the free workshop below.

Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business (Free Workshop)

If you love this guide, please check out our free podcasting workshop for therapists.  It contains even more lessons and tips to build a successful podcast that makes and is personally and professionally fulfilling. 

mel, sign me up

Frequently Asked Questions: How To Start A Podcast

This section contains a handful of questions that trip our colleagues up who are trying to figure out how to start a podcast.

How long should my podcast be?

  • Try to think about your ideal listener and what length they’d want. For example, I was thinking about therapists who would have 10-15 minutes between sessions or 30 minutes if a client canceled or no showed.
  • Here’s also a helpful link if you’re a data nerd like me.
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How often should I publish my podcast?

  • Buzzsprout has a link that is pretty interesting link that says 73% of their podcasts publish every 3-14 days.
  • I’m at 7 days for Selling The Couch
  • My personal recommendation? Take out your yearly calendar and block out months where you don’t want to podcast.
  • I design my podcast around our daughter’s school schedule (e.g., no summer podcasting). I run replay episodes on the off months.

Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business (Free Workshop)

If you love this guide, please check out our free podcasting workshop for therapists.  It contains even more lessons and tips to build a successful podcast that makes and is personally and professionally fulfilling. 

mel, sign me up

Thank you For Being Here

I know you have options when it comes to learning podcasting.

The fact that you chose to spend your time with this guide means more than I can say. I’ve poured everything I’ve learned across over a decade of podcasting, hundreds of conversations with therapist podcasters, and over 40 hours of research and writing into these pages — and I’ll continue updating it as the landscape evolves.

If this guide has been helpful, please consider bookmarking it for future reference.

And if you know a colleague who’s been sitting on a podcast idea — a therapist in a Facebook group, a listserv, a LinkedIn connection — please consider passing it along. The simplest way to share it:

sellingthecouch.com/how-to-start-a-podcast

If you share it on LinkedIn, tag me — I personally reshare every post that mentions the guide.

The Tools I Use And Trust

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission if you sign up — at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I personally use and believe in.

After years of testing what actually works, I’ve landed on two tools I recommend without hesitation to every therapist podcaster I work with:

Riverside — my go-to for recording. For years I resisted switching from Zoom even though trusted voices in the podcasting space kept recommending Riverside. Here’s what finally convinced me: Zoom compresses both your audio and video quality by default — meaning every interview I’d recorded sounded and looked less sharp than it could have. For a podcast you’re putting your name and reputation behind, that matters. Riverside records studio-quality audio and video locally, so what your listener hears — and what your viewer sees if you publish to YouTube — is crisp, clear, and professional. It keeps all your solo and interview episodes organized in one place, makes it simple to hand recordings off to an assistant, and uses AI to automatically generate short clips from your most powerful moments — turning one long episode into multiple pieces of content without extra work. It also includes AI editing tools that significantly cut down post-production time. Less time editing means more time doing the work that actually matters. Use my link to start for free.

Captivate— my podcast host of choice. Clean analytics, easy distribution, and built specifically for podcasters who are serious about growth. It also includes dynamic ad insertion — meaning you can swap in a new ad across every episode you’ve ever published the moment you have something to promote. Launching a book, opening your waitlist, booking speaking gigs, welcoming new clients — your entire back catalog becomes an active promotional channel overnight. Use my link for a free 30-day trial, no obligation.

Ready To Take The Next Step?

If you’ve read this far, you’re not someone who’s casually curious about podcasting.

You’re someone who builds things.

Haven is a community built specifically for therapists who have already built something successful — and are now ready to expand their impact and income through podcasting, courses, YouTube, speaking, and writing.

It’s not a general business community. It’s therapists only — which means everyone inside understands the unique professional and ethical considerations our field presents. No explaining yourself. No blank stares when you mention you want to start a podcast. Just colleagues who are already in the arena doing exactly what you’re trying to do.

Inside Haven you’ll find:

  • Quarterly accelerators to help you make meaningful progress on your platform
  • Monthly hot seats so you can get real feedback from people who get it
  • Weekly work blocks to actually get things done — not just talk about them
  • A podcasting-specific pod — a small group of therapists who are actively building and growing their podcasts alongside you. Exchange resources, get feedback throughout the week, and get answers quickly instead of disappearing down a rabbit hole or getting stuck and stalled
  • A wider community of therapists who understand both the clinical world and the entrepreneurial one

Haven also includes full access to the Healthcasters podcasting course — the same curriculum trusted by 240+ therapists to start and grow their podcasts, including many of the most recognized voices in the mental health space.

Whether you’re launching your first episode or taking an existing platform to the next level — Haven was built for you.

mel, i'd love to learn more about Haven
The Healthcasters logo with Melvin Varghese