Testing Podcast Strategies Without Risking Your Brand

Have you ever wanted to try something new with your podcast or content—but felt afraid to risk what’s already working? When your podcast is a key part of your business, experimenting with new formats, monetization strategies, or community-building can feel overwhelming. But what if you had a low-risk space where you could test ideas, rediscover your creativity, and gather real-world data before bringing those lessons back to your business?

In this episode of Podcasting Unlocked, Alesia Galati shares why every podcaster should create a "sandbox" project—a passion-driven podcast or creative outlet that allows you to experiment without the pressure of generating leads or revenue. Drawing from her own journey with her hobby-turned-business podcast, We Read Smut, Alesia explains how playful experimentation led to new monetization opportunities, community growth, and fresh excitement for her work. This week, episode 298 of Podcasting Unlocked is about building a podcast sandbox to test new ideas without risking your business!

In this episode of Podcasting Unlocked, I'm sharing how creating a low-stakes passion project can reignite your creativity, reveal valuable audience insights, and help you confidently experiment with new podcast strategies.

I also talk about the following:

• Why Every Business Podcaster Needs a Sandbox: Learn how a separate creative project gives you the freedom to experiment without affecting your primary brand or lead-generation podcast.
• Choosing the Right Passion Project: Discover how selecting a topic completely unrelated to your business can help you reconnect with creativity and avoid burnout.
• Keeping Your Sandbox Simple: Find out why fast, imperfect production allows you to focus on learning rather than perfection.
• Turning a Hobby into a Thriving Community: Hear how Alesia grew her passion project into a community with thousands of subscribers by testing platforms, memberships, and engagement strategies.
• Creating Sustainable Micro-Monetization: Explore how community-supported memberships, early access content, and exclusive experiences can fund a creative project without overwhelming your audience.
• Using Sandbox Data to Improve Your Business: Learn how testing marketing, content, and monetization strategies in a passion project can provide insights you can confidently apply to your business podcast and client work.
• Finding Joy Beyond Your Business: Understand why pursuing creative interests outside your work can prevent burnout, increase fulfillment, and ultimately make you a stronger creator and entrepreneur.

Your business podcast doesn't have to be the place where every new idea gets tested. Sometimes, the best way to innovate is by creating a space where experimentation is the goal and failure simply becomes valuable data. This week, brainstorm three topics you could talk about for hours simply because you love them, and consider whether one of them could become your own creative sandbox.

Be sure to tune in to all the episodes to receive practical podcasting strategies, expert insights, and actionable systems that help you grow your show, build stronger communities, and create a podcast that evolves alongside your business.

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the episode to post in your stories and tag me! And don't forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast and tell me your key takeaways!

Learn more about Podcasting Unlocked at https://galatimedia.com/podcasting-unlocked/

CONNECT WITH ALESIA GALATI:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Work with Galati Media! 
• Work with Alesia 1:1

Proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Transcript

Alesia Galati: 0:01

As we near the end of podcasting unlocked, I want to share a behind-the-scenes secret with you. Testing new marketing strategies on your main business podcast might feel a little dangerous. You don't want to break a system that is actually currently generating leads and confuse your core audience. But today, I want to show you how to build a hobby sandbox. This is a low stakes passion project where you can test community building, monetization, and audio formats before applying them to your primary business. Welcome to Podcasting Unlocked, the show for purpose driven podcasters. I'm Alesia Galati, founder of Galati Media, and I'm here to share actionable strategies to help you amplify your message and grow your audience. Hey, friends, it's Alesia. I love this topic. As always, podcasting is fun to talk about. I know I'm getting to the end of this show, and maybe feeling a little bit less inclined to talk about podcasting, but it is still something that is near and dear to my heart. I love podcasting as an industry and as a whole. I just don't want to talk about podcasting on podcasting much anymore. But that is why this topic is so incredibly important. When you're experimenting different formats, like we talked about in the last solo episode, and your podcast is the primary lead generator. That can feel like a huge risk, and I don't want you to feel overwhelmed by that. But I also want to give you some options. So often, us as business owners, especially if we didn't ever plan to be business owners, we feel stuck in this content rut, like we are literally talking about the same thing over and over and over again, and no one is listening. And it can feel frustrating to want to change that, but not really knowing how or not being able to. Eventually, that is going to lead you to burnout or stagnation, which we don't want in our business or our podcast. So here's your solution: a sandbox. It is a separate, low stakes project where failure is just data. It will allow you to play, test, and find joy in the medium that you're choosing. So maybe that's writing, maybe it's audio, maybe it's video, whatever that might look like. But it allows you to play and test. Now I have done this with my own podcasting, and you have probably seen it throughout the last few years as I've shifted and navigated my hobby podcast, which is no longer a hobby, but my primary podcast, and I want to yes talk about that. But there's another example that I want to talk about. There is a pretty prolific podcaster who has been in this space for about the same amount of time, maybe longer than I have, and they specifically work in marketing and social media marketing. Now they, in the last few years, and I had a conversation with her about this. In the last few years, she found herself feeling frustrated and feeling quite honestly burnt out and done with her business. And so she decided to create a sandbox. And the sandbox for her was writing a romance novel, and if you know anything about me, I love a good romance novel. So we were talking about this topic because, of course, similar interests, and I found it so fascinating that someone who I you know admire in this space, admire on the side of social media marketing and all of that-that she was able to create something on the side under a pen name that is lighting her up, that is exciting her-and I love that. I love when people are able to reignite the passion in their lives, and I think, especially as women and those who are socialized as women, that we have a lot of pressure on us to work hard, to have the family, to find fulfillment in only our careers or our family or our kids. We are so much more than that, though. My kid actually the other day he asked me. I'm trying to think how he asked me this, but pretty much

the point of it was: 4:23

was my life's has my life goal been achieved because I'm a mom? And I was like, no, I am so much more than that, and I have so much more interests than just being a parent. In 10 years, both of you are going to be out of the house potentially. Both you're going to be adults, and if my life is tied around you two kids, then what am I going to do when you guys leave? Like, I need to have other interests. I need to have other things that I am experimenting with, and. Finding joy and purpose in, and I think that that's why sandboxes in our own lives and building that sandbox for yourself can be so important in revitalizing our excitement about life. Now, here's how to build your own sandbox, and we'll get into my experiment, of course. But here's how to build it. First, you're going to want to pick a topic that you genuinely love. I would recommend that it has zero connection to your business or your industry. Now, in this case, we'll talk about it in a second. The We Read Smut experiment. I liked reading smutty romance novels. I wanted to talk about it with some friends. It actually took about a year and a half, because I was co-hosting an account with someone, that when she said,"Hey, I want to leave this account and I want to hand it over to you, that I finally was able to take that step because I had said to her several times,"I want to launch this podcast. What do you think? And it was always a no-go, just from capacity reasons, which I definitely understand. So, pick an industry or a topic that is nothing to do with your business. I want you to keep production fast and simple. The goal here is simply that you are trying to gather data. You're not winning awards for sound design. You're not winning awards for creating something incredible. It's just to give yourself space to play because I think once we start attributing this has to make money or this has to do X Y Z, whatever that goal might be, that is very tied to an achievement. We lose sight of the sandbox of it, and then it turns into a castle making competition, which is not what we want initially. Eventually, it can turn into that if that makes sense for you. But initially, I want it to be something you're simply playing with. Now, I also want to give you permission to completely ignore the standard business podcasting advice that I've given you in this space. And I know in the last few years we have shifted a little more to give broader podcast strategies, but a lot of it still goes back to business and creating thought leadership and creating a a message that gets out there that people get to hear and share. If you're going the podcast route, forget that stuff. Simply create because you want to create. Now, I started the We Read Smut podcast purely as a passion project. I wanted to talk about books with my friends that I was meeting on these platforms. I wanted to share the content, and podcasting is my preferred mode of information transference. I am not someone who likes to blog a lot. I'm actually finding I kind of like blogging a little more if I find the right strategy. But podcasting is the way that I like to have these conversations, and it's something that I knew I could do quickly, efficiently, and get it out there. I think I maybe spend two to three hours on each podcast episode, depending sometimes less, and that's just quick and easy. Not a lot of time and effort, and I can get my content out there. So I did that, and then I tested Substack for community building. I knew that I didn't want to have your traditional email marketing strategy. I knew that someone had recommended Substack to me, and I thought, "Let's give it a shot, see what we can do. Fast forward a year and a half, and I have 15,000 subscribers over on Substack. That means I have 15,000 people's emails, which I was not anticipating happening at all. I said, "This is where you get to decide. Hmm, I'm doing this for fun. I'm really enjoying it. I'm loving what I'm doing. Is there something that I want to create? Not that I need to create. That I want to create to transition this from hobby to business or hobby to making some income. What I did was I took that community and I created a paid aspect of it. Now that paid aspect is $15 a month. The goal here is that it funds the podcast and it funds buying books. Literally, that is the goal at all. And so the first thing that people get when they join is every month they get a free ebook. So I've partnered with BIPOC and LGBTQI plus authors that I admire that fit a specific trope that we're focusing on that month. I buy the licensing from them to have here are 15 people that are in my community. Here's 25 people that are in my community. They want your book. What's your price per ebook for that amount of people? I pay the author because that was something that was really important to me. Was that I wanted to make sure that I'm paying the author. So I pay the author, and then the author gets money. They're part of a. Community, and then I get to create something exciting and a free book for these people who are paying to be in this space. The next thing is they get early access to podcast episodes, so they're getting podcast episodes two weeks before the episodes drop on the platform, so they're able to get early access to those. The third thing they get is a virtual silent book club. I knew I didn't want to have like a hey we have to read this book every month and then we're going to talk about it. I didn't really want to create something like that. What I wanted to create was a place where we could come together in silence, just read for an hour, and then leave and get back to our lives. And so I started that as well, and that has been a lot of fun to do. Now, this is a micro subscription. It is community funded models. This is how I wanted to create this space and take it from sandbox to mini castle competition. Eventually, I might do some shifting away from that. I'm working on a virtual event right now to increase the number of subscribers, to get them engaged, to highlight some of my favorite content creators, and more. And then they can pay to have access to that as well. If they're part of the membership, they'll get access to those replays. But what I'm finding is I am loving this space. It is a space that excites me. It lights me up, and I spent two years working on it and building it before I decided, hey, I'm going to transition over to focusing more on this community instead of this podcast on podcasting. So, how do we translate that from hobby into making some shifts in our actual podcasts and our actual content that we're already creating as business owners. When we're looking at the data for our passion project, our sandbox, look at it without emotion. I want you to pinpoint the exact formats that are shifting and marketing angles that are working and the monetization strategies that work. Now you have to understand that these might not translate back to business, but if you have the strategies around it, you might be able to translate some of those consumer-focused strategies into B 2b business applications, or maybe you're finding that your sandbox listeners, what strategies are working for them, is actually revealing core human psychology that could work for your business. So I think that it's an all-around win. Having a sandbox can help you in so many different ways. You can use those strategies to show that you have field-tested strategies that are going to work for your clients, you can take successful integrations that you maybe didn't even consider, and you can apply them to your own clients. I know I did that with Substack in the strategies that I was using over there, and being able to see how I could help my clients with their side and their substacks, even though that's not a platform that we typically push. And the best part is that as my clients have shifted and as they're navigating their own pivots, I'm able to come up alongside them and say, "I totally understand. Here's what's working for me and what's not, and that'll give them a quicker way to push towards whatever they're trying to pivot towards, and potentially keeping us alongside them during those pivots because we have those strategies to help them integrate. Now, I want you to take action. I want you to write down three passion topics that you could talk about for an hour with zero preparation. Once you've done that, sit on it. Think about it. Is this something that you want to create? And again, is this something you want to create? Is this something that would bring more life to your energy, more excitement to your life? Is this something that is going to light you up? As my friend Lisa says, now I want to encourage you because the next solo episode, episode 300 so in two episodes, that will be the final episode in this specific format, and I would love for you to check out what is coming next, and if you would like support for your podcast production support, strategy support, monetization support, any of those things, I want you to go to helpmypod.com, and that is going to give you access to all of my resources. I've got lots of information over there that you can check out, see what might work for you, what might not, and then decide how you want to move forward with your podcast or with some production or podcast strategy support. I would love to chat with you. You can book a free consultation or you can just simply book a strategy session and let's talk about your podcast or your podcast goals, what it is that you're trying to achieve. All right. Until next time, happy podcast.