You've already got listeners, a format that works, and a team that cares. I help podcasts like yours figure out what's actually working, fix what isn't, and grow on purpose instead of by accident.
No pitch, no deck. Just a conversation about your show.
Episode completion on Wild Ideas Worth Living, up from roughly 55–60%
Listens for Thrifty Traveler, up from 29,000 in about 90 days
Downloads for Wild Ideas Worth Living, the show she produces
Working professionally in audio. In radio since she was eighteen.
The problem
You publish every week. The show is good. You know it's good, because you're there when it gets made.
Then the numbers come in and they don't really tell you anything.
One episode does twice the traffic of the one before it and nobody on the team can say why. You're not sure how many people actually finish. You're not sure whether YouTube is the thing now or a distraction. There's a dashboard somewhere with forty numbers on it and no one has ever explained which two matter.
So you keep making the show the way you've always made it, and you hope.
Here's the quieter part. Podcasting gets lonely. You're in a studio, or a room, or a closet, talking into a microphone, and there's almost no face to face contact with the people on the other end of it. You can go a very long time without knowing whether any of it is reaching anyone.
And in the back of your mind there's a version where the show just flattens out. It doesn't fail, exactly. It plateaus. And eventually somebody asks what it's doing for the business, and you don't have a good answer ready.
What working together looks like
I'm Sylvia. I've been making audio professionally since 2015, and I've been in radio in one form or another since I was eighteen. I produce REI Co-op's Wild Ideas Worth Living and the Thrifty Traveler podcast, which means I'm in the weekly grind of making episodes and I'm also the person watching what's happening around the show.
I listen to your show the way a listener does, all the way through. Then I go into your back end, your platform numbers, your YouTube, your drop-off points. You end up with a clear read on who's listening, what they're staying for, and where they leave.
There's almost always a handful of things you can change this month that will move the needle. I find those first, so you get momentum while we work on the bigger stuff.
Chart pushes, platform features, awards you qualify for and never submitted, live events, the right industry people to know. That work never makes it to the top of your list because you're busy shipping episodes. It's on the top of mine.
The promise underneath all of it
I'm not going to hand you a plan that scrubs off whatever made people love it in the first place. Growth that costs you your voice isn't growth, it's a different show with better numbers.
That is the whole job. Everything else is method.
"Sylvia is a wildly talented producer and a natural leader. She's excellent at identifying where a show has opportunity for growth and coming up with a smart, strategic way forward. I've worked with her on multiple shows and she is always an asset to the team, one of my go-to people in the audio industry! If you want to elevate your audio content and grow your show, I highly recommend working with Sylvia."
Jenny Barber
Program Manager, Podcasts, REI Co-op
Proof
85%
Episode completion, up from roughly 55%.
Wild Ideas Worth Living went from roughly 55 to 60 percent completion to around 85 percent over the time I've worked on it. In podcasting, 80 percent and up is exceptional. Getting there was a deliberate goal, not luck.
+72%
29,000 to 50,000 listens in about 90 days.
That's Thrifty Traveler, after we put a real growth plan in place. It's held that level since and it's still climbing.
300
Tickets at their first live show.
Almost 300 sold. It brought in sponsors and local press, and the company has kept investing in live events since. A second one happened alongside TEDx in Fargo.
Won
A Shorty Award nobody would have won, because nobody would have entered.
I spotted the category, ran the submission, and the show won it. The Thrifty Traveler Podcast, 18th Annual Shorty Awards: Winner and Audience Honor, Other Podcast Genres.
The work
The weekly work is where the craft lives. The rest is where the range is.
Took episode completion from roughly 55% to 85%, and kept the show sounding like itself.
Producer, end to end: guest research, pre-interviews, finding the story in the tape, writing for the ear, editorial rounds, mix and sound design.
29,000 to 50,000 listens in about 90 days, plus a live show that sold almost 300 tickets.
Production, growth and strategy: recordings, mixing, production edits, performance review, and the industry opportunities the team has no time to chase.
Grown on every platform your show lives on
Also worked with
Unstoppable with Kara Goldin
The Terri Cole Show
The Rant with Baeth
She's Got Moxie
The Power of the Only
Life Gets Real
The Beauty Biz Show
Ask Dr. BenOn the record
W3 Awards
Shorty
Shorty Awards
Signal
Signal Awards
Salt Institute for Documentary Studies
Watson
Thomas J. Watson Fellowship
Working professionally in audio since 2015. In radio since she was eighteen.
Twenty minutes. You tell me what's going on with the show and what's been bugging you about it. I'll tell you honestly whether I think I can help, and if I can't, I'll say so.
I read and answer every message myself. It comes straight to me, not to an inbox nobody checks.
What you can book
Every engagement is scoped to what the show actually needs. The first move is finding out where you stand, whether that becomes a long relationship or stays a one-time project.
One-time
Find out where you actually stand.
Packaged
Work the plan with support.
Ongoing
I’m on the show with you.
Pricing is a conversation, once I understand the show and the scope. It depends too much on what you need for a number here to mean anything.
Photograph by Beth Olson Creative
About
Podcast producer, strategist and growth consultant, based in Minneapolis.
I produce REI Co-op's Wild Ideas Worth Living end to end: researching and pitching guests, running pre-interviews, sitting in on the interview and asking the follow-ups, going through the tape to find the story, writing scripts for the ear, working through rounds of editorial feedback, then building the episode with music and sound design.
On Thrifty Traveler I'm at the recordings, I handle mixing and production edits, and I run growth and strategy: reviewing performance, and looking for the larger industry opportunities the team doesn't have time to chase.
My specialty is organic growth. In order to make your show grow, you have to have a good product, so I do the best I can to make the product as sharp as it can be.
Graduate certificate in documentary studies from the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Thomas J. Watson Fellow, 2014 to 2015.
Before you ask
I'm not going to. I start by listening to what you've already made, and I find what's working before I say a word about what isn't. Most of what I find first is small, quick, and doesn't touch the soul of the show at all. The bigger swings come later, and you're in every one of those conversations. I'm not interested in handing you somebody else's playbook. I've seen what happens when a show gets optimized into something its listeners don't recognize, and I'd rather grow slower than do that to you.
I'm not full time and I won't pretend otherwise. I'm not the person sitting on Slack all day waiting for a ping. What I am is the person who's thought about your show before your meeting starts, who knows what your numbers did last month, and who's been doing this long enough to know which problems need a fast answer and which ones need a good one. If you need somebody at a desk from nine to five, hire that person. That's a real job and it isn't this one.
An editor makes the episode you asked for. That's a genuine skill and you should have one. But an editor isn't going to tell you your third act is where everyone's leaving, or that the format you've used for two years is why your best guest underperformed, or that there's an award category you'd win if somebody filled out the form. I'm in the tape and in the strategy at the same time, and the reason that matters is that the two things are the same problem. You can't grow a show that isn't good, and you can't tell if it's good without listening properly.
Twenty to thirty minutes, free, and you don't have to prepare anything.
You tell me about the show, what you've tried, and what's been nagging at you. I'll ask about your numbers and how you work. By the end of it you'll know whether I'm the right person for this, and so will I.
It isn't a free strategy session and I'm not going to sit there rattling off fixes I haven't earned yet. I'd need to actually listen to your show and get into your back end before I told you what to do, and that's the step after this one.
You're not signing anything. You're not committing to a project. You're spending twenty minutes finding out whether the show you've built has more room in it than you think.
Every message comes to me and I answer it myself.
"One of my go-to people in the audio industry." Jenny Barber, Program Manager, Podcasts, REI Co-op