Hello, World!

Welcome to Little Empire, a podcast network started by me, Tim from The Worst Idea of All Time podcast. I wanted to jot down some thoughts at the outset of this venture to give you a sense of what I'm trying to do and what this thing actually is.

So, first thing first; What is Little Empire? It's a podcast network. What's that? Just a fancy way of saying that there's a bunch of different podcasts, hosted by different people that are all part of this one group. Building a network means I can invest money and time in setting up the infrastructure to help people create their own shows and support them getting an audience and sponsors/revenue so they can be paid for their hard work. It's a bit harder to do when you're on your own, but being part of a collective means we can pool our resources and help each other out.
Why am I doing it? Guy and I got very lucky with the success of TWIOAT and I wanted to take the opportunities that having that lovely global audience afforded us and DO SOMETHING with it. I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by smart, funny and just generally awesome people who have something to say. I wanted to remove all the technical barriers to them starting their own shows and allow their voices to be heard around the world. Podcasting is fun, but learning all the steps from equipment to microphone technique to audio software to creating an RSS feed ain't for everyone. I've aimed to take away as much of the hard stuff as possible to let these people do what they do best.
Where's all this going? To the moon! Whilst steady growth and financial success are two goals of this network, they're not the only ones. Really, who knows where this is going? We're aiming to have fun putting out some top quality shows and create a path for making that sustainable over the long term. I want this business to have a positive impact on the communities it is apart of. The internet community is one, the podcast community is another. Being based in Auckland, New Zealand is a third. I'll be looking for opportunities for us to do good stuff when we can in lots of interesting ways.
And when you screw up? I'll be doing my best to keep this network to a high standard in a multitude of ways but mistakes will inevitably be made. These might be technical, maybe they'll be financial. They could even be errors of judgement in putting out material which hurts or offends people. This will never be my intention. Mistakes do happen. I only hope that people give us a chance to correct what we've done when these occur and respect that honest errors frequently go hand in hand with trying to achieve ambitious projects.
Hopefully you'll join us for this exciting journey!