What to cut (and what to leave)
Minimum Effective Editing in three moves: cut the mistakes you flagged in the room, top and tail the recording, clean up the levels. Leave the rest.
Remember the trick we covered for mistakes during recording — pause, click your fingers three times into the mic, then start the sentence again. Now you have a quick way to spot anything that needs chopping out: scan the waveform for the three sharp peaks.
Aside from that, you'll want to "top and tail" your recording — cutting any preamble at the start and drawn-out goodbyes at the end.
Then it's the cleanup and volume-levelling stuff. Learn it in a DAW, or hand it to a podcast maker tool that does it automatically. Piece together any segments, music, or other clips in your editing software, and you're ready to export.
Cut or keep?
Five quick calls. There are no wrong answers — but most new editors over-cut.