061: Behind the Scenes at Wild Home Podcasting
I wanted to do things just a little differently in this episode. Instead of the usual topics where I chat about all of the elements of podcasting and developing your podcast strategy, I thought it’d be fun to give you a behind-the-scenes sneak peek into how we work at Wild Home Podcasting.
You’ll get a birds-eye view of our workflow, what our processes are like and what makes our systems unique. I say it a bit in this episode, but I’m very thankful for my amazing team and how we work to accomplish our mission of supporting our clients in what they aspire to do: share their voice and message with the world.
If you’ve ever wondered how we keep things running like clockwork (ahem, thank you Alyssa), this is the episode for you!
What’s in this episode:
My journey from doing all of the client work myself to where I am today
Our goal for taking on podcast clients
How we use SOPs
Our unique editing process and show notes framework
What our system is for producing podcasts for our clients
Links:
Nicole's Instagram
Scale Your Way podcast
AGENCY
Our Team
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The Transcript:
061: Behind the Scenes at Wild Home Podcasting
I always say that our mission at Wild Home Podcasting has always been to support our clients so that they can share their voice and their message with the world. And we really take that seriously. And that's where that whole like, we want this to be easy for you comes from because we want people to be able to focus on love creating the content and not focusing on getting hung up and then techie pieces and getting hung up in the editing and all the steps that go with it.
Welcome to the Wild Home Podcast, where we talk about podcasting, life and all the wild in between. Join me, Caroline, every week because I share a peek into the world of podcasting and my wildlife as well. Ready. Let's get into it.
So I wanted to do something a little bit different today, I feel like I spend a lot of time talking about elements of podcasting and strategy, and I really wanted to give you kind of a behind the scenes peek at how we do things at Wild Home Podcasting. And I think I've done an episode like this before, but it's been a while, so I wanted to update it. The other reason I wanted to do an episode like this is because coming up, I'm not sure how many episodes away it's going to be, but I am going to be doing some episodes with my team, which I'm really excited about. And so before we dove into those episodes where I'm going to be chatting with my team about things that we see in the podcasting industry, I wanted to tell you a little bit about how we work, what we do and what it looks like working with us in our monthly podcast management services.
Let me just start off by saying like, I'm going to start telling you about the amazing team that I have and how everything around here runs like clockwork. And I just want to like preface this conversation by saying it did not always look like this. It has taken me a lot, a lot to get here. It's taken a lot of really deep diving into like a lot of hang ups and fears that I have as a business owner. It's taken stepping into the CEO role and is taking a look. It took looking for outside help and the outside help that I really received that has changed my business the most has been through my dear friend and former business coach Nicole Jackson Miller.
She is amazing and I highly recommend you follow her on Instagram. If you're even thinking about growing an agency or having people work for you and taking over client delivery. I learned so much from her and actually did a whole series with her on her podcast, which is called Scale Your Way. And so if you go and subscribe to her podcast, you can find my episodes. They go back a couple like, think there are some over a year old, maybe even more, and they kind of follow my journey to creating the business that I have now. I think it's really important to just kind of like mention that and talk about that because I think sometimes in business, we talk about like the beginning and the end. You know, the beginning was really hard. The hustle is awful. And now I'm over here and everything's amazing. But the middle is really important. And I think one thing too, that I learned about that messy middle and one of the things that Nicole has really taught me is that there's no end to the learning and the growing and evolving. It kind of always happens. And so I'm in a really great place with my business right now, but I don't feel like this is a starting point to me. This is like a launch pad to other things. And so I just wanted to kind of preface all of that. And I'm going to put links to Nicole to her Instagram, to her podcast and then to her program, which is called Agency, which I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend. If you are thinking about growing an agency or getting into it like that. So there is my little, my little blog about Nicole. I just love her to death and just, you know, the experience I gained with her. I just can't even tell you.
Before I met Nicole. So let me just kind of talk through some things before I met Nicole and before I started on this journey, it was just me and one other person, and I had hired one other person as a way to kind of help me, but I was still doing the bulk of the client work. No, let me say that again. I was doing all of the client work, let's be honest. And you know, it was fine when it was just me and a couple of clients. But as things started to grow, I really quickly realized that it was not going to work. You know, just being me. And also kind of one of the huge catalysts for a lot of the change that has occurred at Wild Home Podcasting was that I had a baby during the pandemic in 2020. And so I had to start thinking about how my business can operate at the level that it existed, but without me.
And that's kind of a crazy thing. As a business owner, to start to think about, right is like, you know, this thing that I've built, that I've hustled for years to create and now I need it to run without me, like, is that even possible? And so I kind of set out on this journey to like, figure out how to do that. And it was very like it had to happen because I mean, I was having a baby. There was no other option, like I just had to happen. And so a lot of the things that we do now at Wild Home Podcast and came out of that need. But what's so amazing and crazy about the whole thing to me is that every. Saying here is so like, I'm going to be exact, I'm going to exaggerate and say ten times better than it was when it was just me, I think the quality of service that our clients get is just so, so high, and I used to be afraid of having so many people in my business.
And now I realize the reason why we do such good work that we do is because there are so many people here who really care about what we are putting out and what we are supporting, what we are putting our names behind. I mean, it's just it's kind of amazing and humbling as a business owner and a CEO to go, "you know, what's better? Not me." And so as I kind of talk through a little bit of a behind the scenes, I just wanted you to keep all of that in mind. I felt like it was really important to kind of frame the journey for you.
OK, so let's dove in. So our bread and butter is our monthly podcast management. This is what we do for our clients on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Pretty much all of our clients have weekly podcasts. I think we have a few who are semi monthly or bi weekly. I'll let you decide which one of those was the correct word to use. And we we have like we keep a very, very tight ship around here and we've had to because when you have multiple podcasts that you're managing each week, things can get nuts if you're not incredibly organized.
And so when you sign on to work with Wild Home Podcasting, we send you an onboarding packet that introduces you to the team, kind of tells you what our standards are, what to expect, that kind of thing. And then we also send you a form that we have you fill out.
Most of the clients when they come to us, they've either been doing the podcast themselves for a while or they're just starting their podcast. Maybe they've done a few episodes and they're trying to do it themselves. And so when these people come to us, they're ready to hand it over. And that is something that I have really tried to drive home to my team, especially is like, you know, we want to make things as easy for them as possible because I find that when podcasting gets hard is when people usually stop or they skip a month or two of episodes because it is a very time consuming process, which I will detail for you a little bit here.
And so when we take over someone's podcast, we want them to be able to record and hand it to us and we do the rest or whatever is in there, their package. We have three tiers of packages, so we have like an editing package, we have an editing insurance package and then we have a full production package where we do everything from edit to posting it on their blog, right? So if there's graphics involved a transcript, any of that is going to be in the production package. So that's like the real, like a hands off package. And so what we want is for our clients to record it and hand it to us and we take care of it and schedule it, and it's done right. That's our goal. That is our goal is for you to build a record and does not have to worry about it.
And so in order to do that, we have to create like really strict systems and schedules. And so every day we're editing, oh, between five and six episodes or so a day, depending on the workload we edit Monday through Thursday. And then we also write show notes on those days as well. And so we have three editors on the team currently, and then we have three show notes writers on the team currently, and they're all really, really good at what they do. And here's the kicker they, like most of them, have been with me for multiple years. They were with me in the first kind of iteration of what this looked like, and they have a ton of experience listening to podcasts.
Now we specialize in working with podcasters who are using their podcasts as part of the marketing for their business. And so we work with a lot of coaches, service providers, things like that. And so they have all really developed an ear for what they need to be editing for, what they need to be writing for. So just a very, very skilled group of people, and I'm going to put the link to our about page in the show notes. So you can actually, I'm not, my show notes writer is, let's be honest. And so you can go check out and see their beautiful faces because they're all amazing humans, and I am super lucky to have them on my team.
So one of the people that you will be talking to the most if you decide to work with us is my Ops Manager, Alyssa. And she is amazing and she is super organized and we had built out these crazy systems. This was literally like a whole year of my business was me writing SOPs and creating Asana boards. And it was a lot of work. But what it has done is it has created a system that just flows automatically. It's really amazing.
I feel like I should package that up and sell it because it just everything is just so seamless around here. And we have detailed SOPs for each client. So any notes you give us any changes or, you know, let's say you have a comment about something, it's going to go into the SOP. So that way our editors and our show notes writers can refer to it at any point.
We do have our own systems for editing. We have standards that we apply to everybody's podcast and then we kind of make decisions based on what we hear. And then same goes for the shownotes. So we have kind of a framework that we work within, have show notes that we have found to be successful and that we feel like do the job that they're supposed to do. And then, of course, if we need to make any modifications within that, we will do that for our clients.
And so basically, we you give us a file, the editors edit it. The show notes writers listen through in its entirety and write the show notes, and then from there it is scheduled.
I think they're really cool thing about our system and how we how and why we do things. The way we do is that usually by the time it goes live, a few people have listened to that episode already. And so I mean, we've had maybe a client ask about quality or content, and it's really fun because we will have like a whole conversation amongst us, like what we think and how we feel. And I just I love that like collaborative experience. And then we take that back to the client.
And I think that's just something really cool that, you know, you don't necessarily get with just any podcast editor because we have listened to a lot of podcast episodes about business and about running a business. And we work with a lot of people in the online business space, which you know is where I'm from, right? So we really relate to it and we are able to give feedback and kind of be a part of it. I always say that our mission at Wild Home Podcasting has always been to support our clients so that they can share their voice and their message with the world, and we really take that seriously. And that's where that whole like, we want this to be easy for you comes from because we want people to be able to focus on creating the content and not focusing on getting hung up in the techie pieces and getting hung up in the editing and all the steps that go with it because it is a lot, you know, even with this podcast, which I have been slowly handing over to my team to produce.
There are still weeks where I'm like, I am creating graphics and it's, you know, it's Wednesday night at midnight. You know, it's just there are so many pieces and it's really important for me like, I want to be in the same process that my clients are so I can understand what they're dealing with and where they're coming from. And so that's one of the reasons why I keep this podcast going, and it's another reason why I'm considering adding in a video element and doing YouTube again, because that's something that a lot of our clients are thinking about is YouTube. And so we want to make sure that we are fully prepared to dove in with them and to offer our expertise and our experience.
So that's kind of what the monthly management looks like. I think, you know, a lot of people, when they come to us, the first thing they ask is like, how are we going to keep track? And here's one of my secrets, and some podcast producers managers may not feel the same way that I do. I don't love to create a system and then make people conform to it. And so one thing that we've become really skilled at is being able to jump into other people's systems, maybe offer some advice, clean them up by use their systems in addition to our own. It sounds like it wouldn't make sense because there would be two things going on in two places, but one of them is internal and one is external.
So, for example, if our client uses Click Up, we use Asana and so we will jump into their Click Up and do all the communicating and everything over there with them, in addition to our own system where we keep track of it.
I feel like this is really important because when we talk about again making things easy for our clients, we also want them to be successful at being a consistent podcaster and we want to make sure that they have a system that's going to work for them. And so whether that's a spreadsheet, Asana, Trello, Click Up, what have you. We want to make sure that we are not creating a situation where they have to go to an extra place to take care of their podcast because again, the minute you add on layers is, the minute it gets hard is the minute that people stop podcasting or miss a week here or there or that kind of thing. And so that's One of the really key important items for us as well.
So that's just a little bit of the behind the scenes at Wild Home Podcasting. Again, I just want to like throw out some high fives and fist bumps to my team because they are also amazing at what they do. One of our editors has her own podcast, and so she does that as well. We have a couple writers on our team that are actually writing books and and doing other things, and they're just such talented, amazing people.
The Ops, our Ops Manager Alyssa has really stepped in and just made my life a million times easier, but she's also really made our clients lives so much better where the podcast is concerned. And you know, one of the things as we move forward into this year, it's only February, and I feel like this is going to be a really great year for us is just continuing to up level the service that we offer, the support that we give and just making sure that our clients are able to do what they do best, which is sit down and record right. That's that's what they do best.
So we do actually have some spots available. We do have a capacity and we try not to max it out, but we do have some spots coming up available. And this month, February, when this is recorded and then March and beyond. And so if you're interested, you can head to WildHomePodcasting.com and check out our services. You can email me hello@wildhomepodcasting.com or you can go check out my Instagram at @WildHomePodcasting where you'll see more information and some behind the scenes stuff there as well. And I thank you so much and I cannot wait to chat with you next week.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. To stay in the know, head to WildHomePodcasting.com and be sure to connect with me on Instagram @WildHomePodcasting. See you next week!
