121: Three Tips to Help You Overcome the Overwhelm in Your Podcast
Have you had those moments where you question whether your podcast is worth all the effort you put in? You know your podcast is valuable and has great content for your listeners, but the process just feels so overwhelming.
Folks, I have been there, and I learned some really valuable things about the way I think about my podcast now through that experience. So today, I’ve got three big tips for you to overcome the overwhelm and prioritize your podcast to better serve your audience and your business. You can reclaim your time and your mental energy, and I’m going to help you do just that. Let’s dive in!
#1 | Examine why your podcast feels like a hassle.
This is the first step to finding ease and getting back on track with your podcast. Does your podcast feel overwhelming because you literally don’t have hours in your day? Or is it because your podcast isn’t feeling aligned with the rest of your business and life goals, so it just doesn’t quite feel worth the effort? If it’s the first, hang on tight – we’ll circle back around to that in a sec.
But if your main hang-up is alignment, then it might be time to reevaluate the premise or the topics you cover in your podcast. Instead of throwing in the towel, take a moment to audit your podcast (use our free guide here!) and start creating content that’ll be impactful for your business. Once your content is feeling aligned, it’s time to move on to our next tip.
#2 | Shift the way you think about your podcast.
If you view your podcast as a hobby or a fun side project… there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s probably going to make it difficult for you to prioritize it as a crucial part of your business. However, if you can reframe the way you think about your podcast, as a central support for your business that can create and inform all of your content, you’re going to prioritize your podcast very differently.
“Okay, Caroline, but how do I actually do that?” you might ask. Well, you need a strategy! Think of your podcast as your director of marketing, and work out from there. How can you use your podcast content in other parts of your business? Where can you share your podcast to get more visibility for your business? How can you make the content creation for your entire business simpler by leveraging your podcast? There’s no one right answer, but you need to have a plan. And speaking of planning…
#3 | Decide how you’re going to regain your time.
At the end of the day, podcasting does require some of your time. But it doesn’t require ALL of your time. And if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your podcast, streamlining your production process can help. Start with a process audit. Read that again: PROCESS audit. Write down all the steps you go through for each part of the production process. Where can you be more efficient? What systems can you implement to make your work faster and simpler?
Maybe it’s a new project management software. (We love Asana over here at WHP.) Or maybe it’s just doing more batching or planning ahead of time via a Google spreadsheet. You could also reevaluate your publishing schedule. If publishing a new episode every week is too much, try twice a month instead!
And finally, you can always consider hiring additional support. If you’re passionate about podcasting and what it can do for your business, then a VA or a podcast management company (like us here at WHP!) can be a gamechanger. You can outsource as much or as little of the process as you’d like, but it’ll allow you to feel more in control of your time and your schedule.
And that’s it! Go forth and podcast, friends! You can do it!
Are you looking for a partner who can help you add a little bit of humanity back into your podcast to create deeper and more meaningful connections? Check out our Podcast Strategy Intensive, where we help you focus your content and get the most out of your small business podcast, or sign up for a Podcast Refresh, where we help you strategize and then implement all the great ideas we come up with together!
Links:
Free Podcast Audit Guide!
Check out our services to Launch, Uplevel or Grow your Podcast
Alyssa Adam’s Episode on Podcast Your Business
Join the Strategic Podcast Academy!
Are you ready to start strategizing your podcast and simplifying your marketing? Download our free guide to do your Podcast Audit!
The Transcript for Podcast Your Business:
121: Three Tips to Help You Overcome the Overwhelm in Your Podcast
[00:00:00] Caroline Hull A lot of times it just takes like reframing your podcast. This kind of goes back to why does it feel like a hassle making sure that your podcast has a job? I like to say that, you know, your podcast should be like your head of sales, your director of marketing, something like that. You know, it needs to work for you. It needs to be working for your business and earning its keep. Are you ready to start a strategic podcast for your business and share your message in a way that feels wildly authentic? This is the place. Welcome to Podcast Your Business, where each week I share the strategy behind having a podcast that helps grow your business. I'm Caroline Hull, podcast manager, strategist and consultant, and I've seen the power of podcasts can have for your business. Let's get started.
[00:00:52] Oh, my goodness. I'm recording this on a monday. I don't know about you all, but Mondays is not the best day for me to be doing content. But I've got a super busy week, so I need to kind of get on top of things a little bit. So I thought it would be fun to sit down and chat about this, especially because it's been on my brain a lot as I've been thinking about my own podcast. And last week I did a lot of strategy. I usually try to limit my strategy calls just like one a week, and I had so many last week and they were all so fun and just invigorating. And you know, one of the things that keeps coming up with some of the newer strategy people that I'm working with is this concept of their podcast being more work than they thought it was going to be, and the fact that it's more work than they thought it was going to be has been creating problems for them because I think there's a whole mindset, negative shift that happens when you're struggling to get something done. I mean, I can relate this to so many things in my life, like it can be something as simple as packing for a trip, which I recently had to do, and we get to the last minute. We're cleaning my house, you know, if I'm going into it thinking, Oh, this is going to be so much work, then I tend to put it off or I do it like in a weird kind of process. And that's not necessarily going to help me get it done faster. It's a mindset thing, right? Like it really does. Your brain like, jams up if something feels really hard to get done. And so I wanted to walk through some of the things that we can kind of think about when we're looking at our podcast and saying, Isn't helping my business right now? Or has it become a complete hassle for me to get done and what we can do to take steps to get out of that.
[00:03:00] So going back again, I want to kind of focus a little bit more on this mindset that can happen when things get really busy in our business. Often one of the first things to start getting attention is creating content, right? Those things that we are creating to connect with people and to network and all of those things, you know, emails, Instagram and then of course your podcast. Those are often the first things that stop getting attention, and it's because they are time consuming things to do. And if you don't have a really good process in place, if you don't have a system, if you don't have a plan of attack ahead of time, it just is too hard to sit down and do when you've got 50 other things to do. Right. And I know this especially like became true for me with my podcast before we did the relaunch, because I was still doing a lot of the work related to it. And I would put it off. I would just keep putting it off, Oh, I'll do that on Wednesday. Oh, I'll do that on Thursday. And then the weekend would come and it still wasn't done. And so it's just because it's time consuming and your time is precious. But the thing is, is it's really detrimental to the mission, the why of your podcast, right? Because you're trying to have this thing that is going to bring in listeners, bring in potential clients and help establish your authority. But if it's so hard to get it done each week and you keep putting it off and next thing you know, you're skipping a week or skipping two weeks, you're skipping a month. And now you're not doing it anymore. Right.
[00:04:41] This is what happens. Consistency is super important when you're trying to grow an audience. And so this all sounds really negative and horrible, but I think it's really important to kind of address it. Some people call it pod fade. You may have heard that. And that's when somebody starts a podcast. It's rolling along, it's doing really well, and then either they get busy or they're not seeing the results they want right away. And so they start putting all the effort and time into it. You may see one episode published one week, then they skip a couple of weeks, an episode pops up until all of a sudden there's no episodes anymore. I don't like to call it Pod Fade. That sounds so horrible, but I think it's just a matter of being busy and not having really great processes in place. Right.
[00:05:33] Okay, so what can we do if we have found ourselves in this place where we're like, Oh, this podcast is way more than I thought it was going to be. I don't know what to do. I don't know if I should keep doing it. I just don't know what the next steps are. I'm here to help. So first I want you to really think about why your podcast feels like a hassle. Is it because you don't have time, like actual physical time to do it? Or is it because it doesn't feel aligned with your business, your mission, your goals, your wise? Now, if you've listened to any of my past episodes, we've talked about how if a podcast is not aligned, you're not going to put in the effort. In fact, I think the guest on my last episode or two episodes back, Alissa Adams, who has the podcast Uncommon Couch, even said this like if it's not aligned and it's not doing what you want it to do for your business, you're not going to want to put the time into it. And so you really need to kind of stop and ask yourself, like, is it hard to get done each week? Because I am literally running out of time or because it doesn't feel aligned. And so I'm not wanting to put the time into it. And it's okay if your answer is one or the other, your answer could be a little bit of both. And I often find that it is a little bit of both because people love the idea of podcasting, they love doing the actual podcast episodes, the interviews, those kinds of things. But as they've gotten into it, maybe six months, maybe a year, they're kind of looking at it and saying, okay, what's the point? But also, my business is growing. I'm tired, I don't have time. The editing is a time suck. So there's usually like a combination of the two and there are things that you can do to kind of resolve them. But let's keep chatting about what you need to do. If it feels like a hassle. So that's the first thing, is to just examine why it feels like a hassle.
[00:07:31] Okay. Second, I want you to look at how you can shift how you actually think about your podcast. What do I mean by this? Well, the problem is when we put the podcast kind of is like a side hobby for our business. It tends to act like a side hobby for a business, right? It doesn't really do exactly what we needed to do and we're not going to put the effort we need to put into it. But if we make it the top tier of our marketing funnel and we start thinking about how it can support our business, there's going to be a mind shift there. And that shift is going to make us realize what a cool and valuable tool it it can be for us. And so then instead of thinking, Oh my gosh, it's such a time suck, we start thinking, Oh, I'm really excited to chat about this thing and share about this offer on my podcast this week. I need to make time for it. You see how that kind of happens? Is your podcast Growing Your Business? And if you don't know the answer to this question or you think the answer might be no, it's time to take an audit. Your podcast can be so much more than a hobby. It can be a way for you to attract your ideal client and establish yourself as an authority. But you need a strategy. And the best place to start is with an audit. And I have a free guide that helps you perform an audit of your podcast, gives you my top tips for having a strategically aligned podcast and a playlist of podcast episodes. For more insight, you can head to Wild Home podcasting dot com to download your free audit guide today. A lot of times it just takes like reframing your podcast. This kind of goes back to why does it feel like a hassle? This is just like reframing and making sure that your podcast has a job. I like to say that your podcast should be like your head of sales, your director of marketing, something like that. You know, it needs to work for you. It needs to be working for your business and earning its keep. And so we want to make sure it's drawing in people. That's really hard to do that when it's just down here at the bottom of the list. For those of you who can't see me because I'm not making a video, I'm literally pointing to the floor right now. So and that. Jenna funnel is down at the bottom. We want to move it to the top.
[00:09:43] Okay, so we've examined why it feels like a hassle. We've shifted our mindset about how we think about our podcast. And the third thing we needed to do is decide how we are going to regain our time. One of my favorite things to do is a process audit. No, not a podcast audit. A process audit. Actually, look at the process. Go through the steps. What pieces are taking so much time? What are the things that you are getting hung up on? You know, you may be surprised to find that it could be something that you didn't think was going to be difficult. Maybe it's shownotes, you know, maybe for some reason, sitting down and writing the show notes each week is really hard for you. It's hard for you to put into words what you just said in 20 minutes. Maybe it's the actual editing that is taking the time. Maybe you don't have a really great checklist that is helping you keep track of where you are in the process. Podcasting is a process. Getting it recorded, edited, scheduled show notes, written graphics, created all the, you know, content that goes along with it. Getting that all ready each week takes a lot of time. And you know we we love systems here while podcasting. I feel like that's all I've been talking about lately is systems because they're just my favorite thing. You know, we use Asana and so in Asana there are really robust checklists, and so we're able to assign tasks and set due dates. And that has been really helpful for me personally. As someone who likes to fly by the seat of her pants.
[00:11:25] The other thing, there are some other tools that we use for our clients include Google sheets. We build these incredibly robust spreadsheets. Some people really love working in spreadsheets, and that's great, you know, columns and all the things click up, Trello, whatever it is, but you've got to have a process. And so, you know, start by jotting it down on paper. What are the tasks that you're doing each week and how long is it taking you? Where are you getting stuck? What is the thing that you keep forgetting to do each week? You know, Are you forgetting to actually share your episodes on social media and to your email list? You know, put that in the checklist with due dates and, you know, think about how long it's going to take you to do those things and then work backwards so you know how far in advance you have to do your episodes, because doing them the night before is not going to do you any good. Right. And so we want to make sure that we build in that time. Another thing you can think about is your podcast schedule right now. Do you have the capacity to be doing two episodes a week like you originally planned or an episode a week? Do you need to go every other week for a while and get caught up and put out some really amazing episodes in the process? You know, Because that's the other thing too, is when we feel rushed to get our episodes out, we're not putting out our best work, right?
[00:12:46] And then the last kind of thing in this time category is, you know, it could be time to get some support and whatever that means for you. If that means hiring a VA to help you with some of the tasks, or if that means hiring a podcast management agency and getting all of it off your plate, you know, whatever the things are that you need help with. Ask yourself, is it time to get some support and can I do that? So these are the three things I want you to look at when you're thinking to yourself, okay, is this a plus for my business? Or has it become such a hassle for me that I'm not enjoying it anymore? And these are kind of the three things that I really feel like are where you need to start. And a lot of it is a little bit of a mindset shift and making a schedule, which seems really simple. But as you all know, like things get crazy and having schedules for things and fitting things in when he needs you, it can be really hard when you're running a business. And so setting days that you're going to work on things that are times really looking at the purpose of your podcast, really looking at, you know, where this feeling is coming from before you just throw in the towel and, you know, quote unquote pad fade as they say.
[00:14:05] I think that a podcast is a really powerful, powerful tool. I really do. I think there's so much value in being able to sit here and share my thoughts and tips with you and things like that. And I know that especially for business owners, it's such a great way to clarify your message and, you know, build your authority, but you have to do it in a way that's not going to be hard on you, right? We don't want it to be a struggle. It shouldn't be a struggle. It should be fun. So definitely take a minute. Listen to this. Webisode, you know, right down one, two and three, and figure out those questions for yourself and then decide what are your next steps going to be like? How am I going to move forward? How am I going to move forward with a better mindset, with intention, and how am I going to commit to remaining consistent? Because by remaining consistent, that is how you're going to grow listeners and build your authority. If you've thrown up episodes the night before on Random Weeks, it's not going to do you any good in the long run. So I hope this podcast was helpful to you. I would love it if you listened to this and it resonated with you where you felt like, Oh my gosh, I am totally like in this, this part of it, or I'm in this part of it, Message me on Instagram @wildhomepodcasting. I'd love to know what you thought and how you felt about the episode. And yeah, I hope you have a great week and we've got a lot of really neat things happening out world from podcasting, so I'm going to be making announcements about some of the the new offerings. We're going to have some of the new resources for you, free resources, so be sure that you are sticking around. Hit that follow button. Leave us a review if you can, and also be sure to follow me on Instagram because that's where a lot of my after the episode type chatting happens. So thank you so much. Keep on podcasting. Don't give up. Have a great week. Thank you for listening to podcast your business. For more podcasting tips, follow us on Instagram@wildhomepodcasting. If you're ready to launch up level or grow your podcast, head to WildHomePodcasting.com To get started today.
