How I Plan and Execute My Podcast as a Busy CEO
Podcasting is time-consuming. There’s just no way around that. But there are systems you can put in place to make the process run more smoothly, so that you can make the most of your time. I’m the CEO of my business, a podcaster, a mom, a wife, and countless other roles in my life, which means I am truly busy. But I will not let go of my podcast because it has truly grown my business, even in the midst of my crazy schedule.
Making it as easy as possible to record episodes, and planning ahead as much as I can, has been a lifesaver for my podcast. I am able to focus on creating the best show that I can, one that will help my clients with their shows. It’s a win-win, to be honest.
Today, I’m sharing how I plan and execute my podcast, why I’m being more intentional with my time and content, and why I’m no longer batch recording episodes (I said what I said!). Whatever stage of life you’re in, you can have a successful podcast that doesn’t drain your energy and your time. I hope my tips help you to stay fresh and energized with your podcast. Keep reading to steal my strategies, I don’t mind.
Why I plan ahead as much as possible when it comes to my podcast
My time is limited right now. As I mentioned, I’m the CEO of my business. I also homeschool my children. My youngest has stopped napping. Cue the internal panic! Just kidding. It’s just made it a little more tricky to plan out my working time and record episodes. But I get it done by planning ahead as much as possible.
Now, I don’t want you to think that I have some spreadsheet with a podcast schedule that goes into 2026 or anything like that. I still like to be flexible with my episodes and content calendar. But I also like knowing what’s coming up in the pipeline and being able to adapt my podcast recording to the pockets of time I have in my day.
Going back to that podcast schedule that I mentioned, I like to stay on top of my content by utilizing a bank of episode ideas. I’ll think about what my business and sales goals are for the quarter and align my content around the appropriate offers or categories. It’s been a great way to strike a balance between planning ahead and still having some wiggle room if I need to change things up.
How I’m being more intentional with my podcast content
I’m just going to say it: in looking back at some older episodes, I realized that my content was getting a little stale, and sometimes a bit repetitive. But that’s okay because that means there’s always room for improvement. What I’ve started doing to help keep my episodes fresh is drafting a rough script with bullet points that I want to touch on. It helps me stay on track, I don’t repeat content as often, and I remember to cover everything I wanted to talk about.
Again, this is a rough, abbreviated, bulleted list. Please don’t create a word for word script that is 100 pages long and read it verbatim. I promise you that is not the key to podcast success! But this one simple step has really kept me organized and on topic and allows me to create the best episodes I can for my listeners.
Why I no longer batch record episodes (gasp!)
You hear this from business experts and coaches all the time: batch your work! Batch your content! Batch your episodes! And I really did do that for a long time. I’d sit down and record 2 or 3 15-minute episodes at a time so that I could get ahead with my schedule. But do you know what happened? They weren’t always my best effort.
So, what I do now is to record ahead of time. I’ll sit down to record one episode, but I’ll do it a few weeks before it’s set to air. This gives me plenty of time to plan, to get my schedule in order, to do research if I need to. It also helps me in case something happens in my personal life - a sick kiddo or jury duty or whatever. Things will happen in life that will throw a wrench in your plans, but if you have prepared ahead of time, you can roll with the punches and not get behind (or burned out) on your podcast. I’m really not trying to discourage you from batch recording your content, though. I think you should do whatever works for you. But it was no longer serving me or my podcast and I decided to stop doing it. Set up systems that will make your life easier in the long run.
I also like to pick a day that works for my schedule to sit down and record. Right now, that day is Fridays, but it could totally change in the future. Pretend it’s Friday with me. Picture me getting camera ready so that I can record video at the same time I’m recording my audio. I’ll make sure my kids are occupied. I’ll have my rough script in front of me. I’ll have a smile on my face because I know exactly what to do and when because I’m prepared. And then I’m ready to rock and roll.
I outsource my podcast tasks to my team and it’s the best investment for my business
I’m a busy business owner, have I mentioned that? I used to do all the tasks for my own podcast because it felt weird to have my team do them. They’d work on client work for my podcast agency, but not my podcast. I know, weird, right? Completing podcast tasks for my own show took up so much of my time that it often got put on the backburner. I’d be recording episodes the night before, writing my show notes late at night, etc. It wasn’t sustainable. But I got over it, don’t worry. Now, after I’m done recording, my team takes over. They edit the audio, write the show notes, and create the graphics. They’re a well-oiled machine at this point and they free me up to be the best content creator I can be for my podcast and I’m so glad I decided to let those tasks go off my plate.
But outsourcing to my team isn’t just about reclaiming my time, although that’s a huge part of it. It’s also freeing me to truly be the CEO of my business. My job is to bring people into my podcast membership, and to bring in clients who need help with podcast strategy. I can’t do that if I’m only focusing on my own podcast and nothing else.
My encouragement to you today is to think about what systems will help you with your podcast. You don’t have to use all of my tips all at once. Maybe try 1 or 2 and see how it goes. Taking a small step that will save you time and brain power will have a great impact on your podcast content and your energy.
Are you ready to build your podcast strategy, simplify your marketing, and finally make your podcast work for you? Join the Strategic Podcast Academy, my signature group program that’ll support you with monthly training, resources, and an amazing community!
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The Transcript for Podcast Your Business:
136: How I Plan and Execute My Podcast as a Busy CEO
[00:00:00] Caroline Hull Podcasting is time consuming, like there is no way around it. But even though I'm a CEO, homeschool mom, a busy, busy person, my podcast still remains the best way for me to share my message in a long form content. And it helps me to engage new audiences and also new potential clients. Right? So I wanted to get a little personal today and share just how I make it work and the systems that I have in place that help me to be not only a successful business owner, but a successful podcaster.
[00:00:38] Hi there and welcome to Share, Strategize and Shine. I'm your host, Caroline Hull, a podcast strategist and CEO of Wild Home Podcasting. I've built my entire career through podcasts by sharing my experience using strategic systems and shining a light on the power of podcasting. If you are looking to cultivate leads for your membership, group program, or consulting services, I'm here to help you create a holistic and integrative podcast strategy that will let your business thrive. Let's dive in.
[00:01:16] Hello and welcome back to Share, Strategize and Shine. It is a super rainy day today when I'm recording this and we have started homeschooling on Fridays, which we typically do not do. And this used to be kind of our day off during the week. And so I am so ready for movie night tonight. I cannot even tell you.
[00:01:39] So one of the problems we solved this week was having too many social media accounts. Let's talk about this. I will see very often people have a Instagram account or a TikTok, whatever it is, whatever the thing is for their business. And then when they start a podcast, they feel like they have to start a separate account for their podcast. So this begs the question, should I have a social media account just for my podcast when I also have a business account? If the goal and the purpose of your podcast is to help your business grow, then I always say no, you should just have one account. That's where everything should live because the podcasting content is going to help our business marketing, right? That's the whole goal. And also the goal is to create a podcast that is part of the funnel. So it's really helping people get to know you better and build that know like and trust. And that's really hard if you have two places to be. So what do you do if you do have two social media accounts? Well, one of our clients had this issue. We've actually had a couple of clients that have had this issue, and this is what we've been recommending everyone do. So on that podcast account, because we don't necessarily want to delete it, you don't want to lose the followers that are there. Create one of those static nine grids about your podcast. Go ahead and post that and make sure that you say in the description and in the captions of all of those where people can hang out if they want more, which is over at your other social media account. And then I want that social media account, the one for your business to be where you start posting about your podcast episodes. Because the whole goal of having a podcast for your business is to be able to take that content and repurpose it, directing people to the podcast into your business, right? And we can't do that if we're constantly switching between social media accounts and we're talking to two different audiences when they really should be the same. And so this is how we've been solving the problem. And the results that we're seeing from this is not only does it help a lot because now we're sharing on our main business account, which is going to really help with, again, business and content. But we're actually seeing downloads increase and we're seeing more ears being able to listen to that podcast and being aware that it exists. Because one thing that I have found is that if someone is interested in working with you and they're interested in buying from you and they see that you have a podcast. One thing they may do is go and listen to that podcast, but if they don't know you have it, they're never going to go over and listen. And so that's why it's so important to be talking about your podcast in the right place. And so that is the problem that we solved this week.
[00:04:33] So podcasting is time consuming. Really, there is no way around it. I mean, just sitting down to record can take a lot of time. And when you feel like you have no extra time in your schedule, one thing that can happen is your podcast starts to feel more of a burden than something that's actually helping you and that you enjoy doing. I know for me it's definitely a struggle to want to sit down and record for 30 minutes to an hour when there are so many other things that I need to be doing. But I'm going to talk a little bit about that today.
[00:05:09] And I want to start out by saying and sharing with you why podcasting works for me. I have mentioned many times and a lot of spaces that I am an INFJ and when I first started podcasting, it was a struggle and it was also like this amazing light bulb thing for me because I wasn't very good at being on video and I'm still not great at being on video and working on it. But I loved podcasting because I could sit, I could talk, and that felt really natural for me. And I feel like over the years my love for this format has just kept growing because it's helped me really hone in on my messaging and it's helped me become more confident in how I speak about what I do. I can never see a situation where I would give up podcasting because it just works so well for me. I love it. I love doing it. I love sitting down and working with audio. But the other reason why I think it works so well for me is because I'm not as good at creating like short form video content, all those other things, I am practicing, let me tell you. This is like the best way to get to know who I am and what I do. And that's why it works for me. Also, I just love the flexibility that the audio format gives you. Even though we have started using video and I have started putting videos on YouTube. I know that like if I absolutely had to get on an episode and I was having a rough day, we could do without the video and it would still be okay and it would still work for me. And so that's why I really love it.
[00:06:54] You know, it has become such an integral part of my business, I would say definitely over the last five years. And really, because we have implemented all the strategy that we use for our clients for my own podcast, and it's made such a difference in my business and has helped so much with client acquisition and things like that. And so it's the cornerstone of what we do here and I'm going to keep doing it. So I've got to find a way to make it work no matter how crazy things feel. We are starting a new schedule with the podcast or we started it the week before this episode came out where we are going to be releasing two episodes a week as a bit of an experiment. And so this has taken a lot of planning and really thinking through how I'm going to work ahead and make sure that I'm staying on top of the schedule. I definitely feel like there are these moments and there are these phases in my life where it feels harder to get things done and harder to get things recorded. And right now is definitely one of those moments. My kids schedules are insane. My youngest is three right now and I don't have a lot of help because we do homeschool and you know, we kind of live in this environment where we're constantly teaching and working together as family. I don't really bring in a ton of outside help. I am getting outside help this year, though, for the first time in a while. And so my three year old has stopped napping and napping is when I do all my recording. Napping is when I do my calls. It's like the most important time of my day. And so the fact that she is not napping is definitely like throwing a wrench into all of this. And so I'm having to be really intentional about my planning and my schedule and how we're going to make all of this work.
[00:08:45] Let's start with planning. So I try to plan ahead as much as possible. At the same time, I hate planning too far ahead. So let me explain. I have always been a big believer that planning really helps. It helps to see things on the calendar. It helps to understand what's coming up. But I also love to be able to be flexible and move things around if I need to, or if I feel like something is just calling me to talk about it, like I want to be able to do that. And so I've had to really like strike a balance between scheduling too far ahead and then also making sure that I am leaving some of that wiggle room. But we do try to plan ahead as much as possible. I believe right now I am planned through October and I'm going to start working on my November-December plan for the podcast.
[00:09:36] And so one of the ways that we kind of stay on top of episodes and scheduling is keeping a bank of episodes ideas. This has been huge for me. So really like thinking about, okay, what is our focus for this quarter? What are the things that we are going to be trying to sell? And then what are some episodes that go with that? And we keep an episode bank. And then what I will do is as we're working through that month and our plans are coming into place, into fruition, I will plug episodes and this has been a really, really effective way for me to strike that balance between, again, planning so far ahead and feeling like there is no wiggle room and being able to be flexible and move things around.
[00:10:20] Did you know that 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 in your field. But you need a strategy. And that's why we've created the Strategic Podcast Academy, a monthly membership designed to help you build a strategy for your podcast. You can grow your business and get off the content creation hamster wheel. With support from myself and a community of like minded podcasters, you will create a strategic plan for your podcast and start implementing impactful changes. During our time in the monthly membership, we're going to cover topics such as customer path planning, content planning for sales, podcast SEO, creating connection with your listeners, email marketing for your podcast, and so much more. So if you are an online business owner, coach, consultant or service provider, and you're ready to have a podcast that supports your business, then the Strategic Podcast Academy is for you. Head to wildhomepodcasting.com/membership to join today.
[00:11:26] The other thing that we have changed or I have changed specifically and how I work on the podcast is my episode prep. So I was really starting to feel like my content was getting a little stale. And trust me, after years of podcasting, this can happen to anybody. And I felt like a lot of my content was becoming incredibly repetitive. Which I'm sure some of you listening to this are shaking your heads yes, go right ahead. You can agree with me. So one thing that I am trying to do because I want to improve as a podcaster, is to start drafting rough scripts of my episodes. I am not a big script out the episode and read it person. That just does not work for me. I like to. I like to chat. I like to talk. I don't want to read a script and but having the rough scripts has really helped me to make sure that my content isn't repetitive and that I am also being very intentional about what I'm talking about on the episodes. And so that is definitely added a small step each week. But I think, you know, the intention of our podcast in going into this quarter and into next year is that we really want to grow it. And part of growing it is improving the content. And so this is really something that is important to me. And if it means that I have to dedicate a little bit more time to mapping out the episodes and doing some research, then I'm going to do it because I want to grow this podcast and want it to be one of the more well known podcasts for podcast strategy. So I'm going to work on that, right? That's a goal I have. That's something I'm going to work on.
[00:13:09] My scripts are not super detailed. So what I have been doing is, you know, writing out what I want to talk about in key points with a little bit more detail than I used to. So kind of making bullet points for myself and then maybe writing like a couple sentences with each bullet point of things. I just want to make sure that I talk about. I also will write out my intro and then I will write out our new segment, which is the problem that we're solving each week. And that has really helping me. You know, the act of doing that again is helping me to be more intentional with what I'm choosing to talk about, but it's also helping me to prevent getting into that habit that I was of repeating myself on a lot of episodes.
[00:13:54] So let's talk about recording, because I know that recording can be one of the hardest things to do and to feel like you're doing it effectively and you're getting ahead. I have decided I've landed on, you know, it kind of changes with my season of life and what's going on. And for a while I was batch recording and I would sit and record 2 to 3 episodes. But I've decided that I don't want to do that anymore because I want each episode to be amazing and sitting down and recording a bunch of 10 to 15 minute episodes that are not great wasn't really serving me. So instead, what I'm doing is I'm recording ahead of time. So I think right now I'm about three weeks ahead on my schedule, so I'm really trying to stay ahead and record and make sure that I am working far enough ahead for my team. A side note, like I have also just I'm going to be doing jury duty in a couple of weeks and I'm worried that you know what will happen if I get picked. And so I want to make sure that I have episodes in the bank. And I think that brings a really important point. Like things happen, you know, things are going to happen. A kid's going to get sick. You know, my daughter, who is doing fencing, she may have a competition. My daughter, who's doing musical theater, may have an audition come up, and that's going to mess with my recording schedule. And so I want to make sure that I do have a little bit of wiggle room. But here's what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to batch. I just that does not work for me like it used to. I don't feel like my strength is in batch recording content. I don't feel like my strength is in batch creating content for Instagram never has been. And so I'm going to stop trying to do something that doesn't serve me well.
[00:15:41] You know, as I'm creating systems for my business, I think one of the biggest lessons I have learned is that any system is fantastic. Any system is great if you use it right, But if you're not going to use it, if it doesn't feel right for you, it's going to start feeling forced and it's not going to feel like it's working. And that's kind of how I feel about batch recording. I feel like it's me trying to force something to happen that's not going to be great. And so I really I really wanted to change that. And so recording ahead is where it's at for me, and that's what I'm going to be doing and just really trying to stay on top of my schedule.
[00:16:17] The other thing that has helped is picking a day that works for me and a day when I can be camera ready because we have added YouTube to this. So as I mentioned, I'm a homeschool mom. My kids are home all day. You know, my weeks are not always like cookie cutter. Every day is the same. Everything happens according to schedule. I mean, if your weeks are happening like that, please let me know your secrets, because I feel like one week we'll be just doing so good. Everything will be going according to plan, and then we'll have a week where it feels like it's pulling teeth, trying to get schoolwork done and the chores done and staying on top of everything that we need to do. And so I have to really account for that. I also take client calls, I'm doing calls, I'm doing interviews for podcast, I'm doing other events, things like that. I have to take all of this into account, right? Because all of it is important. And so picking a day that works for me and knowing like that's the day that I'm going to record. So right now, for me, that day happens to be Fridays. And so that's the day that I get up and like I make sure that I am ready to be on camera and that I have the time set aside and a plan for what's going to happen while I'm recording. So for instance, in real time, I am pretty sure that my toddler has gotten out of her bed. I'm recording this episode. I do have a pause button so I can pause if I need to. But my older ones know that if she gets out of bed just to invite her to sit with them until I'm done. So that's probably what's happening. That's what I hope is happening. We'll find out. So that's recording and episode prep and how I plan. So, you know, when I'm planning. Also, I just want to say like I'm not using a super fancy tool. We literally do this in Google sheets and then we have a Google doc where we do our quarterly planning. And this year we actually just put all of our content ideas in that quarterly plan. And so that's been really great because that document kind of serves as a hub for my business that I pull up whenever we're working on things or making decisions. And so I will just when it's time to sit down and work on my schedule, I'll pull up my my Google sheet and I'll pull up my Google doc. And that's what I'm working in right now for my schedule. My scripts, I'm also just doing Google Docs. So like Google all the way. No special tools here and it works great for me. So again, finding those things that work for you.
[00:18:49] Okay, so I've planned the episodes. I recorded them. What happens after? Well, here's the thing. I have a team and I want to talk about it because I think transparency is really important. I didn't always have a team. I have a podcast agency and you know, they've always been there. But it really wasn't until a year or two ago that I actually started giving them my podcast because it felt weird to ask them to do my podcast for some odd reason. But I do outsource pretty much all of my podcast tasks that happen after I record. And I think this is a really wise investment for me as a busy business owner. Like, I do not have time to be doing all of this stuff and that's not what I need to be focusing on. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in just a minute.
[00:19:40] So right now I'm outsourcing the show notes and the graphics show notes because everybody can write them better than me. And I love having them written really well. We've been actually writing full length blog posts to go with my episodes to build SEO on the website. And so like that is I don't have time for that. I have somebody amazing who can do that. So she's going to take care of that. And graphics are kind of the same thing. We have really experimented over the last year with how we show up on social media and the graphics that we create. And one thing that my amazing ops manager is so good at is creating graphics that go that she like pulls a point from the show notes and creates a carousel. And that has been amazing and so helpful. And sometimes I will maybe come up with something and she will make it happen. But for the most part, she's really helping me with that.
[00:20:36] Now, for the interviews, the editing is completely outsourced, so I'll record with a guest and then I'll send it all to my team and they will put it together. But definitely the video has kind of thrown a wrench into all of this. So I actually do the video editing for my agency. So any of my clients that they have videos that are going to be edited, I'm going to be doing them and then I do my own videos. And so right now, because I'm doing those, actually makes a lot of sense for me to edit the video and just export the audio for my team to look over. But I've been kind of doing a first edit, so I am still a little bit involved in the process just because I'm doing the videos. But for the most part my team is handling all of it.
[00:21:24] And the reason why I wanted to share all of this with everyone who's listening is because I want to talk about what your job is as the CEO of your business. And believe me, there have been phases where I was doing everything, everything that my business needed, I was doing it. And the further I got along into this business world, into this business life, the more I have realized that having people support me in whatever way I can have them support me is so important, so I can focus on my strengths and so I can focus on what I'm good at, but also so I can focus on creating amazing content for my business. You know, when I was doing everything, my content suffered because it became very last minute and I need to get this done. I need to get this out. It wasn't as impactful and planned out. Being able to have the time to really work on my episodes, work on my episode structure, work on what I want to talk about, I think makes such a huge difference in the quality of content that we produce. And so, you know, I understand that not everybody can outsource right away. But even just having someone come in to help you schedule the episode or maybe help you create graphics is so, so helpful. So that way you can take that thing, that task off your list and focus on the things that you should be focusing on. You know, my job is to work on strategy for my clients, to create content for my business and to get more sales for my business so that we can help more people. But if I'm bogged down by everything, then client acquisition goes by the wayside because I'm so busy focusing on all of these little tasks, right? And so the value really is there for me to have somebody help me and somebody outsource.
[00:23:31] But let's say that you are not able to do that today and you're like, okay, but how can I get all this done? And what I tell people in the academy when we're talking about this, which is my membership, is, you know, you don't have to do everything right away. So like, pick the things that you feel are going to make the most impact for your business and your podcast. So a really good example is show notes. Like I would spend time on my show notes because then you can repurpose that and use it in so many different places. And that is really important. I would spend time working on the quality of your episodes because that's really important. I would make sure your content is amazing before worrying too much about graphics or how many times a week you're going to post on social media, right? Like, I want you to focus on those things and then as you can start to get help, you can start to improve the other things that go along with it. But really the key here is having systems and that makes such a huge impact on my schedule. And what's going on is knowing that I don't have to find anything. I don't have to hunt for anything. It's all there where it's supposed to be. It's organized, there's a system, there is a way that we do things. And I really, truly believe that, you know, efficiency, efficiency and quality is what makes it work for me in this way. You know, I, I am a very busy person, but this is so important to me, and I want to make sure that the energy that I am putting into the podcast is not coming from a place of being tired and being overwhelmed, but it's coming from a place of I am so excited that I get to share this with my listeners. This is something that is so important to me and I'm so grateful that I get to share it and talk about it. That's the energy that I want when I'm coming to sit down and record not, Oh my gosh, I have to do this today. Right? And so how can I make sure that everything around me is working so that way I can approach it with this energy, because I know that this is going to help my business grow if I can put the right energy into it.
[00:25:47] And so my encouragement to you today is to think about what systems work for you. I hope hearing how I do this helps you kind of figure out your weekly schedule with your podcast, and maybe you can pick out one thing that you can try, such as trying to record three weeks ahead or, you know, write a rough script, whatever the thing is that you resonated with, you know, just trying to take that one step to make it a little bit easier for yourself is going to make a huge impact again on the energy that you're putting into your podcast. So I hope you have a great week. I will be back next week with a new episode and I'm going to go finish enjoying this rainy day and relax and rest now that I've recorded this episode. Be sure to follow me on Instagram. Let me know what you thought. And thank you so much for listening.
[00:26:51] Thank you so much for listening to Share, Strategize and Shine. To give your own podcast some shine, download my free podcast content by heading to the link in the show notes. Be sure to leave a review and connect with me on Instagram for more podcast strategy insights. Until next week.
