Your Voice Is the Strategy: Podcasting with Soul, Not Just a System
You’re following the plan. You’re showing up, you’re publishing, you’re doing everything “right.”
But deep down, something feels... off.
In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on a major shift that changed everything for me: the realization that strategy without soul was burning me out.
We’ll explore what happens when you stop podcasting just to check a box—and start podcasting with real clarity and intention. If you’ve been feeling disconnected from your content, if showing up feels more performative than purposeful, this is your invitation to breathe, realign, and trust your voice again.
Because your voice is the strategy.
Why Strategy Alone Isn’t Enough
Strategy can give you structure. It can guide your timing, your launches, your themes. But when your voice is missing from the equation—when you're only showing up because the plan says it's time to—it starts to feel hollow.
Podcasting isn’t just about delivering information. It’s about connection.
And connection only happens when you show up fully.
If your episodes are feeling flat, if recording feels like a chore, it might not be your format or your equipment...
It might be that you’re following the plan, but you’ve lost touch with the purpose.
How to Reconnect with Your Purpose (and Still Have a Strategy)
Here’s what shifted everything for me: starting with my message, not the calendar.
🌿 Before planning episodes, I now ask:
What am I feeling pulled to say right now?
What questions are my clients or community asking me?
What story or lesson feels alive for me?
🌿 Then, I build my strategy around that—not the other way around.
Structure is still important. It holds the container. But the heart of the content? That comes first. Always.
What Podcasting with Purpose Looks Like
✅ You're creating episodes that feel like conversations, not performances.
✅ You're leaving space for storytelling, honesty, and connection.
✅ You're choosing themes and topics that truly serve your audience—and light you up.
✅ You're letting your intuition and lived experience guide you just as much as your editorial calendar.
When you show up this way, podcasting stops feeling like another task to cross off the list.
It becomes the gift it was always meant to be. ✨
Are You Ready to Podcast from Purpose?
If you’re nodding along thinking, “Yes, this is what I need”—I’ve created something just for you.
Join me for Podcast to Profit, my free live event happening April 30th! 🎙️
It’s a 3-part strategy training rooted in clarity, alignment, and intention.
We’ll dive into how to create episodes that feel good and attract clients—because when you trust your voice, the results follow.
🌟 Sign up here: wildhomepodcasting.com/live
(And yes, there’s a replay if you can’t attend live!)
Final thought:
Your voice is not just an add-on to your strategy.
Your voice is the strategy.
And it’s enough. Always has been. Always will be. 🌕
The Transcript for Share, Strategize, & Shine:
217: Your Voice Is the Strategy: Podcasting with Soul, Not Just a System
[00:00:00] You know that feeling when your podcast starts to feel like a to-do list item, like no matter how on top of your content plan you are, something still feels disconnected, you're showing up, you're publishing, but it doesn't feel like it's doing anything right? That was me not that long ago. I was following my strategy to a t.
But it felt like I was just pushing content instead of sharing my voice. We're gonna talk about that today.
Welcome back to Share, strategize, and Shine. I'm Caroline, your podcast strategist and voice keeper guide, and today I wanna pull back the curtain on the moment. Things changed for me when I realized that strategy without [00:01:00] soul. Was burning me out. And what actually happens when you start podcasting with purpose and not just publishing a plan.
So if you're in that weird space where podcasting is working on paper, but just doesn't feel like it's working, this episode is for you. Let's take a breath together.
Let's drop back into why you started your podcast in the first place. and what happens when you return to that with strategy by your side? There was a season where I was in full content machine mode. I had my calendar. I was batching like a pro.
My outlines were tight, but I felt like I was going through the motions. And the worst part about all of this is like I wasn't seeing results. The clients weren't coming through the podcast. The conversations were quiet. I felt quiet. Does that make sense? Like, you know, when you feel like you're not reaching [00:02:00] anybody shouting into the void, that's one of the things I like to say.
And so one day I just scratched my outline, spoke from the heart, no agenda, no keyword optimization, just what I needed to say. And that episode got me the most dms I'd had in months. And it was a huge reminder to me that my voice is the strategy when I let it speak. And I, I wanna be really clear about this.
Here's the part that I do not want you to miss. We're not throwing out strategy, like strategy is still so important, especially if you want to create a podcast that is doing more than just being content, right? You need. You need strategy, like I still plan content. I am still tracking what converts, but I started weaving more purpose into my process, and I wanna share what that looks like for me and so that you can try this too and hopefully start to feel really good [00:03:00] and really connected to the podcast episodes that you're putting out.
Again. So the first thing I want you to do is start with the message, not the calendar. Before I fill in my content plan, or if I'm working with a client and we're working on their content plan, I always ask, you know, what, what's alive in your work right now? What are you talking about? What's been coming up with clients?
What do I need to say? I've talked about before how like you kind of become a detective. You know, you really start paying attention to what people are saying in your world. In your discovery calls and the messages that you're getting on Instagram and you'll start to notice something, you'll start to see some threads.
And a lot of times when we are not paying attention to those things, we are creating content that is very disconnected from our client. And so I always like to return to that. You know, what are people talking about? What is hard for them right now? What do I keep hearing them saying? And from there we [00:04:00] layer in the strategy.
So. What aligns with my current offers? If I'm looking at my promotion and my sales calendar, how can I incorporate these topics that I'm hearing come from people, uh, that I'm hearing people talk about? You know, what speaks directly to the person that I want to reach? So we are still working with a calendar, but instead of just trying to fill in space, we're trying to fill that space in with a little bit more intention.
The second thing I do is I build content around connection and not performance. So this really means like speaking more to transformation, not just tips. It means telling real stories, even if they're messy. I think that this episode is a really good example of that. Like I'm, I'm sharing that, you know, I have gone through a stage recently where my content didn't feel great, like I don't wanna share that I'm a content strategist.
Like, but it happens to everybody. [00:05:00] Right? And the thing is, is that I want you guys to feel. Me, right? Not just learn from me. Like I want us to feel a connection. One of the things that I teach a lot is this concept of sprinkling crumbs. If you've ever been to any of my workshops, masterclasses, anything, you know this.
I actually recently started using a visual because I would always talk about it, but I didn't have a visual, and I was so excited when I found that cookie graphic that is now in all of my presentations. But I talked about sprinkling. I think we can get into this trap where we're creating content and we're like, here's three tips for this.
Here's why you need to do this. Here's how to do this, and we forget that people wanna build connection with you. They really wanna get to know you. I think that I. When you share your voice from a place of, of purpose and identity, it becomes so much more meaningful to your listeners as well. And so sprinkling [00:06:00] is, you know, putting in stories, adding in tidbits about what's been going on in your life. Talking about how you work with clients, sharing a recent testimonial, those are like the things that you want to sprinkle in your content, and that is what is going to create connection and not just feel like a performative episode where you're sitting down and you're like, you have to do all these things.
I'm gonna tell you just 'cause I know, you know, it's almost like showing them as well, right. So just remember like your audience is really craving that connection and when we start asking Chat GPT just to spit out our episodes and they're just, you know that bro marketing speak, it can really feel like we are not being ourselves on our podcast.
And so one of the things that I really want you to remember, if you're using any kind of AI to help you outline or script, is to remember to give it what's important to you. You know, how do you wanna show up? What [00:07:00] do you want to be included in your episodes? Make sure it knows those things. That way it's infusing some of your personality.
And don't forget to infuse your own personality when you're recording it. Don't just sit down and read it, right? So build that content around connection, not just performance. The third thing I do is I use structure to support my voice, but not suppress it. Outlines. Episode rhythms, promotional calls to action.
These all still matter, but they serve my voice, not the other way around. So I have a episode template, which I will link it in the show notes that I love giving to my clients. , and you can get it in my, in the podcast strategy shop as well. And the cool thing about this template is it gives you the like chunks.
Of things that you need. So when we think about our episode, you know, what are the different things that we wanna make sure we include? Because let me tell you, long-winded, people who have a lot of [00:08:00] thoughts and feelings like me can easily lose, can easily lose their place and their structure and just start going off in different directions.
And so you wanna make sure that you do have some kind of structure. What I don't. Want people to do is be so married to that structure that it starts to take their personality away. So they sit down and instead of outlining the script, then they're just reading from a script and it sounds so robotic. So I always encourage my people to bullet point outline and then sit down and infuse their personality when they're recording it.
Like again. We want this to support you in sharing your message, not take away from it. So even though we are, you know, focusing more on content and purpose, by making sure that we're creating connection and using that structure, we are still leaning into a strategy that's gonna help us create episodes that are a amazing, okay, [00:09:00] so if you are listening to this and you're like, oh man, I feel like I've been podcasting like a performer.
Or if you're stuck in a rhythm that no longer feels like yours. This really is your invitation to pause, and I want you to ask yourself like, what would it look like if I were to podcast from clarity instead of obligation, right? Where am I following a strategy that doesn't feel like mine anymore? Like, strategies are great, but if they take away you from being you, are they worth it?
And what would, what shift? Or what would shift if I trusted my voice more than the algorithm? Oh, this question, it just gets me every time I have been actually working, like behind the scenes on some of my own voice stuff, I have this vibe, this feeling that I want to come out in my work, and it just hasn't been coming out in my marketing.
And so I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes [00:10:00] and this is really where this question comes from because I think that sometimes. Even I get so hung up on, well, I wanna make sure this gets enough downloads. I wanna make sure this gets enough views on YouTube. I wanna make sure that if I post it reel about this on Instagram that it gets seen, right?
And so I create it from a place of, of that and not from a place of purpose. And. You know, I think leaning into your purpose and sharing from that place can feel really vulnerable. It can feel sometimes like, well, nobody's gonna click on this because it's whatever. But the thing that is important to me, and I hope that you get from this episode, is like, we want people to connect with us, not just what we're saying.
Like we want them to feel welcome in our world and to be able to take that next step with us. And so really think about like if you trusted your voice more than the algorithm and just started sharing and [00:11:00] not worrying about who's gonna hear it, who's gonna click on it, all of those things. Like what would that look like?
I. And this is exactly the kind of work that we're gonna be doing inside of my Free event podcast to profit the three part Strategy to Attract Clients with every episode. It's a strategy training. Okay? Because I'm still a podcast strategist, even though I'm a little wooo. Um, but it's rooted in your voice.
Because that's what makes it convert, not tricks, not hacks, just clarity, alignment, and intention. And believe me, we are gonna talk about sprinkling crumbs in this free training. So definitely come, it's gonna be on April 30th, the link is in the show notes. Or you can head to wild home podcasting.com/live.
So please, please, please come join us. Even if you can't join, sign up, you will get access to a replay. So just be sure to add your name to the list and just a reminder. You do not have to scrap your strategy, but [00:12:00] maybe it's time to realign with your why. Your voice deserves so much more than a checklist.
It deserves to be heard. It deserves to be trusted and to be shared with purpose. So until next time, keep sharing what's true. Keep shining in your own way. Hopefully I will see you at the live event and have a great week.
