Hey Friend!

Today I am answering a Quick Tip Tuesday Question from Joy. She asks, “How can I podcast and run my coaching business in only 5-10 hours a week?”

I give Joy an hour–by-hour breakdown of what I think she should be focusing on each week to keep her growing without overwhelm.

The craziest part about starting a podcast for me was the fact that it saved me 15 hours a week of ‘social media marketing’ and promotion that was not actually moving the needle.

When podcasting becomes ‘the thing’ you save so much time, sanity, and free up space for intention in your motherhood, marriage, and home. You actually have TIME again while still seeing success.

It’s straight crazy.

Find out if your podcast plan is working, how much time each thing SHOULD be taking, and what you might be missing.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00):
What’s up, girl? So, you’re sitting here going, should I start a podcast? But I don’t know cause I don’t have any time. That sounds really hard.

Or maybe you are a podcaster and you’re like, why is this taking so much time? I’m overcomplicating this? I’ve gotta simplify. This episode is for you.

(00:18):
I’m gonna be talking to Joy around how long it should be taking her to do her one episode a week to podcast with intention, from planning all the way through promotion.

How many hours does that leave her? I give her a five-hour-a-week plan and break it down by the half-hour.

(00:37):
I give her a 10 hour a week plan and break it down by the half-hour. So stay tuned, grab a notebook and pen.

This one is going to be super tactical and it’s super applicable to you right now, to your every day, and to the growth of your business. Let’s go!

(01:59):
Hey, Stef! This is Joy from Playfully Faithful Parenting. I recently listened to your episode on 0-10K downloads and as a stay-at-home mom to five with only one of them in school full-time.

Some weeks I only have five to 10 hours to commit to my podcast and coaching business. How would you recommend spending that time? Maybe an hour-by-hour breakdown? Thanks so much.

(02:22):
Hey, Joy! What’s going on, my friend? I am so excited that you asked this question because I think one of the biggest hangups that people have around podcasting is either the fear that it’s going to take too much time.

They don’t have the time. How is it going to work to scale their business?

(02:40):
Or 2) they’re doing it and it is quite literally taking too much time. And that is the exact opposite of what it should be doing.

It’s the exact opposite of what I want it to be doing for you, guys. I want podcasting to be the thing that frees you in your life. I want it to be the thing that you can set it and forget it.

(02:59):
You can show up, you can pour into it and then you can absolutely walk away from it. Publish, done, moving on with my day, moving on with my life.

And I’m gonna go pour into my kids, which Joy sounds like you have your hands absolutely full over there.

(03:14):
And so today let’s give you some freedom in this process. I’m gonna walk you through what I think a five-hour-a-week podcasting plan would look like for you.

And then I’m gonna go through a 10 hour a week podcasting plan.

(03:29):
Now, Joy, I’m going to assume that you are not doing any type of private coaching right now, or it doesn’t really sound like you do any kind of monetization, but even if you do, I have created that space for you in these schedules.

(03:45):
So, let’s go hour by hour. Let’s begin with the five-hour-a-week podcasting plan. The first half an hour of your week… Now, the first thing is you must have an intentional time management system.

(03:58):
You’ve got to know how many hours you have, which it sounds like you know, but then you need to be able to plug those hours in as work blocks into your week, into your day so you know where they fit.

So, my week right now looks very different. Monday, Tuesday versus Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, cuz the boys off for spring break.

(04:19):
And it depends on what Brad is doing and what meetings he has and who has the kids and all the things.

So, one day you may have two hours of work time and then you may not have any work time the next day. And then you may have half an hour the next day.

(04:32):
And then you may have four hours on a Saturday. So you just have to intentionally time block in knowing you’ve got flexibility here because kids, I was gonna say, but grace, then I was like, but kids. Kids, and grace and do your best.

(04:48):
So, you gotta know when you’re showing up to work through.

Because I think one of the biggest things that hurt us in our growth is trying to multitask with no plan, trying to show up, to run a podcast, and doing it when you didn’t have the time allocated to it and then the kids need stuff.

(05:05):
You need to allocate these five hours to your business, know where your kids are gonna be, know that they’re gonna be occupied so that you can show up and get out. So let’s go and break this down. Grab a notebook and pen, y’all.

(05:22):
If you’re listening and you wanna know how to run a podcasting business truly in five hours a week, we’re gonna start there. 0.5, your first half an hour is going to go towards recording your show.

The next half an hour, I’m giving you for editing. Did y’all hear that?

(05:47):
If you record a 30-minute podcast episode, you only get 30 more minutes to edit. Now, I would prefer that you only spend five minutes editing. Why and how?

(06:00):
One of the hacks I teach you, guys, in Podcast Pro University is to stop when you make a mistake, press the stop button, delete the mistake, right as you’re recording, and click play again.

It takes two seconds and it saves you from having to edit. 95% of my shows are completely unedited.

(06:20):
The only ones I edit are the long live coaching episodes. Cuz we wanna get those down shorter for you, guys, to digest. But I don’t edit.

Let’s say that my dog tuted or he snorted because Hugo is a wild card co-host, you don’t know what you’re gonna get with Hugo the pug.

(06:41):
Let’s say that he did. I would literally just stop this episode right here. It would delete that part and I’d start recording again. Or maybe I would leave it in because y’all know me, but anyways.

(06:52):
So, so far we spent half an hour recording and then you get half an hour to edit, but I would prefer, you really start scaling this back to legit less than five extra minutes.

(07:03):
The next half an hour. Now, wait, I did forget something. A lot of you still need time to prep your podcast content. So I’m gonna give you half an hour for that podcast prep.

Again, I would like you to get that down to about 10 minutes overtime.

(07:26):
But for the purpose of this episode, I’m gonna give that to you. So we’ve got half an hour of podcast prep, half an hour recording, half an hour editing.

We’ve got an hour and a half so far. We have five total hours. The next thing you’re gonna do is spend half an hour creating your promotion material.

(07:44):
Now, if you’ve been through Podcast Pro University, you know that we have a very simple promo plan over here in Stef Gass’s world. It is so simple. We are just gonna whip up some graphics.

(07:56):
We’re gonna share them in the places that we already all are with the description that we’ve already written for the show, which is I’m including writing your description from the uploading process inside of creating promo.

(08:11):
That’s the promo. That’s all we’re doing here. You are not creating a reel that takes half an hour. That’s a waste of your time. Sorry.

You are not creating some crazy thing to do some others, you don’t need a freebie for your one episode. Stop the madness.

(08:27):
We’re simply gonna create some graphics or post a simple poll. We’re gonna use the description we’ve already done and we’re gonna post it in the places that we already are.

Lots of freedom in that. If you guys don’t wanna be on social media, you have the biggest blessing for me that you could ever have in your whole life.

(08:43):
And you’re just going to cut that out and you’re gonna just promote on Pinterest, which I teach you, guys, intensively in Podcast to Profit. So, you’re gonna promote on places that are one to many. So that’s it.

(08:55):
So the next half an hour, I’m giving you for your email nurture. I do think it’s important to grow an email list because that’s where you can capture your listeners and you can stay front of mind with them.

(09:07):
If you guys are not on my email list, you should be cuz I send you my episodes every week, so you could be actively learning how to nurture an audience. Don’t worry, because you guys can get on my email list at stefaniegass.com.

(09:20):
Now, yours does not need to look like mine. You do not need to email as often as I do just do one a week with a very simple here’s the episode from this week, description that you already wrote, same description, and also a link to show.

So, we’re just gonna keep it super simple here.

(09:36):
So, the next half hour is your Facebook community nurture. If you don’t have a Facebook community, we talk a lot about this in Podcast to Profit around when and why, and where.

And then, all the things that have to do with building community, but you could also do mighty networks community.

(09:53):
It’s really like where’s the place your people go to find each other. They found you, they love you. But now how do they connect with each other?

How do you create this self-sustaining community where people are speaking to each other and then you’re just gonna nurture that.

(10:15):
That might look like a poll, a funny meme, a reminder that your show is out. Keep it casual, so don’t have any expectations around this right now, Joy.

Because when you’re growing, the group’s really not gonna do much. It’s just kind of like a container to collect your listeners.

(10:32):
So we are at three and a half hours, and we have completely done everything for our podcast. From planning through recording, editing, launching, executing, and even promoting.

That leaves you one and a half hours for projects slash to-dos because I understand you’re not just here to podcast.

(10:57):
You’re probably doing some other stuff like getting your business stuff in order. Also, maybe you have an email that you need to get back to.

Maybe you are coaching. I don’t know what else you’re doing. So, here’s your hour and a half. This is your five-hour plan.

(11:10):
What I want you to do, Joy, is I want you to inventory the next week of your business and tell me what you are doing in those five hours that I did not mention. So, scratch those off, throw them away.

(11:22):
Now, Joy said sometimes she has up to 10 hours a week. So, if Joy has 10 hours a week, what am I going to have Joy do? Joy, I’m gonna have you add a second podcast to your show per week.

So, this gives you an extra three hours of work. So that takes us up to 8 hours total leaving you with two more hours of project time, a project/to-do list.

(11:47):
You can do whatever you want in your project time. You’re the visionary of your business. You’re the leader of your business.

We all have one job and it’s to be the CEO of growth. So if we are the CEO of growth, what do we do in our project time? We do things that make an impact or income, and that is all.

(12:05):
Now, I understand sometimes we are a solopreneur for a while. So what does that look like? Maybe that looks like you are building a website, you’re doing copy, and maybe you are doing some market research.

So what I’ve proven to you is that you can actually podcast in three and a half hours a week and you wouldn’t have any project time, but you could literally do it in three and a half hours a week.

(12:37):
So now, I want you to imagine if you stopped doing all the other things you were doing and you just did this three and a half hour a week, evergreen strategy that would grow and scale and reach people and multiply without you, forever.

(12:54):
That you didn’t have to battle an algorithm or feel weird or compare yourself. You just showed up and you spoke your heart and you knew the strategy behind it. And also, you knew keywords and SEO and all those pieces. You knew visibility.

(13:06):
You had every strategy that’s helped me get to 750,000 downloads. I hope you listened to yesterday’s episode BTW. If you did or didn’t, go listen, but if you did you understand that this is it.

(13:20):
So, we’ve gotta let go of the other pieces that are taking up time and specifically commit to this one strategy for at least 12 to 24 months, without adding other stuff in. It’s so important that you simplify the growth of your business.

(13:36):
Therefore, growing your business should not be overwhelming, hard, addictive, or distracting. Otherwise, you are doing it wrong.

I’m telling you right now that the enemy is a liar and he wants to tell you that you need to be addicted to your phone, to hustle.

(13:49):
You need to spend millions of dollars, millions of hours, you’re not gonna be fruitful unless it’s hard, that’s not true.

All you have to do is do the work to know your person, know your listener, understand the strategy behind scaling and then put your head down and get to work, which is exactly what I’m gonna teach you, guys.

(14:12):
I’m doing a free workshop for all my podcasters that I wanna invite you to. It’s called the S.C.A.L.E. Your Show Workshop. So, this is happening March 30th, 9:00 AM Pacific, 10 Mountain, 11 Central or 12 Eastern.

(14:25):
And so, I’m gonna sit with you for an hour on zoom. I’m not preparing slides, just gonna talk to you from my heart, and, I will share with you what I know.

I’m gonna talk to you about how I got here, and also how I am able to grow this incredibly successful business.

(14:42):
All from a show from sitting here in my comfies, I’m eating a perfect bar for my lunch right now, also drinking a kombucha. Life is great.

It’s kind of gonna snow outside. I’ve got my little co-host Hugo by my side. And I am literally living my best life.

(14:57):
I don’t have to go on social media. I haven’t been on Instagram in probably three weeks. And even that was just to check a message.

I got a team running Facebook. Guys, it’s truly possible for you if you want it. And if God wants it for you.

(15:15):
So, do you want it? So I would pray intently over if you’re meant to be at this workshop or not. And if you are it’s free. We are going to have a lot of fun.

We’re doing door prizes, and hopefully, I’ll make somebody cry, in a good way.

(15:29):
So you can go to scaleyourshowworkshop.gr8.com. Save your seat.

You’re gonna learn how to scale your show faster without wasting time, connect and convert. How do we actually turn a listener into a lead? How do you actually create paid stuff?

(15:46):
How to build momentum and get more downloads and just share my heart with you, guys, over there. So it’s the first time I’m ever done it in this very intimate way.

And I just pray that the people that God has perfectly prepared will be there with me.

(16:00):
So again, that’s scaleyourshowworkshop.gr8.com. If you, guys, want me to answer one of your questions, live on the show, head to stefaniegass.com/contact.

Leave me a SpeakPipe question or a testimony. How has this show changed you, challenged you, grown you?

(16:17):
Have you taken one of my courses or my program and if so, how has that helped you? What’s been your tactical breakthrough?

Have you ranked on the charts? What does your revenue look like? How does your relationship with God change? I wanna hear from you.

(16:31):
Y’all can send all of those questions or testimonies to stefaniegass.com/contact. I love you, guys, so much. May God bless you. May He shine His light and His face upon you. And may He be gracious to you, because He is so good.

(16:45):
He is faithful, fruitful, and has favor over your life. So, there is abundantly more for you to bring glory to the kingdom. All you gotta do is say yes and amen. So, claim it, partner with Him, and show up for it. Love you, guys. God bless. Bye.