This is the show for creative entrepreneurs who have a message to share and want to live a life of freedom. Learn how to grow your network and net worth. Hear from exciting guests and more. My name is Dylan Schmidt and Welcome to Digital Podcaster. Let's talk scheduling. So scheduling what why scheduling? Right? We're talking about podcasting. Now we're gonna have a scheduling. Yes, scheduling is vitally important to the success of your podcast, not only scheduling important in the release of your episodes, but scheduling is kind of like the basis of the whole podcast, it's scheduling creates the boundaries around you. Making time for your podcast scheduling creates the structure that allows your podcast to take place, right? It's the unspoken key to success with podcasts. So let's break down some scheduling elements before your podcast during your podcast after your podcast. Looking at before your podcasts like recording takes place, blocking out time to like schedule, right? That could be as simple as scheduling time to like, list out possible guests you'd like to have on your podcast, scheduling time, and your own personal calendar, around any meetings you need to have to that needs to take place around with CO hosts or possible guests scheduling time to reach out to guests, all of that stuff needs to be scheduled, it needs to go into your schedule. And it needs to. Like you need to you need to have a system around that right you need to know what you're doing each day. That only happens if it's scheduled. If it's not scheduled, it doesn't happen. When it comes to actually scheduling with the guests or your co hosts things like that. Let's look at guests specifically, the easiest way to do that is through using a tool like Calendly. And there's alternatives of Calendly out there. So I'm not going to go through all of the alternatives. If you listen to the last episode, I talked about money and budgeting for podcast equipment and gear and software. So I broke that down a little bit in there. But let's just talk Calendly Calendly makes it easy. Like if I'm going to appear on somebody's podcast, and they don't have a Calendly link. I'm like really what this is going to take so much more energy, like, Are you available around this time, then I gotta go to my calendar, all that stuff. If you give me a Calendly link, I can open up Calendly I can look at it and go. And it will tell me automatically like, yeah, you're available on the state. And it's so easy to book I can book in like two seconds, it's added to my calendar, automatically. The link is in there, everything set up. So it takes you know, time to like, share link with me seconds. And then it takes me no time to find a time like me no time to find a time that works for both of us. If you're not using Calendly, you're missing out on a ton of opportunities and you're causing so much more stress on yourself, then that needs to take place. So you got to coordinate all these schedules, right Calendly is the easiest way to do that. But you have to kind of like schedule time, especially to set up the calendar in the first place. Because Calendly doesn't magically know when you're available. So you got to do the due diligence of scheduling time to schedule time. And that looks like during that time to to schedule time for commonly creation things you have to take into consideration of setting up our you know, what days will you record podcasts? Like it doesn't have to be every day, you could set a side like, I like doing podcast recordings on Thursday and Friday or Saturday and Sunday. Take into consideration your guests or your co hosts or whoever, like what are their calendars like? And can you find, you know, similar days where you can batch around things. Because podcasting and the systems and processes that take place to make a successful podcast rely on like a structure. And if you're reinventing the wheel every time, you're going to find that structure just fall apart because reinvention and like creating something new is not. You don't want to do that around your systems. You want to do that around the content and innovate that part. But the actual like, when something will take place that doesn't need to be when we feel like it. No, that means that might not ever happen. It needs to be in stone in your calendar. So it's Calendly the only solution? No, that wouldn't make sense. If you were a solo podcaster you wouldn't need column like Calendly if you had no guests on, but you still need to schedule time. So coordinating schedules. Really it comes down to like setting boundaries, but not being so rigid in those boundaries, too. If you have guests come on your podcast, and you're only available to do episodes, you know, one day a week and you're like it's Thursday or nothing. Be prepared to lose out on opportunities. If you're trying to have like an array of guests. They might not be able to fit in your time. So just be aware of that because I see podcasters make the mistake of like Like, I only want to record it on this time, and then they have trouble getting guests or they have to lower the standard or lower the desire of guests that they're having in the first place because they have trouble getting guests. So you know, you got to open up that calendar a little bit more. And the truth of the matter is, the bigger you get the more reined in, you could probably make it. Yeah. So scheduling is important to take into consideration. Also, when it comes to content. After the podcast, we talked about editing, right? So after you've recorded, you have to schedule a time to edit it. Rarely, excuse me, rarely will you ever just released something unedited, right, you have to edit it. So scheduling time for that, whether it's you or another editor doing that, that needs to be taken into consideration that needs to go on your calendar or someone's calendar, editing, and then promoting. So now you got to, you know, schedule time for promoting and promoting might look like creating the assets using the edited episode or just the raw episode, whatever you need to be successful for that with content clips, my kind of goods.com My company that takes podcast episodes and turn them into clips from social media, we just take the raw episodes, if it's edited, sometimes it makes it harder to create the clips from so we use the raw episodes. But you got to schedule time for that, right. Like even if you were using content clips as a service, you would need to schedule it in time on your own and on your own calendar of like, alright, well, if it takes x amount of time to get the clips back, you know, and this episode's going out at this time, there needs to be some type of schedule that you're following, so that you promote the episodes when they're released. So there's an event happening around the episodes. Once again, I'll get scheduled in. But the time it takes to either send it all that stuff like needs to be scheduled in Suddenly, like a broken record at this point. So you're gonna also schedule like when you're promoting it during that week that the episode is released. Oh, I need to schedule this piece of content to go up. I need to schedule the episode itself to be published. And then I need to schedule some promotion time, whether that's through social media, email, all of that, maybe we'll do a go live on Instagram around that, again, shouldn't be just avant garde, freeform jazz, it should be intentional, and it should be scheduled. Also, when we're talking about scheduling your whole like podcast calendar, really, you should have like, it shouldn't be just freeform, it should be scheduled. So you should have the next six weeks, the next two months, the next six months outlined doesn't have to be like set in stone, but know where you're going. Some people do seasons for their podcast cool. Have that scheduled. Some people don't have seasons, they just kind of always go cool. Have that scheduled. Know what your last podcast episode was, know what five episodes was, know, when new episodes come out. Know when future episodes are coming out. These are all things to take into consideration and should be scheduled. And if you want to get past the hump of you know, no one's listening to my podcast or I, you know, I'm gonna launch my podcast, but you know, I'm hesitant, whatever it is. You won't feel hesitant when you have it scheduled. When you have it scheduled, it becomes real. We have it scheduled. You can look at it and go, Dylan, I know what's happening. It's absolutely like, terrifying to me personally, if I have no idea when something's happening, right? A schedule is how you get over that fear. A schedule is how everything happens, unfortunately. And that's kind of it when it comes to around that because after you've promoted it, you're kind of good, you're on to the next one, you're repeating that cycle, and what sounds like you know, 12 plus things I've talked about that you need to schedule in such a short amount of time. Really, when you get in the groove of these things, it doesn't take as much time in the beginning, when you set up these structures. When you set up these processes, the systems take place. That takes a little bit of time. But once you get rolling, like once I get rolling with content creation. It doesn't take me nearly as long as it did in the beginning, because I know what to do. And I have a checklist that I follow. And inside Podcasting Academy, like I give that checklist I have like a whole podcast production management template that it's it's essentially like a schedule, right? Because some schedules live in your calendar, and some schedules live on like it's more of like a to do list I guess. But it's similar to it's, to me it feels like in the same category of schedule is where you go 123 Right. It's a linear thing. But You need to schedule that in. Alright, that's it for today. I feel like enough of scheduling. Let me know if you have any questions about that. Or if there's something that you maybe notice that I forgot, or something I could go deeper on, I'd love to let you know. Alright, in the next episode, we're going to be talking about sound quality. Sound quality is vitally important for a podcast. If no one can hear you, no one's gonna listen, because they don't know what the heck you're saying. So let's talk about sound quality, how you can achieve good sound quality with whatever type of gear you have and how you can create ideal conditions for great sound quality to take place. Alright, I will see you in the next episode. Talk to you soon.