Outsource Podcast Production or DIY? Do the Maths First

"The cheapest way to make a podcast is usually the most expensive way to spend your time."

Most business owners default to DIY podcasting because it looks free — no invoice, no line item, no upfront cost. But time isn't free, and for a business owner, the real cost of producing your own show is almost always higher than it looks on paper.

In this episode, I break down the actual maths behind the DIY-vs-outsource decision: what a podcast episode really costs once your own hourly value is factored in, what full-service production actually covers, and the specific signs that tell you it's time to hand the work off.

Key Takeaways

• The Free Trap: DIY podcasting isn't actually free — it just moves the cost from your bank account to your calendar.
• Do the Maths on Your Hour: Before choosing DIY, calculate what your time is worth to the business and compare it to what outsourcing would cost.
• Five Jobs, Not One: "Making an episode" actually means strategy, filming, editing, publishing, and promotion — five separate skills, not a single task.
• The Consistency Problem: A podcast only builds trust if it keeps showing up, and DIY production is the first thing to slip when your week gets busy.
• Keep What Only You Can Do: The ideas, guest relationships, and conversation require you specifically. The editing and publishing don't.

Chapters and Timestamps

• 00:01 – Why "cheapest" and "most valuable use of your time" are two different questions
• 00:07 – The eight-to-ten-hour reality of producing one episode properly
• 00:11 – The signs it's time to outsource: dollar value, consistency, and personal fit
• 00:14 – A quick framework to decide: outsource or DIY
• 00:16 – How Seven Million Bikes Podcasts handles production end to end

Book a free call with me here to help you create the best podcast possible!

Email me (niall@sevenmillionbikes.com) or contact me on Seven Million Bikes Podcasts Facebook or Instagram to book your free Podcast Audit!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Cutting out your own arms and ads, and I say this with love, is a terrible use of your business. We've had people record for an hour, and the final product is 15 minutes. Finding a good 15 minutes inside that hour, that's the work. Podcast that you love listening to, there's probably a team of nine people behind it. The host is just the face. So if you're doing everything by yourself, you're doing nine jobs. The thing about podcasting is that the learning curve isn't just steep, it's expensive, and you pay for it in hours, not just money. Let me ask you a question. If you make a podcast yourself, you record it, you edit it, you publish it, you promote it, do you know how many hours one episode actually takes? Not a guess, that actual number. Because I didn't. For years I didn't. I started my first podcast in 2019 as a hobby, and I remember editing episodes late into the night, way past when I should have been asleep, just to get it finished. I loved it, I still love it, but I never once stopped to add it all up. Then one day I sat down and I did the math, and the number genuinely shocked me. One episode eight to ten hours. Think about that. You go to work for about eight hours a day. So a weekly podcast is basically an extra day of work every single week or whatever. And here's the thing nobody tells you this before you start. Everybody tells you podcasts are easy. Buy a microphone, press record, you're a podcaster. And then the industry data tells a very different story. Nearly half of all podcasts stop at three or fewer episodes. Three. And only about 1% ever make it past episode 20. That's not because those people weren't smart, and it's not because they had nothing to say. It's because nobody did the maths before they started. So today in this episode, I'm gonna do the math with you. Hour by hour, where the time actually goes, why it takes so much longer than you think, and then how to decide honestly whether you should be doing all of this by yourself or not. I'm Neil McKay and I've made over a thousand podcast episodes, worked with more than a hundred shows around the world through my company 7 Million Bikes Podcast, and this is Smarter Podcasting. Let's get into it. Okay, so let's break down one episode. One, and I'm not talking about some fancy Hollywood production here, just a normal, decent quality episode for your business. First, preparation. If you're interviewing a guest, you've got to research them. Write your questions down, go back and forth in scheduling, and then set a date. If it's a solo episode, you've got to plan what you're actually going to say. That's about an hour. And honestly, that's if you're quick. Then set up. Even me, and I do this every single day, I still need to get everything ready before I press record. Cameras, microphones, levels, checking the SD cards aren't full, making sure the batteries are charged, that can easily take 30 to 45 minutes. Then the recording itself, about an hour. So we're already at nearly three hours and you haven't even made anything yet. You've just got raw footage. Now the editing. This is the one that destroys people. A decent edit on one episode is three to four hours per hour of raw footage. Minimum. And in the beginning, when I was learning the software, way more. Then show notes, the title, the description, uploading it to your host, scheduling it. There's another hour. Minimum. Easily. That's eight hours, and you haven't even promoted it yet. You haven't made a single clip for social media, you haven't posted it anywhere. And you haven't told a single person that it exists. Eight to ten hours for one episode. An extra working day every week. And the promotion bit deserves its own mention because that's the part with no ceiling. For our clients, we make multiple short videos from every single episode. Then there's the posting them, writing the captions, the LinkedIn post, making a blog from the transcript, the newsletter. You could spend another full day just on that. Most DIY podcasters skip promotion entirely. Not because they don't know it matters, but because by hour eight, they've got nothing left. So the episode goes out into the world and nobody hears it, which makes all eight hours worth. Well, you can do that math too. And look, when I did the math for myself, it actually changed my life because it's partly why my business exists. But when most people do this math, they do it three episodes in when they're exhausted, and that's when they quit. That 47% I mentioned, I'd bet most of them never saw the eight hours coming. Now, let me explain why editing takes so long. Because this is the part that catches everybody out. Here's the thing most people never even think about. If your recording is one hour long, then just listening to it back with no stops, no changes, nothing, that's already one hour of your life. That's just the starting point. Every single time you press pause to cut something, fix something, adjust something, the clock is running on top of that hour. And those pauses add up fast. I've looked up at the clock before and realized that I just spent 15 minutes making five seconds of audio sound right. 15 minutes, I'm not joking, for five seconds. And I do that because I want the podcast to sound amazing. That's the standard for me, that's the minimum. But here's something that sounds completely backwards, but it's true. A 15-minute episode can take longer to edit than a one-hour episode. We've had people record for an hour and the final product is 15 minutes. Finding the good 15 minutes inside that hour, that's the work. A clean one-hour conversation with no mistakes is easy by comparison. And editing isn't just cutting out the ums and the ahs. It's balancing the sound levels between you and the guest because your guest recorded on the laptop microphone in their kitchen and you didn't. It's the intro, the music, the outro, the ads. It's making it flow so well that nobody can even feel that it was edited. The best edited podcast in the world, you can't tell. That's the whole point. The podcast that you love listening to, there's probably a team of nine people behind them. The host is just the face. So if you're doing everything by yourself, you're doing nine jobs. Well done. But also, that's why you're tired. Oh, and that eight to ten hours, that's when everything goes right. Let me tell you about when it doesn't, and I'll use myself as the example because I've made every one of these mistakes. I do this every day, right? Over a thousand episodes, and I have still recently sat down to record and realized afterwards that the SD card was full from a test recording, so the camera only captured half the session. I've had a camera overheat mid-recording because I turned the air con down to make the room quieter, and instead I made it too warm. I once did a whole setup, an hour of prep, guests arriving, everything ready, and one of my guests looked at the microphone and said, I don't think you've turned it on. He was right, I hadn't. Now, when that happens to me, I know how to recover because I've seen every version of this problem. When it happens to you, three episodes into your podcasting career, it's a lost recording, a wasted afternoon, maybe a guest you can't get back, and an apology email you really didn't want to write. In the beginning, my own episodes used to miss my publishing deadline because the editing took me so long. The thing about podcasting is that the learning curve isn't just steep, it's expensive, and you pay for it in hours, not just money. And that's the hidden part of the DIY math. It's not just the eight to ten hours of doing the work, it's the hours of redoing the work when something goes wrong, and something always goes wrong while you're learning. So now let's talk about you. Because if you're listening to this, you're probably not making a podcast for fun. You're making it for your business. Which means we need to talk about what your time is actually worth. I recorded an episode a while back with two clients of ours, Nick and Jenny. They ran an IT business in Australia for about 30 years before they sold it. So they know a thing or two about business. And Nick said something on that episode that I think about all the time. He said business owners should value their time at $500 an hour. And then he said, and this is the bit I love doing a podcast edit, I can pay someone else $25 an hour to do that. And I'm 10 times better off. Run that maths on yourself. Whatever you charge, whatever your hour is worth, say even if it's just $50 an hour. 8 hours of podcast production is $400 of your time. Every episode, every week. Doing work that is not your actual job. And it's not just about the money, right? It's about what those eight hours could have been instead. Time with your clients, time growing your business, time with your kids, your partner, your friends. That's the real cost. And the funny thing is, Nick knew all this, and he still almost fell into the trap himself. When they decided to start their podcast, he got my quote, and then the exchange rate moved against him, and he looked to the price and went, you know what? I'll just do it myself. So he goes onto YouTube to learn how. And I'll quote him exactly because he said this on my show. He said, I go onto YouTube and I go, Holy shit, there is a lot of stuff on here. This is a guy who ran an IT company for 30 years. Technology is literally his world, and even he looked at podcast production and went, Nope. There's an old story I love about this. A plumber comes to your house, fixes a leak in five minutes, and hands you a big bill, and you say, Hang on, that took you five minutes. And he says, You're not paying for the five minutes, you're paying for the years it took me to learn how to fix it in five minutes. That's every expert. That's every skill. I had a client once who wanted color grading on their video, and part of me went, ah, I'll just learn color grading. I looked into it for about 20 minutes and I went, no, no, I will not. This is somebody's entire full-time job. I hired an expert, it cost a few hundred dollars and it was done properly and done quickly. I don't need to learn every new skill, and neither do you. Here's where you probably expect me to say, so don't do it yourself, hire us. And look, obviously, that is literally my business. But I'm gonna be more honest than that because the honest answer is it depends. If you genuinely don't have the budget, do it yourself. And I mean that I couldn't afford an editor for most of my podcasting career. I started on free software and I learned everything from scratch and I loved it. If you've got more time than money, then that trade can make sense. And if that's you, here's my honest advice for doing it. Get proper editing software and learn it properly. The learning curve is steep, but once you're over it, everything gets faster. Batch your work, record two episodes in one session so the setup time only happens once, and keep your format simple. A 20-minute solo episode is a fraction of the work of an hour-long interview with three cameras, two microphones, and lights. Start small, get consistent, upgrade later. But if you're a business owner, flip it around. You've got more money than time. Your hours are the most expensive hours in your company. Spending eight of them a week cutting out your own hums and ads, and I say this with love, is a terrible use of your business. So here's the question to actually ask yourself. It's not, can I do this myself? Of course you can. You can learn anything on YouTube, ChatGPT, Claude. The question is, should the most expensive in my company be doing this? You already know the answer. So let's recap. One podcast episode done properly is eight to ten hours work. Prep, set up, recording, editing, publishing, and that's before you promote anything. That is an extra day of work every week. And that's why nearly half of all podcasts are dead by episode three. Not talent, time. If you've got time and no budget, learn the skills, do it yourself. It's genuinely a great craft. But if you're running a business, do the maths on your own hour first. Because the cheapest way to make a podcast is usually the most expensive way to spend your time. And if you want that whole 8 to 10 hours off your plate, that is exactly what we do here at 7 Million Bikes Podcast. We've made over a thousand episodes for more than a hundred shows around the world. Everything from strategy through to editing, publishing, and promotion. So you just show up and do the fun part, the talking. Go to 7millionbikes.com. There's a button right there that says talk to Neil. That's me. Book a call, no obligations, and I'll just tell you exactly how it works if we work together. And if this episode helped you, just do me one favor, then please share it with another business owner who's thinking about starting a podcast before they find out about the eight hours the hard way. Thanks for listening to Smarter Podcasting. Cheers.