How Business Owners Can Reduce Overwhelm and Manage Podcast Burnout

It's time we decide that it's less about preventing podcast Burnout. It's less about preventing that exhaustion that comes in when you do the same thing week in, week out. For years and years and years, I've been doing this show ten years, more than 600 episodes. And I will tell you, there will come a time when you are burned out. This is the universal truth. There is a time where you have reached your capacity city and you need a rest. I want to talk about how do we manage that burnout? How do we build a process that reduces the frequency, but also once it happens, how do we deal with it? Welcome to the more profitable podcast with Stacey Harris. I'm Stacey and this is the spot to learn more about the strategies, tactics, and tools you need to build your more profitable podcast.

My team and I work every day with podcasters like you to shift shows from frustrating time sucks to productive members of your sales team because your show should be built to generate and convert leads. So let's get into it. We had a past conversation around being able to try on podcasting without burning out, and I'll link to that episode in the show notes because I'm sure it'll be helpful. But for most people who are wondering about podcast Burnout, they're in it. They've been in it maybe a year, maybe two years, maybe five years, maybe nine years. I don't know where you are, but at some point you reach a wall. It certainly feels like a wall anyway. So you run into it full speed and you're like, I'm all the way done.

I cannot get myself to sit down and create another episode. And I want to talk today about managing that, responding to that, because there is a certain inevitability to it. When we talk about taking on a weekly show, even in seasons, any kind of regular production and output, week after week, month after month, year after year, for an often indefinite amount of time. There's going to need to be periods of rest, and we can reduce the frequency, and we're going to talk about how to do that. But I also want to talk about the things you can put in place now that will help you manage this going forward, because there are some pieces, some assets you can have in your back pocket that will make this better. Before we jump into that, I want to remind you one more time that we are coming together for our last roundtable of the year. That's right, our last Podcasting for Profitability Roundtable is November 16. Make sure you've reserved your seat over uncommonlymore.com.

Roundtable we're setting this up as a Q and a structure again this month. That's been going really well. We've been having a lot of fun with that. So make sure you head on over there. Reserve your spot. When you reserve your spot, you will get a link to submit your question. You can also ask questions live on the call, but I like having that form there because I'm terrible at retaining the questions I have till the point where it's time for me to actually ask them. So I wanted to give you someplace to put your question.

So if you go in there, you can lickety split, leave your question and we will get to it at the top of that roundtable again on November 16. Again, reserve your seat@uncommonlymore.com. Roundtable as we dig into this, let's start with reducing frequency. Let's first talk about the thing that you're just waiting for me to say. Let's just get that out right here at the front of the show. Building your strobe strategically is going to be a foundational element in reducing frequency and managing sort of the inevitable. Right, managing when this does show up. So what does that mean? It means having a time, ideally each quarter.

This is why we have quarterly strategy calls with our clients, where you're sitting down and you're talking about what do you need to talk about? And understanding fundamentally why you're talking about what you're talking about in that season of the show, in that period of time. Right. This helps us build a couple of things. It helps us build in rest. It helps us have an understanding of where we need to get ahead of something. It also Allows us to do things like build repeatable series, which is something we talk about in the profitable podcast or mastermind. We want to be building a strategic show because that's what generates, educates and converts right fit clients. It's also what allows us to take time off.

The reason that every August on this show, you're going to hear the podcast Housekeeping series is because it allows me to reduce production in July. It allows me to start getting ahead for the end of the year, where I take the last two weeks off. Our entire team, in fact, takes the last two weeks of the year completely off. And so I know I'm going to be batching a ton of content as we hit September, October. I like to have a little rest in July, August. And so we run a repeatable series. I am building in rest before I get burned out. And that's the preventative right.

That's how we make this happen less frequently. And this is the part I want to stress. This is a habit, this is a process. This is something that happens over and over and over and over and yes, one more time, over again. This isn't. I sit down one time, I build a strategy, and then the wheels kind of fall off because I keep going, oh, well, I had that strategy, so now I understand how to create sort of strategic episodes. I don't need to take a break and plan. I just got to keep doing this.

I just got to keep understanding why I'm releasing the episode. And then that's a strategy, and I can just be ongoing. No. Again, this is why, with our production clients, we sit down quarterly. This is why, when I have clients book podcast strategy intensives, they don't just book one, they book their first one. More often than not, our podcast strategy intensive clients are sitting down with us two to even four times a year. One of the things we're exploring for next year, and we're looking at with a couple of prospective clients right now, is a strategy only contract. So essentially, you get all of these strategy elements of our production contract without any of the production dEliverables, because maybe you have a production team, you have an editor already.

You are just looking for the strategic element. That's because this is a repeatable process. This is something that has to happen over and over and over again to stay impactful, to do things like buy you time and rest. Because it's not just about thinking about your episodes different. It's not just about planning your episodes differently. It's not just about having a better understanding around why you're releasing what episode, when and who it's for. It's about taking a beat and looking at your show as a whole, your capacity coming up in the next quarter and making sure that your show supports you and the listeners. And that's how we make this happen less frequently.

We check in with it regularly. Now, the key to managing it is going to also be a product of this strategic time. Because I'm doing this strategic work, because I'm taking these beats that will allow me to have this happen less frequently, where I can build in rest and I can take care of myself before I'm full on burnt out. I have assets, and those assets are key to me managing this, because when I'm burned out, when I'm like, I got nothing, I have a whole wealth of content I can be pulling from. Like I said, with a repeatable series we absolutely have clients where our repeatable series floats. It's on their podcast every year, but not necessarily in the same spot every year because it's kind of a. When we needed it, it's a little bit like, what do I need here now to get where I'm going, right. And that's going to be a really sort of, like, lifesaver moment when you can just.

I don't have it. It's not. Don't. I can't find it. It's gone. It may never come back. It's funny because the scene in my mind right now, the image in my mind right now is, not surprisingly, from West Wing. And Toby is getting ready to write the State of the Union, and he has decided he's lost whatever it is that makes him a good writer.

And it's a great scene, but it ultimately comes down to the idea that it's not that you don't have it, it's not that Toby no longer is a good writer. It's just that he's so deep in it, he couldn't find it. There's so shrouded sort of in darkness that there's no way to access that it. That X Factor. Right. And that's what happens with us with burnout, too, when we're talking about getting burned out from content, it's not generally a result of the fact that we've run out of good things to say. It's not generally a result of we have no good ideas left. We've used them all.

No, it's generally just we're too deep in it. And one of the really powerful ways to reconnect with the impact, the value and the quality of your show is to be able to go into your dashboard and look at all that it is that you've created. It's hilarious to me how frequently this happens with clients where they're like, oh, I was looking back at something and I was really good. And I'm like, yeah, you're great. But we forget in the day to day, we get disconnected from the fact that we're great at this, and it's because we're tired. It's a capacity, not a competency issue. A capacity issue, not a competency issue. And so we have this wealth of value that we can use to manage that burnout period so that we don't have to burn the showdown, we don't have to scrap it and maybe come back to starting over or run to the nearest shiny object for a hopeful hit of dopamine that gets us back on track with the thing we're currently doing, but really just leads to feeling even more overwhelmed and even more burned out and with even less capacity than we had before.

Because now we're trying to do two stupid things and really like 47 stupid things, right? No. Instead we go to this pool of value and wonder and we go, cool. How much time do I need? Do I need a week? We're going to run a rerelease episode. Do I need a month? We're going to run four rerelease episodes. Whatever it is that you need. Space. If you need more than that, great. Maybe it's rereleasing something for six months.

Depending on how long you've been in your show, you have the capacity to rerelease quite a bit of content. Or maybe it's six months. But I'm going to keep going with my interviews because those are still feeling really good and we're just going to really streamline production. But because we're ready for it, because we're doing these quarterly check ins where we do our strategy work, we do our review work, we assess where we're at and where we're going and where we've been, we're able to sit back and go, cool, this is what I need and this is how we're going to get it. And that is critical when it comes to actually managing your podcast. Burnout is having assets that you can reach to and clearly see. This is why, going back to talking about streamlining and building an efficient and organized production process, this is why I spent so much time talking about Monday and the dashboard we work out of. Because all I have to do is go in and I can see everything we've ever done.

I did it before this episode, to be honest with you. I went and typed in the search on our dashboard, the word burn. It's funny, I'm looking at it right now and I can see every episode we've done where Burn or Burnout is in the title, so I could quickly see what I needed to do differently here. Was there anything where maybe I just needed to update an existing show notes? Were there episodes I wanted to reference here and tie in? I'm able to really clearly and quickly see what I need to put together, what we can reference, what we can use. That's the power of having an organized and strategic production process, and that should be what you're getting when you're working with a production team. If you don't currently have this and you're working with a production team, do you need to address that? If you don't currently have this and you're diying, you can address that, too. Go listen to episode six, one eight, and you will hear me talk about our production process and the questions we asked. And we used to build out our dashboards.

Even better, reach out. We have spots for one more client to join us for podcast production this year. I would love for that to be you. You can find out everything you need to find out and book a conversation with me over@uncommonlymore.com podcastproduction this is one of those unfortunate elements that will come up. If you're going to be podcasting for five or six or ten years, you're going to need to figure out now how you're going to prevent and how you're going to manage the point in which you just don't have the capacity. Because I don't want to put too fine a point on this, but podcast Burnout, being frustrated and burned out with your production process, it's not the only thing that could potentially disrupt your show. Life happens all the time. I'm willing to bet when I said that statement, there was a part of you that was like, don't I know it, right? Because we've all been living in a reduced capacity, and it seems like it just gets smaller and smaller and smaller every day.

The world gets noisier, the world gets scarier, and our capacity to take it all in shrinks. The world gets busier. Our lives get busier. Our families grow, our responsibilities change, whatever it might be. I'm thinking through sort of my circle of friends and family and my own life right now. And for some people it's kids, but for some people, it's aging parents. For some people, it's changing jobs or partner situations or whatever it might be. But there's going to be something that needs your capacity more.

And so you need to be able to decide now that you're going to be building a show and a process that allows you to manage those situations where your capacity is simply not there to keep recording. Because it will happen at some point. You will get lifed. We all do. I hope it's quick, I hope it's easy, and I hope it's far away, but it's going to happen. And what we talked about today, that strategic approach to your show, building assets that allow you to come in and go, cool, this is what's getting repurposed. It's critical. And what I would encourage you to do is if you look at your show right now.

And you see I have these notate them, have a special note in your dashboard, have a special list somewhere. I have a handful of what I call breaking case of emergency episodes, and they are the episodes that I know could be dropped, released, repurposed, easy breezy, no touches just done. Or that I can write an email and send traffic to right now so that if I get the flu and I'm going to be out, or if there's an earthquake and I lose electricity for an extended amount of time, I can drop a note to my team and it's handled. If you're looking at your show and you don't have these kind of assets, if you don't have something like a repeatable series, like what we talk about in the profitable podcast or mastermind, that's going to be your priority. That's what I want you to look at for your next twelve to 24 weeks is to just be hammering out repeatable assets. Maybe that's building your repeatable series, maybe that's building single standalone episodes, but that are easily evergreen. That's going to be a critical part of your production. To do list over the next three to six months is really prioritizing that creation because you've got to have something you can pull that's the linchpin to being able to manage this stuff.

That is the magic piece to being able to manage when that burnout or whatever else takes you out and get your show done, allowing your show to keep fulfilling its role in your business of generating, educating and converting right fit clients. All right, again, if this is some work you'd like some help with, now is the time to figure that out. Our prices are going up in January. If you want to be working with us now or starting next year at this year's rates, contracts have to be designed by December 15. So reach out and let's have a conversation. Even if in that course of that conversation, we decide that now is not the right time, at least you can go into next year knowing, here's what I need to get together for it to be the right time, for it to be the right fiT. And then you have a clear path, a clear set of actions, regardless of your next steps, whether it involves working with us or not. All right, again, uncommonlymore.com, Podcastproduction is the place to book that chat with me.

I'm looking forward to it. We are in the midst of our Q One planning sessions with our clients right now, which is one of the reasons I want to have this conversation today, because that is such a key component to preventing burnout for our clients. And they're all feeling a little hairied right now because this is the time of year where we all are producing a bit more because we're creating time for that time out. But that time off and knowing it's there is what is allowing all of us to get through sort of an increased production schedule these last couple of months of the year. All right, again, uncommonlymore.com podcastproduction to reach out and learn more about working with us. And of course, if you want to join us at the Roundtable, uncommonlymore.com Roundtable is the spot to reserve your seat. I will see you right back here next week. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the show. Remember that content consumption does not make changes, so commit to doing something from today's episode. Maybe it's taking action on what we talked about. Maybe it's reaching out to me and learning more about podcast strategy intensives or what podcast production looks like with our team. All of that is over@uncommonlymore.com. And if you haven't yet signed up for the podcast newsroom, I want to remind you that is a great next step. If you're not really sure what comes next, hang out over there. Get those exclusive private episodes.

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