The Difference Between Podcast Busy Work and Profit Work
There is always one more thing you could do to your podcast.
Add video. Move your RSS feed. Start doing Lives. Create a private podcast. Record article voiceovers. Make more clips. Try another platform.
All perfectly reasonable ideas.
And all capable of eating three hours before lunch without making you one dollar.
That became the accidental theme of this month’s Substack Podcast Studio Q+A.
People came with questions about video, RSS feeds, private podcasts, content, messaging and Substack.
I kept coming back to one:
What is the business purpose?
“Can I do this?” and “Should I do this?” are two very different questions.
If you don’t know the difference, your podcast can become a remarkably efficient machine for creating more work.
Profit Work #1: Make the Business Case Before You Add the Thing
Adam is developing a podcast miniseries around his book.
He’d already started recording article voiceovers. Then he asked about adding video.
Should he?
Maybe.
But first I wanted to know what video was supposed to accomplish.
He believed seeing his face would create more connection, which could make someone more likely to hire him for one-on-one coaching.
Now we have something to evaluate.
My recommendation: begin with audio.
Find your podcasting voice. Get your reps in. Learn how to hold someone’s attention. Get the message right first.
Then add video if video has a profitable job.
Looking fabulous while saying something forgettable is not a business strategy.
And every addition has a cost.
Not just money.
Capacity.
Recording. Editing. Lighting. Equipment. Repurposing. Another workflow. Another thing you have to remember to do.
You only have so much creative and mental bandwidth.
Spend it where it has the best chance of producing the result you’re actually after.
Adam summed it up perfectly. He’d been thinking about “piling everything on.”
I wanted him excited and profitable.
There is a difference.
Profit Work #2: Stop Reopening Decisions That Are Already Working
Then Jodi started talking about moving her RSS feed.
We’ve already spent private coaching time on this.
We’ve already made decisions.
And most importantly:
What she’s doing right now is working.
But you know how entrepreneurial brains behave when they hear about another option.
Hmmmm. Maybe I should…
No.
I stopped her.
“I want to do profit work with you, not busy work.”
Busy work is dangerous precisely because it rarely looks like busy work.
It looks strategic. You research a new platform. Reorganize your content. Move your podcast. Change the artwork. Add video. Build another funnel. Create another offer. You can explain exactly why each thing is a perfectly sensible business activity.
Meanwhile, the work closest to revenue is sitting over there tapping its foot.
The follow-up. The invitation. The episode that makes your ideal client recognize herself. The collaboration. The offer.
The messaging that makes the right person say:
Oh. That’s for me.
So before you change one more thing about your podcast, ask:
What business result am I expecting this to produce?
If you can’t answer that clearly, don’t automatically add it to your list.
One of the “podcast questions” turned into something much bigger.
Raina came in asking about her content pillars. Within a few minutes, we weren’t talking about content pillars anymore.
We were testing whether language she loves about her own business might be repelling the sophisticated buyer she wants to attract.
So I asked people in the room to tell me what they pictured when they heard it.
No filter.
Their answers were almost immediate. And they confirmed the problem - there was a messaging/language barrier.
Then Raina read a completely different piece of messaging aloud.
The room changed.
That’s where this Q+A gets really good.
Because what happened next wasn’t about finding better words.
It exposed something much more expensive:
You can be extraordinarily good at what you do and still be talking about it in a way that makes your best buyer think you’re for somebody else.
And we found it in real time.
Paid subscribers can hear what happened next in the private feed.
Paid subscribers can listen to the full private feed drop inside the Substack Podcast Studio
(Note: Sometimes a quick audio response is all you need to fix a tech hurdle. But when you are wrestling with big picture questions, like how to structure your publications, monetize your tiers, or position your authority on Substack, that’s when we need to do the real, high-ticket strategic work. 1:1s are available here.)
