 Podcasting requires attention, but not all of your time. These five tips will help you manage your podcast schedule or create a schedule so that you can still enjoy your life. Keep watching. Hey everyone, I'm Kyla Denigno and today we're talking about five things you can do to make podcasting a little bit simpler, right? So my podcast, You Are a Lawyer, just reached its two-year anniversary. Two. Two. So two years is three seasons, 47 podcast guests, and a few bonus episodes sprinkled in there. So I am extremely happy to celebrate this. This was a huge milestone for me. So the first tip about how to manage a podcast and have a life is to work ahead. So when I say work ahead, a lot of times people think about batch recording, but the first tip being work ahead is that anything that you can do ahead, you should do ahead. At any given time, I will record a couple of episodes in a week. I will make sure that I have episodes waiting for me just to be edited, scheduled, and then they can be released. There were a lot of things that could distract me from podcasting, right? I was having my first child and we were in the middle of a worldwide situation. I was working remotely. A lot of things were brand new. My husband and I had been married for less than a year. So anything that could happen, I wanted to be prepared for it, right? So the best way for me to get prepared was to record ahead. Now, my due date for pregnancy was in June 2020. So I did make sure that I actually edited and scheduled episodes to get me through the end of July, just because I've never had a baby before. I had no idea what it would be like. I had no idea how much time and attention and whatever would be happening. But outside of that, I always have at least four episodes recorded and waiting, waiting to be edited because I edit my audio myself. The podcast episodes are released every two weeks. So if I schedule three episodes, that's six weeks that I don't necessarily have to think about the podcast. I just need to plug in the social media post and then I can be away and nobody even knows. So another really important thing when it comes to managing your time is to know how long you want the podcast episode to be. On average, the UR lawyer podcast episodes are 20 minutes long. Occasionally there'll be a 30 minute episode. But I used to record with guests for an hour and a half and then it was very hard to narrow down everything they said, everything I said to 25 minutes. It was really uncomfortable to cut out entire portions of our conversation because I thought everything was relevant. So I started to schedule 45 minute recordings to yield a 20 minute episode. So another tip that's really good is batch recording. Batch recording means that you are recording multiple pieces of content at one time. So I would record multiple episodes in a day because I needed to get into a rhythm. I needed to get into a flow and a system of, okay, I just talked to them and that was good. Now let's go talk to the next person. Okay, you're getting better again. I needed the constant practice. I needed to be practicing multiple times a day, talking to people on zoom, looking at them and not being distracted, asking the right questions. I've really needed that. I needed the practice immediately. Now that I am about to start the fourth season of the podcast, I am able to record almost once a month because I have recorded so far ahead, right? So my time management and my preparation in the beginning has led me to be where I am now, where I look forward to recording. It's a treat. I don't have to do it multiple times in a day because I'm able to replicate that energy, that excitement, that feeling when I talk to each guest. Another really good tip for to make podcasting easier and to allow you to have a life is that I always email the guest a week before the episode airs. Hey, it was wonderful to record with you. Your episode will be released on this date. I will share the episode on these social media accounts. The episode will be released on these 15 platforms, including my website, urlawyer.com. So I give them all the details. And I also say, attach our graphics that you can use for sharing the podcast. You never want your guests to have to search around and look for information. You want to make it easy for them to talk about the podcast. So I always include the graphics that I'm going to use, the same ones that I create on Canva or wherever. And I attach those to the email, please share the podcast with your friends and family, right? I don't believe that guests do not want to talk about the podcast, even though a lot of times people have an issue with the way their voice sounds. But you took the 45 minutes, you spoke to me, I edit the episode, I edit my music and this and that, please share it with people, right? Let them hear your story. Maybe I asked a question and you shared a snippet about yourself that nobody knows. Let the people know. So I make it easy for the guests and I always include details about where they can listen to the podcast, the date that the podcast episode will be released, and the graphics that I've created for sharing the podcast. I make it a point to ask the guests to share the episode because it helps, right? They might forget or they might be like, oh man, I don't, should I share it or she just want me to listen? No, I want you to tell every single person that you know. Every single person that you know, I want you to tell them. So another thing that you can do that really helps with managing your podcast is to automate as much as you can. There's two things that I do that really help me manage my time. The first one is I send out a pre-recording questionnaire where I ask guests a number of questions for them to answer, just give me a little bit background information and submit their bio. So when I get their responses back from the Google form, I'm able to see their city, their image, they give me permission to use their image, all of these things. And then once I receive that questionnaire and those details back, then I send an email with my Calendly link. Calendly is an app that is used to schedule meetings and I actually have that hooked up to my Zoom account so that a guest can go in there, they can schedule time that fits their schedule. One of the things that I really love about working with Calendly is that if a guest has a conflict that comes up, they can just reschedule right there in the app. They don't even have to send me an email. We go back and forth between, are you available here? What about this? You got 30 minutes here? It's all right there. They can do all the rescheduling that they need. So finding ways to automate the process is another step that will help you become a more efficient podcaster and allow podcasting not to take up your entire day. So I hope you enjoyed these tips. Hope you found a new tip that you can implement into your podcasting process to make sure that you're not spending your whole day, your whole week dealing with your podcast. So I will see you in the next episode. Make sure you check out the UR Lawyer podcast and leave a comment. If you have a podcast that somebody else should listen to, let us know what your show's about. Talk to you later. Bye.