Listen Now:

We publish 3 episodes a week… and run our businesses… and have lives. How the heck (and WHY the heck) do we get it all done withOUT leaving the rest of our priorities behind?

We’ll talk about the systems we’ve put in place to help us make sure we get it all done without losing our minds or forgetting about the rest of our responsibilities.

Alyson Lex
On today's episode, we're answering the question, How the heck do we get three episodes a week published and still focus on our core businesses. thriving in business does not mean you have to lose yourself. It does not mean following cookie cutter advice.

Jennie Wright
What it means is finding what works for you, for your audience and for your business and working process until you get to the level of success that you're looking for.

Alyson Lex
This podcast is designed to give you the tools and inspiration to build your business on your terms. I'm Jennie Wright. I'm Alyson Lex,

Jennie Wright
and welcome to the System to THRIVE.

Alyson Lex
July 9 2020, we launched three episodes at one time of the System to THRIVE podcast, that was the first week we were live. And we were so excited. three episodes felt like a lot to launch at one time, we had a ton of prep work, we had to set off these recording times together, we had to come up with our content. And it was very overwhelming. And then January 2021, came along and we announced that we are going to be doing three episodes every week. Because we're crazy. We changed the format up a little bit. So not every episode is just Jenny and I, we have some amazing guests we've brought on, we do a quick little tip on Mondays. But the fact is we're still creating three episodes per week of content and running businesses aside from this podcast. The truth is this podcast is not paying the bills. Our businesses are Yes, we use this podcast to gain credibility, to drive traffic to get new leads all of those good things to support our core businesses. But we have businesses to run. We have list build events that we're doing that don't involve each other. We have clients and projects and programs and products that we are putting together that are not related to this podcast. How the heck do we do it? The first thing that we do that Jenny hated when we first started this whole thing was we batch our content. If you pay attention to what we're wearing, and happen to see a video of this, we're wearing the same clothes that we had two episodes ago, because we batch record them, we just finished recording Episode 40. Now we're recording Episode 42, we're probably going to do Episode 44 in a minute. But that allows us to go ahead and get a bunch of stuff done. get ahead of the game. Jenny hated it. At first, I was like let's batch let's do multiple recordings all at one time. And she said no, I had a good reason. at that. I don't remember what that reason was, there was

Jennie Wright
two things at the time we were doing this, when we first launched the podcast, I just moved. And I was in I was getting settled in. But the move was really hard on me physically, because it was COVID times and we couldn't have anybody help us move. So we had to move everything ourselves. The other thing that happened was I hurt my back. And sitting in a chair for any period of time when your back hurts is agony. It's just pure agony. And one of the reasons I didn't want to do that is because it hurt my back after a certain period of time I was jumping out of my skin to get out of the chair. And so I just couldn't do it. My back is a lot better. Now. We're settled in here, everything's hunky dory. And on top of that, our schedules have gotten a little insane. Getting together with Allison, because of you know, her kid was home for a really long time, or, you know, her husband's working from home and has calls that he has to do. And he you know, he even started a podcast at one point. Like all of this trying to find the time was really challenging. And we were we were actually struggling like it was getting to the point where it's like, do we record today or don't we record my mom, but my day is so busy, I kind of don't want to and we were we're gearing ourselves these Hall passes of not recording, and then having those holy poop moments of God record. So we wanted to make it a pleasant experience. This podcast is fun. And it's fun for us to do this together. So let's make it pleasant. And so we decided I was back on the the batch train. And Alison was like choo choo, I'm all ready to go. And she was all happy. And so now we're back to batching, which is awesome. We highly recommend this for a lot of areas in your business. But we're gonna focus on the podcast, because we've had some questions on how we actually get this done. How do we get three episodes a week out? How is that even working for us? Especially with what Alyson said in the intro, where we've got these other businesses that have nothing to do with the podcast or even each other? Right?

Alyson Lex
I think it's important to start with why the heck are we doing this to ourselves? Because it is a little crazy, right? Oh yeah,

Jennie Wright
it's insane. It's crazy. It would be easier for Allison if if I was not me, and I was more she was giggling if I did not insist on having outlines, but I do, because my comfort level is knowing what the next thing is going to be said. And the next thing and knowing that we get to a point and deliver, Allison can do that very naturally without an outline, I cannot, I have proven to myself over and over and over again that without an outline, I circle, I recycle, and then I lose my place and becomes an on and off fest. I'm a much better presenter, I'm a much better podcaster. And I'm a much better speaker, when I know what needs to be said. And I have an outline. Now the outlines have gotten better. They've gotten shorter. In the beginning. I think I probably drove Alyson to, you know,

Alyson Lex
to craziness, tactically a script, it was scripted, it

Jennie Wright
was it was literally almost every single word. And Allison's like, do you think we could shorten the bullets up a little bit? And I'm like, but I like it like this. She's like, let's try it a little bit short, just just a little bit. She would shorten it up. And I'm like, but I'm feeling uncomfortable. She's like, come on, I know you can do this. And now the the the bullets now that were I don't know how many months we're into this. But the bullets now have three words. Right? So we're down from paragraphs, right, like we wrote the Iliad, down to bullets. So I've done better. Like, I feel like this podcast is like a is you know, a journey, you were bad. And now you've gotten better episodes.

Alyson Lex
Well, so that is actually a really good reason that we don't have an outline for why we're pushing ourselves to do all of this content. Because we're pushing ourselves, we're pushing ourselves to grow as business owners as podcasters. As content creators, we're pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone. We're seeing what we're made of, we're getting excited. We have a lot of fun with it. Is it stressful? Yeah. But we're learning how to take that stress as a business owner, and create systems, which we're going to talk about in a little bit, create those systems in our businesses. And that's a skill that transfers. So it's not just create a system for a podcast, have a system for a podcast, it's create a system, learn how to utilize the system the right way, in the way that works for you. So I'm really excited about up leveling ourselves this way. But there are a couple other reasons that we're doing three episodes a week one, we want all of this content, Jenny, and I have a lot to say, we do. We have a lot to say we have a lot of opinions, we have a lot of knowledge about a lot of things. And we want to share that with our audience. We want to help our audience grow in their businesses in that way. We're also doing something that Jenny and I call the race to 100. This came about because I heard somewhere that you really start to see momentum once you hit 100 episodes, when I heard that, I didn't hear a timeframe on that. So to me, that says get to 100 episodes as quickly as possible. And so I told Jenny, we need to raise to 100. So that's what we call it the race to 100. That's going to help us supercharge the power of the platform. If you've listened to some of our other podcasts, you know that when we try things, we we try them as tests when we're trying something. And so this is a very long term test, I want to see what happens when we get to 100. That's part of the test. I want to see what happens. Does it take off? does it stay the same? Does it help does it this does it that what happens when we do that? And that way, we can see what the true power of the platform is, we've seen a lot of other people have a ton of great results, they have already hit that 100 episode mark, or they've been doing it longer or what have you. So we're just seeing what really we can do. The last reason I can let Jenny talk about if she would like, but it's really that there are so many smart people out there that we want to connect with an interview. We know that even though we have a lot to talk about, even though we have a lot of opinions and knowledge, we can't talk about everything.

Jennie Wright
And we're not qualified to talk about everything. Exactly. And we want to grow our own knowledge. Let's just be frank that having some of these experts on is quite selfish, because they have knowledge that Allison and I want. We've had people on where we've just gone Oh my gosh, we're doing that in our businesses tomorrow. Totally.

Alyson Lex
And we have,

Jennie Wright
we take notes. We take very copious notes, and we've been able to add really cool stuff into our businesses and listen to what people say, you know, we had somebody on Allison remind me properly, the name. Oh, I feel so bad. That said, always be promoting something.

Alyson Lex
Oh, you're talking about Caterina. Caterina?

Jennie Wright
Caterina? Sorry, Kevin. I wanted to say Christina and I knew it was wrong. No

Alyson Lex
Yasmina Brando a tip from her. Yes,

Jennie Wright
always be promoting something else. And I took that to heart. We've been doing it ever since. Right. There's been a ton of great experts on this event or on this on this podcast. Allison and I have met and connected with, and a lot of people are really interesting to talk to. So let's talk about how we actually do this and get into the method I want. I think people want to hear like the how tos.

Alyson Lex
Okay. So the first thing is what we talked about at the top of the episode batching. batching, is it's simple when you do it, but it is difficult to get started for someone like me, I'm super creative and kind of all over the place, right? But when you batch, you basically sit down, and you do a bunch of the same task over and over again, in order to get ahead. We, it starts with a system. Okay, we have a Google spreadsheet, which is a secret love of my life. And it's our podcast, Master sheet, and we have the episode number and the date. And it's like this super organized thing, and whether we have a guest scheduled and what the title is, and all of this stuff, and we quick brainstorm titles, we brainstorm the titles, we throw them into this spreadsheet, and then they get moved over into this outline document, again, a Google document, it literally has all of the outlines of all of our episodes. Even the ones were recorded that you haven't heard they have that we didn't we have chosen not to release for one reason or the other. Yeah, there's only a couple of those where we've ended and we're like, yeah, hated that.

Jennie Wright
Yeah, there's been a, there's been a few there at the bottom of the sheet. But they're there. They're there. They're there. They just weren't up to snuff. We both had the same feeling. As soon as we hit stop record. We're like, Yeah, no, no, not not good enough. Not feeling it. And there's episodes, other episodes were like, Oh, my gosh, that was like so good. But batching batching does take a lot of

Alyson Lex
planning,

Jennie Wright
but you can absolutely do it. So if you don't have a co host, like Alison, I have each other and you're on your own, it's going to be a heck of a lot easier, right? Because you don't have to rely on the fact that you're working with somebody else's schedule. And also, quite honestly, two different personalities, you know, also not get along very well, we're very good friends. But we also have very different ways of approaching things. You know, I'm very, like, we share Funny enough, even though Allison says she's all over the place. She's quite systematic. She's actually taught me a lot about systems. But I'm, I'm also very, what's the polite way to say this stubborn, a little bit stuck in my way sometimes. And also, I get a little bit of anxiety when things feel like they're too up in the clouds. I'm very grounded. I like things to be

Alyson Lex
yes. So what we did is we created a system to work with that. So we have our titles in our spreadsheet, we take them over to the the outline document. And then Allison goes in. And I call this past Allison hooking up future Allison, and I will batch I will say I'm going to do the outlines for these five episodes. And I sit there and I do a super fast, high level, Allison style outline that if Alison was doing this on her own, it would be perfect. And then I send it to Jenny. And I say Jenny outline started, Jenny comes in and fills in the information that Jenny needs to feel comfortable, she expands it. Now like she said, they've gotten smaller, she's not she's not putting novels in there anymore, which is awesome. But now, I've kind of got a format, she might rearrange some things, add some things, delete some things, that's fine. We trust each other. This is what we do. But she fleshes it out to where she's comfortable. And we now have an outline. But she does them all at once as well. So I've sat down once and done five or six episodes, Jenny sat down wants to do five or six episodes, then we sit down one time and we record two or three or whatever, at a time. And our content is batched. We also schedule what we call thrive days. We have specific days in each week that we've dedicated to recording our thrive stuff, whether that's guest interviews, our stuff, anything like that it's in our calendar, we know that these are the days we're going to do that. And it's the same time every week. And so it's an appointment. It's a non negotiable,

Jennie Wright
yes, and which is great, because we work around the rest of the schedule. The other thing that we do is we have a shared calendar. So when you have a co host, it's important to have a shared calendar where, you know, I know that Alison has, she has something going on at this time, like some you know, she's got karate with her kid, or she's got this or this is when, you know, she has to do some momming time and can't be available for podcasting. And I have the same thing. We both have lives and businesses. And we have it so that if you know we have these non negotiable times that are specific to working on the podcast together, and we make sure those stay available and they're in our calendars therefore they actually they spread further out into if anybody tries to book a call with us, it says that we're not available those times.

Alyson Lex
Yeah. So if I have an appointment on my Alyson Lex calendar, I block it off on the thrive calendar. Yep.

Jennie Wright
But which automatically notifies like I actually can see that and I Do the same thing. If I have an appointment, I block it off on the thrive calendar. And it's just it just how it works works very, very well.

Alyson Lex
And at the same time, we have a set recording appointment every Tuesday morning. And that's also blocked off on my Alyson Lex calendar, nothing can take the place of that it's non negotiable.

Jennie Wright
And the other thing to remember, and it's a good thing is also to plan production time, like planning time, not just recording time, it takes longer than you think, setting up these episodes, thinking about the titles, finding experts, like if you actually are bringing in guests, there's a lot of time associated with guests, and we'll talk about that as well. But setup the setup some production time time for you to actually look at the things, you know, we also get a little bit of help, we've had some templates made for graphics, we you know, we we do a lot of stuff ourselves, because we enjoy it. And we're actually quite good at it. But we've had some help to make sure that you know, things look pretty good. We've had better logo designs, my partner designed the logo for the, for the podcast, he designed a lot of the artwork for the podcast when we were first launching out, which was great. And you know, we get some templates made here and there when we need them, which is awesome. And then thank goodness that Alison has a secret love and desire for all things Google and you know, spreadsheets and outlines, she she loves those things she made them, I'm quite happy to play in her system. We just happen to like she's really good at it. And it makes it easy for me to get in there, which is fine. And then we go like we prep. Right. So we do a lot of prep, which we've already talked about a little bit. And we maximize and I want Alyson to pop in on this we maximize on like the quiet times when there's, you know, a break between calls and stuff. I will this is the great thing about Alyson, we have sleep, we have different sleep schedules. And we've talked about this before Allison goes to bed earlier, she gets up earlier. But right now well sometimes. And then I go to bed a little bit later, but I get up later. So sometimes when I wake up, there is a huge ream of stuff that Allison has done between like when you know when she got up and when I get up. And then sometimes when she goes to bed, I'm still up working. I'll do a whole bunch of stuff. It's like the quiet time stuff, right?

Alyson Lex
Yeah, the quiet time stuff is. And this is actually about knowing your own rhythms and your own schedules. So Jenny knows that she is more productive leader. So she maximizes on that. If you're more productive later, why are you going to bed at nine o'clock, don't do it, sleep in a little bit, shift your sleep time, I'm very productive, very early in the morning, I can sit down, I can have my cup of coffee, I can get stuff done, I can bang it out. And then my day starts. So I go to bed earlier so that I can get up earlier. And I also know that my written my personal rhythms are going to change through the seasons. Summertime I'm up earlier wintertime, I tend to sleep in a little bit more, I'm still usually up by like six, seven o'clock at the very, very, very latest. So it's not like, you know, I'm not sleeping till noon, like I did when I was a teenager, I loved that my mom hated it, but I loved it. But that's when I do all my batching when I do all the outline stuff where I prep, six episode, notes pages for ahead, you know, I just set save them as drafts and just get them ready so that when the production of everything's done, they're done. They're scheduled, I'm ready to go. It's also really important to recognize the purpose. And we're talking about podcasting. But this can be to anything that you're doing in your business that you're doing a lot of, or that you're wanting to get a system behind us recognize the purpose behind it, we have a couple of different purposes for this podcast. But what it does is makes it a priority. It makes it one of those non negotiables. For us, it was important to have something that is static, where we're showing up in the same place at the same time every single week. And if it doesn't happen, we feel that we've done something wrong and let our audience down. Yeah, that's not how we want to feel. That's not how we want to show up. And so it's now a priority. What's great

Jennie Wright
is now because now that we're showing up on a regular basis for this, we're seeing the fruits of that labor in a big way, which I think is fantastic. So we're seeing some really good momentum that's happening, right. So we're seeing some really good momentum with the downloads. And we're seeing some good momentum being able, you know, people who actually want to be on the episodes and things like that with us, which is great. So just to kind of sum this all up, create a process that works for you the process that Alison I just shared is what works for us if you're solo podcasting. It's going to be different Patino. It's going to be different. I actually did a podcast with a guy last week, where he actually does his recordings in the back of his Ford pickup because it's quiet. And he has four daughters in the house with his wife. So it's the only place that you know, you mean, and he goes into his Ford pickup truck and records his podcast. I'll admit the sound quality was awesome. So Figure out a process that works for you and how you need to do it. There's going to be some trial and error by the way. Absolutely. trial and error. Focus on things like creating the process focus on things like batching, if you can batch pays special attention to how you're showing up in terms of the audio, we haven't even talked about the technical side of the podcast at all. And maybe that's a completely different episode. But there is a technical side to getting three episodes out, not gonna lie, and Alison, and I divvy the work. So I will do the actual editing of the podcast, but I've gotten really fast at it. In the beginning, it was like, it was taking me two hours to edit a 30 minute podcast, it was getting a little much. But I've gotten a lot better where I can actually edit a podcast pretty quickly now, because this is the weird part. I can read that audio waveforms. It's really kind of creepy. I'm like, I know, Allison's I know Allison's waveform. Now I know my own waveform, but anyways, I can edit

Alyson Lex
pretty loudly creepy.

Jennie Wright
It's

Alyson Lex
Yeah, I know when you're saying and I know when you're saying and so. So I was I say that all the time. I know. But I don't think our listeners know, because I think you pull it out.

Unknown Speaker
I edit it out. Yeah,

Jennie Wright
I edited out, Jen and I added another stuff.

Alyson Lex
Does the editing. I do a lot of the I mean, I do all the show notes. I do the website side of it. Yeah, making sure that's taken care of, obviously the writing, I take care of some of the guests stuff. So I really, we really work to keep it even ish. Yes, I need it to be 5050. But it's gonna be even if she plays

Jennie Wright
into the skills, it would take me 10 years time, it would take me 10 times longer to do the writing, I can't I can't do it as fast as you. And it's great when you do it. And it makes me happy to see it done. And I feel happiness, right, I feel quite happy to be able to edit the podcast. And it's not that you couldn't edit the podcast at all. It's just, I happen to have the software

Alyson Lex
and the skill to do it

Jennie Wright
and the skill to do it. And that's okay, right, as a solo podcaster, you may have to hire all this stuff out, it may not be in your skill set. And that's okay, too, right. So you can find people on Fiverr, you can find people on Upwork, you can find people to fill the gaps where you need it. But the main thing that we're trying to instill in you today is create a process, create a system that works for you. And batch batching is what's making the big leap forward for us if we didn't batch. And I think you know, Ben Ellison knows this, I think I kind of held us back a little bit with trying to do a one off. But that was just my comfort level. And I've you know, I've gotten better at it. And I'm cool with that.

Alyson Lex
I'll own that all day long.

Jennie Wright
To that end, we hope this, this was helpful for you, we hope that you got something out of this that you can apply either to your podcast or your business, we use batching all over the place with social media content writing, so highly recommend that you do that. But this is how we're getting this podcast out on a regular basis. This is not a technical episode, obviously. And quite honestly, I don't think we need to do something like that. I think we need to talk about these sort of soft skill sides, which make more sense. So if you're listening to the podcast, and you're loving it, which we hope that you do, please consider leaving us a very honest review. We'd love to get your true and honest feedback. We always want to hear from you. And please consider subscribing to the podcast on whatever platform you're using. So you don't miss an episode. We would love to stay connected with you that way. And in addition, if you need anything for your business, in terms of what else and I can support you on, please go to the System to thrive.com check it out. See how you can connect with Allison and I and see if we can help you. Thanks so much for being here, everybody. We really appreciate you and we'll be back again soon answering another big question. Thanks again for watching or listening to this podcast. We hope we've answered some of your big questions today. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast anywhere you're listening and leave us a review.

Alyson Lex
We publish multiple episodes per week, all designed to help you grow your business. Look for us online on Facebook and Instagram at System to drive for our home on the web at System to thrive.com