Your Mom Needs a Podcast

Your Mom actually may not need a podcast. But you probably do. Unfortunately, there’s way too much friction in starting one, and like a book, often disconnected from a larger brand. Below discusses the strategy and finesse to bring one to life.

A podcast can get you into a room that a cold pitch never would.

You can invite someone you admire to discuss a question you both care about. You can spend an hour learning how they think. If the conversation is good, it becomes something other people can learn from too.

That is why I see a podcast as a powerful brand and relationship strategy, not simply a content format.

The guest invitation gives you a reason to reach out. The conversation lets you understand what is occupying that person’s mind and the episode introduces your thinking to people who may never have heard of you. And if those people find their time with you useful, you can invite them to join your email list, where you have the space to keep building trust.

A well produced and consistent show can eventually lead to speaking, media, partnerships, and business. It can also make you better at your work. When you regularly talk with people in your field and hear directly from an audience, you learn which questions they keep asking, what they disagree about, and what they need help making sense of.

But there’s a reason many leaders have been “thinking about starting a podcast” for years.

The Strategy: What you want the show to do?

If your primary goal is building relationships that may lead to business, define your ideal customer profile before making a guest list. Who are you trying to reach? What are they working through? Who would they find genuinely interesting? You can then use LinkedIn and email to invite relevant people into a conversation worth having.

An invite message I often use: It would be great to get you on our podcast (100+ ratings and reviews, 200+ episodes). We discuss trajectory changing moments and sense your story would be great for our audience. Up for joining?

Once they accept an invitation, that hour across the screen creates room for curiosity and trust. You hear what matters to the guest in their own words. Afterward, you have something specific to follow up on. The conversation needs to be worthwhile and you need to ask good questions, so you can build rapport, and be of value to that person after you better understand their essence.

A show built primarily for widespread distribution calls for different choices. The host’s ideas may lead more often, sometimes without a guest. The topics, openings, and clips need to give strangers a reason to care before they know the person behind the microphone. A show can serve both purposes, but it helps to know which outcome you are optimizing for (lead generation and relationships or host distribution and influence).

Then there is the name. A show about founders has a clear home in the startup world; a parenting show can move across pregnancy, health, family decisions, and raising a child. Neither range is inherently better. The name sets expectations for guests and listeners. We’ve spent multiple meetings working through the name and differentiation for Christine Perkett’s upcoming show on resilience, after a similar concept appeared elsewhere.

That positioning work happens before a single episode airs.

The show also has to connect credibly to its host or company. Our podcast,The One Away Show makes sense alongside Arcbound’s work helping people build personal brands and unlock opportunities. I ask guests about the experiences that brought them here and what they have found meaningful along the way. It gives people room to tell a story they rarely get to tell in a business meeting. Puneeth first found his way to Arcbound through the show. I could not have planned that when I began recording.

Over time, the archive becomes part of the invitation. A prospective guest can see the conversations you’ve had, the people who have joined you, and the ratings and reviews listeners have left. They get a better sense of what they are saying yes to.

Then you have to make the show week after week

Recently, I asked Hemali and Priya, who help run and grow our shows at Arcbound, to walk me through a single week. By the end, I had a deeper appreciation for what our team does.

Often times, clients underestimate what goes into making a great show, both on their side, and the team who brings it together.

Before a guest records, Hemali helps coordinate the calendar, prepares them for the conversation, and builds an episode docket. A good docket gives the host a path without turning the interview into a script. It draws on the guest’s work, the audience’s questions, and what the host genuinely wants to understand.

The preparation changes with the show. On Founders in Arms, Immad Akhund and Rajat Suri talk with founders and operators about building companies. The research needs to surface the decisions and convictions that make a guest interesting. On The Unplanned Parent, pediatrician Dr. Angel Rampal and her brother Raman bring medical knowledge and lived experience into conversations about family building and parenting. That calls for careful research, clear language, and room for the human story to unfold.

During the recording, someone needs to notice when the framing or audio is off, when an answer deserves a follow-up, and which moments might become a strong opening or clip.

Post-production is where much of the show takes shape. Puneeth works on the full episode, choosing an opening that gives people a reason to stay and tightening the conversation without losing its personality. Pranaya helps turn it into shorter videos through which new people can discover the show.

A good clip is rarely just a cut from the middle of an interview. It needs enough context for someone meeting the host and guest for the first time, a clear thought, and a strong hook in the first few seconds. Sometimes the most memorable line makes a poor clip because the viewer needs ten minutes of setup. A quieter exchange can work beautifully once the edit reveals the insight.

From one conversation, the team might create a short vertical reel, a longer excerpt, and different clips for the hosts or guest to share. Each needs decisions about framing, pacing, captions, and headlines. Meanwhile, Hemali manages the thumbnails, approvals, episode details, publishing, and materials that help the guest share it.

And publishing begins another cycle. Priya plans how the episode lives across the week. Clips might sit alongside a quote, carousel, or researched post that gives the audience another entry point. She watches what people respond to organically before deciding what deserves paid support, then checks and adjusts campaigns as they run.

Here is what that work has helped build

Our shows span parenting and health with The Unplanned Parent, technology and business with Founders in Arms, a few dominant health shows, and AI leadership with Charlene Li’s Leading Disruption. Three have each passed 23,000 YouTube subscribers, one with more than 30,000 subscribers!!

We’ve crossed ten podcasts in production, with more shows coming.

These August dashboard snapshots show two of those channels before they crossed the 23,000 subscriber mark.

The views use different reporting periods. Both channels have since passed 23,000 subscribers.

The newsletter gives the conversation somewhere to continue

Look at the Founders in Arms Substack. An episode has a place to live with its title, context, audio, video, and an archive of other conversations. Someone who enjoys it can subscribe and hear from the show again.

That dedicated publication makes sense when the podcast has its own identity and audience. Another option is to share episodes through your existing personal or company newsletter. You can tell readers why a conversation mattered to you, draw out an idea they can use, and point them to the full episode. The choice depends on whether you want a distinct community around the show or want it to deepen the relationship people already have with your brand.

Either way, email lets interested people choose to stay close to your thinking. Their replies can tell you what they are wrestling with. Along with what you hear from guests, that insight should shape future episodes, outreach, speaking topics, and the work you offer.

The opportunity behind the show

I think about what a show can create in three parts:

Access. It gives you a thoughtful reason to meet people you want to know and learn from.

Trust. Episodes show people how you think. A newsletter gives those who subscribe a way to continue the relationship.

Opportunity. The relationships and body of work with a large audience can open doors to speaking, media, partnerships, a large publishing deal, or commercial opportunities for your business. What you learn helps you decide which doors are worth walking through.

If you’ve been sitting on a podcast idea, definitely think through all the pieces before jumping in, the goals of the show, and understand this takes effort and committment to be successful.

1. Join us Oct 13 for our next Webinar with Charlene Li and CEO of Trovia, Aaron Rallo.
   
   In a prior life, Aaron was the former Director of Agentic AI at AWS. Incredible operator. Charlene is quite special herself.