In today’s competitive business landscape, podcasting has emerged as a powerful tool for thought leaders and executives to showcase their expertise and build their brand. However, many business podcasts fail to deliver meaningful ROI because they’re missing one critical element. As a professional podcast co-host who has guided hundreds of thought leaders through successful podcast launches, I’m about to reveal the ONE essential element smart business leaders never go without when launching a podcast.
The Hidden Challenges That Derail Business Podcasts
When business leaders decide to launch a podcast, they often underestimate the complexity involved. The enthusiasm for sharing their expertise quickly collides with the reality of production demands, time constraints, and the specialised skills required to create engaging content consistently.
According to industry research from Podcast Insights and Edison Research, the majority of new podcasts don’t make it past their seventh episode. This phenomenon, often called “podfading,” isn’t due to a lack of valuable insights or expertise from the hosts – it’s primarily because of five critical challenges that plague DIY podcast efforts:
1. Production Quality Limitations
Many established businesses invest thousands in top-tier equipment only to produce amateur-sounding episodes. The difference between professional and amateur production isn’t just about expensive gear – it’s about the expertise to use it effectively.
As I’ve seen firsthand, even basic equipment can produce professional-quality content when handled by someone with the technical know-how. Conversely, premium equipment in inexperienced hands often results in poor audio quality, inconsistent levels, and distracting background noise that undermines your authority and message.
2. The Hidden Time Trap
Perhaps the most insidious challenge is the time commitment required to produce a quality podcast. Every hour your team spends editing, scheduling, and organising your podcast is an hour not spent on revenue-generating activities.
For established businesses, this opportunity cost is substantial. The production process – from planning and recording to editing and publishing – can easily consume 5-10 hours per episode. Multiply that by weekly or bi-weekly releases, and you’re looking at a significant resource allocation that could be directed toward core business functions.
3. The Conversation Leadership Gap
Leading compelling conversations is a specialised skill that few business leaders naturally possess without training or experience. This became abundantly clear during my work co-hosting the “Get Enabled Digitally” podcast with Jim Barker and Kramer from Cooperative Computing.
In one episode about digital operations excellence, you can see how my conversation style helps extract valuable insights from Kramer about operations personnel and their approach to change:
Anthony: “Let’s get into the whole operations and fulfillment space because there’s a natural flow on from the sales space, which is a natural flow on from the marketing space. I think one of the biggest challenges here in getting enabled digitally is to some degree take people allowing their hands to be taken off the wheel a little bit. But it’s also knowing where and what to do and what are those crucial pain points to start from to work out from there.”
Kramer: “As you move from the marketing and branding to the sales and commerce to the operations, you’re gonna notice something about the people involved. Creative minds. Creative minds, but a little more structure. And then creative minds with lots of structure. Why? You never want to blow up 20, whatever it was, $20 million rocket ship on the launch pad because someone had a leak in a fuel tank. That’s an extreme side of something, but you never want that to happen as a result of what you’re doing in operations. So operations people are not resistant to change. I do not agree with that. I think a lot of people think they’re, what they’re resistant to is unpredictable change. They don’t want to put something in and not know the outcome of it.”
This exchange demonstrates how my guided questioning helps guests articulate complex ideas about organisational psychology and change management in a way that delivers genuine value to listeners. As a professional co-host, I create conversational bridges that help executives share their expertise in accessible ways.
4. The Authority Position Surrender
When business leaders interview guests without a co-host, they inadvertently surrender their expert position. Instead of being perceived as the authority in their field, they become the supporter, asking questions and highlighting someone else’s expertise.
This positioning challenge can significantly impact how your audience perceives your brand. Is that the positioning your established business wants in your market? For thought leaders and executives looking to establish themselves as authorities, this subtle shift can undermine the very purpose of creating a podcast.
5. The Consistency Challenge
Perhaps the most common killer of business podcasts is inconsistency. The overwhelming reality of the previous four challenges eventually leads to irregular publishing, quality drops, and audience abandonment – damaging the brand you’ve worked so hard to build.
Consistency is the lifeblood of podcast success. Your audience expects new episodes on a regular schedule, and failing to deliver erodes trust and engagement. Research from the Podcast Host shows that podcasts with consistent release schedules retain listeners at significantly higher rates than those with irregular publishing patterns.
The ONE Thing Smart Business Leaders Never Go Without
The most successful business leaders don’t DIY their podcasts – they partner with professionals who handle everything from production to co-hosting, allowing them to focus solely on sharing their expertise.
This professional co-hosting approach transforms podcasting from a resource-draining endeavour into a strategic asset that builds authority without consuming internal resources. The professional co-host serves as both technical expert and conversation guide, ensuring that each episode delivers maximum value to both the host and the audience.
In another segment from the Get Enabled Digitally podcast about the five pillars of digital growth, you can see how my conversational approach helps Kramer articulate complex business concepts:
Anthony: “So let’s talk through, just at a high level, firstly, what are those five key areas?”
Kramer: “So in a business traditionally our thought leadership says, here’s how you put a business together. And that came out of, how we built businesses in the old days to make certain that we could actually manufacture at scale, so on and so forth. Now, under no illusion that those things we did traditionally should be thrown out and not thought about. But one of the things that are critical for us as we actually get into the future are those people that are saying, I’m gonna cause disruption because of how I do it.”
Through this guided conversation, Kramer was able to deliver a comprehensive explanation of the five pillars of digital growth that businesses need to focus on – branding and marketing, sales and commerce, operations and order fulfillment, customer engagement, and service delivery management. My role as co-host helped structure this complex topic into digestible insights for the audience.
How Professional Co-Hosting Elevates Business Podcasts
The value of professional co-hosting becomes even more apparent when tackling technical subjects. In an episode about digital operations excellence, I helped Kramer explain the concept of digital twins in manufacturing:
Anthony: “And driving efficiency, I think is one of the keys, isn’t it? In demonstrating that predictability as well, because I think of, for example, a printing press. People still get business cards printed and there are plenty of these larger printers that offer it online. So you go and order your 250 business cards and they come to you. But as a printer in an efficiency model, to go through that process individually each time is costly and exhausting for the people that are performing that operation, whereas if we get 50 people who might not be known to each other, have no relationship with one another, they’d all want 250 business cards at the same time. If we can group all of those together and print them, we create efficiencies in the operations and ultimately then efficiencies in the cost.”
Kramer: “Yeah. And I got a rare opportunity to work with Lego whenever they were doing their transformation from you buy in the box till you go online, tell us what you want, and then we’ll spit one of those out and we’ll ship it to you. Now think of what that means. That was disruptive. It was disruptive to a level that was actually almost the impact was so huge. They didn’t expect the uptake to be as high as it was. You know how branding and marketing works, and that goes to sales and then operations has to deliver it. So there were some things they had to shuffle around quickly because the demand was really high.”
This exchange demonstrates how my conversational guidance helps guests share real-world examples that illustrate complex concepts, making them accessible and valuable to listeners. By providing the right prompts and context, I help business leaders showcase their expertise in a way that resonates with their audience.
Real-World Success: The Get Enabled Digitally Podcast
Our done-for-you podcast service has helped companies like Cooperative Computing grow their brand, showcase the value they bring to clients, create opportunities for business growth through existing relationships, and attract new connections – all without consuming their internal resources.
The Get Enabled Digitally podcast serves as a perfect case study of this approach in action. By partnering with Jim Barker and Kramer from Cooperative Computing, we’ve created a platform that positions them as authorities in digital enablement while requiring minimal time investment from their team.
In one particularly insightful exchange about digital enablement, I helped Kramer articulate the concept in a way that resonated with their target audience:
Anthony: “Just to pull it back a little bit, and I want to make sure that everybody understands the concept of digital enablement because there are, in order to get into all of these different areas, you really have to understand that concept. So talk to me about what that really means at a high level, because it’s a nice term, but it’s the guts of it.”
Kramer: “A hundred percent. And thank you. ’cause this is such an important concept because it is, it can be somewhat ambiguous, but it’s also very deliberate. So one of the key things that in the early days I worked on a bunch of digital transformation projects. And in digital transformation, we were quite often going in ripping out systems and putting in new systems. And often we were seeing that, hey, the thing that you’ve got, it’s not far off. Someone just misconfigured it. They forgot to turn the green button on instead of the blue button. Digital enablement says, why don’t we take a look at your current state, the thing that you’re doing today, you’re a future state, and look at what is it that you need to do from a digital perspective, and that includes organisation, methods and procedures, systems and technology, and key performance indicators.”
This exchange demonstrates how my questioning helps guests clarify complex concepts for the audience, ensuring that listeners gain valuable insights they can apply to their own businesses.
Measuring the ROI of Professional Podcast Co-Hosting
For business leaders considering a podcast, the return on investment is a critical consideration. Professional co-hosting delivers measurable ROI in several key areas:
- Time Savings: Reclaim 5-10 hours per week that would otherwise be spent on production tasks
- Brand Authority: Position yourself as the expert in your field through strategic conversation leadership
- Content Leverage: Transform each episode into multiple content pieces for other marketing channels
- Relationship Building: Create deeper connections with clients, prospects, and industry partners
- Business Growth: Generate new opportunities through increased visibility and authority
In another powerful exchange from the Get Enabled Digitally podcast, I helped Kramer articulate how businesses should approach digital enablement:
Anthony: “And how much time are you spending going into organisations and helping them identify what tools that they can bring in, what the possibilities are for automation and the value that it’s bringing in. Then working out how you actually measure that, because they do require a significant amount of investment in some cases.”
Kramer: “Yeah, a lot of cases. So it’s a great question, Anthony. Our methodology is around going in and identifying what are the known issues today? What are the real issues? If we think about, when we approach business, we’re usually going into a current state environment that they have a desired future state they’re trying to achieve, and they can’t get there on their own. They’ve decided now we need somebody to help. And so we’ve got called in for one reason or the other, they called us in private equity groups, called us in whatever it might be, someone, a stakeholder has called us in to help in those capacities.”
This conversation demonstrates how my questioning helps guests share their methodologies and approaches in a way that provides genuine value to listeners while showcasing their expertise.
Is Your Business Ready for Podcast Success?
If you’re considering launching a business podcast – or if you’re struggling with an existing one – professional co-hosting could be the key to transforming it from a resource drain into a powerful brand-building asset.
Our done-for-you podcast service handles everything from production to co-hosting, allowing you to focus solely on sharing your expertise. We’ve helped companies across industries grow their brand, showcase their value, and create new business opportunities through strategic podcasting.
Ready to explore how your established business can leverage professional podcast co-hosting to build authority in your industry? Let’s talk about creating your podcast strategy.
Anthony Perl is the Director of Brilliance behind Podcasts Done For You, a complete podcast production and co-hosting service for thought leaders and executives. To arrange a free catch-up to discuss your podcast dreams, book an appointment here.
