What job are you hiring your podcast to do?

If your answer is simply "be a podcast," we need to talk.

If you treat your podcast as just a feed to be fed with episodes, lather, rinse, repeat, you're missing out all that a podcast can do for you and your mission or business.

Your podcast is like a wildly overqualified employee...one that deserves to have an actual job description (or, ideally, several).

Because once you know what you're hiring your podcast to do, it can help lighten the load of the decisions and actions the world asks you to make and take you every day.

And if you know what your podcast is supposed to do, it can help you also figure out what it doesn't have to do (cough cough full-on slick video production).

ABOUT THE SHOW

Talking the Talk: A Podcast About Podcasting helps entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and business owners create podcasts that work harder than they do to earn their keep.

Host Courtney Reimer explores how to build a show that creates trust, builds your business, remains sustainable, and delivers a meaningful return on what you invest into it.

ABOUT THE HOST

Courtney Reimer is the creator of THE STRATEGIC PODCAST LAUNCH STUDIO, the founder and principal strategist of Sounds Great Strategy,and a former executive at Spotify, Audible, Yahoo!, Discovery, and MTV. She helps entrepreneurs and organizations create podcasts that become their hardest-working business assets.

HOW TO CONNECT WITH COURTNEY

Follow on Instagram: @soundsgreatcourtney

Connect on LinkedIn: Courtney Reimer

Subscribe to her weekly-ish newsletter on burnout-proof podcasting: Sounds Great on Paper

Email Courtney: [email protected]

THE STRATEGIC PODCAST LAUNCH STUDIO opens Monday, September 28, and there is one spot left. This six-week, done-with-you experience is for people who are ready to stop talking about their podcast idea and actually build it...with a thoughtful strategy underneath so it has a fighting chance of earning its keep.

If you want to figure out what jobs your podcast should be doing for you and build a show ridiculously well-qualified to do them, visit SoundsGreatStrategy.com/Studio to learn more about it and grab that last spot!

There are a thousand things on your plate as an entrepreneur (and human in the year 2026): Clients to serve, new ideas to chase, business to support them, and the all-elusive "visibilty" that fuels all of it. Somewhere in there, you're supposed to find time for life outside of all of the above.

The last thing you need is another hungry content mouth to keep feeding. Rather than being a bottomless pit that does little more than populate a feed like this, your podcast needs a job. Ideally several. In short: your podcast needs to earn its keep.

No one knows this better than Sam Hoey Nelson. She's a creative strategist, writer, entrepreneur, mom, autism advocate, founder of Storytime LA, creator of the Kitchen Table Method, and host of Powermomma. With so many different pieces of her life and work competing for her attention, she's figured out how to make the podcast not just work for her, but harder than her.

In this episode, Courtney and Sam talk about turning a podcast into a discovery call you don't have to schedule. They dig into how the show can build trust with potential clients, spark new ideas and offers, and help the right people find you before you ever get on a call.

We discuss:

• What a podcast can do before you ever get on a sales call

• Why giving people a sense of your personality can be more valuable than giving them more information

• How personal stories can create professional trust

• Why AI can create more room for the creative work only you can do

• How to build a sustainable show through seasons, breaks, and better boundaries

• Why letting yourself screw up is part of learning how to podcast

ABOUT THE GUEST

Samantha Hoey Nelson is the founder of Storytime LA, a creative strategy agency helping women, founders, creators, and purpose-led teams turn lived experience into clear messaging, offers, content, and brands. She's also the creator of the Kitchen Table Method, a story-to-strategy framework, and host of The PowerMomma Podcast, where she explores motherhood, identity, ambition, and becoming.

Connect On LinkedIn: Samantha Hoey Nelson

Website: Storytime LA

ABOUT THE SHOW

Talking the Talk: A Podcast About Podcasting helps entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and business owners build podcasts that work harder than they do.

Host Courtney Reimer explore how to build a show that creates trust, builds your business, remains sustainable, and delivers a meaningful return on what you invest into it.

ABOUT THE HOST

Courtney Reimer is the founder of Sounds Great Strategy and a former executive at Spotify, Audible, Yahoo!, Discovery, and MTV. She helps entrepreneurs and organizations create podcasts that become their hardest-working business assets.

HOW TO CONNECT WITH COURTNEY

Follow on Instagram: @soundsgreatcourtney

Connect on LinkedIn: Courtney Reimer

Subscribe to her weekly-ish newsletter on burnout-proof podcasting: Sounds Great on Paper

To book your free Podcast Clarity Call with Courtney, visit SoundsGreatStrategy.com.

We all know podcasts are a great way to build a brand. But what if we flipped that idea around? What if your podcast wasn't just a way to promote what you're building, but a way to help figure out what you're building in the first place?

That's what happened for Bill Groner when he launched the Positive Connection Initiative. Initially, the podcast was a way to establish credibility and create a body of work while the organization itself was still taking shape. But then the podcast ended up doing something Bill didn't anticipate– it started shaping the organization itself.

In this episode, Courtney and Bill discuss what happens when you stop thinking of your podcast as simply a content channel and start treating it as a sandbox for your ideas. They talk about using conversations to test and refine new ideas, building a body of work that can become something bigger, and the unexpected ways a podcast can influence what you create next.

Topics include:

• Why the podcast comes before the book

• How a podcast can help you establish credibility when you're launching something new

• What happens when you use your podcast as a proving ground for ideas you haven't fully figured out yet

• How podcasts can "show" expertise, better than simply "telling" people you're an expert

• What is "Return on Thinking" and how can your podcast inform the direction of your business

ABOUT THE GUEST

Bill Groner spent 35 years in the courtroom before becoming fascinated by a different kind of practice: understanding what helps people connect, communicate, and thrive. That interest led him to co-found the Positive Connection Initiative, a nonprofit focused on human connection and wellbeing. He now explores these questions on his podcast, The Connection Effect: With Bill Groner, through conversations with scientists, philosophers, and other thought leaders.

Learn more at: https://connection.net/

ABOUT THE SHOW

Talking the Talk: A Podcast About Podcasting helps entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and business owners build podcasts that work harder than they do.

Host Courtney Reimer explore how to build a show that creates trust, builds your business, remains sustainable, and delivers a meaningful return on what you invest into it.

ABOUT THE HOST

Courtney Reimer is the founder of Sounds Great Strategy and a former executive at Spotify, Audible, Yahoo!, Discovery, and MTV. She helps entrepreneurs and organizations create podcasts that become their hardest-working business assets.

HOW TO CONNECT WITH COURTNEY

Follow on Instagram: @soundsgreatcourtney

Connect on LinkedIn: Courtney Reimer

Subscribe to her weekly-ish newsletter on burnout-proof podcasting: Sounds Great on Paper

To book your free Podcast Clarity Call with Courtney, visit SoundsGreatStrategy.com.

The most important return on your podcast investment shows up long before anyone writes you a check.

In this voice note episode, Courtney shares why her obsession with podcast ROI may have something to do with her experience overseeing content development for the Meghan Markle and Prince Harry at Spotify and what a multimillion-dollar podcast deal taught her about the danger of expecting financial returns too soon. Because podcasting is a long game, and sometimes the early ROI is simply a signal from another human that tells you: keep going.

Seemingly negligible returns (an idea resonating with a stranger, a relationship beginning, a potential client tuning in, someone validating the thing you're building) can be what keeps you in the game long enough for the financial ROI to follow.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Talking the Talk: A Podcast About Podcasting helps entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and business owners create podcasts that work harder than they do to earn their keep.

Host Courtney Reimer explores how to build a show that creates trust, builds your business, remains sustainable, and delivers a meaningful return on what you invest into it.

ABOUT THE HOST

Courtney Reimer is the founder and principal strategist of Sounds Great Strategy and a former executive at Spotify, Audible, Yahoo!, Discovery, and MTV. She helps entrepreneurs and organizations create podcasts that become their hardest-working business assets.

HOW TO CONNECT WITH COURTNEY

Follow on Instagram: @soundsgreatcourtney

Connect on LinkedIn: Courtney Reimer

Subscribe to her weekly-ish newsletter on burnout-proof podcasting: Sounds Great on Paper

Email Courtney: [email protected]

The Strategic Podcast Launch Studio begins the week of September 14th, and it's the final cohort planned for 2026. If you're thinking about starting a podcast and want to co-create it with Courtney and a small, intentionally curated group, visit SoundsGreatStrategy.com/Studio to learn more and apply.

If you're a busy person exhausted by the demands of work and life, this news should come as a relief: your podcast doesn't have to be a whole production.

We've collectively convinced ourselves that a "real" podcast requires a beautiful set, multiple cameras, expensive equipment, and enough branded merch to clothe and house a small village. While we're distracted with the branding and presentation of it all, we can end up spending so much energy (and money) on the production that we forget the actual thing that makes a podcast valuable: the conversations that happen inside it.

In this episode, Jess Milanes and Courtney make the case for a simpler kind of podcast—one that serves the goals of the person behind the mic, not some irrelevant downloads number.

Both on her own show and via her company, KNWN, Jess has produced and created countless podcast episodes. She's seen firsthand how much value a podcast can create that has nothing to do with its audience size. It can put you in conversation with potential clients, establish your expertise within a niche, and create the kind of relationships that keep paying dividends long after an episode is published.

Topics include

• Why audio is still a perfectly good place to start (and why you can always add video later)

• How podcasting can build relationships and generate clients long before you have a big audience

• Why a broader audience isn't necessarily a better audience

• Why showing up as yourself is part of the strategy

• How podcasts can help you build authority

• Why being "useful" to your audience of potential clients matters more than working hard

If you've been putting off your podcast because the whole thing feels bigger and more expensive than it needs to be, this episode offers a useful reframe. Your podcast doesn't have to reach everyone or look like a Netflix production. Sometimes the magic is much simpler: giving the right people a chance to get to know you well enough that they want to keep the conversation going.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Jess Milanes is a podcast strategist and producer who helps founders and business owners use podcasting to build authority, relationships, and their businesses. She's passionate about creating podcasts that are strategic, sustainable, and actually fit the lives and goals of the people making them.

Learn more at: KNWN.com

Connect on LinkedIn: Jess Milanes

ABOUT THE SHOW

Talking the Talk: A Podcast About Podcasting helps entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and business owners create podcasts that work harder than they do to earn their keep.

Host Courtney Reimer explore how to build a show that creates trust, builds your business, remains sustainable, and delivers a meaningful return on what you invest into it.

ABOUT THE HOST

Courtney Reimer is the founder and principal strategist of Sounds Great Strategy and a former executive at Spotify, Audible, Yahoo!, Discovery, and MTV. She helps entrepreneurs and organizations create podcasts that become their hardest-working business assets.

HOW TO CONNECT WITH COURTNEY

Follow on Instagram: @soundsgreatcourtney

Connect on LinkedIn: Courtney Reimer

Subscribe to her weekly-ish newsletter on burnout-proof podcasting: Sounds Great on Paper

To book your free Podcast Clarity Call with Courtney, visit SoundsGreatStrategy.com

A funny thing happened on the way to recording this week's episode: I nearly didn't.

Between work, family, travel, and life generally life-ing, I found myself on the verge of becoming exactly the kind of podfade statistic I spend so much time warning others about.

So instead of skipping a week—or forcing myself through an elaborate production—I took my own advice.

This episode is an experiment in easy mode podcasting. It's also my first attempt at something I've been talking about for months: making my podcast work even harder by repurposing…my own podcast episode into another podcast episode. (Yes, it's a little snake-eating-its-tail.)

If you've ever felt guilty for not publishing every Tuesday, wondered whether "consistency is key" is more of a threat than a helpful tip, or needed permission to build a podcast around your actual life instead of rearranging your life around your podcast, this one's for you.

Topics include:

• Why I almost skipped publishing this week—and why I didn't

• The real reason so many podcasts fade out before episode 10

• Why "always-on" publishing advice wasn't designed for most business owners

• How to make your podcast work harder by repurposing it—even within the podcast itself

• Why reliable beats relentless when it comes to sustainable podcasting

• Easy-mode formats that help you keep showing up without burning out

• What I mean by "Return on Thinking" (ROT) and why I'm trying to make it a thing

If you're building a podcast to grow your business, establish your expertise, or create a body of work that compounds over time, this episode is your permission slip to stop chasing hustle-culture podcast advice and start building something you can actually sustain.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Talking the Talk: A Podcast About Podcasting helps entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and business owners build podcasts that work harder than they do.

Host Courtney Reimer explores how to build a show that creates trust, builds your business, remains sustainable, and delivers a meaningful return on what you invest into it.

ABOUT THE HOST

Courtney Reimer is the founder of Sounds Great Strategy and a former executive at Spotify, Audible, Yahoo!, Discovery, and MTV. She helps people and organizations create podcasts that become their hardest-working business assets.

HOW TO CONNECT & WORK WITH COURTNEY

Instagram: @soundsgreatcourtney LinkedIn: Courtney Reimer Weekly-ish newsletter: Sounds Great on Paper

Thinking about a podcast? Want to get Courtney's take? Book your free Podcast Clarity Call at SoundsGreatStrategy.com.

"Be consistent." We get this advice for everything from our strength training routine to business-building practices, and, of course: podcast strategy.

Publish every week, on the same day, at the same time, from now until eternity til death do us part.

But what if we've misunderstood what consistency actually means? What if "be consistent" is actually counterproductive advice if the goal is sustaining a podcast that delivers meaningful returns?

We dissect this well-meaning advice with Julie Fischer, host of the Nine to Thrive podcast, whose thoughtful, every-other-week publishing cadence has helped her build a show she's sustained for nearly three years. Rather than chasing an arbitrarily demanding schedule, Julie designed a podcast around her actual life, energy, and capacity—and that simple decision has made all the difference.

We discuss:

• What people get wrong about consistency

• Why knowing your capacity is one of the most important podcast decisions you'll make

• How podcasting can be a service to the people you want to service, as well as a magnet for clients

• Why "baby steps" outperform ambitious content plans

• Helpful advice for folks hoping to land a guest spot on a podcast like Julie's

If you've ever worried that you don't have enough time, enough energy, or enough capacity to keep a podcast going, this conversation offers a refreshing alternative to the hustle-culture-centric advice that dominates so much of the podcasting world.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Julie Fischer is the host of the Nine to Thrive podcast and a coach who works at the intersection of work, life, and well-being. Through coaching, speaking, and her podcast, she helps people rethink the relationship between achievement, purpose, and well-being, offering practical tools for building lives that feel both successful and sustainable.

Learn more at: www.juliefischercoaching.com

ABOUT THE SHOW

Talking the Talk: A Podcast About Podcasting helps entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and business owners build podcasts that work harder than they do.

Host Courtney Reimer explore how to build a show that creates trust, builds your business, remains sustainable, and delivers a meaningful return on what you invest into it.

ABOUT THE HOST

Courtney Reimer is the founder of Sounds Great Strategy and a former executive at Spotify, Audible, Yahoo!, Discovery, and MTV. She helps entrepreneurs and organizations create podcasts that become their hardest-working business assets.

HOW TO CONNECT WITH COURTNEY

Follow on Instagram: @soundsgreatcourtney

Connect on LinkedIn: Courtney Reimer

Subscribe to her weekly-ish newsletter on burnout-proof podcasting: Sounds Great on Paper

To book your free Podcast Clarity Call with Courtney, visit SoundsGreatStrategy.com.

Discoverability.

It's one of those words that suddenly becomes part of your daily vocabulary the minute you start a podcast. Then, before long, you're drowning in advice about SEO, AEO, YouTube, keywords, metadata, transcripts, video, social clips…and wondering whether your podcast can ever keep up.

To help us separate signal from noise, I invited someone who literally teaches this stuff.

Anika Jackson is a professor at USC Annenberg, host of the globally ranked Your Brand Amplified podcast, and someone who spends far more time thinking about podcast discoverability than most of us ever will.

We get into the weeds on SEO, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), AI search, YouTube, podcast metadata, and all the technical pieces that help people find your work. But somewhere along the way, the conversation takes an interesting turn...

The most important optimization metric of all, according to Anika, has nothing to do with dashboards, rankings, or download numbers—and everything to do with the humans your podcast attracts.

We discuss:

• Whether podcast SEO actually exists (and how it's changing)
• What AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) means for podcasters
• How AI search is reshaping discoverability
• Which metadata fields are worth your time—and which many podcasters ignore
• Why YouTube isn't quite the same game as Spotify or Apple Podcasts
• The surprising role Pinterest can play for certain podcasts
• Why guest selection may be your most underrated growth strategy
• How to think differently about clips, downloads, and social media
• The metric Anika cares about more than downloads
• Why entrepreneur podcasters should optimize differently than creator-economy shows

If you've been wondering how much of today's podcast growth advice actually applies to entrepreneurs, consultants, founders, and thought leaders—not people chasing millions of downloads—this conversation should leave you with both a few practical next steps and a healthy sense of relief.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Anika Jackson teaches the future of media and podcasting at USC Annenberg and hosts the globally ranked Your Brand Amplified® podcast. She helps entrepreneurs build stronger brands through strategy, podcasting, and AI, holds an MBA specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning, has served as a startup advisor and Webby Awards judge, and spends a lot more time thinking about podcast discoverability than the rest of us.

Learn more at: https://yourbrandamplified.com

ABOUT THE SHOW

Talking the Talk: A Podcast About Podcasting helps entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and business owners build podcasts that earn their keep.

Host Courtney Reimer explores what makes podcasts worth creating—not just how to launch one, but how to build a show that creates trust, opens doors, strengthens your business, and remains sustainable for the long haul.

ABOUT THE HOST

Courtney Reimer is the founder of Sounds Great Strategy and a former executive at Spotify Studios, Audible, Yahoo!, Discovery, and MTV. She helps entrepreneurs and organizations create podcasts that become their hardest-working business assets.

HOW TO CONNECT WITH COURTNEY

• Instagram: @soundsgreatpodcasts
• LinkedIn: Courtney Reimer
• Weekly newsletter: Sounds Great on Paper

Book your free Podcast Clarity Call with Courtney, and learn more at SoundsGreatStrategy.com

You work hard. Your podcast should work harder. Even if it means doing double duty on an episode--because if you do it right, it will do quadruple duty for you.

I recorded this episode twice. The first recording disappeared into the technical-gremlin abyss and I had already done the mental math: this episode was worth more than the additional time it would take to recreate it.

That calculation sits at the center of my approach to podcasting: it's not a time-sucking deliverable you continually feed because the content calendar says so. It can and should be one of the hardest-working, highest-ROI assets in your business because it generates ideas and leads, sharpens your thinking and delivery of your message, strengthens and develops relationships, creates pportunities by giving the rest of your content ecosystem somewhere to begin.

In this solo episode, I puts my own advice to the test. Even though I had to invest a little more time than I intended to, I ultimately went with an easy-mode version of this episode, and I'm glad I did.

Sometimes walking the walk means talking the talk AND letting the podcast do more of your work.

You log onto LinkedIn and everyone is *delving* into a pool of AI slop that *quietly* reads like a DiGirornio frozen pizza ad--it's not their delivery, it's the sameness of it all.

Then you stumble over to a podcast like this one, and feel seen by the realness, the stutters, and the general imperfectness of something that only an actual human voice can bring.

It's an established fact the podcasting wins by a mile when it comes to building trust with an audience. But what happens when AI enters the chat and brings all of its pet phrases with it? What do we lose when we win back some time by outsourcing some of our work to our LLM of choice?

In this episode, two word-nerd podcasters talk it out.

They discuss:

• How AI "tells" are becoming easier to spot

• Why AI is eroding trust with audiences

• Where podcasts have an edge over other content channels–and how AI is threatening to erode it

• The difference between using AI as a tool and outsourcing your thinking

• Why AI abstention may not be an option for solo business owners

• Accessibility, AI voices, and where technology creates opportunity

• Where/how/when to disclose your use of AI

• And whether AI will ever be indistinguishable from humans

If you've been wondering if it's possible to embrace AI without sacrificing the very thing people come to you for, this episode is for you.

About Emily Aborn

Emily Aborn is a copywriter, entrepreneur, and host of the Small Business Casual podcast. For more than a decade, she's helped entrepreneurs find the words that sound unmistakably like them by bringing personality, clarity, and humanity to how they show up for their clients.

Listen to Small Business Casual wherever you get your podcasts.

About Talking the Talk

Talking the Talk is a podcast about podcasting: for entrepreneurs, creators, and business owners who want to build podcasts that earn their keep.

Each week, host Courtney Reimer shares hot takes, practical podcast strategy, honest conversations with creators, and lessons learned from developing shows for everyone from first-time founders to Fortune 500 brands.

Connect with Courtney

Want to find out how to build a podcast that works harder than you do? Schedule a complimentary Podcast Clarity Call with Courtney at her website:

https://www.soundsgreatstrategy.com

Connect with Courtney:

• Instagram: @soundsgreatpodcastss

• LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/CourtneyReimer

• Newsletter: Sounds Great on Paper

☕ If you'd like to share a cup of coffee with the real human behind this episode, Courtney would certainly appreciate your appreciation--head over to Buy Me a Coffee to say thanks for the realness: BuyMeAcoffee.com/SoundsGreatCourtney