five hours a week... how much time a podcast takes

friday's live session had one question that kept coming back in different words.

it wasn't about cost. it wasn't about whether a podcast works. it was about time. founders on the call liked the idea and then did the math on their own calendar and flinched.

so let me give you the honest number, because i think it's smaller than you fear.

start with why this works at all. every company needs one of two things, sales or capital, and plenty need both. both start with a conversation. most founders get their conversations from referrals, and referrals are great until they stop. a referral network is a local maximum. it gets you to a certain size and then it plateaus, because it only reaches people who already know people who know you.

a podcast invite reaches anyone. and nobody flags a podcast invite as spam. you're not asking for a meeting. you're offering a spotlight.

now the time.

at least 5 podcasts a week, right? so that's 20 per month, right? so close rate of 10%, 15%, 20% will bring you a couple clients per month.

five a week. call it five hours. that's the floor we recommend.

twenty conversations a month with exactly the people you want in front of you. at a ten to twenty percent close rate, that's a couple of new clients a month. it works best when a client is worth more than about three thousand dollars over their lifetime. below that, the math gets thin. above it, it gets very good.

and those five hours aren't all with whoever books. there's a fifteen minute pre-interview first. someone on your team runs it. it filters out the guests who score low before they ever get to a thirty minute recording with you. so your hours go to people who already cleared a bar.

here's the reframe that landed best on the call. those five hours aren't extra time. they're your sales time.

we framed the ceo job as half sales and relationships, and half agents running the backend. the research, the prep, the follow up, the clips, the scheduling... software and a small team handle that. you handle the part only you can do. you show up and have a real conversation.

if you're a founder and you're not spending five hours a week in conversations with buyers, partners or investors, the podcast isn't the thing taking your time. something else already is.

someone asked the obvious question. why not let ai do the front end too? ai hosts, ai outbound calls.

we've talked about it. we haven't done it. outbound ai calls run into legal friction in the us and canada. and more importantly, the whole point is trust. the guest is giving you thirty minutes because a person invited them. the minute that person is a machine, the gift turns into a trick.

so the machines run the backend. a human sits in the chair.

and if five hours still sounds like a lot, look at what it replaces. no conference booth. no cold call block. no networking dinner where you meet two useful people out of forty. five hours, twenty conversations a month, each one picked on purpose.

long term, this is the part i think founders underrate. those twenty conversations a month don't just produce a couple of clients. they produce a library. clips, quotes, relationships, people who now know you and will take your call next year when you're raising. the close rate is the short game. the network is the long one.

if you want to see exactly what the system needs from you each week, and what it handles without you, it's all laid out here.

so be honest with your calendar... where are your five hours of real conversations going right now?