What CEOs Get Wrong About Podcasts
- Laura Malpeli
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
If you’re a CEO, chances are at least one person on your team told you to start a podcast. And chances are you’ve had the same reactions we’ve heard from leaders over and over again:
I don’t have time.
We don’t have the tech.
It has to sound perfect or it’ll hurt the brand.
While some CEOs are avoiding creating podcasts, the market is growing and getting harder to ignore. According to Straight Arrow News, Nearly half of Americans 12+ listened to a podcast in the last month, and weekly listening is growing in double digits year over year.
In B2B, podcasts have quietly become one of the most trusted formats. One study found that about three-quarters of listeners say they trust podcast hosts more than they trust content from social media or traditional advertising.
In other words: the market is there, your buyers are there, and your future hires are there. The bottleneck is in fear.
The perfection trap
When we talk to CEOs who haven’t launched, the most common blocker isn’t budget or equipment. It’s perfection.
They want the first episode to sound like a top-10 show. They want the perfect concept, perfect name, perfect theme music, perfect guests. And until all of that is nailed down, they keep pushing record into next quarter.
The irony is that podcasting rewards the exact opposite of perfectionism.
Listeners don’t come back because every sentence is polished; they come back because you sound like a real person with a point of view. The intimacy of audio is the whole point. It’s literally in someone’s ears while they drive, walk the dog, or wash dishes.
If you wait until every variable is perfect, three things happen:
You never launch. Competitors who are willing to learn in public get the compound interest on trust and attention.
You miss the feedback loop. The best way to figure out what your audience cares about is to publish, listen to reactions, and iterate.
You burn cycles on the wrong details. Episode artwork is not what moves revenue, recruiting or investor confidence.
The time myth and the 80/20 rule
Another myth: Podcasting will eat my calendar.
If you try to do everything yourself, it really will. Independent creators often report 10–18 hours of work per episode once you add up prep, recording, editing, show notes, and promotion. That’s obviously not realistic for someone running a company.
But here’s the part many CEOs miss: you shouldn’t be doing 100% of that work. You should be doing the 20% only you can do and building a system or team for the rest.
Your unique value is:
Your perspective on the market.
Your ability to ask sharp questions.
Your stories from the trenches.
Everything else is operations.
A sustainable executive-podcast workflow usually looks something like this:
You spend 60–90 minutes a week recording conversations (solo episodes or interviews)
A producer or agency handles guest outreach, research, recording logistics, editing, show notes, and clip selection.
Your marketing team (or a partner) turns each episode into LinkedIn posts, newsletter content, sales enablement snippets, and internal comms.
That’s the 80/20 rule in action: 20% of your time, 80% of the value.
What if no one listens? (You don’t need “everyone”; you need the right 500)
The third misconception is about audience size.
Because podcast charts are public, it’s easy to think in terms of mass reach: How do we get 50,000 downloads an episode? For most business leaders, that’s the wrong goal.
Decision-makers overwhelmingly say that high-quality thought leadership content increases a brand’s trustworthiness and makes them more likely to consider it in buying decisions. The keyword here is quality, not quantity.
If your show is listened to by:
300 ideal customers
50 potential hires
20 industry partners or investors
…and those people feel like they know how you think, what you care about, and how you solve problems, that’s an enormous win.
A single episode can:
Shorten sales cycles because prospects “pre-meet” you through the show.
Warm up investor conversations—they’ve already heard how you frame the market.
Help candidates self-select into (or out of) your culture before the first interview.
Podcasting is less like broadcasting and more like having a standing, long-form conversation with the exact people you want in your orbit.
What “done right” really looks like
So if perfection isn’t the goal, and you don’t need a stadium-sized audience, what does a “right” CEO podcast look like?
It looks like this:
Consistent cadence. Weekly or bi-weekly episodes that ship on time, even when you’re on a plane or in back-to-back board meetings. (That’s where a remote production partner earns their keep.)
A clear point of view. You’re not trying to cover every topic; you’re relentlessly exploring the problems your customers, team, and investors care about.
Real conversations. Less keynote, more coffee chat. People stick around for authenticity.
Smart repurposing. Each episode becomes a dozen touchpoints: LinkedIn posts, email hooks, short clips, internal messages, maybe even the outline of your next keynote.
A light lift for you. You step in when your voice is needed and step out when it’s time for editing, mixing, publishing, and distribution.
That’s the model we’ve refined at Graystoke Networks: remote, lightweight for the CEO, heavy on strategy and production behind the scenes.
If you’ve been circling the idea of a podcast but waiting for the “perfect” moment, gear, or concept, consider this your nudge: the perfect show doesn’t exist.
Your voice is already one of your company’s most valuable assets. The question isn’t “Should I start a podcast?” It’s whether you’re gonna let your shot go away.
Santiago Olivares Torres | Producer at Graystoke Networks
Helping leaders share their voice through podcasting.
Based in Bogotá, Colombia. Outdoor enthusiast, Abbot Elementary fan, and gamer at heart.
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