I’ve mentioned this a few times, in a few scattered places. But I wanted to share a few thoughts about the companion podcast. (Wherever you like to listen, search for “podcaster community” or you can simply press play over in #listen.)
Today, for example, I have 3 people scheduled for recording. (It’s possible for up to 6 to get scheduled if everyone happened to pick things just right.) So it’s critical that this show be immediately publishable. If I have to do anything later, it won’t get done, and the episodes will pile up.
So that’s the first MVP element: The show is driven by the guest’s availability, and everything happens when/just-after the recording happens.
To keep things sane for me, I have ground rules about when the conversations get scheduled. I have large windows of time, but only on certain days of the week, configured in Calendly. That’s easy. The clever part is that I don’t let anyone schedule beyond the next seven days. If a guest is interested, they press the schedule in the next week… often, people pick a spot tomorrow. The podcast is streamlined, so scheduling month in advance doesn’t make sense. Also, it means my personal calendar doesn’t get shot-through with random little calls. Today I’ve three to do, yesterday there were none. In my personal calendar, I have big recurring events (multi-hours long) that remind me to keep that time free—it’s like having office hours. As I’m looking ahead—say, I get the chance to go climbing on a day where I’d have possible recordings—I can duck into Calendly and enter the “schedule exception.” I’m going away over Labor Day, and I can simply mark-out the days… no one has calls scheduled there yet, since it’s more than a week out.
So that’s a second piece of MVP: Nimble scheduling, “soon” gathers the truly interested guests, and the whole things works for my personal schedule and life-style.
Finally, I’ll share a behind-the-scenes bit from the episode that just went out. I have a checklist that I print to use. I also keep a scribbled list of words or ideas as I’m hunting for the show title during the recording:
MVP in action: 12:30 call start, 1:05 guest hangs up, 1:10 podcast is completely done and published. …and on to the next thing. 
So that’s a third piece of MVP: Checklists, and process