Junaid Ahmed

The Clip That Took an Hour to Make Nothing

Vertical video with captions is live in PodGlue. It nearly shipped in a state where every clip would have burned an hour of server time and then failed.

I Was Shipping Things Nobody Knew About

We wrote release notes every week. They lived on a page nobody had a reason to visit. So the work happened, and the people it was for never found out.

I Was Reading My Own Calendar in Someone Else's Timezone

My booking list said 3:00. It meant 3:00 in Tokyo. Nothing on the screen told me that.

Nobody Talks About the Waiting

There's a new puzzle game inside the PodGlue iOS app. It exists because of the ninety seconds you spend staring at a progress bar.

I Forgot I Had a Recording on Tuesday

Nobody was late. Nothing was double-booked. I just hadn't looked at my own week, and I'd stopped trusting myself to remember.

My Booking Page Made People Scroll To Book

The calendar looked fine on my monitor. On a laptop, the button that actually books the interview was below the fold the whole time.

My Calendar Invite Finally Tells Me Who I'm Talking To

Ten minutes before a recording, the calendar event said a name and an email. Everything the guest had actually told me was somewhere else.

I Gave PodGlue My Own Run of Show

PodGlue was generating a run of show, a list of questions, and an intro script. Three separate documents. I was doing the work of stitching them together in my head while recording.

I Kept Opening the Calendar and Learning Nothing

Ten minutes before a recording I'd click the event and get a name, an email, and a link. Everything the guest had actually told me was somewhere else.

My Booking Page Was Offering This Morning

At three in the afternoon, my calendar was still showing nine, ten and eleven as open. Not tomorrow's nine. Today's.

Blocking an Hour Was Costing Me the Day

I blocked 2pm to 3pm for an appointment. My booking page quietly took the whole day off. And a booking I'd cancelled was still holding its slot hostage.

My Booking Page Said Come Back in October

My Thursdays were wide open. My booking page told every guest the soonest I could talk was two months out. It was wrong in both directions at once, and no error was ever logged.

A Discovery Call Is Not an Interview

My booking page treated a 15-minute chat and a 90-minute recording as the same thing. Offering one meant offering both, and I'd been quietly working around it for months.

The Money Was Already in the Room

Every guide to making money podcasting starts with the same advice: get more downloads. I built a tool that tells most people the opposite, and it will refuse to point you at sponsorship if your numbers aren't there yet.

The Top of My Screen Was Doing Nothing for Me

I opened PodGlue and counted five things in the top corner competing for my attention. None of them were the work. So I cleaned it up.

Your Guests Don't Know You Switched Schedulers

When you move your booking over to PodGlue, the guests already on your calendar get a confirmation from a name they don't recognize, for a meeting they already booked. Now that email explains itself.

I Interviewed Hundreds of People and Never Saw Them on a Map

After years of podcasting, my guests lived as a long list of names. PodGlue now puts them where they actually are, on a map, so the network I built is finally something I can see.

One Appearance Is Not a Relationship

You spent an hour in real conversation with someone, and then you both went back to your lives and never spoke again. That is the normal outcome, and it is the biggest waste in podcasting.

How to Promote an Episode You Were a Guest On

Your episode went live, you posted the link, and it did nothing. The problem is almost never the audience. It is that a link asks people to leave, and nothing in the post tells them why they should.

Your Guest Already Told You How to Interview Them

Guests fill out your intake form with the exact stuff that makes an interview feel like a conversation. Then it dies in a calendar invite. PodGlue now turns that intake into the context that writes your run of show, even when the booking came from somewhere else.

What Happens After You Record a Podcast Interview

You finished the conversation, you felt good about it, and then nothing. Weeks pass. Here is what is actually going on between recording day and the day your episode goes live, from a host who has run this pipeline 700-plus times.

How to Be a Great Podcast Guest, From Someone Who Has Interviewed 700 of Them

You said yes to an interview and now you are quietly wondering what you signed up for. After 700-plus conversations, here is what actually separates the guests I remember from the ones I don't. Almost none of it is polish.

Why Your Host Asks So Many Questions Before You Record

The form after you book looks like admin. It is not. Those answers are what stops you being run through the same script as every other guest, and the difference between a good episode and a forgettable one usually shows up in that form.

How to Decide Which Podcasts to Say Yes To

Download numbers are the worst way to choose. After 700-plus interviews on both sides of the microphone, here is what actually predicts whether an appearance was worth the hour.

Finding a Guest Shouldn't Mean Buying a Cold List

Most guest-finding tools sell you scraped contacts so you can cold-pitch strangers. We have both the hosts and the guests on PodGlue already, so we just let them find each other.

I Was Hiding on My Own Homepage

On a call, my mentor Pat Flynn reviewed the PodGlue homepage, and after a pile of notes he said the line that stuck: we wanna see faces, we wanna see real people. He was right, and it is the same thing most podcasters do to themselves with their own show.

Open the App, Know What's Next

The PodGlue iOS app used to open to a list. Now the Command screen opens with a read on your whole show: what's ready, what's blocked, and the one thing worth doing next.

Your Recording Backs Itself Up Now

Studio recordings now back up continuously while you record, video sessions capture a separate clean audio track per person, and you can choose 720p or 1080p before you hit record.

The Diagrams Were There the Whole Time

Four diagrams on our homepage quietly stopped showing up. The images were fine. The server refused to serve them. Here's how a one-line allowlist miss hid our best explainers, and how we made sure it can't happen again.

Your Guests Just Met Each Other

The guest network used to be something only the host could see. As of this week, every public guest page on PodGlue shows who else shared that mic. Here is why that small section matters more than it looks.

You Could Add an Expertise Tag. You Couldn't Take One Off.

The guest card let you tag what someone is known for, but once a tag was on there, it was stuck. A small thing that quietly annoyed people. Now it comes back off.

Your Audience Is Not a Community. Not Yet.

I saw a chart that scored a real community against a typical event. Five requirements, and the event lost on all five. After 700-plus episodes, I realized I had been producing events and calling it a community.

Your Name Should Be the Same in Every Room

You had one name on your public guest page and a different one in the community. Same person, two labels. We fixed that, and cleaned up the front door while we were at it.

The Best All-in-One Podcast Management Software in 2026

The best all-in-one podcast management software in 2026 covers planning, guests, production, content, and archive. Here is an honest look at what all-in-one really means, from a host who has run a show across 700 episodes.

Castmagic vs Descript for Repurposing (and a Third Option)

Castmagic turns a finished file into written assets. Descript helps you make the file in the first place. Here is the honest difference, who each one is for, and the part neither of them touches.

PodGlue Pricing, Explained Plainly

PodGlue Review: An Honest Look After 700 Episodes

The Best Software to Repurpose Podcast Episodes in 2026

The best podcast repurposing software in 2026 turns one episode into clips, posts, and show notes without you starting from scratch. Here is an honest, by-the-job look at the real options, from a host who has done this across 700 episodes.

The Best Capsho Alternatives for Podcasters in 2026

Capsho is known for podcast marketing copy and show notes. Podcasters still go looking for alternatives, for price, for workflow, for guest management. Here is an honest, job-by-job guide from a host who has recorded 700-plus episodes.

The Best Castmagic Alternatives in 2026

Castmagic is good at turning a recording into written assets. People still go looking for alternatives, for price, for workflow, for guest management, for editing. Here is an honest, job-by-job guide from a host who has recorded 700-plus episodes.

PodGlue vs Capsho: Show Notes or a Full System?

Capsho turns an episode into marketing copy. PodGlue runs the system around the episode. A plain look at which one your podcast needs.

PodGlue vs Riverside: Recording or the Whole Workflow?

Riverside records the conversation. PodGlue runs everything around it. Here is the honest comparison of the two, why they are not really rivals, and how I use both on the same show.

The Best Way to Track Your Podcast Guests

The best way to track your podcast guests is the one that survives the moment you get busy. I walk the ladder of methods, from memory to a real relationship tool, and show you which one fits where you actually are.

You Already Taught the Workshop. You Just Did It One Interview at a Time.

Every podcast interview you give leaves your best teaching scattered across other people's feeds. We built a way for guests to harvest it back.

The Best CRM for Podcasters in 2026

Most CRMs are built to close sales, not tend relationships. Here is an honest look at the real options for podcasters in 2026, from spreadsheets to purpose-built tools. Written by a host who tried all of them across 700 episodes.

The Best Podcast Guest Management Tools in 2026

An honest look at how podcasters keep track of and book guests in 2026. Spreadsheets, marketplaces, DIY databases, and relationship tools, sorted by who each one is actually for.

Integration Pages That Tell You What They Can't Do

Most 'integrations' pages are a wall of logos that promise everything and explain nothing. We built ours to say what each tool actually does, and what it doesn't.

Notion for Podcast Guest Management: Does It Hold Up?

Can you run your podcast guests out of Notion? Yes, and here is roughly how. I walk through building a guest database in Notion, where it genuinely holds up, and the point where a busy show starts to strain against it.

The Link That Reloaded the Whole Page

Clicking a story in the community sometimes reloaded the entire site instead of just opening the thread. It still got you there, but it felt heavy. Now it's instant.

How to Build a Podcast Guest Pipeline

An empty calendar on your own show is a quiet kind of panic. The fix is a podcast guest pipeline: a steady list of future guests at different stages so you never scramble again. Here is how to build one and keep it full, from 700+ episodes.

The Newsletter That Writes Itself When You Hit Publish

Every podcaster on Kit knows the chore: an episode goes live, and the newsletter you meant to send never gets written. PodGlue now writes the draft for you.

Podcast CRM vs a Spreadsheet

I ran my whole guest list in a spreadsheet for years. It worked, until it quietly stopped. Here is the honest comparison of a podcast CRM vs a spreadsheet, where each one fits, and the moment a real system actually earns its place.

How to Follow Up With Podcast Guests

For most podcasters, the conversation ends when the recording stops. That's the mistake. Here are the follow-ups that actually matter, and the messages I send to keep the relationship alive.

The Podcast Guest Outreach Emails I Actually Send

Most guest invites fail for the same reason: they're about the host, not the guest. Here are the outreach emails I actually send, line by line, and why each line is there.

What to Look For in Podcast Guest Booking Software

Most podcast tools are built for audio. Booking and managing guests is a completely different job, and most of us do it with a patchwork of calendar, forms, email, and a spreadsheet. Here's what actually matters when you're choosing a tool for it.

How to Prep for a Podcast Interview

The difference between a flat interview and a great one is almost never the gear. It's the prep. And the prep is mostly about the guest, not your microphone. Here's what I actually do before I hit record.

Turn Your Podcast Guests Into Your Best Growth Channel

Most podcasters publish the episode and never talk to the guest again. But your past guests are the warmest network you have. They share, they refer, they come back, they vouch. Here's how to grow a podcast through the guests you already have.

How to Repurpose an Interview Episode

One good interview is a dozen pieces of content. It's also a reason to stay in touch with the guest. Here's how to repurpose a podcast episode around the person who made it, so the work gets shared by the one human most invested in seeing it do well.

The Podcast SOPs That Run My Show

A podcast SOP is the repeatable steps of your show written down so they can run without you, or be handed to help. Here's the production workflow I documented after years of being the bottleneck, and the discipline it actually takes.

The Podcast Guest One-Sheet

A podcast guest one-sheet is the single page that makes a guest easy to book and easy to promote. Here's what belongs on it, and why you actually need two: one you keep about each guest, and one your guest can share about their appearance.

How to Find and Book Podcast Guests

The best podcast guests rarely come from cold pitching. After 700+ episodes, here is where good guests actually come from and a booking workflow that makes it easy for them to say yes.

How to Manage Your Podcast Guests Without Losing Track

Nobody teaches podcasters how to keep track of the humans behind the episodes. After 700+ episodes, here is the simple system I wish I had built on day one for managing podcast guests as relationships, not bookings.

The Episode Ships. Then You Forget to Tell Your List.

Email is the channel that actually moves people. It's also the one most podcasters skip on a busy week, because it's a separate job from making the show. PodGlue now connects to Kit so it isn't.

The Guest App Got a Desk

The old guest dashboard was one long scroll you had to dig through every time. We rebuilt it as a proper workspace, sidebar navigation, separate pages, one place for everything you need as a podcast guest.

The Promo Graphic You Never Made

You recorded a great episode. You exported the audio, uploaded it, wrote the notes. Then you needed a graphic for social and you opened Canva and never came back.

The Blank Box Problem

Every press release needs an 'about the show' paragraph. We added a field for it and then watched everyone leave it empty. So we taught PodGlue to write the first draft.

The Dots Were Already There. We Just Connected Them.

A guest page that doesn't link to the episodes. An episode page that doesn't link to the guest. A podcast page that never shows who came on. The information existed. Nobody was surfacing it. We fixed that.

PodGlue Is on My Phone Now

The thoughts about my show don't happen at my desk. They happen walking to the car after a recording, in line at the coffee shop, the morning after an episode goes out. Until this week, none of them survived.

The Deploy Button That Did Nothing

For two months, every backend improvement we shipped quietly went nowhere. The code was written, reviewed, and merged. It just never reached you. Here's how we found out, and what we changed so it can't happen again.

Your Guest Appearances Deserve an Address

You've been on twelve podcasts. Maybe thirty. Where do they live? A LinkedIn post that scrolled away. A link in a bio somewhere. We just gave every guest a single address for all of it: podglue.com/@you.

The Home Screen Was a Lobby. Now It's a Desk.

PodGlue's home screen looked impressive and told you almost nothing. We rebuilt it so the first thing you see is what your show actually needs from you today.

Your Episode Is News. Nobody Told the News.

Every episode you publish has a claim, a story, or a take a journalist could run with. Most of them die in your feed because nobody wrote the press release. Now PodGlue writes it.

The Guest Can Finally See Where Things Stand

One of my favorite guests spent nine months politely asking when his episode would go live. He deserved a page, not a thread. Now every guest gets one.

The Guest Journey Now Runs Itself

A guest books a time, gets a real confirmation, gets reminded before the recording, and can even get the questions in advance. Four gaps in that journey closed in one day of parallel building.

We Were Charging You to Think

We put a monthly limit on press releases, and accidentally put it on the wrong thing. The limit was on writing the draft, not on sending it anywhere. So we moved it.

600 Episodes and Nobody Got Credit

I imported my entire back catalog into PodGlue and discovered something embarrassing: hundreds of episodes with guest names right there in the title, and not one of them linked to an actual guest. Here's what we fixed.

Eighteen Settings, Buried Two Menus Deep

PodGlue's settings page grew one feature at a time until fifteen screens were hiding behind a single tab. I built it, and I still clicked the wrong menu. So we flattened the whole thing and put a search box on top.

Not Every Conversation Is an Episode

Some of my best material was never meant for the podcast feed. Discovery calls, research interviews, the conversations I had on the side. I wanted to publish a few of those to my own site without them ever showing up on Apple or Spotify. Now I can.

I Made the Images, Then I Switched Tabs and They Were Gone

PodGlue's Social Studio made a full set of post-ready images for an episode. Then I clicked another tab to check a caption, came back, and the whole set was gone. Here is why that happened and how we fixed it.

I Watched My Product Break on a Sales Call

Four demos in one day. The product sold itself, and then the studio wouldn't connect, and a login button did nothing. Here's what the rough edges taught me that the polished parts couldn't.

You Don't Need a Strategy. You Need the Next Move.

Every podcaster gets told to grow their show. Nobody tells you which of the 26 things to actually do first. So we built a library of the plays, marked the ones PodGlue can run today, and picked one for you to start with.

The Internet Replaced Travel Agents. AI Won't Replace the Ones Who Became the Voice.

We're building a dedicated entry point for independent insurance agents introduced by APPLICA Innovations. Here's the thinking behind it, and why a weekly conversation does more for an agency right now than any ad spend.

We Kept Shipping. The Page Stopped Saying So.

Our community Release Notes sat on one version for weeks while we shipped almost every day. The work was happening. The record wasn't. Here's why it froze, and how it fixes itself now.

Our Homepage Was Too Clever. So We Rewrote All of It.

We described PodGlue like a pitch deck instead of a tool. A busy podcaster does not want a philosophy. They want their Saturday back. So we rewrote the whole homepage to say what it actually does.

When You Run More Than One Show

One podcast is a workflow you can hold in your head. Five is not. At some point you stop making episodes and start losing track of them, and you can't see it happening until a client asks where theirs is.

Is It You, or Is It Us?

When something feels off with your show, you don't want an apology. You want one honest answer: is it me, or is it them? PodGlue now has a page for exactly that.

You've Been Consistent for Three Years. Why Is Your Audience the Same Size?

Consistency is necessary. It is not sufficient. The podcasters who stay stuck aren't doing anything wrong, they're just running on a treadmill that was never built to go anywhere.

I Built a Team of AI Agents. The Best One Said Stop.

I wired up four AI agents to ship a feature while I slept. The first real job they ran, the most valuable thing any of them did was refuse to write code.

One Link for Every Live Event We'll Ever Run

Every launch, every webinar, every office hours session used to mean a new landing page. Now it's one URL that knows what state it's in.

Your Best Episode Is Invisible

The episode that would change everything for a specific listener is already in your feed. They'll never find it. Not because it's bad, because it's organized by date, and ideas don't live on a calendar.

The Day the Tolerance Ran Out

Doreca Delbridge told me her tolerance for things she doesn't enjoy started going down the year she turned forty. Three years later she's still redesigning her business around that. It's the most honest framing of a creator's career I've heard this year.

When a Beta User Tells You to Spin It Off

Adam Bird watched the PodGlue book builder for ninety seconds and said it should be a standalone product. He's probably right. That doesn't mean I'm doing it yet.

Ninety Videos of IP Collecting Dust

Doreca Delbridge isn't a podcaster. She has roughly ninety YouTube videos and a recurring philosophy she talks about across all of them. That's a book. It just hasn't been one yet.

The Book He Built in 2015 With QR Codes

Adam Bird runs a podcast network. In 2015 he cut up interviews into a book and put QR codes at the bottom of each chapter. It was before its time. The work he did then is the work PodGlue does now.

The Calendar That Went Blank on My Own Show

My scheduled posts were sitting right there in the database. The calendar showed me nothing. The reason it broke was the one thing I'm proudest of: a very long back catalog.

Your Appearance Was Already Waiting for You

You go on a podcast, the episode airs, and then... nothing you can point to. We flipped that: the episode page itself now hands the guest a ready-made page with that appearance already on it.

Your Guest Isn't Flaky. Your Reminder Is.

After 700-plus episodes, the most expensive moment in podcasting is the empty chair. The guest didn't flake. The reminder got buried in their inbox. So we moved reminders to where people actually look: their texts.

A Business Card Says What You Do. A Book Says Who You Are.

Podcasters with 200 episodes on a single topic still introduce themselves as 'I have a podcast.' The material to change that has been sitting in their archive for years.

Where Did Your Customer Feedback Actually Go?

I clicked Submit on my own product's Feedback button and watched the issue land in the wrong place. Six weeks of customer feedback had been quietly going to a team that wasn't watching.

I'd Rather Pay You 30% Than Spend That on Ads

Most podcast tools either don't have an affiliate program or pay you 10% once. PodGlue pays 30% recurring on every Amplify subscriber you refer, for as long as they stay. There's a reason for that.

Your Next Listener Is Not Searching for Podcasts

A friend told me how she'd found her current favorite show. She didn't say Apple Podcasts. She didn't say Spotify. She said she'd seen a clip on Instagram that stopped her thumb. That's not unusual anymore. It's the default.

Five Apps Open. Still Dropping the Ball.

Calendly, Zoom, Drive, Notion, a spreadsheet. The tools aren't the problem. The gaps between them are.

Help That Knows the Product

My own Help button was confidently lying to me. The fix wasn't a smarter AI. It was handing the AI the docs that were sitting on the shelf behind it.

I Was the Bottleneck in Every Part of My Show

For years I ran Hacks & Hobbies alone, host, editor, scheduler, show notes writer, follow-up person. The show didn't stall because I ran out of ideas. It stalled because I ran out of me.

The Creator Economy Just Got Its Disney. The Other 50,000 Creators Still Need an OS.

Steven Bartlett's $425M Steven.com is the most important validation the creator economy has ever received. It's also a model that, by design, will only serve a few dozen creators. Here's what the rest of us are building toward.

The Headline That Stopped Me in 2014

Instacart raised $44M and I quietly stopped building. Twelve years later, a $425M creator economy raise is teaching me the same lesson, except this time I'm not putting the laptop down.

The Guest You Booked Six Months Ago

You booked them when it felt right. Now it's the night before, the doc is blank, and you're piecing together who they are from LinkedIn and three browser tabs. This happens every episode. It doesn't have to.

Your Guest List Is the Warmest Relationship List You Own

Podcasters treat their guest roster like a CRM of strangers. It isn't. Every person on that list chose to show up, gave their time, and shared something real. Most of them never heard from you again.

You Had a Great Conversation. Then You Disappeared.

Your guest showed up, prepared, shared something real, promoted the episode, and then waited. Most hosts never came back. That's the moment it breaks.

I Wanted to Invite 50 People to a Call

What started as a weekly beta call invite turned into rebuilding how PodGlue tracks people. The smallest tasks reveal the most about what you actually need.

From 642 Megabytes to Nine

Our admin app deploy was uploading 642MB. The container only needed 9MB. The fix was one config file, and a question I'd been avoiding.

The Deploy That Never Deployed

Our CI had been silently rejecting every edge function deploy for months. I only noticed because something I shipped didn't appear.

The Email System I Almost Built Twice

I was three commits into a custom email broadcast tool when I remembered I was already paying for one that did it better. The lesson wasn't about email.

The Reason I Built PodGlue

I had 147 rows in a spreadsheet. Color-coded. Formulas. Dropdown menus. It was immaculate. It was also completely useless. That's where this started.

How to Turn Your Podcast Into a Book

The material is already there. Here's exactly how I selected ten episodes from 750+, structured each chapter into four parts, and turned hundreds of hours of conversation into a published book.

Your Archive Is Not an Archive. It's a Research Library You've Never Opened.

If you've done fifty, a hundred, three hundred episodes, you've assembled something most people never have: a structured body of expert knowledge organized by conversation. The problem is you can't get to it.

The Best Conversation You've Had Is Probably Still Waiting for a Follow-Up.

The conversation is the easy part. Showing up for it consistently, with the right guest, at the right time, that part requires something a good microphone can't give you.

Podcasting Disrupted Radio. Nobody Asked What Comes Next.

The podcast industry built better tools for making episodes. Nobody built tools for making something more durable. That's the gap PodGlue was built to close.

PodGlue vs Castmagic: Repurposing or the Whole Workflow?

Castmagic turns your audio into content. PodGlue runs the workflow around the episode. A plain look at which job you actually need solved.

You Think You're in the Audio Business. You're Not.

Most podcast tools were built to solve the audio problem. They solved it. But nobody went back and asked what happens to the conversation after it ends.

What Is Podcast Relationship Management (PRM)?

After 700-plus episodes, I kept losing track of the people I interviewed. The promises, the follow-ups, the threads. Podcast relationship management is the name I gave to the work of tending those conversations instead of forgetting them.

How I Turned 20 Podcast Episodes into a Book Manuscript in Under an Hour

I had 300+ episodes of Hacks & Hobbies sitting in a digital vault. Here’s how I finally unlocked that content and turned it into a book manuscript in 45 minutes.