S5 E5 - What Happens Next? The Question That Will Simplify Your Business

What happens next in your business? It sounds like a ridiculously vague question, but lately I have been asking it about almost everything. What happens after someone listens to your podcast? What happens after someone follows you on Instagram? What happens after you publish a piece of content? What happens after someone becomes a client? And behind the scenes, what happens after you complete the part of a process that you know how to do? I started thinking about this because I've been looking closely at the systems behind both Chaos to Clarity and Built to Scale. Recording a podcast has a very obvious beginning and end: I open Riverside, hit record, talk, and eventually hit stop. But the business doesn't end when the recording does. There is an entire journey around that episode, from production and repurposing to relationships, lead generation, follow-up, and eventually sales. And once I started asking "what happens next?" about my podcasts, I realized this isn't actually a podcast problem. There are probably places all over your business where you are personally holding everything together because the next step hasn't been clearly defined. You're remembering what needs to happen, manually moving things around, making the same decisions over and over, and carrying processes around in your head. In this episode, we're talking about how to find those places, decide what should be automated, systematize what shouldn't be automated, and create processes that don't require your brain to remember every single step. Because your business should not require you to be the integration holding everything together. **In this episode, you'll hear:** - Why I've been asking "what happens next?" about almost everything in my business. - Why recording a podcast is only one small part of the business system around it. - Why downloads and analytics don't tell you the full story of what your podcast is creating. - How content can create leads, relationships, collaborations, referrals, and sales beyond the obvious metrics. - What I discovered when I started handing parts of the Built to Scale podcast to someone else. - Why undefined processes create more mental load and decision fatigue. - How to identify what should be automated versus what still needs a human. - A simple exercise for mapping a process and finding where you're personally holding everything together. **This week's next step:** Choose one thing you recently completed in your business. It could be a podcast episode, reel, email, new client booking, sales call, or another recurring task. Map what happened from the very beginning until a few weeks afterward. Where are you personally holding everything together? What could someone else do? What could happen automatically? And where does your current process simply end because you've never decided what happens next? That's where I'd start. **Want to build a podcast that actually supports your business?** On October 14, 2026, I'm hosting a free workshop, **How to Turn Your Podcast Into a Business Growth System**. We're going to map how your podcast connects to the rest of your business so you're not spending hours creating an episode only to turn around and wonder, "Okay...now what?" # Links: **All Links:** https://maggielynnolson.com/biolink **The Built to Scale Podcast**: https://pod.link/6796758128 **Sign up for Riverside**: https://riverside.sjv.io/en1Qyz This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy