PWH 13. The 4-Step Script Formula Every DIY Podcaster Needs

If you’ve ever hit record and started rambling—or worse, not recording because you're stuck on what to say—this episode will change that for good.

Today, I’m sharing a 4-step scripting formula I learned from a top YouTube scriptwriter whose episodes have millions of views.

Target, Topic, Stakes, Transformation.

And now that you have it - You can use the same storytelling power to keep your podcast audience engaged from start to finish.

Whether you're just getting started or looking to tighten up your show flow, this episode will give you the tools to write scripts that educate, captivate, and activate your listeners.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why your listener’s desires and pain points are the starting point for every great episode.
• How to use tools like Answer the Public and ChatGPT to choose irresistible episode ideas.
• Why starting at the “foundation” builds loyalty and binge-worthy content.
• What your audience risks by not hearing this information.
• How each episode should guide your audience one step closer to the life or results they want.

Take Action:

This week, use the Script Formula: Target → Topic → Stakes → Transformation to outline your next podcast episode. Your listeners will thank you—and keep coming back for more.

Mentioned in This Episode:

• The Scriptwriter Behind YouTube's Biggest Channels (George Blackman)
• Strategic Copywriting by Edd Applegate
• AnswerThePublic.com
• Tori Dunlap’s “Financial Feminist” Podcast Series

CONTACT & MORE RESOURCES

Project Start Your Podcast Workbook

Let’s Connect!
Tag me on your latest podcast episode on Instagram or LinkedIn – I’d love to cheer you on!

Podcast Inspo:

Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap

All In with Allie

Always Supporting:

Planned Parenthood

© 2025 Whistler Media LLC. All rights reserved. No content may be reused without written consent.

Transcript

0:00  
There is a formula that the best script writers use to keep an audience engaged in whatever content they're creating. I learned this four step formula from a YouTube script writer who writes some of the most popular episodes on the internet, and I'm going to teach it to you today if you're a DIY podcaster who's tired of winging it and ready to sound like the knowledgeable teacher you know you are. This episode is for you. Welcome to podcast with her, where we publish value driven podcast episodes every week together, and we have fun and learn so much while we do it. Hi, I'm Lexi, and my mission is to teach women how to create an impactful podcast and establish authority in their professional fields. That is what podcast with her is here to help you do, speak confidently, publish consistently, and create value with your voice. So consider this your accountability check. Where are you on this podcast journey? If you're right in the beginning, that's great. The first three episodes are here to help you get started already making episodes perfect. The rest is to keep you motivated to keep going. You music.

1:26  
Today, I'm walking you through the four steps to writing a podcast script that gives your audience the education they're looking for and keeps them listening to your show. Because the truth is, without a plan. Your words can ramble, your listeners can tune out, and your podcast never lives up to its potential. Let's fix that. Grab your pen and let's write your next impactful episode together. Step One of the script formula is target. Can you answer these questions, what type of person clicks on my podcast and wants to listen to my episodes? What are the attitudes, interests, needs and wants of this person? What problems do they struggle with? What is their deepest desire? Every successful brand knows their ideal customer persona, what they struggle with, and what they want, and then the brand delivers on those wants. That is how successful brands are built. Your brand is no different than Nike selling shoes to people who want to feel as cool and stylish as the high level athletes who are wearing them. So what does your listener want? There is a book I'm diving into right now called strategic copywriting, how to create effective advertising, by Ed Applegate. I'll share the list of interests or wants that he talks about. He says advertisements must appeal to customers interests, or they will not be viewed, read or heard. Interest can be obtained by understanding the intended consumers and what appeals for to them. For instance, one of the following may appeal to them, avoiding embarrassment, avoiding housework, avoiding pain, avoiding worry, being creative, being a leader, caring for children, enjoying comfort, enjoying cooking, enjoying leisure activities, enjoying looking for bargains, gaining professional and or social prestige, getting ahead in a career, having financial security, having friends, having a happy marriage, having a nice home, improving one's education, improving one's health, improving one's physical appearance, influencing others, ensuring one's health, investing money, making money, protecting one's family, reducing weight, saving money, winning gifts or money, winning praise from others, knowing who your target audience is and what types of problems they have is step number one to providing that solution. It's number one of the script formula. It's number one of brand design, and it is the top of the funnel for all of your future content. So you must, you must know your listener to a T further down the funnel, we have step number two, which is topic. 

Now that you have knowledge about the problems your audience has, you can provide the solutions. There is a reason that answer the public is so popular. It's a website that I see mentioned by so many content creators when they are teaching others how to script videos, and it's no different for podcasting. So you can go to answerthepublic.com One you can type in your topic or your niche, and it lists the most common questions people ask on the internet about your topic. If you're able to answer these, then not only does it boost your SEO, but it's also directly answering a question that your audience wants more information about. They have a desire, they have a want, and you're answering that want. You can also use chat GPT to help find the right topics, simply using a prompt similar to I have an audience who is blank, what problems do they have? What are their deepest desires and what do they want most? What solutions can I provide? And I did this, and I'll share the feedback that I got from chatgpt. This is what I typed in. I have an audience who is DIYing their podcast production. What problems do they have? What are their deepest desires? What do they want most? What solutions can I provide? Here's what chatgpt replied with, top problems your DIY podcasters face, overwhelm with tech and tools, inconsistency in publishing, fear of sounding unprofessional, time consuming process, imposter syndrome and comparison, low engagement and unclear ROI their deepest desires to sound polished and confident, to be heard and make an impact, to grow a loyal audience, to be consistent and proud of their content, to monetize and leverage their podcast. What they want most, a repeatable system that simplifies the process, a voice that feels clear and confident, support and guidance without giving up creative control, ways to grow their podcast without burning out a brand that sounds aligned with their bigger vision. Solutions, you can provide scripts and templates take away decision fatigue and give them a head start step by step. Guides from scripting to launching clarity kills overwhelm, mindset boosts remind them their voice is worthy and needed. Time saving tools recommended, editing hacks, batching workflows and checklists. Courses or mini trainings teach systems they can DIY confidently. Community support. Offer spaces for feedback, encouragement and momentum. Brand clarity workshops help them align their show with their message. And this goals. You guys, if I I mean, I'm a DIY podcaster, and all of this is so true, and if I went into researching all these topics myself, learn the ins and outs of each of these, and then teach my listeners each of these. I have endless content right here, so buckle up, because that's exactly what I'm going to be doing. And if you're wondering where the best place to is to start now that you have elite these topic options, the best place to start is at the base of the foundation the beginners information. What does your audience need to first learn in order to continue down this path with you? And I can share an example for how one of my favorite mission driven podcasters has done this with her own content. So I follow Financial feminist by Tori Dunlap, and she has a seven episode series called financial foundations, and I took myself through these steps, and episode one starts with the bare bones, basics like setting up a high yield savings account, talking about what is high interest debt versus low interest debt and why you should pay off the high interest debt. First, how to have a money date with yourself so you can start educating yourself on your present finances. The second episode gets a little deeper about budgeting and setting financial goals for yourself. And then the later episodes go even deeper into building credit using credit cards, how to start investing and how to start a side hustle. And if these episodes were flipped around in any other order, they would not make sense. I would be confused. Her audience would be confused. She does a great job of starting at Episode One, teaching the listener about the very basics of financial foundations, and then she moves up and continues to build brick by brick. So what is the base? What is the foundation that your audience needs to know? What are the ABCs of your topic that they need to know first? That's why I started with the first three episodes of podcast with her being how to actually set up. Your Podcast. Because in all reality, that part is the easy part. The hard part is going through the Marathon of posting episodes, marketing your episodes, writing episodes that people want to keep coming back to, and actually building this thing set up. Easy. It doesn't require anything that's public facing yet. So if, if you can do that first, then that gets a lot out of the way of the tech overwhelm, the confusion. So that's why I started with that as the foundation, because then I can go deeper with you, like this episode on script writing formula how to actually write the episode. But first you need to start publishing episodes that so that you can actually get into a rhythm and you have a place to practice. That's why we're here.

10:57  
And if you're really strategic about this, you can take one topic that your target audience has questions about and make it into a series like Tori Dunlap did, and this is a great way to educate from the ground up and provide depth on each topic. It gets your audience to listen to all the episodes in a series so that, so they can get the wins from completing it, from getting the comprehensive overview of the topic you're speaking about. That is topic. Let's talk about step number three. Step number three is the stakes. It's not the wins, but it's the opposite of the wins. What are the risks? What are they losing out on by not having the education that you are going to provide with your content with Tory Dunlap's podcast series, if I didn't listen, I wouldn't have the financial foundation I have today. I would feel incompetent about what to do with my money. I would still be flailing. I would be confused. I would have no strategy. I would not be making more money. I would not be investing my money, those those desires, those interests that I talked about in strategic copywriting, a lot of them are centered around money. So she has a great topic and target audience that she's talking to, and the stakes of not listening to her are not having a strategy or not having a financial foundation. So with your topic, the stakes are what your audience fears. It's the opposite of their wants. So with that list, the opposite of some of those would be feeling embarrassed, feeling pain, feeling worry, not being creative, not being a leader, not enjoying comfort, not enjoying your leisure activities because you have to work all the damn time and you're stressed because you don't have a podcast system, not gaining professional or social prestige, not getting ahead in your career, not having financial security, not having friends, not having a nice home, not improving your education, not improving your health, not improving Your physical appearance, not being able to influence others, aka, hey, we have a four step process to influencing your listeners to actually want to engage your episodes, not investing money, not making money, not protecting your family, not reducing weight, not saving money, not winning gifts, not winning praise from others. One of the reasons that I love podcasting is because when I tell people I have a podcast, they're like, Wow, that's so cool. Guess what? I like praise. It feels good to produce things. So keep that list in mind. What are they missing out on by not getting this content knowing their fears helps you address the bullet points that you might have otherwise just overlooked. It also helps you connect with your audience on a deeper level, because you're tapping into their worries. You're helping to educate them away from their worries with your content. And if you're able to do this, then you're able to provide step number four to them. Step number four is transformation, whether it's big or seemingly small, each piece of your content should leave your audience feeling somehow changed. They're moving closer and closer towards what they want. For my audience of DIY podcasters, you want impact and you want profits, and that is what I'm here to teach. You want to impact your audience by providing education. Foundation that helps your listeners so they come back for more. So that's why I wrote this episode, to help you write a more impactful podcast script, continue to gather an audience, and then this translates into profits, which I will also continue to teach about. But today it was a foundational episode. You needed to know how to write an episode, and now that you have this script formula, you have a transformation yourself. You have armed yourself with a four step process that you can use to write better content. So how do you use this? How do you actually use this script? Formula? These four steps do not have to be in order, but they should be used throughout your content. If you go back to the introduction, you can hear this formula in action. I addressed who you the listener are? A DIY podcaster. I introduced the topic of today's episode. I also talked about the stakes if you don't learn this formula, wasting your time energy having confusing podcast episodes, and the transformation that you will have for scripting your episode, saved time, saved energy. Clear episodes listeners who are experienced with transformation and they come back for more. So now you have a formula to write better podcast episodes. Target topic, stakes, transformation. Try it out for your next episode. As always, there are more resources and ways to get in touch with me in the show notes, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Until then, go and value your voice. Cheers you.