Podcast Workflows with Joe Casabona (Amp My Pod Guest Expert Call)

Sarah [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the amp my pod community. Today, we have Joe Casabona. I'm excited to have him on. I love your hats, by the way.

Joe Casabona [00:00:08]:

Thank you very much.

Sarah [00:00:10]:

They stand out in the crowd. You know, like, Larry Roberts, red hot red hat Larry?

Joe Casabona [00:00:15]:

Yes. Yeah.

Sarah [00:00:16]:

Mostly red hot Larry. You could be, like, yellow hat Joe.

Joe Casabona [00:00:21]:

I picked the yellow for that reason. I, I used to wear fedoras. I feel like it fits. I'm, like, an Italian cigar smoking guy, but they got super hot in the summer.

Lynette [00:00:34]:

Oh, yeah.

Joe Casabona [00:00:35]:

Or, like, if I was on stage speaking with lights, and then I I went to a Castro cap, and I really like that style. That's, like, the military style. K. Sarah, I think you're wearing one right now, actually.

Sarah [00:00:46]:

Am I? Yeah. I just started wearing hats because I kept my hair short, but it was too short and shorter than I wanted. Uh-huh. So now I'm wearing hats.

Joe Casabona [00:00:54]:

Nice.

Sarah [00:00:54]:

Till it grows out.

Joe Casabona [00:00:56]:

But I'll I mean, I love the I'm usually wearing a Yankee hat, and so I decided to go with a branded Major League Baseball style, new era cap.

Sarah [00:01:06]:

Yeah.

Joe Casabona [00:01:07]:

New branding.

Sarah [00:01:08]:

That's awesome. Well so today, we're talking about podcast workflows, and you are like the king of podcasting workflows. Like that's your whole niche. So let's see, where should we begin this conversation? Well, first I'd be curious how you even got into talking about podcast workflows.

Joe Casabona [00:01:30]:

Yeah. So I think, I mean, from a practical standpoint, my background is actually in software engineering and I am an extrovert. And so I love podcasting. And my brain thinks like a computer thinks, thinks heavy quotes there. And so it felt like a really good fit from a kind of what's my unique offering or skillset within the podcasting space. But the reason I decided to really double down on this was, and Sarah, I'm sure you've heard this story before, but I I have now I have 3 small children during the pan before the pandemic, I had one small child and my wife's a nurse and she was working a lot and I therefore was not working a lot. And in November 2020, I I had a panic attack because I wasn't producing my podcast and a lot of sponsorship money came from there. And my income was, like, half of our income.

Joe Casabona [00:02:26]:

And I was just very stressed. And my daughter came up to me and brought me a bottle of water and and said, it's okay, daddy. It's gonna be okay. And I was like, well, this is not okay to me. Right? She shouldn't be taking care of me. I'm her dad. And so I realized that if I was going to survive as a business owner and a dad, I would have to take everything off as much as I can off of my plate. So after that, I was like, okay.

Joe Casabona [00:02:53]:

I have some automations in place. Let's just go nuts. Let what can I automate? If I can't automate it, can I delegate it? And so I hired a VA. I really leaned into the automation tools, and now it's basically, like, I record my podcast. I write the intro, and then I ship it off. And I I don't see it again until it's live. So the skill set was there. And then there was the real life forcing function that made me really double down on it.

Joe Casabona [00:03:24]:

And so I started sharing it. Lots of people, it resonated with a lot of people as podcasters are busy doing not just their podcast probably. And so this is this is something that I know a lot of podcasters need. There's a need for this in the podcasting space.

Sarah [00:03:42]:

Mhmm. Yeah. So okay. So you don't edit your own show or anything like that then?

Joe Casabona [00:03:49]:

Okay. No. And that was, like, even before 2020. I've been podcasting since 2012. And so 2012, my show was called Today I Learned. It was me and a bunch of friends talking about things we didn't know anything about. And I just released that Skype call Yes. Ecamm recorder style.

Joe Casabona [00:04:11]:

So that was not very good because the topics weren't good. We didn't know what we were doing, and it was, like, 5 people. And the 5 people on a podcast is just awful, unless you have a really good moderator, and I'm not that. So 2016, I I launched a new podcast. It was called How I Built It. It launched 3 months before the NPR podcast, but I got 3 episodes into that. And I had a guest who said a lot. I don't usually edit out filler words even though it's super easy to do today with, like, Descript.

Sarah [00:04:43]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:04:44]:

Because I think it sounds unnatural. We breathe and we say filler words, but the 4 or 5 umms in a row

Sarah [00:04:55]:

Oh.

Joe Casabona [00:04:55]:

Gets very distracting. And so I was editing that, and I was and it took me I think it was a half hour interview, and it took me, like, 2 hours to edit it. And I'm like, this is a very bad use of my time.

Sarah [00:05:07]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:05:08]:

And so I found a and I found an editor on Fiverr, and I was like, if I'm gonna keep podcasting, I can never edit. But luckily, my show is sponsored from before episode 1. I could offset the costs.

Sarah [00:05:22]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:05:23]:

If I was a hobbyist, I might not have cared, but I did care about the audio quality and the experience. And I mean, that's probably why my show grew the way it did and how I managed to get 5 figure sponsors pretty quickly, but editing was never, never my jam.

Sarah [00:05:45]:

Yeah. So do you still use the Fiverr person, or do you use a company now to edit?

Joe Casabona [00:05:50]:

So the the person I originally hired, I don't anymore because they were doing this thing where they would mark the job complete on Fiverr so they wouldn't get dinged, but then send it to me a couple days later. And I'm like, I don't if you need more time, that's fine, but don't do that. So I have a new editor now and I've been with him for like 7 years.

Sarah [00:06:09]:

I, oh, wow.

Joe Casabona [00:06:10]:

Yeah. I found him through some other marketplace or whatever. And, yeah, it's great. He does video now too. So it's, that was the big thing holding me back from releasing video was I didn't wanna hire a second. It wasn't about cost obviously, because it costs more for him to do audio and video. I'd have to send him the audio and he'd have to master it and then we'd have to send it to the video editor and he'd have to chop up the video and then send the audio back to my editor for whatever, whatever. The juice wasn't worth the squeeze to me at that point.

Joe Casabona [00:06:42]:

Now, after podcast movement and learning some stats and seeing things, I think you do need video. But I think if you don't have an editor already, you find an editor who can do audio on video.

Sarah [00:06:53]:

Yeah. Exactly. The fewer people you have to communicate with them, step 1 is this person's stuff that yeah. You become a mess.

Joe Casabona [00:07:01]:

It's a considerable cost. My bill from my and he edits multiple shows for me. But my bill from my editor this month was $700, but that's also audio video for a bunch of shows. Next month, it won't be as heavy because it usually ebbs and flows like that. Right? It probably averages to, like, $300 a month or whatever. But

Sarah [00:07:20]:

Yeah. That's not bad. You said 3 shows for audio video 700? Okay.

Joe Casabona [00:07:25]:

Yeah. So one is one is audio and video. The other is just audio. Mhmm. But the other is me and my friend are interviewing local folks, and there are a lot more technical issues and cleanup required. So it's definitely a harder job to edit that show. But yeah, I mean, I think it's totally reasonable. And if I want him to do an advanced edit where he scrubs through the whole episode, he can do that.

Joe Casabona [00:07:52]:

Usually it's just, I mean, you've seen the way I structure my shows. So I try to do a lot of front loading. This is the other thing to keep editing costs or time down. Right? This is one of those important workflows.

Sarah [00:08:04]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Casabona [00:08:05]:

I I do a lot of front loading to make sure we have a good structure to the show so we don't have to rearrange things. I've been trying to be better about not going off on tangents so that we don't have to edit those out later. But I also am pretty, I take good notes during the call or during the interview so that if we do go on a tangent, I kind of timestamp it and Riverside and Descript make it really easy to find the actual timestamp. There's a good mix of tools and preplanning and editing so that I don't have to be like, Hey, we talked about bicycles for 15 minutes. Mhmm. Cut that out. We're like in the middle of this point my guest was making, they just started talking about how they hate turnips. So can you find that part and cut that out, but merge it together so it makes sense? Like, there's not a lot of that happening.

Sarah [00:09:02]:

So tell us a little bit about your preshow workflow. Oh, that rhymed preshow workflow.

Joe Casabona [00:09:09]:

Preshow workflow. I'm super bullish on solo episodes lately because everyone does interview shows and and peep I mean, you and I have been doing it a long time, and so we've learned how to become good interviewers, but most people are not good interviewers. And so, or most people aren't listening, which makes you a bad interviewer. Right? You're just waiting to ask your next question. That's not a really good example. This is politically agnostic, even though the people I'm about to name, people have strong opinions about. But when Donald Trump did the thing with, Elon Musk, Elon Musk was interviewing him, but Elon Musk is a god awful interviewer. Like, he was just like, yes.

Joe Casabona [00:09:52]:

Mhmm. Oh, yes. And you also said that. And I'm like, this is not this isn't good content regardless of how you feel about what they're actually saying. This is just it's just like one guy talking for a long time and then another guy going, yes. Oprah was an actual good interviewer. Andrew Warner is an actual good interviewer. Right? Anyway, I think that most people do interview shows because they feel they have to, but then most people also there's a, a big learning curve for being a good interviewer.

Joe Casabona [00:10:23]:

Okay. That was more than 10 seconds. And I apologize for that. But I really felt like I had to put that out there. Pre show workflow. Once a let's let's go the guest route first. Once a guest books with me, part of the automation is a Google Doc is created from a template that I use, and I will I think I can share my screen here. So what I'll do is I will show for the p this is is this does this go out audio only at all?

Sarah [00:10:55]:

No. Video as well. So I will remove myself from the stage so that you, when you present, it'll be full screen.

Joe Casabona [00:11:02]:

Cool. Awesome. And then I can do this. Yeah. Cool. So Emily Aborn is someone I just interviewed and she's an absolute delight, Strongly recommend her. But when someone books on my podcast, a document with this is generated based on what they filled out. I break the episode down into 3 acts.

Joe Casabona [00:11:26]:

Classic three act structure is the setup, the conflict, and the resolution. And so the setup is why is marketing important? Why can't I just build something? And if it's good enough, people will come. Act 2 is a conflict. And for me, this is usually just an obnoxious question, or it's an inoculating question. Right? In journalism, there's the idea of the inoculation effect. So when you're doing a piece, like an article or a video piece, you present your thesis, Right? Whatever you're talking about, and then you think about the questions that the audience is going to ask, and you answer them before they have the opportunity to ask them. So you're inoculating them against the the things that will cut against your credibility. Right? So if if I do this interview and I'm just like, yeah, market without social media, right, people would immediately be like, well, you need social media.

Joe Casabona [00:12:23]:

Right? So I wanna ask that as part of act 2, the conflict, but also the inoculation effect is is happening here because someone's listening going, well, I need to do TikTok videos. Everyone says I have to, and so we kinda get into why. Maybe you don't have to. Right? And then act 3 is the resolution for me in my in this show, the resolution is actionable advice. Okay. You have convinced us that we need to do x, y, and z. How do we get started? And then ProShow is, I guess, that's a little bit act 4. Now you can see throughout, right, that I have notes here as, as I'm talking or as my guest is talking, I'll write edit.

Joe Casabona [00:13:03]:

I think I have a cold open note here. But the pre show process is mostly this. It's create the 3 acts and then the story beats for each act that we can go through. And again, that's all based on oh, where are you show notes template. There we are. That's all based on this. So with Zapier or Make, you have these little template tags here. And with the make automation I use, these things get filled in dynamically.

Joe Casabona [00:13:37]:

And then the rest of this stuff, I, I fill in myself. Right? So act 1, act 2, act 3, the pro show topic, And then edit notes. So something that's changed in my process recently, and this is postproduction, so maybe we can touch on this in a minute. But I I include the edit notes here too as well. So that's the preshow process. And I guess the last thing I'll do here since now we're talking kind of in generalities of sorts is I can actually show you where this this magic happens. Here's what happens. This is gonna look way more complicated than it needs to be for anybody watching.

Joe Casabona [00:14:12]:

But when someone books a call or an interview for the streamline solopreneur, these these things happen. Right? So this is all part of the pre call. Create that Google Doc from the template I just showed you. Add them to the Notion database. And then this send email is to add to my task manager to remind me to do the post show summary. I wanna do that as close to the day of as possible. For two reasons, I'd like to do it on the day of because now there's video component, and I'm I'm, like, conscious that I'm wearing I could be wearing 2 different shirts within the span of, like, 10 seconds. But it's mostly because I wanna try to remember the emotion of the interview as well as because I could just put it through whatever, chat GPT, and be like, hey.

Joe Casabona [00:15:11]:

What were the summarize this episode. What were the important parts? First of all, I asked well, I use perplexity. So I asked my AI assistant to do that, and it's like, I don't know. So they just told me about me. I'm like, that's not that's not good. So I wanna do it as close to the interview as possible so I can remember the excitement I felt during the interview and the part that really lit me up so that I can highlight that in the intro bumper, which I'll record and in the text, which I'll write. And then the top takeaways, I will use AI for because it'll just be, like, give me 6 top takeaways, and I'll pick my 3 favorite based on what overlaps with what I wrote down. So that's the whole preshow process.

Joe Casabona [00:15:55]:

For solo episodes, it's moderate it's somewhat similar except all of that stuff happens in Notion in my episode planner. But I still try to do the 3 act structure for that. What I'm toying with after podcast movement and some of the discussions I had was instead of 3 acts have segments. And so instead of me talking for 20 to 30 minutes about some topic, it'll be like, okay. In this segment, I'm gonna talk about a thing I'm thinking about. In this topic, I'll highlight an automate or in this segment, I'll highlight an automation. And in the 3rd segment, I'll highlight a listener mail or something like that. So I'm I'm toying with that idea.

Joe Casabona [00:16:39]:

Feels like I should do that, but I haven't implemented it yet. So to be determined.

Sarah [00:16:47]:

Yeah. That's awesome. So you use make over Zapier, it looks like?

Joe Casabona [00:16:53]:

Yeah. I I mostly did that because make gives me the same stuff that I need for, like, 90% of the cost. Something that's yeah. Something that Zapier does that annoys me is I understand giving, like, 1 or 2 months free if you pay annually, but Zapier is, like, 40% discount if you pay annually. I really don't like that, and I get why they do it. And hopefully, they get why I don't like that. Right? If I wanted to pay for Zapier for a year, it would be, like, $500. Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:17:30]:

But because I was paying monthly, it ended up being whatever. Oh, I might have done the math wrong there. Maybe it was it would it'd have been, like, 90 9.40 so maybe it would have been, like, 3 and change versus, like, 450 or $500. Right? Mhmm. It would have it was a significant increase. Mhmm. Whereas make, I pay $11 a month.

Sarah [00:17:54]:

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Joe Casabona [00:17:55]:

Yeah. My trade off is that Make is not, I would say, not as user I would say the learning curve is higher. Yeah. But because I think like a computer, that's fine. I think it probably took me about a week to figure out the the difference, not a straight week, but a week working on it here and there, to figure out the main differences between Zapier and Make and then understand how things work. Right? Because with the with the the main difference is that with Zapier, they charge you per task Mhmm. Which is each time an automation runs. The whole automation.

Joe Casabona [00:18:33]:

Right? So if you have a 3 step automation and it runs once, that's one task. Mhmm. With Zapier nope. With Make, am I confusing myself right now? I was just talking about Zapier.

Sarah [00:18:47]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:18:48]:

Zapier charges you per task. You can have multiple steps per task. With Make, they charge you per operation where each step in the automation is an operation. So with Zapier, you get, I think, on the base I think on the free plan, you get, like, a a 100. On the base plan, let's say you get a 1,000 tasks per month.

Lynette [00:19:15]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:19:15]:

Right? So that's all of your automations running up to a 1000 times.

Sarah [00:19:21]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:19:22]:

With Make, you get 10,000 operations.

Sarah [00:19:27]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:19:28]:

But if the one I was just showing has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 operations in the single automation. And so this automation costs 5 operations to run, which means if I'm running it every minute, even if all the steps don't trigger, at least one step triggers. Right? Because it has it still has to check for something. So Zapier abstracts that away. And for some people, that's still that's totally worth it, and I that makes sense. Plus, they just rolled out a new pricing structure that makes the plan more affordable. But it's it's still, like, $20 per month if you pay for a year and, like, $30 if you pay $30 per month if you pay for per $20 per month if you pay for the year, $30 per month if you pay monthly.

Sarah [00:20:24]:

Well

Joe Casabona [00:20:25]:

That's just annoyingly aggressive to me. When I I'm working on an automate like, a automation for podcasters course and I'm gonna use Zapier. Right? Automation is already scary to a lot of people. And if I have to be like, well, operations are like this and then make and you have to make sure you don't run them too often.

Lynette [00:20:47]:

That's that's

Joe Casabona [00:20:48]:

gonna be too scary for people where it's like Zapier. It's like, set this up. Never think about it again.

Sarah [00:20:54]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:20:54]:

So

Sarah [00:20:55]:

Yeah. So speaking of software and stuff, what other software do you use pre, mid, post, just to organize your entire workflow from start to finish?

Joe Casabona [00:21:08]:

Great question. So I use Notion for most things. I'm actually working on a video. I'm trying to grow my mailing list, and I'm in I don't know if Chanel Basileo, Growth in Reverse. It's it's an excellent newsletter. It's like she will reverse engineer how people grew their newsletters. Super deeply researched, but I'm in her community, and we're just talking about a bunch of what's working for us and someone's YouTube is the number one growth driver for my mailing list. And she said, well, it's really one video where I walk through a template I made, and then in the description, they can join my mailing list to get the template.

Joe Casabona [00:21:43]:

And I'm like, that's so smart, and I'm such a dumb dumb for not realizing that I should do that. So I'm gonna make a video on this, but it my Notion planner is kind of the linch pin of everything. And, again, I can I'll share this. Let me hide my screen.

Sarah [00:21:59]:

Let me remove myself again from the

Joe Casabona [00:22:05]:

So this is let me I'll go out of dark mode. I thought on. I'm usually in dark mode when I record so that there's not a white shine on my face while I'm recording. But this is a little easier. Right? So okay. So you can see here, first of all, right, each these guests match 1 to 1 with the Google Docs you saw. The Google Docs are an entry here, and so I see a full overview of my show for the next 4 months. Right? In December, I take a break, and so I'll kind of reset all of this.

Joe Casabona [00:22:39]:

And you can see some of these are solo episodes. And then inside Notion, I have these templates based on the type of episode. And so this is one I need to rework, But for solo episode planner, I still have this postproduction notes, act 1, act 2, act 3, and then the pro show topic. So when I'm preparing a solo episode, it's here. It's all here. Right? The beautiful part of this and all of it being in Notion is Notion's built in automations are trash. I'm not even gonna mince words. They're they're trash.

Joe Casabona [00:23:18]:

So the nice thing about Notion is that while their internal automations are trash, their API, right, their external automations are pretty robust. And so there's there's one here where when a new here we go. Needs edit. Right? I will put episodes into Dropbox into a folder called called needs editing. It looks for a specific file called the instructions file because once I do the instructions file, we know it's ready to go. Once it sees that, it'll email my editor and say, okay. A new episode's ready for edit, and then it'll update the status of the episode. Right? So I never have to look at so interview scheduled.

Joe Casabona [00:24:07]:

So if I were to add instructions for episode 436 to that Dropbox folder, this would automatically get updated to out out for edit. And the same thing on the way back, my editor knows to put it back into the publishing folder, and so then the The status would get updated to ready for scheduling, and then it would get assigned to my VA. And she would make the graphics using the information here in the SOP we created. So Notion's a big part of that. Now I will say, right, there's a risk to the longer the chain of your automations is. If one breaks, it's all going to break. If a tool has built in automations, use those. Oh, what's a good example of this? I think cal.com is what I use for scheduling.

Joe Casabona [00:25:02]:

It is completely free. They make their money off of Teams. And something I I really like about cal.com, which you also have in Calendly and the other tools is I can send communications to my guests or to whoever books right from cal.com. Right? Oops. Cal.com is in the workflows section here. Streamline solopreneur follow-up triggers 1 after 1 hour after event. Now you can't see my screen. Here we go.

Joe Casabona [00:25:32]:

Streamline solopreneur follow-up happens 1 hour after the event ends. I email them saying thanks so much for coming on the show. If you haven't already given me your headshot, upload it to this folder. Also, what's your address so I can send you a thank you note? I used to do this with Zapier, but I don't have to do that anymore. Right? For a long time, my guest outreach was automated through this Airtable base where I would build a personalized email inside Airtable, but Airtable has really good built in automations. And so Airtable would send the email, which means that I wouldn't have to worry about Zapier, the connection breaking. Right? And then, like, 20 outreach emails not going out. If you can keep it to one tool, I would strongly recommend it.

Joe Casabona [00:26:27]:

But Make and Zapier are both reliable automation tools to connect multiple things. If that makes sense.

Sarah [00:26:38]:

Yes. I haven't, well, I thought I had looked into Cal, but maybe I haven't. So I use tidy Cal, which is an AppSumo product, a one time fee

Joe Casabona [00:26:47]:

Mhmm.

Sarah [00:26:47]:

Kinda similar to Calendly, but I need to look into Cal. So you do they have a free plan or

Joe Casabona [00:26:53]:

Yeah. I'm on their free plan Okay. And it's extremely generous. I was on Calendly. Mhmm. And there was something my friend, Sarah Loretta, told me that cal.com she told me about cal.com. And something that cal.com does is charge a no show fee. So if someone books time on your calendar and they don't show up and they don't tell you they're not gonna show up, then they book then they get charged.

Sarah [00:27:16]:

Oh, interesting.

Joe Casabona [00:27:17]:

I thought that was pretty interesting. But then looking into it, I saw not only do they do everything that Calendly does that I wanted to do, but they also have list the layout for SavvyCal that I really like.

Sarah [00:27:28]:

Oh, yeah.

Joe Casabona [00:27:29]:

And it's free because they charge for Teams. Right? So if you round robin, whatever

Lynette [00:27:34]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:27:34]:

That's gonna cost money. I was like, okay. I can easily move from Calendly to Cal. It's gonna save me $20 a month or whatever. It plays more nicely with Make than Calendly does as well. So I was also able to simplify my automations. I'm like, save money. Great.

Joe Casabona [00:27:51]:

But also simplify my automations, that's even better.

Sarah [00:27:55]:

Mhmm. Yeah. I need to look into that because I don't think with tidy cow that they have the thing where you can send an automated follow-up post show email. I don't think, although, you know what though? I think I, so my current host is Captivate and they, so people actually schedule now that I think about it, they schedule in through the captivate link. Anyway yeah. And I just use TidyCal for other things. But, yeah, I'm gonna look into Cal. So okay.

Sarah [00:28:27]:

So you use MakeCal Notion. What other software do you use or recommend?

Joe Casabona [00:28:36]:

So I'm currently using Riverside for recording. I like Riverside.

Sarah [00:28:41]:

Mhmm.

Joe Casabona [00:28:42]:

But a lot of questions I got at podcast movement during my brain dates were around editing. And as you know, I strongly recommend hiring an editor. If you're not ready to, I can't force anybody to. I do recommend descript just makes editing simple edits, I would say, especially for solo shows, so much easier. Right? And even sometimes when I get I've been trying to keep my episodes to, like, 35 minutes, which is hard because I'm a blabbermouth or I talk a lot. I don't let secrets out, I guess. But so when I get an episode back and it's, like, 40 or more from my editor, I don't have him do this. I don't this is too fuzzy of a request, I think, for most people, unless you work Uh-huh.

Joe Casabona [00:29:29]:

Really closely with your editor. But it's like cut out stuff that you don't think is relevant. Right? My editor probably would know because, again, I've been with him for 7 years and he listens to every episode, but that's a pretty fuzzy request. Well, they had this conversation about fountain pens. Does Joe wanna keep it in? Right? So when I get it back, usually, if it's or lately, I should say. If it's more than, like, 40 minutes, I will load it into Descript. And using the notes that I took, right Mhmm. I will look for things to cut out.

Joe Casabona [00:30:08]:

And so one time, I'll say, I interviewed Mike Schmitz. He is a co host on the Focused podcast, and, he does a lot of stuff with Obsidian. And we were talking about personal knowledge management, and I kid you not, we had a 12 minute conversation about fountain pens and then running. Yeah. Because he runs. I I ran well, running is not the right term. I have participated in half marathons and completed them. Yeah.

Joe Casabona [00:30:39]:

Right. I was acting like I was running, but the speed was not a run. So I thought, I love this conversation, and I left it in for members. But for the main show, I was like, this is irrelevant to what we're actually talking about. The completion rate for that episode is 68% versus, like, 45. There's a very obvious benefit to that. I try to keep it to 35. If it's, like, 37, I'm not gonna look for 2 minutes to cut.

Joe Casabona [00:31:08]:

But if I'm, like, 5 minutes over, then I'm, like, okay. What? Surely, there's something I can cut out. So you can you saw on the note with Emily Aborn, I had edit question mark dog talk. I told a side story about how I don't this is gonna upset you probably and everybody. This it upsets everybody.

Sarah [00:31:26]:

Yeah.

Joe Casabona [00:31:26]:

I don't like dogs. I don't like animals.

Sarah [00:31:29]:

Really?

Joe Casabona [00:31:29]:

I'm not an animal person.

Sarah St John [00:31:31]:

Aw.

Joe Casabona [00:31:32]:

And so I talked about this. My wife wants a dog and my kids want a dog and I don't want a dog, so we're gonna compromise and we'll get a dog because I'm still a good dad and husband. So but we talk a little bit there for that. I'm, like, feels like this anecdote is not really adding to the the actual conversation. And while there is benefit in letting your personality shine, we were in the thick of the main point of the episode. Mhmm. And so I didn't wanna distract from that, or I don't wanna just so so when I get it back from edit, I'll listen or maybe I'll just tell him to cut it. Right? Yeah.

Joe Casabona [00:32:12]:

This is this should go. Mhmm. My my listeners, if they've been with me a long time, have heard me say this before. So that's the kind of stuff that, like, with Descript, my workflow is vastly improved because I don't have to load it into Logic or GarageBand or Audacity or whatever and scrub through or even get it transcribed and try to line up the transcript. I can just search for compromise and get a dog. Because I, I know I said that. Right?

Sarah [00:32:44]:

Yeah. Yeah. I love the script. That's one of the tools I use. Okay. Let's see. So I guess you don't probably use any post production tools because you have an editor. So what, what does your post production process look like?

Joe Casabona [00:33:00]:

It's pretty light. I really don't see the episode again. Oh, so I was talking about, they were talking about the streamline solopreneur here for, for podcast workflows, which is a podcast I host, and that's mostly a solo show. I do I do have post production for that. Right? Because that is either fully scripted based on a blog post I wrote or very tightly outlined. And so with that, I will take the file. I'm recording video. So I'll take the file, extract the audio, which Ecamm Live, that's the tool I've been using to show my screen and stuff like that.

Joe Casabona [00:33:39]:

They they record audio and video separately if you want it. And so I take the the audio. I put it into Logic Pro. I have a chain of events that I have already tuned for my voice. So I I basically just drop the file in and then press and then export it, applying those filters. And that's, like, mouth declicking. Right? Because I hit that pretty hard, and I hate that. I'm really I'm just really sorry that you had to hear that.

Joe Casabona [00:34:05]:

So I hit that pretty hard and sometimes I'll take a big breath. Regular breathing is fine. That's people do that. But the big breaths there like that I want I want those taken out. Right? Because people will say, oh, well, you but you breathe in real life. Right? I said that, but you're not breathing in someone's ear in real life. That's weird. Right? And people are listening on headphones.

Joe Casabona [00:34:24]:

So, anyway, I'll put it through Logic Pro. I'll take that that bounced audio, it's called. Right? And I'll I'll put it back into the video. And, usually, that's all I really need to do because I I keep it tight during the recording. Or I'm live streaming it. Right? And so if I get a bunch of questions in a live stream, which is rare but not very common, I'll cut out the questions and and do the sign off and then put the sign off back. But, again, that's pretty light because I do a bunch of preproduction planning. Right? It's kind of I view it as the difference between, like, shooting a movie and doing, like, a live theater show.

Joe Casabona [00:35:11]:

Right? Both require a ton of work. But with a movie, there's gonna be editing. There's gonna be VFX. There's just a bunch of post production that you're gonna have to do. And if you're try if you're telling a story or you're doing some sort of audio drama or fiction, you're gonna need that or it's your show will greatly benefit from that. But for the information transfer sort of stuff that I do, I can view it more of of the I'm going to see Les Mis this weekend. Pretty psyched about it because I haven't seen that live yet. And so they rehearse and memorize their lines, and they do a whole lot of preproduction stuff so that they can deliver a really good live show.

Joe Casabona [00:35:56]:

And that's the process that works best for me. I wanna make sure, especially for my solo shows where I can control everything. I can't control what the guest is gonna say all the time, so I have to edit there. But for me, I got a good setup. I don't have a dog. And so I have children, but they know when the recording light's on to not pretend an earthquake is happening right above me. But I have good equipment that filters that out. And so my solo shows it's all almost all preproduction work, and then it's clean up for postproduction.

Joe Casabona [00:36:31]:

So I guess in this live theater example, it's making sure the microphones are on properly or throwing it through a live filter to make it less echoey. Right? Getting the lighting right. That sort of stuff.

Sarah [00:36:43]:

Yeah. So now does your editor also do the graphics and stuff? I can't remember if you do episode specific artwork or social media posts or any of that kind of stuff.

Joe Casabona [00:36:54]:

I don't do social media posts. I don't think that they are. I haven't found them to be helpful.

Sarah [00:37:01]:

Yeah. Yeah. What I'll

Joe Casabona [00:37:02]:

do sometimes is say, like, hey. I just interviewed blah blah about blah blah. It's really cool to hear what the takeaways. If that sounds interesting to you, go to head over to streamline.fm or whatever to to subscribe. Or I will do a full solo episode for podcast workflows, and then I'll give the minute overview of that or vice versa. Right? I'll release the short form, and I'll be, there's more to this. It's, like, similar topics, but not reused content. Right? Because unless you are a huge podcast, sharing clips on social media is not going to get you more listeners.

Joe Casabona [00:37:41]:

And if you want the content out there, you should make the content for the platform. Again, going to my movie versus live theater, you can watch a recording of okay. Hamilton's a really good example of this. Right? If someone had just sat with a camcorder in the first row for Hamilton, that would be a terrible viewing experience on your TV. But what they did was set up a bunch of cameras and mic everybody up a certain way and edit the shots to make it more desirable. They repurpose that content for the medium that they were putting the content out on. Right? When I go to the theater, I'm not expecting to see the show in multiple shots because I'm sitting in a seat, and I'm not an obnoxious idiot who's gonna just move seats all the time. Right? That would be crazy.

Joe Casabona [00:38:39]:

So if you wanna leverage short form, definitely leverage short form, but having a short form clip of just minute of a 60 minute interview, that ain't it. I don't like, that I don't think that's gonna do it. So instead, it's like, hey. I just recorded a podcast episode where I talked about 3 things about editing. You should do x. You should do y. You should do z. I just said 3 things so I coulda counted it down.

Joe Casabona [00:39:05]:

If you wanna learn more, like, head over to podcastworkflows.com. Right? Even that probably doesn't work on TikTok. You want a complete thought in your short form videos. I think that's the best way to do it because then you're just being top of mind. And then people are like, oh, this guy looks interesting. What else is he doing? Right? And because I'm gonna beat these analogies to death, a good analogy of this is is Coca Cola. Right? They advertise at the Super Bowl every year. They do not need to advertise.

Joe Casabona [00:39:40]:

No one since 1947 seen a Coca Cola commercial and go, what is that? I've never heard of this soda before. They do it because they want you always thinking about Coca Cola. You just watched the Pepsi halftime show. Well, now it's the Apple Music halftime show. But you just watched the Pepsi halftime show, and you're about to see a really good Coca Cola ad. Well, now you're thinking about Coca Cola. Maybe you go get one from your fridge. And they're not tracking John Boy Media right now.

Joe Casabona [00:40:14]:

They're advertising Mountain Dew. And the call to action is literally, if you don't know where to get Mountain Dew, go literally anywhere. You'll like, is Mountain Dew tracking that? Absolutely not. Right? They just want the John Boy Media guys talking about Mountain Dew because they know that John Boy Media's demographic is is mostly male, let's say, between 18 30. And that's their demo for drinking Mountain Dew. That's how I think you should approach short form video for your podcast. Not like, oh, I created this video and now people are gonna click and watch it. It's just gonna be like, oh, I want people thinking about me and the things that I talk about.

Sarah [00:40:56]:

Yeah. That's what I feel too is clips or anything on social media is more just to remind people that you exist. It's not really gonna convert many new people over to listen to your podcast. But

Joe Casabona [00:41:09]:

I mean, imagine you walk imagine you're walking your dog and someone in full marathon gears. Hey. Run a marathon with me right now. I'm not I just say lunch, I have a dog. I'm wearing jeans.

Sarah [00:41:20]:

Yeah. I'm not

Joe Casabona [00:41:21]:

ready to run a marathon.

Sarah [00:41:22]:

That's like would not be

Lynette [00:41:23]:

able to

Sarah [00:41:23]:

do that.

Lynette [00:41:24]:

He's a pug.

Joe Casabona [00:41:24]:

So now you're like, I gotta put my dog somewhere? That's, like, kinda what it is if you're like, hey. You're on TikTok right now. How about you trade this 1 minute video for a 60 minute interview you might be interested in? You're gonna be like, no, I'm not ready for that. I'm just in line at the grocery store. I'm not ready for this commitment.

Sarah [00:41:41]:

Mhmm. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you sharing your, your insights and workflows. We only have a couple minutes left. Did you have any questions, Lynette?

Lynette [00:41:51]:

I did put a question in there. The the conversation was great. There was a lot of, I'm gonna

Sarah St John [00:41:56]:

do that, do that, do that.

Lynette [00:41:57]:

But right now, I do all my editing, everything. Like, oh, workflow is me, manual. That's it. And so I appreciate some of your suggestions. But I guess from my perspective is I always have a guest on my podcast. And so one of the things I was thinking about is, I do use social media to create a little reel. It's a bit of a hook and I get it out there. And then I add them as a collaborator, and then they share.

Lynette [00:42:23]:

And then that helps to get more views and get more eyes on the podcast. But not all the time do they do this sort of cross promotion strategy, if you will. And I was thinking since the podcast movement, as you also Joe came up with some ideas from that was making it more of an obligation for them too, because really the guests that I talked to them about their story arc, how they got started in their business or write their book, but then we do touch on their business and their book. And so it's sort of, okay, well, that's me helping you promote your book or your business. And so how do I get it so that they do some collaboration of promoting? I've never made it an obligated thing.

Joe Casabona [00:43:04]:

Yeah. This is a really good question. So I will give you a technique and then a tough truth. Right? The technique is you wanna make sure that they're talking about something that they don't always talk about. Right? Because then that makes it worthwhile for them to promote to their audience. If they're just talking about their book or their business, their audience already knows that. Mhmm. But if you extract some story from them about, like, the time that they were sitting on the road and it was raining and they got this idea for their business and they haven't told that story yet, then they're gonna be like, hey.

Joe Casabona [00:43:35]:

Go. I have never told this story before. Go check it out. Right? Or this guest asked me a question I never get. Right, then they're more likely to share it. The tough truth is that, yes, they're promoting their business or their book, but they're also giving you content for your platform.

Lynette [00:43:54]:

Of course.

Joe Casabona [00:43:55]:

And so I will ask my guests to share it if they want. Some of my guests have gone and asked for the video and have made short form video themselves, which has been delightful because I don't do that. But most don't because they're promoting their own stuff. And from my point of view, look, they gave me an hour of their time. They gave me content for my members only, and so that's kind of where their obligation stops for me. Yes. They promoted their their business, but they also hopefully, before that right? Because if it's a 30 minute commercial, it's not airing. We just both wasted our time.

Joe Casabona [00:44:36]:

But, hopefully, before that, they gave 30 minutes of value for my audience, and it it gives me the opportunity to sell to more members or get more sponsors or build my mailing list. So I think I think, yes, we all want our guests to share our episodes. If you have a guest who's doing a lot of podcasts, they're probably not. Because I try to share all the episodes I go on. Most likely, I'm going to retweet or repost the host sharing. Right? Yeah. I'm not gonna create my own post or send out a separate newsletter because what I found is through your I don't control when the episodes come out. And so if I'm promoting something or I've already promoted a podcast I was on, then it's I don't wanna overload my audience with, like, hey.

Joe Casabona [00:45:24]:

I was also over here talking about the things I already talk about. So I think that's I think that's the the way to go. I I will say there's one time there's one time because I do like to share. I I at least repost because I know how important it is to the host for that, and I appreciate. But I went on a podcast, and I was like, yeah. I'll totally share it. Right? He's like, nobody ever shares. And I was like, okay.

Joe Casabona [00:45:49]:

Well, I'll I'll share it. But he used AI to modify my headshot, and it looked real bad. He looks like Fabio, and I look like a troll, like one of those troll dolls. And I'm just like, hey, man. I get that your show is about AI. Get it. But can you use my actual headshot? I don't look anything like this. And he never got back to me, and I'm like, I'm not gonna he, like, deages people, and I'm just like, your guests look like your guests.

Lynette [00:46:25]:

Yeah. Okay.

Joe Casabona [00:46:26]:

So I didn't like that. But

Lynette [00:46:28]:

I mean, to your comment about was it the same thing? Do they talk about it all the time? Like, if they're a regular podcast guest when I do get reached out from these PR people who want their authors to be, interviewed, It I have a specific audience. I know my avatar to a tee, and and I go I get back to them right away and just say, yes, but it's not going to be exactly or yes, and it's not going to be exactly the traditional I'm not gonna read the book. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't have time to read the book. I'm not gonna read the book. I'm not interested in reading the book. What I want is that one moment when she realized she was gonna write that book and why is she writing that book and the the mental mindset issues of writing that book. And so it is every time and I always have a pre call. And so on that pre call, I make it very clear.

Lynette [00:47:21]:

It's the story behind the author and because my audience needs to hear how she overcame procrastination and things like that. And so if not in every pre call, at the end of the pre call, they always say, oh God, that was like, this is gonna be so different than how I'm usually interviewed. And so and then in the interview, it's usually the case. What I've learned from the podcast movement and not to digress too much is like, I've kept the messages. I've kept the interviews very authentic. I have never come up with a bunch of pre questions. I never edit. There's nothing left on the editor floor because there's nothing cut, but I realized I've got to do some of the things you were saying there.

Lynette [00:48:02]:

So get it crisper, get it, get it more focused on one key message, possibly to things like that. So it's all just learning. But, yeah, I appreciate your insights today.

Joe Casabona [00:48:12]:

Yeah. Yeah. My pleasure. I've been doing this for 12 years. I I learned a lot of things the hard way. Yeah. I mean, I used to ask the same 5 questions. When my when my podcast was growing quickly, I was asking the same 5 questions.

Joe Casabona [00:48:25]:

Who are you? What's your product? What failure did you experience? Because it was I was interviewing developers. Mhmm. How did you build that? And do you have any trade secrets for us? Mhmm. And that was great until it wasn't. And I'm like, oh, people are getting sick of me hearing the same of of hearing the same 5 questions. Mhmm.

Lynette [00:48:45]:

Yeah. I'd like to dig into that pre call to find out where she has stumbled or where she's holding back, sort of break down the wall a little bit to show a little bit of vulnerability and stuff. So,

Sarah St John [00:48:59]:

okay. Yeah, that's great. Thank you.

Sarah [00:49:01]:

Well, thanks so much for joining Joe and thanks for coming on Lynette. I appreciate.

Lynette [00:49:05]:

Yeah, that's good. I'm glad. I actually just, I was checking my emails and I thought, oh God, I don't even know if I saw this from Sarah. And so I clicked on it and there we were live. So A long course.

Joe Casabona [00:49:16]:

I

Lynette [00:49:16]:

was like, perfect.

Sarah St John [00:49:17]:

Yeah. Sounds great. I'm glad

Lynette [00:49:18]:

I because I'm not a replay girl. I I never I think I watch the replay, but I never get to the replay. So it's perfect.

Joe Casabona [00:49:24]:

Awesome.

Sarah [00:49:24]:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for y'all's time today. And, yeah, I'll post this in the group and if anyone of course is seeing the replay of this, feel free to comment below and ask me questions.

Joe Casabona [00:49:37]:

I'm in the community. So if you tag me, I will answer.

Sarah [00:49:40]:

Awesome. Well, y'all have a good day. Thanks, Sarah.

Joe Casabona [00:49:43]:

Thanks, Jill. Sarah. Thanks, Lynette.

Sarah St John [00:49:45]:

Bye.