Joe: One of my favorite Disney plus shows is Loki.
It's a truly fascinating look at time travel, predetermined events,
and controlling your own destiny.
And now I'm going to give you a major, if not very simplified
spoiler if you haven't seen it.
See in the finale Loki Masters, the ability to time, slip or transport to
any time, any place, and in any timeline.
For all intents and purposes, a timeline is a parallel universe.
If you're not familiar with the multiverse in Marvel, this also allows him to
relive events over and over again.
So as all of existence faces eradication, he can take as much quote unquote time
as he wants to learn how to save all of everything and everyone on every timeline.
He continuously over thousands of years, learns everything he needs
to learn and practices through trial and error to improve his process.
And his odds of saving everything and everyone, and while we don't
have thousands of years or the ability to time travel, we do have
the ability to take a step back and consider the question what's missing.
Hey everybody.
Joe Casabona here.
This is episode 4 0 4 of how I built it, and I'm going to ask you the question.
What's missing from your process?
You can find all of the show notes for this episode and you can join
my mailing list over at How I Built It slash 4 0 4 for members.
I'm going to be talking about thinking about my own production toolkit and
process, and wonder if it's time to ditch D script for my recording and editing.
If you want to become a member, you can click the link in the description.
Or you can find that link over@howibuilt.it slash 4 0 4,
but for now, let's get to the intro and then the episode.
hey everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps
busy solopreneurs and creators grow their business without
spending too much time on it.
I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and each week I bring you interviews and case studies
on how to build a better business through smarter processes, time management.
And effective content creation.
It's like getting free coaching calls from successful solopreneurs.
By the end of each episode, you'll have one to three takeaways you can
implement today to stop spending time in your business and more time on
your business or with your friends, your family reading, or however
you choose to spend your free time.
Okay, so back in November I asked this question of my members, when do
you burn it all down and start over.
In the members portion of this, I discuss my current and future tool set for
recording, editing and transcription.
I.
And I can't help but wonder if I'm just a chronic app switcher
I am, or if I'm looking to legitimately improve my processes.
Here's what I said back in November.
So when do you burn it all down and start over?
I think it's when the frustrations start getting in the way of you
working efficiently if what you have is working and you can continue
to afford the tools you use.
Leave them be.
But if your processes suddenly start fighting you or there's a consolidation
of tools like with DS script and squad cast, you should consider changing.
So that's again what I said back in November, but that's not the whole story.
That's the burn it all down story.
Reviewing your process is a bit different.
It's something that you should do more often than every couple
of years or so in the show.
Loki.
Loki could have continuously gone back to a happier time, relive
that until it gets bad and go back.
He was living outside of time as they put it in the show, but he
was burdened with glorious purpose.
Loki: I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose.
Joe: In Groundhog Day, bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, which by
the way, I just realized, uh, that that's like an homage to p Phil.
And then I am assuming John Connors from, uh, from Terminator.
Anyway, in Groundhogs Day, bill Murray's character, Phil Connors is stuck
on the same day and after realizing selfishness and hedonism isn't the way.
He uses the time to improve himself until spoiler alert, he breaks the cycle.
In both instances, the characters took a step back, looked at what needs to
be fixed and solved their problems.
So let's talk about reviewing your processes, but first, let's take
a break to hear from our sponsors.
Okay, so let's look at reviewing your processes, bringing
this point back to reality.
How many times have you ignored something until it got truly painful
to experience a light bulb that flickers an ache in your foot?
Having to comb through your email to find that contract you sent one time so you can
make a copy of it to send to a new client.
It's easy to view these fixes as inconvenient.
You're taking time away from what you're trying to do after all, but.
You find that the fix changing, the light bulb, visiting the doctor, saving that
contract in an easily accessible folder is actually much easier and could end
up saving you time and or frustration.
The same thing goes for your work, making a video, writing,
creating a podcast episode.
You are so caught up in the actual creating that you don't feel you have
the time to step back and evaluate.
Does that sound familiar to any of you, but my friend doing this exact thing?
Taking a step back and evaluating your process.
This has the potential to unlock or properly reallocate hours of your time.
So how do you do it?
Well, I think that there are two paths.
The first one is to think about what takes the most time.
You can ask yourself what takes the most time and eliminate or improve that.
For example, when I first started this podcast, I would edit each episode,
but I quickly realized that this was the longest part of the process.
I wasn't particularly good at it, which is also something I hear
from my clients and students.
Editing easily takes the most time.
So I decided to hire an editor.
He does for about 50 bucks an episode.
What would usually take me one to two hours per episode.
So not only was I eating up a lot of my time.
But in terms of billable hours, I was losing hundreds of dollars per episode.
If there is a bottleneck in your process, that's a great place to start improving.
If you do something and it's just eating up your time, and especially
if you don't like doing it, it is a prime area for improvement.
The other thing that you can do is think about the lowest effort improvement.
Perhaps the improvement that would take the most time would also take a high level
of effort to fix, or would cost funds or cost money that you don't have yet.
So conversely, you could consider the easiest thing to improve and do that.
A great example of this in podcasting is using a scheduler to book your guests.
Instead of figuring out a time via email, the scheduler is easy to implement,
free to start, and saves a ton of time and confusion getting guests booked.
I've gone back and forth over multiple days getting a time set.
There's the whole what works for you.
Dance, because you don't have direct access to their schedule.
You have the time zone dance.
Where are they?
Are we close to daylight savings time?
Are they in Arizona?
Arizona has its own rules for daylight savings time.
No one knows what time it is in Arizona in November, no
more because I use a scheduler.
And the great thing about this approach is because you're looking at low effort
improvements, it allows for quick wins.
Without monumental process shifts, you can make a change here and a change there.
And over time those will compound.
Now, I know I said that there were two ways, but there's actually another way
to think about improving your process.
And I suspect that the cold open and the title of this episode
betrayed what I'm about to say.
Uh, it's to ask what's missing?
This is the most open-ended question, and it could yield a bunch of answers.
You could find what's missing is an extra step that makes your content more popular.
For example, I started publishing my articles on Substack as well as
my personal blog this year because I have a suspicion that thanks
to Substack Discovery Engine, more people will find my work.
You could also find what's missing is an automated reminder to follow up with leads
so they don't fall through the cracks.
Around the holidays, I forgot to follow up with certain people because
I moved systems and I realized that I was missing those reminders, and so I
fixed that and now I know exactly what I need to follow up with everybody.
Maybe what's missing is an assistant or a coach.
When I'm looking to improve my process, I like to start with
the question, what's missing?
It allows me and my coaching client, who I do this exercise with as well,
to think bigger picture about the overall process, moving through
each step and wondering if there's something better that we can do here.
Usually when I sit down with a coaching client for the first time, I ask them
to tell me everything that they do.
When they publish a single episode of their podcast, they go through it and
they say, okay, but what's missing?
What do you do before you book the guest?
What do you do after you edit the episode?
What's missing from the process that you just told me?
And we usually end up with a much longer list than they anticipated and plenty
of places where we can save them time.
Here's an example of me doing this exercise recently
with these solo episodes.
The original process was to make an outline, record some thoughts
in D script, make some light edits for content, and then publish.
So as I approached this process, I asked what's missing, and here are
some of the answers I came up with.
There's not a clear story.
I'm telling.
These episodes aren't as polished as my interviews, which are edited more
for both audio quality and content.
And there's not a clear show document or notes for my VA to use to upload
the episode to Transistor because I'm usually just doing this based
on an outline that I created.
I'm not creating the full document, and so usually she ends up asking me what to do.
I realized that I was spending all of my time on doing basic edits because I
didn't have a clearly defined thought progression every time I recorded.
I would just have an outline, so I would talk a little bit, get off track, ramble,
then make an edit point to edit that out.
Then like I said, when my VA went to upload those episodes, she never knew
what to write in the description box because I didn't provide anything for
her because I just recorded the episode.
These were big problems in my workflow because I thought solo episodes.
We're going to be easier than interviews, and I should say that there are big
problems in my workflow because I didn't take the time to define the process
because I thought that they were going to be easier than interviews, and they are.
I mean, but I'm still trying to produce good content here,
so how do I fix these problems?
Well, through this exercise, I found that the main issue
was the lack of a clear story.
I've been talking for at least the last six months about the
importance of good storytelling in podcasting, how storytelling
is going to help you differentiate from every podcast out there.
And I wasn't doing a good job of that on my own podcast, so I knew I could
kill two birds by adding a script, which in turn becomes articles that
you read on my blog or on Substack.
The script allows me to hash out my ideas and formulate a good three act story
with a hopefully gripping open, uh, that got your attention, but it also gives
me clear copy for my VA to add to the description, I usually just copy and paste
the text that is serving as the cold open.
I also made the decision to send solo episodes to my editor.
He can edit for content and polish up the audio better than ica.
By asking what's missing.
I was able to make several improvements to these solo shows.
So to wrap up, I want to point out something that you may have realized.
It doesn't seem like I'm saving time by swapping the edit for writing a script.
And you're right, it may not always be true that you're saving
a bunch of time by improving your process, but as I talked about in
my piece, great things require time.
It's about taking the right shortcuts or saving time in the right places.
So that you can focus on the really important bits, in my opinion, swapping
the edit for scripts or for writing scripts creates much better content
and early indications on my podcast stats show that you think so too.
Plus, I usually write an article for my blog and newsletter.
Anyway, some minor tweaks, and that content now serves three purposes,
which ultimately does save time.
That's not really the point, right.
I swapped out editing for script writing when both Loki and Phil from
Groundhog Day had a problem to solve.
They weren't trying to save themselves time.
They were trying to leverage the time they knew they had and make the most of it.
That's what a good process does for you.
It allows you to use your time wisely so you can do your best work.
That's what you can gain from asking what's missing.
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of How I Built It.
You can find the article for this episode as well as the ability to join
my mailing list or the membership.
Over at How I Built It slash 4 0 4.
You will get bonus points if you write in and tell me the little Easter egg
I hit in the topic of this episode.
Uh, now if you do join, the membership members will hear the extended
version, the ad free extended version where I'm thinking about
my podcast production toolkit.
And I kind of think out loud about if it's time to ditch DS script, which has
been an integral part of my process, but I have some reasons that I'll
explore in the members only episode.
Thanks so much for listening.
Thanks to our sponsors, and until next time, get out there and build something.