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Growth In Reverse is the must-listen podcast for anyone serious about growing an email list and turning a newsletter into a thriving business. Hosted by Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop, two leading voices in the newsletter space, this show pulls back the curtain on how today’s top newsletter operators actually grow and make money.
Episodes include deep-dive teardowns of the strategies behind the most successful newsletters. You’ll hear how creators like Justin Welsh, Codie Sanchez, Sahil Bloom, and other creator founders are building loyal audiences and turning subscribers into revenue. Learn how they attract traffic, increase conversions, boost retention, and scale without burning out.
Whether you're launching your first newsletter or refining your growth engine, Growth In Reverse gives you proven tactics you can use right away. From onboarding systems and referral programs to sponsorships and paid products, this podcast helps you grow faster and smarter. If you’re ready to stop guessing and start applying what works, tune in and learn how the best are building newsletters that last.
VIDEO - RAW - Joe
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Joe Casabona: [00:00:00] if you are automating for the first time, that feels awful. 'Cause then you really don't feel like you know what you're doing.
Chenell Basilio: And now at this point, I kind of forgot that I even have that running until I just thought of it right now.
Joe Casabona: I've just built a couple kind of in preparation for this episode. 'cause I was like, what are some. Newsletter centric automations I can build.
Chenell Basilio: it's one of those things like I didn't even consider to automate
Joe Casabona: And the thing that a lot of people are probably thinking is like, automation sounds hard. If you do automatic bill pay, you're automating. If you have direct deposit, you're automating. If you've set up, uh, an email autoresponder, you're automating, so that's like the, my, the most complicated one that I can't live without. Here's one we can all use
Chenell Basilio: well, Joe, Joe Casabona is here today
Joe Casabona: with us on the Growth In Reverse podcast and
Chenell Basilio: we wanted to walk through some fun, automations and ways that creators can save time. Joe is my favorite automations guy. He's also about 20 minutes from my house, so it's fun to get together and hang out. But yeah, we just wanted to have him come on and, and jam [00:01:00] about automations and see how we could save people time. So, Joe, thanks for being here.
Joe Casabona: Thanks for having me. I'm super stoked. I always, uh, I always wonder if like, uh, it, I should disclose that we live close to each other, like in the community, right? Like, I'm always like, oh, should I, is that like a weird thing to say?
Chenell Basilio: I think it's kind of cool.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, right. I, I agree.
Chenell Basilio: Well Joe, I guess, do you wanna kind of share like how you got started with this, what you do now, and just give us kind of like the quick highlights version.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah. There's like a, a, a funny side to this story and then like a, a bummer side to this story a little bit. Right. So the, the funny side to the story is, my friend in 2018, uh, after our, you know, after my first child was born, um, challenged me to do less, he said, what would your day look like? What would your business look like if you did less?
And what he meant was, say no to more stuff. Stop saying yes, say no. And what I heard was, [00:02:00] yes, how can I make robots do things for me? Uh, so I, I'm taking on more still, but I'm doing physically less of it. And that's when I really started automating in the way that people think of automation today. Uh, I, I have a master's in software engineering, so like I've been.
Writing code to do stuff for me for a very long time. But there was like a shift where I was like, I don't wanna build tools that then I also have to support. Like, I feel like that takes away from, that takes focus away from what I should be focusing on. So that was like the kind of, okay, let me start down.
The Zapier make.com, other automation tools, path. Uh, but then it, it came to a head during the pandemic. Uh, and here's the bummer side of it. , My wife is a nurse. Our second kid was born and I had a panic attack one day because, I wasn't working 'cause I was watching the kids, they weren't in school. And I was, I was just very tired one day and stressed and I start crying [00:03:00] and I'm like sitting on my kitchen floor. and my. Daughter who was three at the time, like brought me a bottle of water and she's like, it's okay daddy.
She's, everything's gonna be okay. and I was like, this is not okay with me at all. and that's when I was like, man, I need to like fix something the next day I could work. I made a list of everything I do and just like drew lines through the things I personally didn't have to do.
And that's when I really started to automate. And the things that I couldn't automate, I delegated. And like, I hired a VA very shortly after that and she is still with me today and I give her raises all the time. 'cause I'm like, please never leave me.
Chenell Basilio: Well, that's a, that's a good little segue. So is that, is that how you recommend people Start with automations is like, write down all the things that you do. Figure out what you probably don't need to do and then automate from there, or.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. 'cause like, I mean. If you just go to like Zapier and you're like, Hmm, what should I automate? Right? That's like a blank [00:04:00] cursor syndrome. Like you don't really know what you're, what you do and what can be done, right? So I have like a three step process, right? the first step is write everything down, right?
Uh, this is like the document phase. IU will usually tell people, pick a specific area, right? So your newsletter, write down everything that you do from your newsletter, from coming up with ideas, to writing it, to publicizing it, everything in between. Leave no stone unturned here, right? Because like when I do this exercise with people are like, oh yeah, well I'll usually like think of what to write, you know, Monday morning, and then I'll write it and then I'll send it and I'm like, no, no, no.
You skipped a hundred things there. How do you write it? Where do you write it? How do you come up with the ideas? Where do you put it to send it? How do you send it? Who do you send it to? Do you use images? tell me everything. Right? , So write down everything. If you are, if you feel like you're forgetting.
I like to keep a piece of paper or like a, a notebook, multiple pieces of [00:05:00] paper bound together next to me. And if I'm doing something new, I will write it down as I'm doing it so that I don't forget, right? Which is also helpful 'cause now you're documenting what you're doing and that's easier to delegate later.
But the second step of this is look at the list and ask yourself, really ask yourself, do I personally need to do this? And this is where a lot of people will be like, yes, I need to do all of this. Only I can do this. But here's the secret, unless it requires your brain or your mouth, your voice, you don't personally need to do it.
That is the most extreme version of it because like, okay, I still do sponsorship outreach and I still do guest booking. ' cause the relationship side of it is really important to me. But like, as far as do you need to do it be just brutal, like just cut away anything that doesn't require your [00:06:00] brain or your voice.
and then that's when you can start the process of automating things. So that's the first step. The second step is ask yourself these three questions. Pick a task, ask yourself these three questions. Am I sending information between multiple apps? Does it require more than simple decision making? And is the input and output pretty much the same every time?
If the answers to those, those questions are yes, no, yes, strong candidate for automation. So if, if the first question is, I've been talking for a really long time, I'll stop after this. The, the, the first question, am I sending data between apps? If the answer to that is yes, if the answer to does it require more than simple decision making is no.
And is the [00:07:00] input and output pretty much the same every time? If the answer to that is, yes, you have a strong candidate for automation, 'cause then it's like you can probably just explain what you wanna do to Zapier and it'll build the zap for you. Like, it'll build the automation pretty much for you.
Dylan Redekop: can you give us an example, uh, a simple, a simple example for somebody who's struggling to visualize this?
Joe Casabona: Yeah, for sure. So I have a feedback form for my podcast, streamlined feedback.com. That is a notion form
because I, I want it to go into my podcast planner. That's where I go for all of my content. So if I'm doing a feedback episode or a segment where I'm like, oh, here's some follow up from listeners, that's where I'm gonna go.
For a while I was offering a free, uh, like lead magnet for anybody who filled out the feedback form.
So, the, let's walk through the questions here. Am I sending data between two apps? [00:08:00] Important detail? I use kit for my, my newsletter. So if they fill out the feedback form, I want them subscribed to my newsletter.
Am I sending data between two apps? Yes. Someone fills out their name and email address. I wanna send that over to Kit. Great. Does it require more than simple decision making? No. The only decision that needs to be made is I'm checking to see if they have opted in to the mailing list. 'cause if they didn't, I don't wanna send their information.
I wanna respect their wishes .
then is the input and output pretty much always the same? Yes. The input is always going to be name and email, and the output is always going to be them getting added to my mailing list so that they can get that opt-in. So that's kind of a really simple explanation of how it breaks down.
Dylan Redekop: Okay. Thank you. I like it.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I like those three. That's a good gauge for whether something should be automated or not. , It's so easy 'cause I, [00:09:00] you mentioned before like people don't write down all the steps. You think you skipped things, you forget this happens. I am so guilty of that. 'cause I'm like, yep, I'm just gonna, you know, do this first thing and the second thing and then I'm like, oh wait, there's a whole bunch of stuff in the middle that I totally missed.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I
mean, if you, if you watch my live streams, like, I just like, oh, let me see if I can build this automation. Like, I think that's instructive for a lot of people. Um, and the other day I did it and I'm like, oh, I'm totally forgetting this, this really important thing. Um, and then, you know, I kind of, I think out loud, uh, and I, I talk through it, but if you are automating for the first time, that feels awful.
'cause then you really don't feel like you know what you're doing. So you wanna like, and you kind of wanna know. And it's also harder to test, right? If you don't know what the outcome is, you can't really test to see if it worked.
Dylan Redekop: It's a good point.
Chenell Basilio: So what are, we jump into some more like simple examples, like I think one that you made me realize was very easy to do, , [00:10:00] in the Growth Reverse Pro community, when I create an event in Circle, which is the one tool I wanted it to add an event to the Google calendar that was shared between members. And so you were like, why are you manually doing this?
Joe Casabona: Mm-hmm.
Chenell Basilio: sense. That's a complete waste of time. And now at this point, I kind of forgot that I even have that running until I just thought of it right now.
Joe Casabona: Nice.
Chenell Basilio: it's great. It like adds the zoom link, it adds like all the stuff, which is super helpful.
But it's, it's one of those things like I didn't even consider to automate. just wondering if there are like any common automations that people can typically get, start, started with. Uh, and then we can move into some fun ones too, .
Joe Casabona: Yeah, this is a really good question. Um, so one of my favorites is, when someone, when I had a membership, this is like my constant internal battle of like, should I have a membership or not? It's usually no for me right now. But when I had a membership and people were actually joining it, I wanted to give them a personalized welcome.
This is, this is [00:11:00] how you can tell that I shouldn't have a membership because I had the capacity to do this, right? So I ran my membership through a plugin, a WordPress plugin, uh, called Paid Memberships Pro. I used a service called Bonjouro to send them a personalized video. And so really simple automation.
Instead of me having to go into paid memberships pro once a day and be like, did anybody join today? What's their email address? And then copying their email address and moving it over to Bon Juro. I have an automation that when a new paid memberships pro order comes in, create a task in Bon Juro, and then I get a push notification from Bon Juro on my phone to be like, Hey, a new member sign.
So there's like that little dopamine hit that's like, Hey, someone gave me money. And then also as soon as I can, right? I send them a video from my phone. I make sure to say their name so they know it's like personalized. And I'm not just doing that. Like, Hey, you, thanks for [00:12:00] signing up. Sent from my iPhone.
Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: a question follow up to
Joe Casabona: All right.
Dylan Redekop: So a lot of people listening will, um, potentially have memberships, but will likely have newsletters or email lists, then they're getting subscribers all the time. this something you could do in that way with a new subscriber, and if so, how?
Joe Casabona: Great question. Is it something I personally could do? Yes. 'cause I don't have scores of people joining my newsletter constantly. But yeah, totally. I have Zapier up here actually. , So I'm just gonna go ahead and, and do a quick check on, let's say Kit, right? We all use Kit here.
So in Kit Trigger, new form subscriber, right? They also have new purchase, subscriber added to tag. So we can get varying levels of specific here.
Whenever someone signs up to it says a specific form. Here it, there's also just new subscriber, [00:13:00] right? So maybe you have 10 forms. Anybody who joins you can, that could be the trigger, right?
And we haven't talked about the four components of automation, so I'm gonna like, put that in the back of my head. , And I then I didn't mention the third thing from how to figure out what to automate, but that's okay. We can go back to that. We got the two really important tasks, right? Um, so yeah, trigger is the thing that kicks off the automation new subscriber is one of them.
New form subscriber is another new purchase, new tag.
Chenell Basilio: Zapier right now to see what's
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Available? Right. Okay.
Joe Casabona: yes. It would be wild if I just like me had those memorized, right? I'm a sub I, that could be like a fun game, right? Uh, I'm gonna name an app and you tell me all the triggers.
So that's the trigger. And then the action is create a task in Bonjour.
Uh, so you can definitely do it for that. You can also do it for. Maybe people who click on a specific link, right? Maybe you're trying to sell something like a growth vault of sorts, [00:14:00] and someone clicks, but they don't buy. Right? So now when they click and they don't buy, maybe when they click, they get added to banjo.
Maybe if they don't buy within a day or so, they get added to that. That attrition sequence that's like, Hey, why didn't you, I, I noticed you clicked, but you didn't buy
Chenell Basilio: Like a card abandonment type
Joe Casabona: y. Yeah, right. Add them to Bonjouro then. And instead of sending them an email being like, Hey Sally, I saw that you clicked on the Growth Vault link, but I don't think you bought it.
I'm just wondering if you had any questions for me. Right. That's like a really personalized maybe. I don't think that's creepy.
Really personalized thing. Do you think it's creepy? Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: I see. And I have the opposite take.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: I think that's awesome. Um, it,
Joe Casabona: I think the wording matters here, right? Hey, se
Yeah.
Yeah,
Dylan Redekop: think it is really powerful for the right person. And some people will
Joe Casabona: yeah.
Dylan Redekop: turned off by it.
Joe Casabona: I [00:15:00] think like I saw that you clicked and didn't buy is the wrong wording.
It's probably like, Hey Sally, um, looks like you were interested in the growth vault. Um, if you have any questions about it, let me know and not like, please love me, buy my thing. Right? Like, that's weird.
Dylan Redekop: Well, I think everybody's used to, people know about cart abandonment, whether they know, they know about it or not, because you go on a, an e-commerce site these days and you maybe put something in your cart, but you don't, you abandonment, right? Um, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I got an email from this company that I forgetting something.
Joe Casabona: Mm-hmm.
Dylan Redekop: You know, those emails, right? So I think
Joe Casabona: Right.
Please love us.
Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: and, and those types of emails. So I
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: it's less creepy than it probably was like five, 10 years ago.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Have you ever added something to your cart and left it just to see if they send you a discount?
Chenell Basilio: All the time.
Joe Casabona: Right. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Totally.
Joe Casabona: Oh, Dylan's like too honest to do that.
Dylan Redekop: My mind just exploded. I never
Chenell Basilio: [00:16:00] Really?
Joe Casabona: absolutely.
Dylan Redekop: I'm,
Chenell Basilio: Huh?
Dylan Redekop: Canadian, I guess.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: that would
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Always looking for a deal.
Chenell Basilio: always. That's funny.
Dylan Redekop: is funny.
Chenell Basilio: Um, okay, so we can automate kind of reaching out to people based on their actions. Um, are there any like super common ones you think people probably don't have set up that they definitely should and we can talk, I mean, this could be a, a newsletter creator, this could be just a podcast or anything you, you think should be set up.
Joe Casabona: I've just built a couple kind of in preparation for this episode. 'cause I was like, what are some. Newsletter centric automations I can build. And Chenell, you mentioned something you didn't even think of automating. This happened to me yesterday. Right. Um, 'cause I was going through my welcome sequence again.
I've changed the positioning for my newsletter and I've gotten really good feedback and now I'm like, Hey, now that this page is the page, I should make sure that like my welcome sequence delivers on what I actually talk [00:17:00] about. Um, and I saw there's an email that says, Hey, do you want this VA template? I will send it to you.
Just respond to this email and say template. And I was doing that manually because I'm like, well, kit doesn't know. Right? Uh, and then I realized I could build an automation that watches my email address for, there's two, two conditions you wanna look for here, re, colon, and then the name of the email that you're, of the, the subject of the email you're sending, and then the word template.
This is gonna throw a weird false positive because the word template is in the email they're responding to. So they could say literally anything, but that's fine. They're responding to the email, so they get the template and then you could tag them in kit so that they get added to another sequence that sends them this, the, the, the email, the template I just use the, there is a, an action, which the second part of the [00:18:00] automation, the trigger kicks it off.
The action is what happens after it's kicked off the action, reply to thread or reply to email. So you can literally reply, like, you can have this email in the same thread. You just need the thread id, which you get from, from the email that triggers the automation. So that's what I do, because now it's all in the same, you know what I'm saying?
Does that make sense?
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, it,
Dylan Redekop: this.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: ahead.
Chenell Basilio: yeah, I was gonna say, do you wanna just share your screen? 'cause I lost, I got lost with the thread ID thing,
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: to this setup, but I think mine at this point is a little more manual. So I have like three Gmail labels that I use.
Joe Casabona: Mm.
Chenell Basilio: is like welcome email replies. One was 30 days of growth replies when I was doing that. And then another one is just like any other email people reply to. And so I will manually move them into folders.
Joe Casabona: So, so this is something that I was going through considering, right. I could do that. [00:19:00] My philosophy is like the fewer links in the chain, the the better because if one link breaks, the whole chain is compromised.
Because I thought like, oh yeah, I could like label them. In Gmail and then just watch for a new label. But I decided, I mean, like I also, I'm an over complicator, so that's part of it. But, um, there is a trigger in Zapier, um, that is new email matching search, and then the account that you're watching.
So I, you know, make sure you're watching on, on the email address you're sending
to or sending from. And then the search, this is, I tested this in Gmail because this is like a Gmail search box search. You can use the builder in Gmail to double check this. So I'm gonna, I'll do the first part last, uh, but the subject is re the delegation system that saved my sanity plus free template.
And then also just separately the word template
So if you're looking at [00:20:00] Gmail and you see the big search bar across the top, if you look at the, the right hand side of that bar, you see like a three slider dial icon thing. And that's gonna bring down just a, a form you fill out and it'll build the query for you.
So it'll build all this for you. Because we will get into what Zapier lovingly calls a zap loop because a new email would hit my inbox with the same subject and the same keyword template in it. And so I would just keep sending myself this email over and over again. So like, that's really important.
Do not include emails that I've sent that match this search query.
Chenell Basilio: So that's what you're saying. So from, and then negative sign is your email so that you're excluding that.
Dylan Redekop: Omit them
Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. It's, it's, yeah. Ex exclude. Yeah. Right. Minus is exclude. So this is the trigger. It fires every two minutes. Timing is one of the other components of, uh, an automation. So how often will [00:21:00] this run? Some are instant. Some need to be what's called polled. It's called polling. You need to worry about this less with Zapier.
Okay, so that's the trigger. That's the search. And then the action is event reply to email and in order for it to know how to reply, right?
Because in Gmail you have threads. I mean, this is like every email, like every email inbox app now, but you have threaded conversations, right?
And so Zapier and Gmail need to know what threaded conversation to put this under. And so you need a message ID that comes in from the first, from the trigger, right?
Every email has an ID associated with it. You also still need to include a two address. So, uh, you need the thread ID and the from email, both of which come from the [00:22:00] trigger.
So you don't need to know those at all. And then I'm sending a plain text email with the text here, right? Hey, thanks for being on the list. As you might imagine, this very email is automated. I say this for two reasons. It's on brand, for me, but also saying, Hey, and then full name is weird, right?
Hey, Joe Casabona, thanks for being on the list. Doesn't feel like it's obvious that someone did not write that email, and so I'm just recognizing that I'm not physically writing this email. I say, this email is very automated, but if you respond, you'll get me. I just wanted to deliver this template to you as quickly as possible.
Here you go.
Chenell Basilio: So I'm curious why you're, uh, you're like completely excluding kit out of this automation. Is there a reason you're, and you might have said this already, is there a reason that you're sending it from Gmail and not like tagging people as replied in kit and then adding them to a sequence?
Joe Casabona: Yeah, good question. Um, I wanted this, you know, [00:23:00] it's partially the way I word it, right? Reply to this email with template and I'll send you the template. So I wanted to keep the conversation going, quote unquote,
Chenell Basilio: That makes sense.
Joe Casabona: But also I didn't want to have a weird timing issue either. Like I know that once this automation goes, they'll get the email, whereas with Kit, it's like this automation has to go, it tags them in Kit. Then in Kit it adds them to the sequence then. I guess it could send it immediately, but again, it's like about like fewer links in the chain, right? Like this is, they match the search, they get the search. What I could do after this is tag them, right?
Because yeah, you can have like multi action, uh, automations, right?
It's one trigger and then one or more actions. So yeah, I, I did think about that. tagging them as like, oh, they wanted the template. Um, [00:24:00] and
yeah. Or they replied. Yeah. Right.
Chenell Basilio: Okay. Cool. so that's a, that's a good one. Um, any other ones that we should be thinking through or
Joe Casabona: Uh, yeah.
So I, so I use Senja. I know you use Senja as well.
So I set this up. Now, this is, we can speak more generally about how, why you would do this. 'cause there could be a bunch of reasons, but Zapier has something called tables.
Now. It's like their answer to, , Airtable pretty much. and so I have a table in Zapier called Kit Subject Lines. Um, and so anytime I send an email in Kit, it gets added to this Zapier table. Why would one want to do that? ' cause something else that I like to do is ask people for feedback or ask them for a testimonial, right?
And so [00:25:00] if I send an email that's like. Hey, if you've enjoyed this email, like I'm rebuilding the landing page. Can you send a testimonial? Here's a Senja link, or just respond to this email, right? Or sometimes people just say nice things like I got an email from, uh, a mutual friend of ours yesterday that was like, I absolutely loved this newsletter, right?
And I'm like, okay, now I gotta remember to capture that. But what I'm doing here right, is sending the email recording the subject line in a Zapier table. So that's kind of step one. I think this is probably a good thing to do if you are automating stuff because you're not relying on an ESP anymore. and then there's a lot of utility in how you might use this, right?
The other thing that I do once this happens. Is, is this it? I didn't name it. That's, that's sloppy. Yeah. Um, So the other thing I'll do [00:26:00] is when someone replies to one of those emails, I forward it to Senja as an unapproved testimonial, right? So some, uh, someone replies to one of my emails, 90% of the time they're saying something nice.
And so I wanna capture that. Uh, so for this, it is, grab any subject line with the word re colon in my inbox. I normalize stuff here. But here is where the, the important bit happens. Okay. Is I am checking the table kit, subject lines to see if the, the, the search terms match one of the subjects I've sent. So, for example, I sent an email a couple weeks ago called Ready, fire, aim, and someone responded, love this [00:27:00] Joe. really shows like how, how good you are at iterating, whatever they said, I mean that's a nice thing, something someone said send it to Senja. Maybe I can use it. Right? So what this is doing is, is looking up in the Zapier table, all of the subjects lines and it's searching for ready, fire, aim.
If it finds it, that means they've responded to a kit email I sent. And so, , it sends that over to Senja and then over in Senja, once a week, once every couple of days, I can go through and look at the new testimonials that were added instead of having to again, remember to copy and paste them for the sake of social proof.
Right? So this is like, this is how I'm using it. A way that you can also use it is when people respond to an email with a question log the question in Google Sheets or something, right? Because that's the other thing. Now you have to go like, what am I gonna write about? I need a place for [00:28:00] ideas, right? Anybody who responds with the question that would be great to have in, in a single place.
And then I'll add the last bit here is that Zapier gives you a custom email address for their email from by Zapier, uh, trigger. So I added that into Kit and I gave it two tags confirmed and exclude. And so when I send an email and I'm like, I'm gonna get a million responses to this email, and none of them are gonna be nice or they're likely not gonna be testimonials, right?
I can exclude that email so that it doesn't get added to the lookup table. Right? So you can be selective inside of Kit or whatever your ESP is about. What subject lines get added to the lookup table?
Chenell Basilio: Okay. The million dollar question for me is if I'm AB testing subject lines, they both get added.
Joe Casabona: Uh, ooh. No, that's a good question. It is only the one that gets sent to the [00:29:00] Zapier email.
Chenell Basilio: Got it.
Joe Casabona: Maybe not even the winner, right?
Because if that zapper email address is included in one of the tests, it would just be that one. Good question.
Chenell Basilio: Okay. Thanks. Um,
Joe Casabona: Can can you exclude? Yeah. See, so that's kind of where it falls apart, right? Like I don't, so like I, the other thing you could do is, is manually add subject lines, but then we're getting out of the realm of automation, right.
, The other way you could, this wouldn't work for me because I am sending from my main email address, but if you have a newsletter, email address sender, right?
Newsletter at whatever, or sender at whatever, then it could be like any responses to that email address. that could be the thing that triggers the automation.
Dylan Redekop: Right.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Okay.
Joe Casabona: I guess you could also look for like some line that you have in every email address, right?
Or in every email that you send part of your kit template, something like that. Right? There's, this is where we like, we're on the [00:30:00] verge of overcomplicating it,
Dylan Redekop: Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: totally.
Joe Casabona: but like the general idea here is like, do you have a use case for capturing responses to your email addresses somewhere so that you can easily reference them later?
Chenell Basilio: Right.
Dylan Redekop: Chenell, would this have been helpful when you sent out that one email? Just that one you did send out a few weeks ago on a whim where you're like, Hey, just checking in and you got a whole boatload of replies,
Chenell Basilio: Yeah. So I went back and had them filled into a Google sheet. So yes and no,
Dylan Redekop: manually.
Chenell Basilio: no, no. I like you set up a Zap, I think you can go back and like it
Joe Casabona: Mm-hmm.
Chenell Basilio: Look at past events
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: I forget what that's called and I can never find it when I wanna find it. 'cause I use it like once every six months.
But yeah, that was a good use case for that.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And that's, that's like one of the other really good things about, you know, for a while I was like, oh, you should use Make instead of Zapier because Make is like [00:31:00] 90% cheaper. But like, testing make is so dumb to like, it's like it's pretty bad.
It's really not. And then like the, the timing thing I mentioned, like if you run an automation too much, you blow past your limit for the month really quickly, and then you get charged more.
Whereas like, Zapier, like abstracts a lot of that away. So it's like a lot clearer, like how you get charged.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Okay. Do you wanna go back to your like four part thing?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Good. Yes, the four components of automation. So the four components of automation. The first one is trigger , this is gonna be the thing that kicks off some event, right? Every automation needs a trigger. And that could be someone signs up for your mailing list, someone responds to an email, it's 6:00 PM in December.
Like that could also be [00:32:00] a trigger.
Uh, that also kind of sounds like a Fallout Boy song. , And so like any of those, it's a thing. It's a, I wish I could tell you that was a canned to joke, but I just thought of that right now.
Dylan Redekop: makes it better.
Joe Casabona: but thank you. Yeah. And the thing that a lot of people are probably thinking is like, like automation sounds hard. I've never automated anything. Right? Um, if you do automatic bill pay, you're automating. If you have direct deposit, you're automating. If you've set up, uh, an email autoresponder, you're automating, right?
It doesn't have to be complicated, but understanding these components is like understanding the ingredients of a good automation, right? And so
the trigger is necessary, right? It has to, like, there has to be an inciting incident, right? Um, number two are actions. So once an automation is triggered, this is one or more actions that are performed.
So in the, someone signs up for my newsletter, the action could [00:33:00] be. Send them the PDF that I promised them, or send them the welcome email, add them to the welcome sequence. Right? All of those things are actions based on the trigger. Somebody signed up for my mailing list. If it is someone replies to an email, we just looked like at, looked at a lot of use cases for that
Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.
Joe Casabona: and 6:00 PM in December.
Right. The action there could be turn on my Christmas lights.
Um, so those are the actions. There could be one or more so in the respond to the VA template email. Right. The trigger was someone responds to that email with the word template. The first action is send them the template. The second action is tag them as replied, right? Or tag them as VA template.
Those two are the required ones. Every automation needs at least, well, one trigger. Exactly. You can't have more than one trigger, and at least one action. [00:34:00] The next two are optional but helpful. So number three is conditions. So you can check for certain conditions that will trigger an action as well. , A condition of someone joins my mailing list.
If they joined this form, send them this lead magnet. If they joined that form, send them this other lead magnet if they have joined my newsletter more than once, don't add them to the welcome sequence, stuff like that. For the, notion to kit automation, I was telling you.
The condition was, did they opt into my newsletter? If opt-in is true, add them to my newsletter. So that's the condition and that's why the second question, like, does it require more than simple decision making is really important. Uh, and then number four is timing. You can run automations immediately or at certain intervals.
So the, you know, send them the, the lead magnet thing, you want that to run basically immediately because [00:35:00] you don't want them waiting hours or days to get the thing you promised them. Some don't need to run every minute or every hour. I used to have an email when Help A Reporter Out was a thing where I had an automation that whenever I got an email from helper, reporter out, , I would search for specific terms in the email.
And that could be automation, Zapier, business owning parent, whatever it is, right? I would search for those terms and if they showed up, add them to a Google sheet so that I didn't have to sift through all of the calls for help from reporters. Help a reporter out sends emails three times a day, 6:00 AM noon, or they did, um, they're sadly no longer around, um, 6:00 AM noon and like seven.
So I would run, oh, they came back.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: So they were gone for a minute. Now they're back with the jump off.
Um,
Chenell Basilio: email a day anymore, but.
Joe Casabona: oh, nice. [00:36:00] Okay. So let's say they send that email at noon, right? I would run this automation at 12:15 PM and it would search that email and if, if any of my search terms hit, it would add it to.
Google sheets and then, uh, I would check that once a day for any emails that I might be qualified to respond to.
Chenell Basilio: Right. That makes sense. I
Joe Casabona: Yeah,
Chenell Basilio: case. I'm curious, like just getting into like some, maybe some rapid fire ones. Like what's the automation that you probably use the most? Because I think, I think while we can sit here and be like, yeah, newsletters all, it's all newsletter stuff.
I think actually just like the, I don't know, workflow and that kind of thing is actually really helpful too. So I'm just curious what, as someone who automates a lot, what is one of the ones that you. Have running to the point where you might not even remember. It's there.
Joe Casabona: yeah. There's, there are two that I think like my whole life would fall apart if they stopped working.
One is [00:37:00] my, podcast guest flow. There's a lot of parts to this, but. The one, the, the really important thing for me is when someone books on my podcast, a bunch of stuff happens, right? They fill out my Calendly and then they get added to my podcast planner in notion.
So I could properly schedule it. A Google Doc gets created based on what they filled out so that I have a research point, but that Google Doc is also used by my VA and my editor, and then it gets sent to the guest as well. , And then all of the reminder emails like, Hey, we're talking soon. Hey, wear headphones.
Please, please wear headphones. So like those, that's really helpful. On the other side of that flow, is all of my file management. So this is now moving into very complicated, but basically I will record in Riverside, I will download the files. [00:38:00] Those files will get renamed and put into a folder in Google Drive called pre-production, uh, or actually needs editing.
Right? Go. Yeah. Was that a
Dylan Redekop: gonna say yes, and
Joe Casabona: Yeah,
Dylan Redekop: done automatically.
Joe Casabona: this is all done automatically. Yeah. So, gets put into a folder called pre-production. The reason it's put there first is 'cause I like to record a little intro in the beginning, and so I record the intro, I add it to the folder. The folder has been renamed the episode number.
That is very important because once that folder has three files in it, it gets moved into the needs editing folder in Google Drive. When it gets moved into Google Drive, notion is updated that the episode is out for edit and my editor gets an email telling them, Hey, there is a new episode for edit.
Here's the Google Doc with the edit notes. Here's the folder with the files. When my editor is done editing it, I've been with my [00:39:00] editor for eight years, so I don't check his work anymore. Like, I just don't, I don't need to, right? Usually I'll listen to the episode before it goes live,
um, especially so I can like, talk about it on social if I want to.
The one social network I'm still on. So when he sends it back, he uploads it to a folder called production, and then the status is updated in notion to ready for scheduling. And my VA gets a notification episode, whatever is ready for scheduling, and then she takes it from there and, and schedules it where it needs to be scheduled.
After I record that intro, I do not see the episode again until it hits my, uh, my podcast player.
Chenell Basilio: Well, that's fun.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Super fun. So that's like the, my, the most complicated one
that I can't live without. Here's one we can all use, it's, it's called my shutdown routine, right? And so use whatever voice notes app you prefer. I use whisper memos because it works with Zapier. [00:40:00] So I will just, at the end of my day, uh, Chenell, actually, I sent you a video right after I did this shutdown routine thing.
So you can see like where my brain was, right? If you like, if you watch that video, you could probably tell it was like a little,
it was definitely the end of my day, right? Um, I did the shutdown routine right before this and I said, respond to Chenell. And I'm like, I should just check this off my list now.
So I will talk into whisper memos. It will transcribe everything I say. It'll send that transcript to chat EPT and it'll say, Hey, this is mostly a list of tasks I have to perform. , Turn it into a list of tasks and send it to Todoist. So that is super crucial for me. I will say Todoist has now officially re like replaced that They have their own ramble feature, but the, I just talked a lot.
Do something with it is so crucial to me. I have ideas. I can just, I can talk into whisper memos. I can talk into my watch and say [00:41:00] article idea and just kind of word vomit the article idea, and then it will create an outline for me. Or if I say like, content ideas, it'll send it to the content idea project in obsidian or whatever.
Right? So like. I was hardcore. People who talk to their phones are sociopaths. And now I am that, like I talk to my phone all the time. I think that's probably not uncommon anymore. Right? 'cause we, we have AI assistance on our phones now, but
it's like, I, my most crucial idea captures are, are voice memos that then get processed based on what I say at the beginning of the voice memo.
Dylan Redekop: One, one thing that you told me that you did in another conversation was you can, you can set up a trigger for your voice memo too, where it will filter, it'll filter these messages into the specific spots you want by saying the word article or [00:42:00] article idea or, uh, whatever word you say. You start with that word and that's where that memo will be cat categorized or captured. Is that correct?
Joe Casabona: That is correct. I think I should be able to show this to you for the, this is, I mean, this is like terrible audio only content. can we, yeah. Perfect. You don't need to see, if you're listening, you don't need to see this. But in whisper memos there is a section called integrations.
And right now I have two, uh, one is called Open Threads. And so the trigger phrase for this is open threads. When I say open threads for whatever, open threads for October 20th, 2025, whisper Memos knows to send this transcript to a specific Zap I've created to process my open threads. The same thing with article, right?
The trigger phrase is article idea. And so when I say article, idea and pause, then I [00:43:00] start talking about the article, it sends it to another, a very specific zap with a very specific prompt for chat GPT to not add anything, just take my words and organize them into an article,
And those are, I mean, I like writing, I write a lot of words.
But like, if I'm out and thinking about something, I am not at my computer and I, it's like a real good idea. This is how I capture it and get the skeleton of that article. And like in whisper memos, you can have as many of these as you want. So like, I could have like a, I already have a Zap for LinkedIn posts where when I record a short form video, again, like it's, I download it from Tella 'cause that's where I record my short form videos.
It's just really easy. My automation will move it into a short folder in Google Drive, and then that triggers a zap that will transcribe everything and send it to chatt PT with a very long prompt that's like, this is a video I wanna post on LinkedIn, [00:44:00] make this a LinkedIn post. Here are all the parameters.
Don't add anything. Only use the exact words that I've used. Come up with a good hook, right? Like that sort of thing. And then sends that all back to Notion.
Chenell Basilio: So
Joe Casabona: So like, yeah,
Chenell Basilio: thing, is it you're saying article idea? Is it? Is whisper memos doing the filtering, or does Zapier then read that and say, okay, the first two words were article idea. I'm gonna put this into thing.
Joe Casabona: yeah, great question. Whisper Memos is doing the filtering. , Inside the app, it'll have like a list of all my memos and then for some memos. It has the little Zapier icon next to it, and that means that that note triggered the zap. So you can actually, if we're looking at my, my memos, there's one that says idea for the automation database that triggered the zap, even though I didn't exactly say article idea,
so it's more like a fuzzy [00:45:00] search, i've matched enough of the trigger phase, uh, phrase for it to send that note to the zap. And then, uh, you know, there's another one like, okay, like open threads for September 29th. That one is always accurate. 'cause I'm saying literally the, that's, I never think like, oh, I need to buy thread from the store,
Chenell Basilio: Okay. Are there, we're not using whisper memos, are there other tools that do something similar or can you just kind of use your Apple Voice notes or whatever app to do something like that too?
Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. So like, uh, yeah, the Voice Memos app on Apple, on iPhone, if you will, , transcribes on Android. There is, I think it's called the Recorder app. Now I should say Android. Uh, like I just got for testing and funs a Motorola Android phone. Samsung might be different. Google might be different.
So like Dylan, I don't know. You have an Android phone, right?
Dylan Redekop: I've got a Google Pixel. Yeah.
Joe Casabona: So that has like a, the recorder app on it.
Dylan Redekop: It might,
Joe Casabona: Okay. [00:46:00] So like it it's gonna have some recording app on it, right?
Yeah,
yeah.
Dylan Redekop: I've used it. Yeah,
Joe Casabona: Oh, yes, yes.
So my, my point here is like, I'm gonna name specific Android apps, but I don't know if like Motorola added those or if they're like, core Android, right?
But like the one that I'm talking about, recorder, it's like a light red icon, that will also transcribe and like, does a better job than the iPhone one I've noticed. And like timestamps, it, it's like pretty nifty actually. All of that is to say that yes, like you can have the native, tools
record and transcribe for you.
So take it one level further. So like the shortcuts app on the iPhone, you can trigger Zaps. Uh, and so you can send that over to, to a Zap. I think the easier, probably more reliable thing would be to save that audio file or that transcript to a specific folder in Dropbox or Google Drive.
' cause you still need to like trigger the shortcut. [00:47:00] And when you add stuff to the cloud to cloud storage, it very reliably works, especially with Zapier ?
Zapier very reliably works with Google apps.
Dylan Redekop: I got ideas. I'm inspired.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Are there, is there a tool you have or sheet of sorts where people could look at like better tools for specific use cases or maybe trying to figure out what automations they should work on next? Or do first
Joe Casabona: Oh yeah. So. I have a brand new quiz where you'll fill out a few questions and I will recommend some auto.
I'll send you these automations to you based on what you filled out. Uh, so you can go to casabona.org/growth, for that, to take that quiz. casabona.org/growth.
Chenell Basilio: Oh, I like this. This is gonna be good. [00:48:00] we'll essentially be able to put in, you know, what I do. I don't know, here are some of the tools I use. And you're gonna be like, yeah, stop overthinking this here. Like the top 10 things
Joe Casabona: Yeah, right. It's like, you know, kind of where do you struggle? Oh. Like, uh, you know, logging ideas, creating content task management. Right. Um, what tools do you use? Okay. Here's, here are a few to get you started.
Chenell Basilio: Right. Nice. That's
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: How have you found all of this for people who are less tech savvy, but maybe they can reliably use like an AI chat partner, like chat, GBT or, or something like that, um, at figuring these things out as well. Um, so could use your quiz or potentially and, and or, chat with chat GPT and figure out, Hey, can I connect this stuff?
Like, have you ever recommended somebody do that or tried it yourself to see how, how well it works?
Joe Casabona: Um, chat. GPT is pretty okay. [00:49:00] You know, Zapier is a vast tool. Uh, it's like, you know, it's like 80% and then it like hallucinates the other bit, and the other bit is probably the hardest part to figure out, Right?
Um, my recommendation. The other thing that I put in the back of my mind, uh, towards the beginning of this episode
is after you write everything down, after you determine things that you don't need to do yourself.
If you're like, I still don't know what I can do with Zapier. There is a page on Zapier that I feel like no one talks about called explore apps zapier.com/apps. And it's a, it's a huge cheat sheet. You, you search for an app, let's say Google Sheets, and it will, I mean, it's a auto-populating thing, so if you just type in Google, you can see all the Google apps it works with, but then you click on it and there is apps.
You pair it with suggested Zaps, but if you scroll all the [00:50:00] way to the bottom, you can sort by triggers or actions so you can see, okay, well if I use Google Sheets, what if I want to do something? When a new row is added to a sheet, is that a trigger? It sure is.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: What if I want to create a new column? Is that an action?
It sure is,
and so if you're unsure, you can go and see what triggers and actions exist. Or you can search for pairing apps and then it will suggest stuff for you. This is how I learned about, oh, what did I learn about here? I was like going through this page for if you go to my YouTube channel.
Chenell Basilio: like spend hours
Joe Casabona: Yeah,
Chenell Basilio: through all of these
Joe Casabona: I was like shocked.
Chenell Basilio: I.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Right?
Dylan Redekop: to run some of these.
Joe Casabona: Yes. Now the other thing shockingly good is Zapier's co-pilot and it's gotten better. So like you explain the automation you want and it kind of goes nuts. It's [00:51:00] like, okay, so you wanna send things to this? Oh, I see that you've connected your Google account. Oh, and you also have access to this.
So these are the two apps I'll use. Uh, let me fill this out. Let me get the test data. Here's a first pass at the automation. What do you think?
Chenell Basilio: So it's gotten better 'cause I tried this in the beginning and it was not very good.
Joe Casabona: It was not very good, and I decided to give it the old college try. I'm, I'm probably gonna do a YouTube video on this, like, and it's probably gonna be like a real dumb YouTube title. E title like
person versus ai, which is the Better Automator or something.
Yeah,
Dylan Redekop: buddy. Get those clicks.
Joe Casabona: Boxing Gloves and the Zapier logo with boxing gloves.
Dylan Redekop: Oh, it's
Chenell Basilio: I feel like you could just do like YouTube lives like once a day and just have people show up and be like, can you automate this? And you'll be like, watch this, blah, blah, blah. And then you have
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: videos of like, here's how to blank, blank, blank.
Dylan Redekop: Oh man, I'll,
Joe Casabona: I would love that. I wrote down, yes, I would love that. Like I wrote down on my little idea board here in front of [00:52:00] me, uh, Zapier Roulette, also my Stupid Doodle, um, Zapier Roulette, right? So like, either. What in an ideal world, I would vibe code a spinner for a trigger and a spinner for action and then see what we can build.
Um, or just like if I have a lively chat, people just shout out
Dylan Redekop: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: this and this. Right? And I, I see what I can do. So
Chenell Basilio: I
Joe Casabona: to my live streams and I'll do that. Everybody listening?
Chenell Basilio: That's fun.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
of live stream show?
I'm trying to do more, after the Grow with Social Challenge, the next thing, , which for, I mean listeners should know this, but for the Grow With Social Challenge, by our very own Chenell and Dylan here, got me to post to LinkedIn 42 days in a row.
I was gonna go, we did 40 and then I wanted to do 42. 'cause it's the answer to life of the universe and everything, you know. And, that's a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Reference.
Uh,
Dylan Redekop: know the, I knew which movie you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe Casabona: I, I really enjoyed it and I think that the place I [00:53:00] should really be for the exact reason we saw during this podcast, right.
Which is like showing like show Don't Tell, right? , Is, is YouTube. And so I am for the next 40 days, for the next five weeks, 'cause it's not gonna be 40 days, it is post, uh, two shorts, a long form and a live stream to YouTube every week. I guess. Like, I could do a community post on Thursdays just to fill in the five weekdays.
But like, why?
Dylan Redekop: What's your YouTube channel, Joe, that we should check
Joe Casabona: uh, It's, if you search Joe Casabona, I'll show up. The, the big dumb handle is Joe Casa because some Ding-Dong got Jay Casabona a bunch of years ago and then didn't use that channel for his main channel. And I can't, you can't like do the old switcheroo with handles on YouTube.
So.
Dylan Redekop: Dang.
Joe Casabona: Joe Casa, but Joe Casabona, yeah.
Dylan Redekop: Okay.
Chenell Basilio: Cool.
Dylan Redekop: your
Chenell Basilio: That's fun.
Joe Casabona: Yes. Joe Casabona, parentheses [00:54:00] automations coach or automations and systems coach.
I, yeah, I'll, it, it's, I look like this. If anybody's wa you know,
I look like Yeah, right.
Dylan Redekop: unless the Mets have just lost in the playoffs then as a black,
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Wow.
Dylan Redekop: sorry. no,
Joe Casabona: Ah, yes. Unless it's, unless the Yankees have lost in the, in October, then I'm wearing a black Yankee hat. 'cause I'm in mourning. It's fine.
Dylan Redekop: right. That's right.
Chenell Basilio: Yep.
Dylan Redekop: That's.
Joe Casabona: It's,
we're a few days past that.
Yeah. We are, I am wearing, I have moved to my, uh, my fall wardrobe, which is my Navy shirt, but as a hoodie. So I, I do try to stay on brand.
It's like the same color.
Chenell Basilio: Love it.
Joe Casabona: yeah,
Chenell Basilio: All right, so casabona.org/growth. You can go find Joe's quiz slash helper tool. He is gonna build for us. check him out on YouTube casabona.org to sign [00:55:00] up for the newsletter.
Joe Casabona: yeah. And uh, all the links are, are over on casa bonna.org as well. Not that there's like that many anymore. I'm on LinkedIn and YouTube and my website and that's it. Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: tease the, the social platform that you have, the only social platform that you still use, which was,
Joe Casabona: Yes,
that is, that would be LinkedIn. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Uh, that's great. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming to hang out Joe. I guess people can go find you at all those places. We'll have them in the show notes too.
Joe Casabona: Yeah,
Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.
Chenell Basilio: for, thanks for sharing all your knowledge.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, this was great.
Joe Casabona: Everything we talked about will be there. So just the one place to to rule them all. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Awesome.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Thank you. This was great.