Make Podcasting SIMPLE Using Systems and Processes with Joe Casabona

Welcome to Profits Through Podcasting, the show for entrepreneurs with podcasts who want to monetize by generating leads and profits for their business from podcasting. I’m your host, joel Oliver, ceo of East Coast Studio. One of the keys to success in podcasting is publishing consistently and keeping with it long enough to see results, and one of the big keys to doing that is putting systems in place to make the podcasting process as simple and frictionless as possible. The thing is, your podcast process could be overcomplicated, wasting precious time and holding you back without you even being aware of how easy it could actually be. Our guest today is Joe Casabona, who hosts not one, not two, but three podcasts, all while raising three small children and having a healthy balance of time for family and hobbies. Joe is a podcast systems coach who helps busy solopreneurs reclaim their time by blending content creation and technology, saving them hours each week.

Joe is a guy I personally turned to for advice on this stuff, and today we discussed how to get out of the hamster wheel of podcasting and look at the big picture like what advice and value should your podcast provide to listeners? Why just having a conversation off the cuff doesn’t cut it as a content strategy, and you’ll learn a simple way to easily identify time-wasting tasks across your entire business, letting you focus on your most important things, including producing a podcast that efficiently brings you leads and revenue. All right, joe, so I think first let’s start with your podcasts and I am saying that as a plural, because you’ve got your main one right, which is called how I Built it, but there are some others, so give us a rundown of what you’ve got going in that podcasting space.

Yeah, I have three podcasts. My main one, we’ll call it the flagship, that’s how I Built it. At least it’s called how I Built it now, but I’m having a little crisis of conscience with the name, which will probably be the next experiment. But I also have two other podcasts. One is called Podcast Workflows, that’s a podcast about podcasting, and one that’s called Start Local, which is a show that we interview people in our area as a way to network, learn about local businesses and organizations in hopes to grow the community.

So, with how I Built it being the big one, let’s focus on that a little. How about a brief history there? How long have you been doing that? Why did you originally start it Like, how many episodes in are you at this point?

So I have over 400 episodes of that podcast now. I started it in 2016. So we’re going on eight years as we record this. I’ve been podcasting since 2012, but the first podcast was terrible. It was just like me and a bunch of dudes talking over Skype. I’m like that’s not great content. That wasn’t great content then and it’s not now.

And the reason I started that podcast was because I had just got married. We found out we had a kid on the way, we had moved away from the place where I was teaching at the University of Scranton. Like we had moved away from Scranton and I had a remote job and so like a lot of things were happening where I wasn’t teaching anymore or really interacting with other people, and I really wanted to start a side hustle and continue teaching. And so I thought, oh, this will be a really good opportunity for me to, let’s say, interview business owners on how they built their businesses, specifically in the WordPress space, learn a little bit and then get some great content out of it. And that’s basically how I started. I kind of like fell into starting the podcast.

So it’s interesting. I know you mentioned the family there. We’ll get into this, but based on the fact that you start saying you have three podcasts or you know, for most people just producing one podcast on a regular basis is a big workload, I was going to assume okay, you have no family, no hobbies, no other life, no, nothing to do outside of creating podcasts, given that you have three of them going. So I can attest to how efficient you’ve been able to create these systems that will. We’ll start talking about in a little bit and I’m gonna get to your business side of things as well, but first I know that the how I built it podcast is a lot of the revenue from that. For you, that’s from sponsorships. Is that correct?

That’s correct. Yeah, the sponsorships, from how I built it, probably it’s been I mean, the last couple years just across the industry have been tough, but traditionally it’s about a third of my income.

Okay, good to know. And so, moving into the business, we’ll keep that in mind that some of the income is through sponsorships specifically for that show. But you’ve also got your business Outside of this. That’s you know the podcast is helping, I assume, bring leads to, so tell us about your business or businesses. However you have that structure. What do you do for money here that your podcast is helping generate leads for?

Yeah, so I’m a podcast systems coach. I help people improve their podcast process as well as Improve their overall content, right? I basically help podcasters spend their time on the right things so that they can grow, monetize, improve their podcast. And the reason I put it that way is because when you start a podcast, right, you’re really focused on Okay, I got a record, let’s get this interview, let’s send the files off to an editor or try to edit myself and then get it published. Oh man, now that’s one and I have six days to do another one.

Like that’s, people get caught in that kind of hamster wheel and so you’re not focusing on the big picture, right, like what should? What big questions should my podcast answer? Or what actionable advice should I offer my listeners? How do I properly prepare and do enough research to make this an actual good interview, as opposed to me just like having a conversation with somebody, because I hate to break it to a lot of people. If you describe your Podcast as like casual or off the cuff or raw, that’s that’s Code for no effort, right, that’s code for just like not putting a lot of effort in the year.

That’s a great point. We can touch on that there for a second, because it’s something I’ve been made more aware of in the last number of months. Part of it was listening to some of your episodes, specifically about storytelling and how to form the content into something that’s more engaging for people to listen to, but also, yes, focusing on the right type of people that you want to reach and we’ve been learning about this here because I was in that. I was one of those people in terms of, especially clientele for the business here, just whoever, whoever wants to work with us, type thing, and the consultant advised me that we’re working with hey, you need to have a very, very clear picture of who you want to work with and then you can let that out in your marketing, specifically in a Podcast format. So, yeah, if you don’t have any idea even who you’re trying to reach, then you can’t make the content appeal to them. So you actually will help people figure that out.

Yeah, and storytelling is such an important thing to me. I think of it this way right, what if Christopher Nolan or George Lucas just showed up with a bunch of actors and a camera and were like, all right, this is gonna be real casual, let’s make a movie, right? Like that would be crap, like that would be so bad. There’s like a reason that movies do scripting and draft scripts, and then rewrites and then storyboards, and then they shoot a bunch of stuff and they try a bunch of different takes and then they edit it together later because they’re trying to make the best story. And you can do that with your podcast too, right? I mean, you don’t have to do a bunch of takes and storyboard, but have an outline of what you wanna talk about. What’s the ultimate goal? How do you get your listener from A to B right? What’s their problem in the beginning, what’s their conflict and what’s the resolution? What’s the character growth that they experience by listening to an episode of your podcast?

And there’s lots of reasons to do a podcast. Sure, it can be fun, but in this space that we’re talking about, specifically when it comes to monetizing and generating leads and profit for your business, you wanna have an intention behind it. You wanna get some kind of return for the work that you’re doing and the money that you’re investing, and not just hope for the best and put out whatever. Right. So that makes a lot of sense. So, just getting back to your business for a moment, this is your full-time life, right. Everything you do is essentially centered around podcasting for your income.

Yeah, I mean, I’ve been self-employed, freelancing in some way shape or form since high school. Like my church came to me and they were like, hey, we need a website. And they’re like we’ll pay you. And I’m like, yeah, I’ll do that. I was like 14, 15, like all I have is time right. So I learned how to make websites and then that became my profession for the next 20 plus years. Like I say, it was divine intervention that I got into web development.

And then around 2018, people were like, hey, how did you grow your podcast so fast? Like how does it make money? And I’m like I don’t know. I don’t feel like I did any of this on purpose. But then I sat down and I really thought about it and the things I did and some of those things were like natural abilities. I’m naturally curious and so I’m naturally a good storyteller. I’m good at getting people from A to B. I have the wherewithal to just like ask people who are asking for a backlink to sponsor my podcast. That’s how I got my first sponsor. So, as I was getting more of these questions in 2018, I was like I really like podcasting and I’m starting to like web development less. I was doing both for a while.

And then, in 2021, I was finally like you know what, like, if I’m gonna do this, like I need to go all in. And so we’re like about three years on from that and I, maybe the middle of last year, like really found the proper niche, like the proper messaging and the proper positioning. Joel, like you said, you’re like I was just like I’ll help you launch a podcast, I’ll help you make money. My tagline for a while was like I’ll help you make your first $10,000. And then my friend, justin Moore was like hey, the people who have deep pockets don’t care about making $10,000. And I’m like cool, that’s good feedback, good notes, good notes. So I finally, through trial and error, like found who I’m talking to.

Who would you say that is now Like through the how I Built it podcast. Who is that for?

Okay, cool. So I’m glad you asked this right, because, again, the how I Built it podcast like that’s eight years old and it’s basically been my show and whatever I was interested and curious in for a while. And so it’s finally, like I alluded to the fact that I’m changing the name and it’s because of the name just doesn’t make sense anymore. Like I was asking WordPress developers how did you build that plugin? I’m not asking people that anymore. I’m not. How did you build your business? Right, there’s a million podcasts to talk about that. So instead I’m like we’re gonna talk about this thing, we’re gonna introduce a conflict. You’re gonna give us actionable advice at the end. It has to. I don’t care about your founder story, it has to be actionable advice for my listeners. And so now there’s a whiteboard behind me.

I wrote out my new mission statement and my target audience. My show is for busy solo-preneur parents. Right, I was really worried about including the parents thing, but like that’s who I’m resonating with, because I am one right Busy solo-preneur parents who want to spend less time in their business by putting systems in place so they can spend their time the way they want. That’s my audience. It’s really long but it’s very focused.

Great. Yeah, I know that’s a big jump to commit. I’m gonna change the name and leave that behind after so long, but it makes a lot of sense. So, okay, now that we’re mentioning the parenting thing and the family, let’s dive into the real reasons why we’re here, now that we’ve got your background, like we alluded to earlier. So you’ve got three podcasts that you’re running, so let’s start chatting a little about how are you making this work in a very efficient way? I know you’re a systems coach this is what you do but give us a rundown of how we can start thinking about this and like how you’re making all this work in an efficient manner for yourself.

Yeah. So let me tell you the thing that forced my hand on this, right and like. The crystallizing question was just like this. Somebody in a webinar was like how do you run three podcasts and also have three kids? Because it’s like a wild thing, right, I’m like nine X to my effort by having both of those things and I want to share this crystallizing moment with you because I don’t want you, dear listener, to go through the same thing that I went to. But this was.

It was December 2020, November 2020. I had two kids at home a three year old and a three to six month old. My wife is a nurse, so we’re at the height of the pandemic and she is still having to go to work, which means I am at home. I didn’t put my business on pause. I’m self employed. I still bring in more than half of our income, but my kids are home day cares closed, schools closed and I have a full on panic attack. That’s the only one I’ve ever had. I am sitting on the floor in my kitchen like fetal position and my three year old brings me a bottle of water and she says it’s okay, daddy.

That’s when I decided anything I don’t need to do for my business, for my podcast, for my YouTube channel. I’m not going to do anymore. I hired a VA within the next two weeks and, because I was a software developer as well, I automated as much as possible, but I constrained myself to not using any of my own like handwritten code, because I want to help people do the same thing. I want to help people who are like how do I have kids and also run a business, also run a podcast? And so that’s what got me there. And the first thing I had to do which is why I told you the story was write down everything I was doing.

So if you’re thinking about your podcast and you’re like, all right, well, I record an interview and then I publish it, there’s a million steps in between those things right, you got to find a guest, or you got to do an outline. You got to record it. You got to get your mic set up. You got to do a sound check. You need to edit the episodes, probably right.

So you got to do that. You got to upload. You got to come up with show notes right, Write down everything you do and then put a little red dot next to everything that you have to do and I guarantee you there’s like two things on that list that should have red dots. One is talk Like that’s your show and maybe the other one is like outline or find guests right, Like I still like to. I don’t outsource that because I have a very clear vision of who I’m talking to and I want to make sure that I’m finding the right people to tell the right stories. Everything else I don’t do. I booked the guest, I come up with the outline, I record and then I push it into my big podcast, Omatic Machine, and I don’t see it again until it’s published.

So I’ve had not only the experience of working with you as an editor for you, but just taking in some of your content over the years and in the different resources you make available for people to learn how to systematize their podcast and various things. And that’s always fascinated me is seeing the depth at which you’ve been able to automate this stuff and build the systems, and that’s why, when we started this podcast, I went right to you. You booked a consulting call and it’s like okay, joe, I want to know your secrets. So I see there’s a huge value in working with someone like you, because, as much as a person may want to make things run smoothly, you don’t even always know what’s even possible.

I know about Zap, you know about a few different tools, but I didn’t even think, oh, this thing could be automated or this works this way. So you’re a definite expert in that regard. I’m curious if you were to come in with someone who needs assistance with this, like they. Let’s say, they have a podcast already, but they want to make everything flow better. How does that work? Do they come with a specific small problem or do you look at everything? How does that work in terms of implementing it and figuring out what areas they can improve on, cause it seems like a big, big job, I guess, is what I’m getting at.

Yeah. So one of the first things I will do is, either before the call or on our first call, I will I have a pretty long form about like at like, tell me everything you do for your podcast, right? So there’s like a bunch of questions to help elicit the responses I’m looking for. And that’s the first thing I’ll make sure we do, because I want to understand how, what, what kind of show do you have? How long is it? How do you record it? Do you edit it yourself? Are you doing show notes? How much research do you do?

And once I figure out that I have everything in place, I have the tools you’re using. Being comfortable with the tools you’re working with is is objective number one, because if you’re not comfortable, you’re not going to use them, and like you need to use them, right. So I want to have all of that understanding and then I will ask you this question where do you feel you spend the most time? That usually becomes a bigger discussion. Well, I think I’m doing it this way, or like I haven’t done enough episodes. I just know I need to get on top of this.

And if that’s the answer, then I tell people like okay, most people spend the most time in editing and promotion and in organizing right, because they don’t use a scheduling link or they don’t use a podcast planning thing. They just kind of keep it all in their head. So that’s the first thing I do and then we drill into do you need to do this? Do you have a team? Here’s how we can automate it and, usually based on the tools they use, I’ll make some recommendations based on that.

Right. So let’s try to just give a brief perspective here. You kind of touched on it a moment ago. But People who are, like both of us, entrepreneurial you have a business, you have a lot of things that are much more important than all these other things we’re trying to automate when I hear this come up, I feel bad at times for people that say, well, I’m just gonna do that, I’m gonna do that myself, they don’t automate it, or they’re gonna try to do it all on their own instead of hiring someone. That kind of thing.

That is a backwards way of thinking when it comes to business, because it’s a complete waste of time. Your time is so important. So, having that perspective and realizing, first of all, that you should be doing as little as possible, but then how it should actually look, so what should the whole process look like? Very briefly, I guess, like you said, you should basically just be talking, but let’s give it a picture of how simple this can be for people who maybe aren’t in that situation now and they feel like the podcast process has a lot of friction. It’s really weighing on people to do it on a consistent basis.

Yeah. So I think what you said there is really important. Like the, I’ll just do it myself. I want to share this because I think it really helps kind of crystallize for a lot of people. First of all, if you don’t know your base hourly rate you probably do If you’re listening to this you know how much money you need to make in a month to make ends meet.

But the thing that crystallized this the most for me was one day when I mowed my lawn. It had been three weeks because we went on vacation and then my wife worked the weekend and I just couldn’t get to it. So my lawn, like our grass, was like inches long and I have a really crappy lawn mower but the lawn mower had run out of gas halfway through mowing it. I had to do everything multiple times. The grass was wet. It took me six hours to mow my lawn on a weekday, which means that I lost six hours times my lawn. Let’s just say it’s $100, for easy math Cost me 600 bucks to mow my lawn that day. Now I pay somebody 30 bucks a week. I never have to think about mowing my lawn again and I can spend that time working. But going through that helped me understand right. Oh, here’s everything I just had to do to mow my lawn, and now I don’t care that it takes them 10 minutes, because it takes me an hour and a half or, on that day, six hours. So I think, like understanding that is really important, like going through it is really important so that you understand your process and how you work.

And I think one place this is super clear is with booking guests right, because here’s like here’s a tale of two ways to book guests right. The first is you know somebody you want to have on your podcast. I’m going to use Joel. I email Joel. Hey, joel, my name is Joe Casabona. I do the how I Built a Podcast. I think what you’re doing is great. I’d love to have you on the show to talk about this.

I usually record Monday, wednesday, fridays between 9 am and 2 pm Eastern time. Do any of those times work for you? Joel, who’s on a different coast from me, is going to take some time to get back to me. Then he’s going to be like hey, I’m usually not in the office on Mondays, but like, wednesday at 12 pm Pacific time works for me. This could take days and if you’re doing an interview week to week. You’ve just lost a bunch of time, right Versus. Hey, joel, my name is Joe Casabona. I love what you’re doing. I love to have you on the show.

You can book any time here. Here’s my Calendly link. Now we don’t need to do the time zone dance, we don’t need to say does this time work for you? It’s automatically booked on your calendar, so you don’t have to remember to send a calendar link or a calendar invite. But then you can also use Calendly to communicate with your guest. Hey, here’s what to expect. Hey, here’s what we’re recording. Here’s what I’m thinking. Right, here’s a reminder. You don’t have to do any of that. You’ve configured Calendly once and it’ll do all of that for you. So that’s one tool that eliminates communication and the whole like time zone scheduling dance. That’s going to save you like two, three hours.

Absolutely yeah, and there are multiple segments to podcasting that can be improved through systems and automation, like we have the production side and then the guesting like we’re talking about. Just to give a little quick insight here into how this one works and how simple it can be yeah, so when it comes to guest booking, you can do your outreach However you like to do. That could be automated. It could be, like you said, you prefer to kind of do it a little more on your own, but once you get a guest that has accepted that sounds a cool idea you fire off a link to them. They do the scheduling. It automatically sends them that stuff ahead of time.

On the back end you probably are doing a little more than we are, joe, but you helped us get this set up. It creates a document and notion with a framework. We go in and fill out some stuff there’s a task and click up updates and air table changes, the status, that all this stuff happens automatically. You don’t have to think about it and if you consider not doing that, so much more time in disorganization. So this is just one little part of what can be automated, right.

Yeah, I think that’s like a really crucial thing about using a scheduling link too, right? Is that when someone books an interview, that information can automatically get sent to click up air table, notion, trello, google Sheets, just like a place to keep all of your potential episodes and interviews so you can see what’s going on Now, like the thing that Joel just explained, where, like other, magic happens. Right? Like that wasn’t my first automation, right? I’ve been doing this for over 10 years, and so I built this up slowly, right? Start with an easy concept that can easily be taken off of your plate.

Exactly. Yeah, I just didn’t even know that a lot of these things could be done. You just kind of get into a flow of whatever you set up and it might be a little rough around the edges and time wasting, but you don’t even know how efficient it could be. The important reason why we want to do this is because the easier you make podcasting, the more likely you are that you’re going to actually keep going with it. Okay, we don’t want friction. We don’t want you to give up. We want this to be a system in place so you can do it for the long haul, because that’s where the results are right, like that would you say. That’s one of the keys to how you not only can run three podcasts but you’ve got like 400 episodes for that main one. I mean that’s a big accomplishment and if the processes aren’t there and it’s a difficult chore not going to happen.

Yeah, and I mean like I’ll say like when I was doing only interviews or mostly interviews, we’ll say like 90% interviews it was like super well oiled right. My show is a little bit in flux now because I changed a lot of things all at once. I don’t recommend doing that, but I’m like but because of that, I am seeing how helpful my systems are. I wouldn’t do one podcast, let alone three, if I didn’t have those systems in place. Joel, you work with people who understand that the whole post production process is hard and time consuming and you help them with that. I help people who maybe don’t know what they can automate. They just know they’re frustrated and things are taking too much time. Right. That’s why you hire experts because you want to run, right. You don’t want to spend a bunch of time walking, you want to run, and experts like us help people run faster.

Yeah, and I would argue that maybe some people aren’t even frustrated, they don’t even know that they could be less frustrated, like they don’t even realize that they have all this friction in place and the process isn’t as smooth as it could be. They literally may not even be aware. So I would say most people with the podcast could find a lot of value in working with someone like you, even if they don’t think so, like they might not even have known. A person like you exists, yeah that’s true.

Let me tell you something right. In the last three years I was diagnosed with two things Type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea. I didn’t know how poorly I was like performing during the day until I lowered my blood sugar. My blood sugar is more or less back to normal right. And then I got a CPAP machine and so, like, when I eat food and don’t feel like I got shot with a tranquilizer dart or get a full night’s sleep, I just feel so much better. But because for the last 30, whatever years I had been living a certain way, I had no idea what I was missing out on. So, Joel, you’re absolutely right. Like, if you’re producing a podcast and you’re just like, well, this is how podcasts are produced, they’re not. You can spend one to one time. The amount of time it takes you to record could be all of the time you spend in your podcast. How much better would your month look if that’s your podcast process?

Yeah, if it’s taking you three or four hours to create a single episode and you do weekly episodes well, if you could condense that to just spend an hour doing the interview well, now in four hours you could do a month’s worth of content. That’s a huge difference. So a lot of good advice here. I think that’s a huge thing, especially as we get this podcast off the ground. Here we’re looking to share the fundamentals and let people know how they can cut to the chase, making things efficient and getting the most out of their podcast. This would be a huge one. If you’re working on a business as a solopreneur or with a small team, this needs to be on your mind. Finding ways to save time is huge. So if people are interested in working with you or even checking out for your podcasts, where should they head to?

Here’s what I’ll do. I will set up a page called podcastworkflowscom slash Joel. That’s podcastworkflowscom slash J-O-E-L. You’ll be able to get my automations database, and then there will also be a special kind of power hour coaching. Call for only a special price, only for Joel’s listeners. So podcastworkflowscom slash Joel.

Sounds good. Okay, I will link to all your other profiles and podcasts and whatnot in show notes, cause I’m sure people are gonna check those out, so we’ll put all that there. We’ll definitely have you back, joel, because there’s so much that we can get into together. You’re just a wealth of knowledge and I don’t wanna talk about it all in one episode.

Thanks so much for having me. I love talking about this stuff.

Join us again next time on Profits Through Podcasting, for more tips on how to turn your podcast into a lead and revenue generation machine for your business, and if you’re ready to let a team of professionals handle your entire podcast production workflow so you can focus on the most important tasks in your business, visit eastcoastudiocom. Slash apply.