00:00:00.000 –> 00:00:03.150

Joe: One of my favorite Disney plus shows is Loki.

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It's a truly fascinating look at time travel, predetermined events,

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and controlling your own destiny.

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And now I'm going to give you a major, if not very simplified

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spoiler if you haven't seen it.

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See in the finale Loki Masters, the ability to time, slip or transport to

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any time, any place, and in any timeline.

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For all intents and purposes, a timeline is a parallel universe.

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If you're not familiar with the multiverse in Marvel, this also allows him to

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relive events over and over again.

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So as all of existence faces eradication, he can take as much quote unquote time

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as he wants to learn how to save all of everything and everyone on every timeline.

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He continuously over thousands of years, learns everything he needs

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to learn and practices through trial and error to improve his process.

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And his odds of saving everything and everyone, and while we don't

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have thousands of years or the ability to time travel, we do have

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the ability to take a step back and consider the question what's missing.

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Hey everybody.

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Joe Casabona here.

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This is episode 4 0 4 of how I built it, and I'm going to ask you the question.

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What's missing from your process?

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You can find all of the show notes for this episode and you can join

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my mailing list over at How I Built It slash 4 0 4 for members.

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I'm going to be talking about thinking about my own production toolkit and

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process, and wonder if it's time to ditch D script for my recording and editing.

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If you want to become a member, you can click the link in the description.

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Or you can find that link over@howibuilt.it slash 4 0 4,

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but for now, let's get to the intro and then the episode.

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hey everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps

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busy solopreneurs and creators grow their business without

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spending too much time on it.

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I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and each week I bring you interviews and case studies

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on how to build a better business through smarter processes, time management.

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And effective content creation.

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It's like getting free coaching calls from successful solopreneurs.

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By the end of each episode, you'll have one to three takeaways you can

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implement today to stop spending time in your business and more time on

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your business or with your friends, your family reading, or however

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you choose to spend your free time.

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Okay, so back in November I asked this question of my members, when do

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you burn it all down and start over.

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In the members portion of this, I discuss my current and future tool set for

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recording, editing and transcription.

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I.

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And I can't help but wonder if I'm just a chronic app switcher

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I am, or if I'm looking to legitimately improve my processes.

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Here's what I said back in November.

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So when do you burn it all down and start over?

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I think it's when the frustrations start getting in the way of you

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working efficiently if what you have is working and you can continue

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to afford the tools you use.

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Leave them be.

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But if your processes suddenly start fighting you or there's a consolidation

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of tools like with DS script and squad cast, you should consider changing.

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So that's again what I said back in November, but that's not the whole story.

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That's the burn it all down story.

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Reviewing your process is a bit different.

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It's something that you should do more often than every couple

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of years or so in the show.

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Loki.

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Loki could have continuously gone back to a happier time, relive

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that until it gets bad and go back.

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He was living outside of time as they put it in the show, but he

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was burdened with glorious purpose.

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Loki: I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose.

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Joe: In Groundhog Day, bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, which by

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the way, I just realized, uh, that that's like an homage to p Phil.

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And then I am assuming John Connors from, uh, from Terminator.

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Anyway, in Groundhogs Day, bill Murray's character, Phil Connors is stuck

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on the same day and after realizing selfishness and hedonism isn't the way.

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He uses the time to improve himself until spoiler alert, he breaks the cycle.

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In both instances, the characters took a step back, looked at what needs to

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be fixed and solved their problems.

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So let's talk about reviewing your processes, but first, let's take

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a break to hear from our sponsors.

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Okay, so let's look at reviewing your processes, bringing

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this point back to reality.

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How many times have you ignored something until it got truly painful

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to experience a light bulb that flickers an ache in your foot?

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Having to comb through your email to find that contract you sent one time so you can

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make a copy of it to send to a new client.

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It's easy to view these fixes as inconvenient.

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You're taking time away from what you're trying to do after all, but.

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You find that the fix changing, the light bulb, visiting the doctor, saving that

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contract in an easily accessible folder is actually much easier and could end

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up saving you time and or frustration.

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The same thing goes for your work, making a video, writing,

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creating a podcast episode.

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You are so caught up in the actual creating that you don't feel you have

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the time to step back and evaluate.

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Does that sound familiar to any of you, but my friend doing this exact thing?

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Taking a step back and evaluating your process.

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This has the potential to unlock or properly reallocate hours of your time.

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So how do you do it?

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Well, I think that there are two paths.

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The first one is to think about what takes the most time.

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You can ask yourself what takes the most time and eliminate or improve that.

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For example, when I first started this podcast, I would edit each episode,

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but I quickly realized that this was the longest part of the process.

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I wasn't particularly good at it, which is also something I hear

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from my clients and students.

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Editing easily takes the most time.

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So I decided to hire an editor.

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He does for about 50 bucks an episode.

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What would usually take me one to two hours per episode.

00:08:07.331 –> 00:08:11.561

So not only was I eating up a lot of my time.

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But in terms of billable hours, I was losing hundreds of dollars per episode.

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If there is a bottleneck in your process, that's a great place to start improving.

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If you do something and it's just eating up your time, and especially

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if you don't like doing it, it is a prime area for improvement.

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The other thing that you can do is think about the lowest effort improvement.

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Perhaps the improvement that would take the most time would also take a high level

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of effort to fix, or would cost funds or cost money that you don't have yet.

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So conversely, you could consider the easiest thing to improve and do that.

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A great example of this in podcasting is using a scheduler to book your guests.

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Instead of figuring out a time via email, the scheduler is easy to implement,

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free to start, and saves a ton of time and confusion getting guests booked.

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I've gone back and forth over multiple days getting a time set.

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There's the whole what works for you.

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Dance, because you don't have direct access to their schedule.

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You have the time zone dance.

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Where are they?

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Are we close to daylight savings time?

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Are they in Arizona?

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Arizona has its own rules for daylight savings time.

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No one knows what time it is in Arizona in November, no

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more because I use a scheduler.

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And the great thing about this approach is because you're looking at low effort

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improvements, it allows for quick wins.

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Without monumental process shifts, you can make a change here and a change there.

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And over time those will compound.

00:10:03.601 –> 00:10:07.621

Now, I know I said that there were two ways, but there's actually another way

00:10:07.621 –> 00:10:10.021

to think about improving your process.

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And I suspect that the cold open and the title of this episode

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betrayed what I'm about to say.

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Uh, it's to ask what's missing?

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This is the most open-ended question, and it could yield a bunch of answers.

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You could find what's missing is an extra step that makes your content more popular.

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For example, I started publishing my articles on Substack as well as

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my personal blog this year because I have a suspicion that thanks

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to Substack Discovery Engine, more people will find my work.

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You could also find what's missing is an automated reminder to follow up with leads

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so they don't fall through the cracks.

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Around the holidays, I forgot to follow up with certain people because

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I moved systems and I realized that I was missing those reminders, and so I

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fixed that and now I know exactly what I need to follow up with everybody.

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Maybe what's missing is an assistant or a coach.

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When I'm looking to improve my process, I like to start with

00:11:18.961 –> 00:11:20.096

the question, what's missing?

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It allows me and my coaching client, who I do this exercise with as well,

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to think bigger picture about the overall process, moving through

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each step and wondering if there's something better that we can do here.

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Usually when I sit down with a coaching client for the first time, I ask them

00:11:40.171 –> 00:11:43.051

to tell me everything that they do.

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When they publish a single episode of their podcast, they go through it and

00:11:47.941 –> 00:11:49.621

they say, okay, but what's missing?

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What do you do before you book the guest?

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What do you do after you edit the episode?

00:11:57.151 –> 00:11:59.491

What's missing from the process that you just told me?

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And we usually end up with a much longer list than they anticipated and plenty

00:12:05.131 –> 00:12:07.201

of places where we can save them time.

00:12:08.301 –> 00:12:11.631

Here's an example of me doing this exercise recently

00:12:11.631 –> 00:12:13.161

with these solo episodes.

00:12:14.766 –> 00:12:18.546

The original process was to make an outline, record some thoughts

00:12:18.546 –> 00:12:23.586

in D script, make some light edits for content, and then publish.

00:12:24.636 –> 00:12:29.376

So as I approached this process, I asked what's missing, and here are

00:12:29.376 –> 00:12:30.847

some of the answers I came up with.

00:12:31.666 –> 00:12:33.346

There's not a clear story.

00:12:33.351 –> 00:12:34.006

I'm telling.

00:12:35.111 –> 00:12:40.516

These episodes aren't as polished as my interviews, which are edited more

00:12:40.516 –> 00:12:42.856

for both audio quality and content.

00:12:44.341 –> 00:12:52.171

And there's not a clear show document or notes for my VA to use to upload

00:12:52.231 –> 00:12:57.961

the episode to Transistor because I'm usually just doing this based

00:12:57.961 –> 00:12:59.881

on an outline that I created.

00:12:59.881 –> 00:13:05.011

I'm not creating the full document, and so usually she ends up asking me what to do.

00:13:05.741 –> 00:13:11.621

I realized that I was spending all of my time on doing basic edits because I

00:13:11.621 –> 00:13:16.751

didn't have a clearly defined thought progression every time I recorded.

00:13:17.471 –> 00:13:22.301

I would just have an outline, so I would talk a little bit, get off track, ramble,

00:13:22.301 –> 00:13:24.251

then make an edit point to edit that out.

00:13:25.391 –> 00:13:30.131

Then like I said, when my VA went to upload those episodes, she never knew

00:13:30.191 –> 00:13:34.421

what to write in the description box because I didn't provide anything for

00:13:34.426 –> 00:13:36.851

her because I just recorded the episode.

00:13:38.081 –> 00:13:44.651

These were big problems in my workflow because I thought solo episodes.

00:13:44.966 –> 00:13:50.126

We're going to be easier than interviews, and I should say that there are big

00:13:50.126 –> 00:13:54.206

problems in my workflow because I didn't take the time to define the process

00:13:54.716 –> 00:13:58.886

because I thought that they were going to be easier than interviews, and they are.

00:13:59.276 –> 00:14:02.546

I mean, but I'm still trying to produce good content here,

00:14:03.656 –> 00:14:05.786

so how do I fix these problems?

00:14:06.566 –> 00:14:09.896

Well, through this exercise, I found that the main issue

00:14:09.896 –> 00:14:11.966

was the lack of a clear story.

00:14:12.671 –> 00:14:16.541

I've been talking for at least the last six months about the

00:14:16.541 –> 00:14:21.101

importance of good storytelling in podcasting, how storytelling

00:14:21.311 –> 00:14:26.711

is going to help you differentiate from every podcast out there.

00:14:28.151 –> 00:14:33.281

And I wasn't doing a good job of that on my own podcast, so I knew I could

00:14:33.281 –> 00:14:38.531

kill two birds by adding a script, which in turn becomes articles that

00:14:38.621 –> 00:14:41.291

you read on my blog or on Substack.

00:14:42.306 –> 00:14:49.106

The script allows me to hash out my ideas and formulate a good three act story

00:14:49.106 –> 00:14:55.706

with a hopefully gripping open, uh, that got your attention, but it also gives

00:14:55.706 –> 00:15:02.066

me clear copy for my VA to add to the description, I usually just copy and paste

00:15:02.066 –> 00:15:04.526

the text that is serving as the cold open.

00:15:06.551 –> 00:15:10.301

I also made the decision to send solo episodes to my editor.

00:15:11.051 –> 00:15:15.581

He can edit for content and polish up the audio better than ica.

00:15:17.051 –> 00:15:18.731

By asking what's missing.

00:15:19.361 –> 00:15:23.381

I was able to make several improvements to these solo shows.

00:15:24.401 –> 00:15:30.461

So to wrap up, I want to point out something that you may have realized.

00:15:31.436 –> 00:15:36.596

It doesn't seem like I'm saving time by swapping the edit for writing a script.

00:15:38.066 –> 00:15:42.386

And you're right, it may not always be true that you're saving

00:15:43.076 –> 00:15:48.566

a bunch of time by improving your process, but as I talked about in

00:15:48.571 –> 00:15:50.996

my piece, great things require time.

00:15:51.776 –> 00:15:57.476

It's about taking the right shortcuts or saving time in the right places.

00:15:57.986 –> 00:16:03.986

So that you can focus on the really important bits, in my opinion, swapping

00:16:03.986 –> 00:16:08.966

the edit for scripts or for writing scripts creates much better content

00:16:09.686 –> 00:16:14.186

and early indications on my podcast stats show that you think so too.

00:16:15.326 –> 00:16:18.116

Plus, I usually write an article for my blog and newsletter.

00:16:18.116 –> 00:16:22.406

Anyway, some minor tweaks, and that content now serves three purposes,

00:16:22.796 –> 00:16:24.536

which ultimately does save time.

00:16:25.631 –> 00:16:26.771

That's not really the point, right.

00:16:26.771 –> 00:16:32.674

I swapped out editing for script writing when both Loki and Phil from

00:16:32.679 –> 00:16:35.734

Groundhog Day had a problem to solve.

00:16:36.064 –> 00:16:38.764

They weren't trying to save themselves time.

00:16:39.694 –> 00:16:45.309

They were trying to leverage the time they knew they had and make the most of it.

00:16:46.969 –> 00:16:49.459

That's what a good process does for you.

00:16:50.449 –> 00:16:55.309

It allows you to use your time wisely so you can do your best work.

00:16:56.569 –> 00:17:00.679

That's what you can gain from asking what's missing.

00:17:02.449 –> 00:17:06.049

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of How I Built It.

00:17:06.379 –> 00:17:11.569

You can find the article for this episode as well as the ability to join

00:17:11.569 –> 00:17:13.249

my mailing list or the membership.

00:17:13.654 –> 00:17:17.554

Over at How I Built It slash 4 0 4.

00:17:17.974 –> 00:17:22.324

You will get bonus points if you write in and tell me the little Easter egg

00:17:22.354 –> 00:17:24.904

I hit in the topic of this episode.

00:17:25.624 –> 00:17:32.974

Uh, now if you do join, the membership members will hear the extended

00:17:33.064 –> 00:17:36.634

version, the ad free extended version where I'm thinking about

00:17:36.634 –> 00:17:38.944

my podcast production toolkit.

00:17:39.319 –> 00:17:44.209

And I kind of think out loud about if it's time to ditch DS script, which has

00:17:44.209 –> 00:17:47.749

been an integral part of my process, but I have some reasons that I'll

00:17:47.749 –> 00:17:49.879

explore in the members only episode.

00:17:50.119 –> 00:17:51.319

Thanks so much for listening.

00:17:51.319 –> 00:17:56.689

Thanks to our sponsors, and until next time, get out there and build something.