78: Your Podcast Workflow: Optimize, Automate, and Outsource It, with Ari Meisel

Podcastification - podcasting tips, podcast tricks, how to podcast better

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How much thought have you given to your podcast workflow recently?

That much, huh? ;)

I've been thinking about mine a lot lately because I have found myself caught up in the minutiae instead of getting the important things in my life and business done.

A workflow like it takes to produce a successful podcast can be very tedious to think through, so I wanted to talk to someone who can give me good tips on how to optimize it.

Ari Meisel is that guy. If you’ve never heard of Ari you really need to listen to this episode so you can hear his story.

An illness literally forced the guy into figuring out how to optimize, automate, and outsource the things in his life that needed to be done in order for him to be truly productive. And he has leveraged it for all it is worth.

In this episode, we walk through the basics of what it means to optimize anything, how to take the next up from there to automate things that can be automated, and then as a last resort, outsource things to people who can take many of the remaining tasks off your hands.

Yeah, I know, it sounds potentially expensive.

But if you'll take the time to listen you'll learn how much of what Ari did when he first started doing it was absolutely free, and what wasn't free wasn't that expensive.

So there you go… check out the outline below and give this episode a listen.

Here’s a rough outline of this episode about optimizing your podcast workflow

• [1:28] Who is Ari Meisel? The story of how he was forced into optimizing his life
• [3:54] What it means to optimize and why it’s important for your podcast workflow
• [6:14] How to begin the optimization process for your workflow
• [8:12] What Ari means when he speaks of automation
• [10:22] How do you know when it’s time to outsource?
• [13:01] Ari’s podcasting career and his tips for optimizing his podcasting workflow
• [18:31] What Ari would do if he was starting a podcast all over from square 1
• [21:20] What Ari’s doing now and how he can help you optimize your podcast workflow

Your podcast workflow needs help, even if you don’t think it does.

I have been podcasting for over 4 years now and I felt like I had my podcast workflow refined pretty well. But then I talked with Ari.

Man, I was both discouraged and invigorated at the same time.

There are so many pieces of my workflow that can be more effectively optimized or automated that I wasn't even aware of. I'm so glad we had this conversation and I believe you will be too - because it will show you what's possible when it comes to getting things off your plate and producing your podcast faster and with better results.

What does it mean to optimize something… in this case, your podcasting workflow?

When I think about optimizing something I often think of NASCAR.

Just watch 1 pit stop and you'll see how obviously those racers and their pit crews have done everything they can to optimize their speed as a team and the performance of their car and driver.

We are podcasters - we're not zipping around the track at hundreds of miles per hour. But what we are doing is still important. We've got lives to live, clients to serve, and families to love, so optimizing the work we need to do in order to publish a podcast episode is vital... so we can have the time for those things.

That means we need to learn how to optimize the processes that we use to publish our shows.

In this conversation, Ari made it pretty clear that in order to optimize anything you have to first take a very hard look at the details of how that thing functions. You won't know where to make tweaks that will run a process smoother until you know the status the process is in to begin with.

What I'm discovering as I apply what I learned from Ari is that the analyzation process takes time. But it is time well spent. That's because once you know where the weak links in your chain are, you can do what is necessary to fix them.

Sometimes the fix will come through refining the process itself, eliminating steps, or consolidating things into one step instead of 3. Other times, it will mean learning how to connect the dots between the applications you are using with some sort of automation.

And to me, that's where the fun really begins.

Automation is like magic. Stuff gets done without you doing it.

Before speaking with Ari on this episode, I knew there were lots of ways to automate things. I just didn't know how many ways.

As you listen, pay close attention to all the places in his workflow that he was able to connect one app or piece of software to another, so that he didn't have to touch his process once he started the ball rolling. It's an amazing example of automation that almost all of us could put into practice for our podcast workflow.

I'm starting to get very excited about the possibilities that flow out of this concept of automation.

My podcast workflow is going to be running much smoother in the future because it's going to be automatically happening through computer interactions, not my mistake-prone attempts at making the process happen.

But, there comes a point in the process where things have been optimized and automated as much as possible but there are still things that need to be done. That is where outsourcing comes in.

What does it mean to outsource something?

Outsourcing sounds potentially expensive, but it doesn't have to be. It could be as simple as finding a person on Fiverr who can do the artwork for your show, and like the name implies, the job could as little as $5.

Outsourcing is all about having things done for you that are not as valuable so that you can invest your time in things that are. And having a human being involved in the process brings a necessary human element to some of the more detailed tasks that computers simply can't do yet.

In this conversation, Ari describes how he utilized a random set of contractors to produce his audio week after week, and it allowed him to go from producing one episode every four to six weeks, to 2 episodes every week. He was amazed at the difference it made, and I am certain you will be too.

Optimizing your podcast workflow could change your life. Really.

That may sound like an overly dramatic statement, but it's absolutely true. You only have to hear Ari's experience to know the impact a good workflow can have on your productivity and effectiveness.

And that doesn't even take into account that once you do, you'll have time to invest in other things that can move your business forward more rapidly, or build better relationships with the people closest to you.

If you don't know where to start, might I suggest you begin by listening to this episode? You will get a very clear idea of what it could mean for you.

Do you need help figuring out how to optimize your podcast workflow?

Toward the end of this episode, I asked Ari to explain to us what he's doing to help entrepreneurs and business leaders maximize their businesses and lives.

My company has provided show notes for both of his podcasts for the last 5 months so I have gotten the opportunity to hear his philosophy and results repeatedly, in detail, and I can attest to how effective he is at what he does. If you need help addressing the sticking points in your podcast workflow, I recommend you get in touch with Ari right away.

You can find his website at www.Lessdoing.com and go from there.

So what do you say? Are you ready to optimize, automate, and outsource everything you can to make your podcast workflow more smooth and trouble free?

Get started by listening to this episode.

resources we talked about in this episode

• www.LessDoing.com - Ari’s website
• RescueTime App
• Time Doctor App
• Monkey Learn
• IFTTT
• Zapier
• Wufoo Forms
• Dropbox
• Wapwolf
• Fiverr
• Rev
• Hootsuite
• Gravity Forms
• Typeform
• Slack

Connect with me…

Carey(AT)PodcastFastTrack.com

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