How to Create a Better Podcast in a Fraction of the Time, With Alex Sanfilippo

podcast death. It sounds scary, and it happens a lot. Podcast death, sometimes also known as pod fade, is when podcasts that used to release consistently simply stop. They die. They disappear. Sometimes this happens because people started their show as a hobby, and after a while the novelty wore off, so they moved on. Other times podcasts die because people think that podcasting is an easy, passive, get rich quick scheme, which as someone who already has a podcast you know, it's not that. But there's also a third reason that podcast death happens, and it's actually, in my opinion, the most tragic. You see, podcasters who have been at the grind for a long time tend to get exhausted spending so much time and energy on all of the podcast grunt work. Podcast grunt work encompasses all the admin, production, and publishing tasks that go into releasing regular podcast episodes. And that stuff is annoying, sure. But it's actually more sinister than that because podcast grunt work is a silent killer. One that you don't even realize is killing your show until it's too late. And here's a little data to back that up. Just last month, we surveyed about 50 grow the show podcasters about their production process. And get this, when we ask them how much time per week they spend on podcast grunt work, they answered on average about six hours a week. But then we asked them to quantify how much time they spent on the different subcategories of podcast grunt work like episode prep, audio editing, video editing, publishing. And here's what's crazy. After quantifying those tasks and adding them up, the average time spent per week on podcast grunt work was on average 14 hours. Remember, they said that they only were spending six hours a week. And here's the nail in the coffin. We asked those same podcasters how much time each week they spent growing their audience. And the average answer about four hours. Now, that's better than no time spent on growth. But do you see now how podcast grunt work is the silent killer podcasters are spending 14 hours a week on it, thinking that they're only spending six hours a week on it. That is a loss of eight hours per week. Can you imagine how much faster your podcast would grow and monetize if you devoted an extra work day eight hours every week, just to making it grow and monetize today. This is how we are going to grow the show because while you might have the best podcast growth strategy ever created, if you don't devote the time, it takes to execute it. And you instead burn yourself out on all the simple little nitty-gritty things that somebody else could honestly do cheaply or that doesn't have to be done at all, then all of those podcast growth strategies will be useless. So how can we improve this? Who can help us get all of that podcast grunt work time back while still ensuring the podcast grunt work gets done and done well? Today's guest can help us with just that. His name is Alex San Felipe. He's the founder of pod match. He's the founder of podcast SOP.com. And he's the host of his own show called podcasting made simple. And he's here today to help you get off the silent road to podcast death. He's going to teach you exactly why it's so crucial to have a great and efficient system for getting the podcast grunt work done. And he's going to help you figure out the systems that you need to implement right now, which will help you learn how to conserve your energy and make the podcasting process as pain free as possible. All of this so that you can grow more while doing less. This is Grow the Show. The podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Spiddler and my mission is to help you the independent podcaster to grow your audience faster and make more money quicker so that you can have a thriving podcast business. Today on the show, we're going to streamline your production process and take you from an amateur podcaster trying to do it all yourself to a professional podcaster who show runs like clockwork. So if that sounds good, then stick around to this episode of Grow the Show. My name is Alex San Felipe and I'm the founder of podcast SOP.com. When Alex was a teenager, he was a bit of a business wonder kind. During high school is actually working on some technology that was virtual tours of homes. Very early stage, you know, like you can now just kind of grab the mouse and you can spin all around a room and stuff like that. We built really early software that could do that and was getting posted on the MLS and I was 16 when I started that and by 18, I had made a commitment. I'm like, I'm going to save my money and I'm going to buy real estate right when I can. And that's exactly what I did. It was extremely impressive for an 18-year-old to be crushing it so much in business that he can start to buy real estate. But unbeknownst to Alex, there was a huge problem with his plan. That's because Alex started buying real estate in 2007 and 2008. And within months, everything had crashed. So I went from like doing really well at like 18, 19 years old to being crazy in debt. Once Alex had lost his success, the rest of his life started to crumble too. The relationship disappeared that I was in. A lot of the friends, they were so shallow when they realized I was struggling. They didn't want to talk about the struggles. They just want to go out and have fun, right? So humbled and in financial ruin, Alex left entrepreneurship and he spent his 20s working for an aerospace engineering company rising through the ranks to become an executive. And he did really well. But with time, he started to feel the itch again. I can't just be a cog in the system at this point. Someone else can do this job that would really thrive in this and love to just hit the numbers. And so a decade after getting burned by the real estate crash, Alex decided to get back in the game, but he had a problem. That was like, you know what? I don't really know entrepreneurship anymore. Like after like 12 years in corporate, I didn't really know what to do. So I just started interviewing success entrepreneurs. People had left their nine to five job to pursue something. That series of interviews would become his podcast creating a brand. And what's so impressive about Alex's presence with that show is that unlike any other independent podcaster I've seen who's hustled a side project into a podcast, Alex turned this show into a well-oiled machine really fast. And he did that for a very specific reason. I was very I was proud of every episode we released, but I wasn't spending 30 hours a week working on it. Like me personally, I was spending time with the community. And I've always found that the more time I can get with them, the more time I can actually send them something that's done, the better it's going to do because there's a lot of shows out there and you know this Kevin that spend the talent, the guy behind it that everyone wants to talk to is spending 40 hours behind closed doors working on it. I think the day the listeners and the community don't care about that 40 hours because you didn't spend it with them. I am guilty of this hardcore as a creator. I spend most of my creative energy in solitude for the sake of the show. And I didn't think that was such a big deal until Alex made this analogy. When I was growing up, my dad was really busy. I have a great relationship with my dad. So I'm not saying anything negative about him at all, but he was really busy. And he always said, well, I'm working really hard 15 hour days to take care of my family. When all that his kids wanted was to spend time with him. I feel that our communities and podcasts are off in the same way. They want more time with you, but you're so busy in the back and making things work that you don't really have that time. Alex didn't want his podcast listeners to feel the same way about him. So basically what I got really good at was building systems around the show and coming over the procedure so I could spend more time with the people that were actually trusting me with their time and listening to me. Like I wanted to be a friend to those people. So how much time do you spend with your community? I think you and I could both stand to show up more for our audience. Anyway, shortly after launching creating a brand, Alex really started to generate some momentum. As a part of that momentum, he was invited to speak at a conference. And he went into that appearance with a goal in mind. When I get off stage, I'm going to ask everybody who talks to me what they're struggling with in podcasting. I want to find something to help this community people. They've helped me so much. They've given me so much. Let me see what I can do to give back. And you know, it goes that you've been on stages as well. Whether you're a good or bad speaker, people are nice and they're just going to come say, how do you afterwards? Right? So as I was talking people, I was kind of logging the responses I got. And 100 people said exactly the same thing, which was I'm having trouble finding ideal guests for my show. And when I heard that, I found a problem. Like first off, I have an industry of passion. So I found a passion of mine. And then I found the problem that that industry was facing. I went home and started searching for a solution for it. Alex would wind up creating that solution. It's called pod match and it's a website that matches podcasts guests with podcasters who need guests. And this platform has done really well. You might have already heard of it or even used it yourself. But even though pod match was working and it was growing, Alex had a weird problem. Even though the website worked well and people loved it, Alex noticed that many of his best users would suddenly stop showing up on the platform. Like they're just disappearing. And so I just started getting on calls with as many of them as I could be like, Hey, what was wrong? Like, why did you decide to leave pod match? Like was it not like accomplishing something? We need to change something in every single one said the same thing. Oh, no, pod match was great. I just completely stopped my show. And at first, I was like, Oh, okay. Thanks for the time, right? And I move on to the next person. And I found out that some people were just killing off their shows. And finally, I got the point where I'm like, you know what? I need to be asking why he discovered two main reasons. The first one he couldn't help with. People couldn't quit their job in six months. They didn't have as much influences Joe Rogan, right? Like those are the main reasons someone's, or they risk a total hobbyist who just like, I just want to try something new. I didn't like it. I don't want to do it anymore. Alex can't make you like podcasting. The second reason was the one that there was something to do about. And it was this. It's that I'm always stressed out. I always feel like I'm behind. I can't get organized. It's just too much. Does that sound familiar? And that's where we got the idea of to see who could we help stay in the podcasting game that is serious, but just doesn't feel like they can do it because of overwhelm. And that's where podcast SOP was born, which SOP stands for standard operating procedures. But the idea behind it was, can we make it easier and less friction involved so a host can just continue to release episodes on time and not have to feel like all that pressure in their head all the time. So Alex created a new platform. And this one is called podcast SOP. Their mission is to just help podcasters be less stressed. But as a podcaster, you're a passionate person who loves making your show. So why the heck is it that you're so stressed all the time? Some of it goes back to the very first thing I said that people would leave the industry for, which is they wanted to make a lot of money, right? Like they have this idea of like, I want to get really rich with it. It's a matter of fact, you have a really good episode on this that I want to call out real quick if that's okay. It was with Dave Jackson back on February 1st, 2022. And I think it was titled the only way to monetize your podcast, which the title totally caught me, but it was really good. So if anyone's saying, oh, well, I'm good with the production, but I'm struggling with the money side of things. Go listen to that episode with Kevin, Dave Jackson, totally worthwhile. But again, the next reason in line was just the stress was involved. So what I started asking, I'm like, well, why is it stressful? And what I found is like people had sticking notes all over their computer. They're pulling them off. Well, this is like the first step I do, or here's a piece of paper, and these are all the steps I do, or here's 10 whiteboards that kind of explain like my process. And the problem I realized is just everyone was keeping this stuff very disorganized first off, but also all in their head. And if there's something that's always stuck with me, it's a quote by David Allen, a productivity expert from back in the day, get things done is his methodology. And you always said that your head is for having ideas not for storing them. For a lot of podcasters, myself included, when I first started out, the process is essentially a tangle of ideas and checklists that are stored completely in our heads. And half of that process ends up just being remembering the process. It was like stress overload because they're like, okay, what are the 20 things I do every time I release an episode? I got to get back in the memory banks and try to figure that out. And just bogging down their head was causing a lot of stress versus just saying, here's the perfect list that I do every time that's in front of me. It was that simple. And when we started making a solution for that, we actually found that podcasters would stay podcasting longer because they felt a relief. They felt like, I don't have to remember all this stuff because it's sitting right in front of me now. It makes the whole process easier for people. By now, I'm sure you're running through your own production process and thinking about how much of it you try to manage in your own head. And hopefully you've realized that you're spending way more time and energy than you need to, not only doing the podcast grunt work, but thinking about and keeping track of the podcast grunt work. So now that you know that podcast grunt work is the silent killer that is coming for your show, what can you do now to get control of the process to streamline everything and to get a hit to start enjoying, growing and monetizing your show? Alex is going to walk you through exactly that after the break. All right. So before the break, podcasting entrepreneur Alex Sanfully both told us how he discovered that podcasters were ditching their shows because they were just so stressed out. Luckily though, some of that stress is preventable and Alex made his mission to come up with solutions to prevent it. His solution is best summed up in four steps. Capture, eliminate, automate and delegate. So let's start with the first one. Capture. Before you can change and improve your production process, you first have to observe what it already is. The very first thing is just to get it all down on a list. And I actually recommend doing that on pen and paper. I think that's a beautiful way to do it because nothing transcribes at your head better than like a pen and paper to me. You can always type it up. It doesn't have the same like feel behind it, but literally write down everything you do. So like if you're saying, okay, I'm going to start doing this now. Your next episode, go through it like you have been, but write everything down along the way. And doesn't need any order. Just make sure you get it all down. If you forget something, be like, oh, I forgot book the guest, right? That can be done in matter. There's no order yet. Just write it all down. I believe that that's the most important step that anyone can take is make sure you look at that whole thing. Then once you have everything that you do to make your show great written down, it's time to organize it. There should be some sort of order of like, where does it flow? And at that point, I recommend transcribing onto a computer and then having your, this is a matter of 20 things. Have all 20 things listed out. Because I'm going to do that now. It can be like, okay, I can move this here. I can quickly jot this up here. This is actually the third thing I do. And by separate, like getting all that together one list, you've now consolidated all the one place. You can throw away the sticky notes, you know, like the paper can go away. You've got it all written down. You can just excel for something like that. So step one is to fully capture and organize each step of what you're doing. And all of that will help you with step two, which is eliminate. Then you've got to look at all the bad habits you picked up. And when I say bad habits, they might start off with good in 10. But Kevin, a day one podcaster might look at your show and be like, I'm going to do it. Kevin does, because he's really successful in podcasting. Everyone knows him. I'm going to do exactly what he does. But the problem is when somebody does that, they're comparing their day one to your, your 10, your five, whatever it is, right? Like, and you didn't start off doing everything you're doing now. Like you've worked your way into that. So so many of us, we've got this list of things in some of it. It's just, it's impossible for us to keep up with. It's just too much. So how do you choose what to eliminate? It turns out that a lot of podcasters include actions on their to-do lists that they just aren't ready to do yet. It's stuff that they want to do in a perfect world. Rather, you need your to-do list to reflect largely where you are, not where you want to be. Here's an example. I talked to money saving mom. And she's like a blogger. She has over a million people who follow her. She has a huge podcast. She's done really well. And when I asked her, I'm like, how did you do all this? She goes, well, I started with just one thing, Facebook. I mastered Facebook. I hired somebody. I moved on to this, hired somebody. Then I moved on to that. Then we launched the show. And then I stopped everything else I was doing. I just did the show. But when somebody says, oh, I want to be like her, they launch all those things at the same time, right? Like it's just crazy. So it's really going back through looking at those bad habits and saying, you know what? This really isn't going to be helpful for me right now. I don't have the capacity for it. It doesn't serve my audience ultimately. And if you can't say that serving your audience ultimately, or it's not really hitting the right place, it's time to stop. At least if it's at least temporarily, it's time to stop. So how do you start stopping? How do you choose what to prioritize? The answer as it turns out is the same answer to a lot of podcasting questions. Should be where your audience is. So example, when I first got started, I launched with all the social platforms. I spent a lot of time on them, especially Instagram, because Instagram was like, it's still pretty hot, right? But like Instagram was like the thing. And people were like, dude, if you're not doing stories doing this, like you're just not going to make it. So I was doing that and just hitting my head against the wall, Kevin, feeling like I was like, dude, this is the worst. I hate this. And then one day someone's like, well, where do your analytics say your listeners are coming from? I was like, good question. I went to the WordPress dashboard. I went into Google analytics. I looked, I'm like, huh, 90% of my social media comes from LinkedIn. And LinkedIn's just automated. I'm not even really doing anything with it. And I was like, well, what if I stop spending time on Instagram and go over to LinkedIn? And that was the first time I show really took off. And it's because I focused where my audience was instead of where I wanted them to be. My audience of early stage entrepreneurs weren't spending time on Instagram. They were looking to network on LinkedIn. And so I doubled down a LinkedIn and shut down Instagram, which most people said, Alex, you're crazy. My show grew by like 200% in the next couple of months. And it's just because I actually went where the audience was instead of saying, I got to do all the things. This is the trend you want it's where I've got to be. So I pulled that out of our process completely. It was just gone off the list. If all of this sounds a bit too hypothetical for you, here's an example of how Alex moved from focusing his social media presence on Instagram to focusing it on LinkedIn. I didn't enjoy Instagram. So like it wasn't like terrible for me because I was like, oh, thank God, I can stop this for a little bit. But I went into another platform. Like is this going to be more the same? Like I was in aerospace for 15 years. And that's what people know me as on LinkedIn. Like, is this still going to work for me? And so I went in there and just did some learning. I just started networking with people that were good at LinkedIn. So I basically would send out a post and be like, hey, so and so you get like 3000 people engaging with every post you do. What am I doing wrong or what am I doing right? And these people just were willing to help out. So I just asked them for their time. It wasn't against paying people for their time either just to learn a little bit about it. And so I just I got really good at using LinkedIn. And it was a lot less work than I thought. Like the thing with LinkedIn was just it's not as hot as Instagram again. So like Instagram you need to post all the time to keep relevant on LinkedIn. Your posts can circulate for weeks and you don't have to do anything. So I was just like, you know what? Post one really good piece of content that could go viral that about an episode and let it ride. And then I'll come back a week later and do another one or a couple weeks later. And so I was really relieved actually when I got into it. But initially, yeah, it was a scary feeling like thinking I already hate Instagram. I'm not good at it. Now I'm going to go over to LinkedIn have to learn something new that's not my podcast, but it up being a really good thing for me to do. Part of building a great system is cutting stuff out of that system. When we're working on projects here at Grow the Show and someone wants to change a system, I'm often asking, okay, what problem does this solve? If the answer is a problem that we don't have yet, I usually ask them to put that project on the back burner. But I'll be honest with you, it can be scary to step back from projects that are so very public and you might worry about this. The fear of failure because I didn't want people to look at me as someone who failed. It's the internet, right? Like when you're posting something people know and stopping that put me in a category of like, ah, Alex isn't really serious in my head. It put me in that category. And in reality, I realized it never really affected much because I wasn't doing well in these platforms anyway. But if I was smarter, what I would have done, what I recommend to people is when you are going to stop something, explain it. Not to make yourself not look like a failure, but just be like, hey, listen, everybody, I've been here for a while, but I realized like LinkedIn's really where my tribe is at. Make sure you're over there with me, but I got to stop this for a little bit for my own personal health and the health of my community. When you're just that transparent, that type of thing goes really well. So I think for me, the first thing was like, and for people that they're scared that people are going to think they're some sort of failure. That's probably the biggest one. But the other one is, again, looking back at some of the greats, the people that have like mastered all this stuff and be like, I've got to do what they do if I ever want what they have. And it's just not always true because you're not going to be them. Your audience is going to be their audience. You're going to have your own. It's a matter of finding your own path and figuring out when you're heading the right direction on that path or heading the wrong way in knowing when it's time to make a decision. So when you have your to-do list captured and unnecessary tasks eliminated, it's time to move on to steps three and four, automate and delegate. The first thing I'm going to look at every way shape and form is, can I automate any of these processes? And here's the thing that there's so many free tools out there these days that can automate almost anything. And they sell to Big B to B. So like B to C, they're like, here, you can have it, right? Because they're looking for those big contracts. So for me, I automate anything I can. The next thing I do is I look, hey, like at that point was just me, but I'm like, hey, my wife is going to be helping out. Hey, can I delegate some of this work to you that's keeping me away from the people? And the last thing that we've been just kind of touching on is eliminate, there's never a problem with stopping something that really isn't working or serving you or your audience. And so for me, it was just taking that's the hardest for people, but really, it's probably the best thing you can do. So I always look at automate, delegate, and then most importantly, can I eliminate something that I'm doing here? The purpose of automation and delegation is to take necessary tasks, tasks that you can't eliminate off of your plate. Automate can be a scary word, and it might make you think of computer programs or confusing apps, but it really doesn't have to be that complicated. I love the use of tools. So if at this point, you've basically documented all, you've got it all in some form of order, you've eliminated the things that don't matter, you feel like you have a really good production list. What I like to do is also just make sure that you batch anything that you can. So if I'm going to record an intro and outro separately, which is something I like to do for my podcast episodes, I'm going to do that right as I'm editing, because I'm already going to be in the spot to edit, right? I can quickly jump in there, read an intro and outro and stitch it right in there all together, right? So I'm going to batch those things together. So again, I've got it in proper order, but now I've kind of got my different sections broken out. I like to do that. Not everyone needs to be that organized, but the next thing that you do after that, once you feel, hey, I've got the right order, I've got it all ready to go, is to go ahead and put it in some sort of system. Excel isn't bad. If you add some sort of checklist on it, that's okay. But for me, I work with a team and I like to have due dates on things. That's why I use podcast SOP. That's why we designed it. Literally, it's like a glorified checklist with due dates. You can upload stuff. You can add comments. You can assign people. The idea was to make it really simple for somebody. But there's tools like Trello is incredible. People are using notion these days. You can build some of your own tools that way. Again, keep the main thing the main thing, right? Don't go out there and build your own solution. Find something that works really well for you. But what's most important with this, like I just said, is to find what works for you. Find that thing because that removes an extra layer of friction that you might have. But then when you have all this organized and a system that you really like that you enjoy, now you're primed and ready to go. You can really just knock this thing out. I think that when you hit that level, it's just a matter of continuously honing that and making that just a really smooth process. Because now the stress has gone and then you can just really get the whole thing just fast-track, right? You can start doing a really good job with it. Yeah. What tell me more? What does it look like to actually get this right? What does it feel like? Yeah. For me, with team members at this point, I mentioned doing editing, which was a hard thing for me to go by the way. Kevin, I really enjoyed editing. That was super fun. But it was one of the things my team actually was like, Alex, you're done. I was like, you know what? I respect all of you. I'm done. But basically for me, it's, again, using podcast SAP, a lot of tools will work similarly for you. I hit add new episode. I put in the tentative title, the tentative release date, and the episode number. And then I hit done. And it basically populates this list of, it's 38 different steps that we have on ours. And it's assigned over 18 members. So I think only four of those steps are actually mine, which is like, upload the audio, right? Like it's something I've got to do. But then it just kind of goes through this incredible flow where everyone just kind of knows exactly what their steps are. They know, I can't do this one till they do that one. The whole thing is just like running really smooth. And what we did with this also is we determined how much each step takes, like how much time. So for us, we know for sure it takes about four and a half hours to do a total episode from start to finish. And we can actually tell that, like we know that. And that's a beautiful thing. Because then you can say, Hey, I need an episode done by next Tuesday when it's going to get released. And it's Thursday. And we've got a two hour meeting today, two hour meeting tomorrow. We've only got six hours total. Good. It takes four hours and 30 minutes. We can get it done, right? Like being able to tell that stuff. All this is just what I'm talking about here is just freedom. Like it's letting the system do what it's supposed to do. So you can have that extra breathing space. If you're interested in a tool, but you don't know where to start, you might look to the one that Alex developed podcast SOP. It's a glorified checklist to keep it really simple. You basically hit add new episode and it'll basically spit out the list that you make. And we just call them templates. So you can go in there and design your own template. And you can basically like, here's my 20 somewhat steps. Everyone will hit add new episode. It'll automatically populate it just like that. It'll sign it to the right team members. It'll add due dates and things like that. So that's basically what does any show can use it. And we've started building out. This is interesting. We just started doing this. We had 150 more, but templates from other people. So basically, right now you can grab the way I did creating a brand. Like it is just there. You can pull all those steps and you can customize it for yourself. We're adding 150 more of all different types of shows like interview shows, solo shows, dramas, all those things. So you can pull someone else's template that has a podcast that said, Hey, use mine. You can pull that customize a little bit. And then you can just start working off of that. If you're like, Hey, I really like the way this person does their show, you can go and grab that and use it. But virtually it works for any type of show. If you're building a process, that's what it's for. As with any strategy we teach here at Grow the Show, there are of course some common pitfalls that podcasters fall into when they're building a system, even when it's a system for having a system like this one is here are some hiccups that Alex says you should avoid. The biggest thing I see is an over complication of the process. So I've mentioned automating. I love automating. Not everything has to be automated. Me basically pulling something from squadcast and uploading it to another system is fine. I don't need to find like a zap for that and then use this third party tool. So basically automatically uploads like the time saving is under a minute. So I'm like, I'm not going to automate that. So I find a lot of people they're really psyched and amped up about their system. I'm like, man, you have spent months and months and months like working on this thing to make it like really robust and everything basically no touch all automated. And to some people maybe that's worth it. Maybe they get the joy out of it. But I find it again, it pulls you away from the main thing that you're doing. I guess unless you had something about like automation processes, right? Like if that was your show focus, right? But yeah, to me, people get really into the tools and like, oh, I'm going to use this now. And if I move this over here and find a zap for this and use this tool for that, like it just gets too fancy. And so I think really the best piece of advice I can give to people that are struggling with this is just to keep it simple. Like there is something you said about simplicity. But here's the thing. If you do this properly, you document every step of the way. Like I get really detailed with this. And early on, Kevin, my team got like a little upset with me because they're like, dude, everyone knows how to do this. I'm like, write it down the system. Like put in our documentation and now all of them are so thankful because we onboard somebody and we onboard somebody knew it's like under an hour and they're fully trained ready to go because they can read every step of the documentation along the way. But a lot of people want to skip it because you don't see an immediate ROI. But later on when you start going to scale, you're done. Like you've already done the hard work up front. So you can kind of wash your hands of it. And it's better that you do it while you're making it because then it's fresh. Like you feel like you're in it, you can actually write it as you're going. But a lot of people want to skip that. It really comes back to bite you later if you don't spend the time to do that. But those are a couple of things. I say a lot of people, it's a common pitfall for people of those two things. All right. So that was a lot of info that we just threw at you. So let's recap. So number one is get it all down on paper. Penning paper, write down everything that you do in the process, all in one place. Step two is to transcribe that into some sort of Excel or sheets or whatever that you like to use. And then once you have it all listed on a computer, now start organizing it. Just move the cells around and organize it. And then batch them into sections, thinking throughout the entire process, how can I automate, delegate or eliminate any of these things to get it really focused, right? The next thing that you want to do is make sure that you keep it simple. So you don't need really crazy robust tools. Find something that you like that works really well for you. That just clicks with your brain and get it all in that one place. Organize each of those steps inside of that. And then of course, make documentation along the way. And at the end of the day, make sure that your focus, once again, is how can I get more time with my audience to better serve those people? At the end of the day, you really can't lose if that's your focus and just find a way to streamline the rest as much as you possibly can. It's all about finding what works for you. And it's about finding a community that works with you to help you succeed. I always like to remind people in the content creation spaces. It can be a lonely space, but there's a quote by Helen Keller and she says, alone we can do so a little bit together, we can do so much. Alone we can do so a little bit together, we can do so much. Make sure that you yourself are part of a tribe. Yes, you have your community that is following you, following your show, following the content you create, but get around some other creators as well, because I find that that just makes you all that much more creative and gives you ideas to better serve the people around you. Together, we seem to do a lot more. And I always think that a rising tide lifts all ships. So we'll make sure that we're really doing that together. Find some people to get around. I believe it shall go further a lot faster. And we've got just the place you can go to find your podcasting tribe. If you haven't already, join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group where you can meet countless other growth-minded podcasters. The link to join us is in the show notes. Grow the Show is a Q9 production. This episode was produced and written by myself and Catherine Nails with post-production by Jeremy Bishop and a very special thanks, of course, to Alex San Filippo. For Grow the Show, my name is Kevin Schmittlin. See you next time.