What Would You Do with an Extra 10 Hours Per Month?
What would you do if you could free up 10 hours from your podcast process? With automation, you can. And today, I wanna tell you about a free webinar I'm giving called Automating Your Podcast Workflow. It's February 22nd, 2023 at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. And it's a free webinar that will show you how to leverage automation and free up your time so you can focus on making great content.
In 60 minutes, you'll learn how to get into an automation mindset, how to determine what you can automate. You'll learn how to get started with today's automation tools and we will look at some of my most important podcast automations. Free up at least 10 hours per month. Join me for free on February 22nd for the Automating Your Podcast Workflow Webinar. You can sign up for free over at [profitablepodcaster.fm/webinar].
As I record this, spring is right around the corner, or at least I am trying to will it to be right around the corner. And it's pretty nice today. So I'm gonna say my efforts are working, but if you are in the northeast United States or probably other places, but that's where I am, you know, that you need to mow your lawn pretty much every week in the summer. And I promise. This is not an ad for some lawn mowing company. This is just a fact of life.
And in summer 2021, I made the mistake of not mowing my lawn for three weeks. And it was, you know, there was a lot of rain, lack of childcare. This was the height of the pandemic. I guess not the height. It was towards the tail end as far as childcare was concerned. But I had traveled recently. And so the point is, I hadn't mowed my lawn for several weeks.
So, one day I set out to mow the very long, still pretty wet grass. On top of that, I had to weed whack. I had to take a hedge trimmer to some overgrown bushes, and it shaped up to be a pretty big job. Something that normally takes an hour on a Saturday took me an entire Wednesday afternoon. And because I was choosing yard work over billable work for my business, that afternoon cost me between 750 and a thousand dollars.
There's a lot of opportunity cost. And I'm telling you this story because I want you to think about the things that you do that you don't need to do especially when it comes to your podcast. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. The title of this episode is: What would You Do With An Extra 10 Hours? And I'm going to give you an overview of my system that saves me even more than that because that's what makes me a profitable podcaster. And that's what could make you a profitable podcaster as well.
Having a profitable podcast is like having any other profitable business. You need to make money. Sure, but you also need to grow. You need to spend your time wisely, and you need predictability. A couple of sponsors won't make you a profitable podcaster, but having systems to stay consistent, create steady growth, and generate predictable income will. That's what you'll get with this show.
Hi. I'm your host, Joe Casabona. And my podcasts have been profitable from Day 1. I'll share everything I know with you here on the Profitable Podcaster.
So, I wanna close this loop on the lawn mowing story, right? Because it was a big job. My lawnmower couldn't handle it. Grass kept getting stuck. I kept having to start and stop. Weed whacking took forever, and I had never trimmed hedges before. Don't judge me but this experience was so important because I realized I could have paid someone far less to do it faster. And that's what I ended up doing.
After that, I said, no more. I'm going to pay somebody to mow my lawn every week. And while my ego took a shot, I save hours. I never have to think about mowing my lawn again.
This is known in economics as Opportunity Cost. What was the cost of me choosing to do something I personally didn't need to do versus doing the work that actually makes me money? This is at least something that I learned about in high school. The way opportunity cost was described to me was, let's say you work on Saturday nights, and you work an hourly job. One Saturday night, you decide you're not going to work, and instead you're going to go to the concert. What's the opportunity cost? Well, it's the missed wages. So if you made $10 an hour and it was a five hour shift, that's 50 bucks out the window. But it's also the cost of the ticket. So maybe this was 2002. So, you know, tickets didn't cost as much as they do now, so maybe that's another 50 bucks. But then there's gas, there's food, there's beverages, there's a lot of other hidden costs, and those all go into opportunity cost.
Whereas again, if I had hired somebody to mow my lawn, then they would've had better equipment, weed whack and trim. They would've had more experience and more skill to work quickly and efficient. And they would not have charged me my hourly rate, nor would they have taken as long as it took me.
But most people don't have that relationship with time and money. They strictly look at money in versus money out. The lawn costs them nothing because no money came out of their bank account or mowing the lawn costs them nothing because no money came outta their bank account. But the people who do see the opportunity cost and realize that where they spend their time is directly related to how their business grows, they start to earn more. And my mission, one of my missions, one of my goals for this podcast is to get you, dear listener, thinking about your podcast as a business.
So tell me if this sounds familiar. You have a great interview with a guest. Now, it's time to edit. You're using software, you're still kind of learning, and this interview has a slightly different issue that you haven't seen before. So, you're watching a YouTube video on how to remove that air conditioning hum from your guest's audio. You feel like you say too much so you're trying to remove some, but not all of those filler words. You don't want it to sound unnatural afterall. And even though the interview was only 30 minutes, the edit took two hours. That's at least three other interviews that you could have done. Instead, you can hire an editor who, for around 50 bucks, can do the full edit and sends back a file that sounds better than anything you've done.
And now, you need to ask yourself, is your time worth $25 an hour?
The saying, you gotta spend money to make money exist for a reason. And while I don't always fully prescribe to that line of thinking, I think you need to spend money appropriately and wisely. But here in spending that $50, you've freed up your time To do more interviews. And so now maybe you have a month's worth of content ready to go instead of scrambling the day before an episode is due instead of rushing each week to get an episode out the door. You can spend that time growing your audience by participating in Facebook groups or LinkedIn, answering relevant questions and courting sponsors. You can promote your show, you can reach out to other podcasts about doing podcast swaps. You can turn your podcast into something profitable.
That's really what I want you to take away from this. By taking things off of your plate that you don't need to do, you can turn your podcast into something profitable.
So here's what I want you to think about. First of all, whenever you do something for your podcast, I want you to ask two things: Do I need to do this? And what is the opportunity cost of me doing it? Then write the things down that you don't need to do and ask, can I hire this out or can I automate it? You’'d be surprised at the things that you can automate. And in fact, most of my operation happens. Thanks to automation.
So here's your takeaway. Here's your homework. Do that every time you do something for your podcast. Do I personally need to do this? I'm going to… here's a cheat. Unless it's you talking, probably not. And then think, what's the opportunity cost of me doing this instead of looking for sponsors or recording more episodes or finding more guests, or making that digital product that I can then sell on my podcast. Write down three of those things and take them off your plate. Take them off your plate.
So that's it for this episode of the Profitable Podcaster. I hope you're now thinking about all the amazing things that you could do with an extra 10 hours per month. I didn't say per month, but an extra 10 hours per month. That's a full workday, plus. I hope you're thinking about that.
If you need inspiration, there is a previous episode called Save Time. Seven Things You Can Automate for your Podcast, today. You can find that over at [profitablepodcaster.fm/304]. So, if you need some inspiration, go there. But I want you to think about this for you. And then write into at profitable podcaster.fm/feedback and tell me what's the things, what are the things you're taking off your plate?
Thanks so much for listening to the Profitable podcaster. My name's Joe Casabona. And until next time. I can't wait to see what you make.
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