Why You Need a Strategic Podcast Workflow with Alesia Galati

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. Erin Ollila 00:04 Hey friends. Welcome to the top coffee Timmy podcast. Here we empower small business owners to step into the spotlight with their marketing and messaging. I’m your host, Erin Ollila. Let’s get started and talk coffee. Oh, okay. Hello friends. I am thrilled to have Alicia Gulati here today from Gulati media and from the listener to listeners to leads podcast, I think she is a Super Podcast expert. And what’s really exciting about this episode is that we are here to talk about podcast workflows. But nothing with us working together as following my actual podcast workflow. We literally planned this conversation booked an almost immediate interview. And you know, all those workflows and automated processes I have in place, I can’t Wow, Alicia with these things, because she’s just, she’s not getting all the while at this point. So if you do not know, Alicia, obviously you need to listen to her podcast and learn more about her. But there is something you may not know if she’s already familiar to you. And that is that she reads an absolutely ridiculous number of books for fun, and that she grew up in a cult. So I don’t even know where to go from here, Alicia, because those two things are just so vastly different. So tell us more about Alesia Galati 01:36 Well, yeah. So when I was growing up, my mom was, there were a lot of drugs and just bad choices and stuff like that. And so she went to a women’s program to get help and support, we went along with her. And it was supposed to be 18 months of a program and turned into 10 years. So that is called, like the very 32nd rundown. So I have a podcast with my sister, we talk all about it. We don’t produce any more. But we did. And we do have our story on there. So you can go listen to two sisters in a call to like, get the full deets. Erin Ollila 02:14 So one, I didn’t know you had that podcast. And now I cannot wait to add that to my queue. Again, not the best subject material, but I’m sure knowing you it will be a very interesting podcast. Before we jump into the workflows on a podcast, let’s talk about the books. I know that you love books, and I really admire all of the like, sharing you do about books so that like I could find new authors and new things to read. Where did your book obsession start? And how has it taken over your life? So 02:44 definitely started at the call. Because there was nothing to Erin Ollila 02:50 thank you again, 02:51 there was nothing to do. And so if you’re familiar with Amish romances, that was like literally the only thing we were allowed to read. I am not familiar with all this. That’s probably a good thing. It was very interesting. There weren’t a lot of options, they would have to read everything before we were allowed to read it. Toward the end, some things snuck through, which we were very excited about. But for the most part, a lot of the stuff we couldn’t read, and there was nothing to do we didn’t have that wasn’t when people had phones actively, you know, but yeah, I didn’t have a lot of people my age, there were maybe four girls my age. And there were no guys my age, like nothing. So you’re talking 11 to 21 being at this place, and being like what do you what else are you going to do other than go to church and do schoolwork and then be home? So read a ton. I mean, I remember moments of folding socks and underwear having the radio playing and reading a book at the same time? Because Hello, adult ad ADHD. Erin Ollila 04:05 Yeah, no, I was gonna be like that actually sounds extremely normal to me like that is what I do on a daily basis. 04:12 All the overstimulation that I needed to just like read a book. So that’s where it definitely started. Erin Ollila 04:18 There is no possible way to transition from cults and book obsession to podcasts, workflows. So we’re just going to jump right in the deep end on this one. I love my podcast. I know you love podcasting, which is another reason why I love you so much. And I think that there are so many podcast curious people out there, or podcasters who love podcasting, but also feel extremely like discombobulated as a podcaster because they don’t have a workflow. So I think this episode today could be both like really informative for someone who is just trying to figure this out and figure out if they want to dip their toe and very helpful for Have that podcaster who is like, Dude, I am just winging this as I go. So maybe a good starting place for this conversation is just kind of talk about, like what a podcast workflow is, and why they can be really important for a podcaster. Yeah, so 05:13 my background in my corporate career was in manufacturing and supply chain. So, SOPs, workflows, creating processes, that was something that I did day in and day out, in helping the team on the production floor, manage what they needed to do. And in helping my managers who didn’t want to write the workflows, right. So if I was the one doing the work, I would help them create it. And what I loved about that is my very type a bonus of like, there’s an order to things, things need to be done in a certain order. And especially in manufacturing, and in the products that we were working with, if those weren’t done in a specific order, someone could die. Like, quite frankly, obviously, with a podcast, that is not the case, which is great. But a workflow can definitely help. There’s a stat that says 87% of people who start a podcast will not keep podcasting, which is really sad. Right, and, and like, I believe it’s 90%. Don’t make it to 25 episodes. I’ve heard a lot of different stats, but 80% or 87% of people who start won’t continue. And I know a lot of people are out there, they’re like, I want to start a podcast, I think it’s gonna be great. Do I just wing it? Do I need to overthink it? What does that look like? And I want to encourage you that it’s okay to start one and stop it. If that’s what you decide that you want to do. There are lots of ways to kind of finagle that. And I don’t think that it’s a failure. When I started my first podcast, which was on ecommerce in being in supply chain and being in manufacturing, it was like, Hey, let’s help these small businesses who are in E commerce space, I don’t do that. Now, I don’t want to do that. Now. That podcast is no longer around. And that’s okay. And I don’t consider that a failure because I learned what my workflow needed to be. Because I got to the point where I was like, oh, there’s an episode supposed to go live tomorrow. And I have nothing. Oops, my bad, right. So this is why this is really important. It can help you keep consistent and whatever that consistency looks like for you. Right. So that consistency does not have to be twice a week or every week, it could be every other week, you are allowed to change your mind on this. Just let your people know. So that’s why a workflow is so important is that it can help you show up consistently in the way that you have already predetermined that you’re going to and can help your audience. It’s kind of set that expectation of what they’re going to get from you. Erin Ollila 07:49 It’s so important. It’s funny how you describe it. Because I remember when I went to start my podcast, I think it was a mixture of like my natural anxiety and my ADHD that was just like begging people for information because I was like, I need directions. What do you mean that there is not like a specific order of things that I need to do, if I don’t know what to do, I can’t be successful. So I think that is what kind of forced me into a podcast workflow right away, was just the anxiety of wanting to make sure that the effort I was putting in was done, quote, unquote, right, and was not missing anything. Because consistency in content, for me is always been very helpful. It’s always been consistency and frequency, let’s say it’s something that I’ve always kind of preached in my content strategy with my clients. So I knew I needed to be consistent. But I also know that with my ADHD, it’s so easy to just start things and then forget about them, or like lose interest. And I just, it was a big goal of mine to start the show. So I was like, I’m gonna set some serious rules. Like this is how we do things here at talk copy to me and we do not do them differently. Which I think as you’re mentioning, like it is okay, if you choose not to go forward with your show or make adjustments is such an important like disclaimer before we talk, because we will be talking about like, how to set up your workflow, how to make adjustments, how do you know if it’s working? How do you know if it’s not working? But if you’re listening, and you’re like, Okay, podcasts workflows, I’m gonna start this show and you’re like, I don’t know, this isn’t for me or your like this podcast workflow that I started with is horrendous. You can adjust at any point in time. There’s no rules, like I said rules before, but there are no rules like I’m actually because I’m trying a different tool. It’s changed a lot of my workflow where I kind of have to go back to the drawing board, not for any bad reasons, but I have to go back to the drawing board and be like, Okay, well, this tool that I have is touching this part of the workflow and that part so now I have to reprioritize them are real Order them, which I think maybe brings us into a great, like first step into the next part is like, what stages are there? In building a podcast workflow? 10:10 Yeah, I think this is really important. And what you’re saying is something we see constantly. I mean, we’re managing ecologic media, a ridiculous number of podcasts that are all very different in the style. In the, whether it’s a video podcast, or an audio podcast, do we handle the marketing or do we not so every single client has their own workflow. But it all covers around these six things. And so hopefully, this will help. The first one is planning and recording. So the planning could involve involve your guest management, your content planning, deciding on what it is that maybe you decide, hey, I’m going to do monthly themes, then you can do that. So that’s going to be in your planning and recording. There’s lots of tips and tricks and things like that, that go into that, and ways that you can decide how you want to do that. But that’s the first one. Second one is editing that podcast. Now you can make the decision how much editing or how little editing you want to do based on your values as someone who either listens to podcasts, or wants to show up a certain way for your audience with that. The third one is that written content for your podcast, you’re talking show notes, SEO strategy, you’re talking social media stuff, your timestamps, if that’s what you’re doing whatever it is that you need to write out for that podcast episode. The fourth one is the visual assets, because you’re going to need to promote it somewhere. And so create those visual assets. That could also be your podcasts video, it could be any other clips or things that you a quotable, whatever you got to make there. The fifth one is uploading it everywhere. And when I say uploading everywhere, I don’t just mean your podcast host. And your website, I also mean scheduling it on your scheduler, making sure that you’re getting it everywhere, because that is the main thing that I see a lot of people do is they’ll be like, All right, it’s out in the world, everybody’s gonna find it’s gonna be great. And that’s, that’s not how it works. Sorry, also not sorry. Then the sixth one is the marketing and promotion or whatever that looks like for you. Yeah, no, Erin Ollila 12:31 those are so important. And I feel like what I noticed when you’re saying those when I’m thinking about my own personal podcast workflow, and some of my friends, like you mentioned, have very different shows, for example, like they have a narrative form storytelling show, and I have a solo interview, education based show, let’s say, we have different needs, and different things happen within those phases of the workflow. But they all kind of drill down to like a few important processes, maybe isn’t the right word that no matter what we’re all doing as podcasters. And I think that those are strategy, creative, like doing the creative work, and communications, and throughout many of those six phases, like, you know, it’s not those things could be happening simultaneously, they could be happening one after another. And that’s probably the key to starting to figure out your workflow is to think about all six phases. And think about what of those three things need to happen. So just as an example, when you were talking about planning and recording being the first phase of a podcast workflow, you mentioned guest management as being one of those things. So that would be communications, right? But in the planning, and the recording first, before you can bring a guest on you need to know what the heck you’re gonna talk to them about on your show right? Now. Maybe they pitch you or maybe you’re asking them to come be an expert on something you want to talk about, regardless of what it is there’s the strategy element is like, do you need to figure out why this person? Why is it important to have them on your show? And then the creative is, you know, for some people, it might be coming up with questions to ask those guests in advance to prepare, or maybe coming up like, you know, for a narrative show to have a script written. So I wasn’t thinking about talking about this at all until you started talking. But I think maybe like when we’re thinking about the actual work that goes into each phases, try to think of those three things are as how are they influencing the actual work that I’m doing? 14:34 Yes, I 100% agree. They’re like, even within my team. There’s a way that I handle my workflow, like, yes, there’s a checklist of things that need to be done for each client, but one of my team members handles it completely different. And it’s all about how you’re able to work. So I’m someone where if I’m editing a podcast, and I still do edit podcast quite regularly Because I like to have a pulse on everything is I will actually write the show notes and pull the quotes. As I am editing the podcast, I work best that way going in after the fact, I don’t want to have to re Listen, I don’t want to have to skim the transcript, I don’t want to have to do any of that I want to do it all at once. And then Bing, bang, boom, done. That is just how I work. Whereas my lead editor, she cannot work that way. She goes through an Edit, then she runs it through the transcript skims the transcript, because she feels that what she pulls for a quote, as she’s editing might not really be what she wants to pull. So the process is still the same. We’re still delivering the same things. But the way that we go about it is going to be different depending on how you work best. Erin Ollila 15:48 Yeah, I find that so fascinating. Because it’s true. Like it goes back to my two favorite words that I say all the time. It depends, right? Like, you know, the and I think that’s why it’s key to have the workflow written. And then consider how you’re going to make adjustments, especially if you have multiple people working on it. You know, just using the example that you have about show notes. When I first started doing my podcast, I was pretty confident that I wanted to I wanted to approach show notes the same way that you approach them. Because I was like, I don’t have time for this. I’ve been in the content creation game for a while now. And I know exactly how much time everything takes. And it’s too much for me and my ADD brain. So we’re going to edit and we’re going to write like an like a well written SEO driven show notes while we’re editing. Even though I don’t know how to use podcast editors back in the day, right. And it worked. It did work pretty well. However, what I found where I found I got much better show notes was when I started taking notes during our podcast interviews, like you can see me right now on video, like jotting down some notes. And the reason that I do that, specifically is one, not that I use them very often. But I do not trust AI tools when it comes to making things like the bullet points that we have to have about like what’s covered in our shows, they don’t work very well, in my opinion. So it’s really key for like, Okay, our conversation is dry, like driving in this direction. So I’m going to take a note of that. Or two, if we’re mentioning things like your part of the podcast you do with your sister, I took a note and I wrote that down. You mentioned a couple stats before I took a note and I wrote that down. So now I’m doing half of the show note creation just on a notebook with a pen. And then when I go back into actually edit, and I’m doing it just how I thought I would I’m filling in blanks more more than anything like an original creation. So you know, even that’s a good example of how like you can start with a workflow and just make adjustments to it as you go. And again, I might tell you how this works best for me. And you might be like you expect me to take notes while I’m interviewing someone, Aaron, what is wrong with you? And if that feels off, don’t do it right. But just it’s always really good. I found to have a podcasting community that you can ask questions of, or you can just kind of like hear how other people do it? Not necessarily, so you have to copy them or you have to follow them. But so you can adjust your own specific workflows with inspiration of other people’s Yes. 18:17 I love that so much. Another example that I think would help your audience too is there’s a client where he wanted to create his episode setup, which is like, Hey, today we have so and so they’re going to be talking about XYZ. So before he used to do that with the person on and he felt like it didn’t really flow that way. So then he was like, Well, where can I fit this in my workflow? Oh, this works. I’ll send it over to Alicia his team. She’ll finish the edits, send it back to me, and then I’ll create the workflow. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, we’re not going to work that does not work with our workflow, and how we like to have things done. Your best bet is to do it the same day. And so I like to do mine this way, where right after my interview, especially if an interview goes off the rails to what you thought it was going to talk about, you know, you still want to have that content. But you don’t want to have to already have that part recorded. So with the same energy and excitement, especially for an introvert who gets you know, these one on one interactions can be really energizing for me, but I also need to rest after so there’s no way that I’m going to match that energy later in the day or even the next day. So I know right after I finished with my podcast interview with this person, I need to record the setup because it’s top of mind. Maybe like you I write notes. I don’t but if I did, and I’ve already got that stuff right there that I can Alright, we’re gonna get this done a minute and a half, and we’re out rather than waiting Days where my energy is completely different. I don’t remember what in the world we were talking about. We were supposed to talk about this, but what did we actually talk about what parts of the episode of my excited about? So it’s gonna be different depending on how you like to work best. And you’re gonna have to work with the people around you, depending on if you’re working with another person to get your podcasts out there as well. Erin Ollila 20:24 Yeah, I’m so glad you went here, because I think it is pretty vital to talk about podcast workflows as they relate to including other people, you know, but earlier, we mentioned we can’t do that until we set up our own workflow. So you’re going to help my ADD rain, remember that that’s the direction we’re going right now. Okay. But first, let’s just let’s stay with the podcast workflows again, really quickly, because you have your six approaches and the six phases mine set up similar I kind of combine recording and editing. So I think of them in like a five phase approach. But let’s talk about some maybe, let’s make a listicle of things that people may want to consider in each of the phases. So when you’re creating your podcast workflows, I think some of the easiest ways to do this, if you’re doing it solo could be just grabbing a pen and paper or like, you know, going on a document that’s blank, and just jotting down like a bullet bullet list of the things that you may know you need to do. If you’re working with a team, even though we’re talking about like creating the standard workflow, it could be hopping on a zoom call, and, you know, brainstorming with people. But I know for me when I do the planning, or when I guess when I originally planned my podcast workflow, and I thought about like the planning phase, what I thought about that I’d have to do for some of the things were like, content ideation. So like, what do I even want to talk about on this podcast? And how does that relate back to business goals? I think before whether we do a solo show, Storify show and interview show, we do need to figure out how the content strategy that we’re building relates back is, especially if you have a business related podcast, relates back to your business. Now, if your podcast is just purely for fun, you don’t need to relate it necessarily to a conversion factor. But there might be some non business conversion related things like joining an email list or like, how do you keep the people interested, like, that’s still key when it comes to like the content strategy element of it. But I think that once you move through content strategy, and for me, what I specifically do here is I have, like, I do all of my podcast workflow through a project management tool, and you don’t have to do that for yours. But for me, it helps to really see things in like list and board format. So I have one list that specifically just episode ideas and future guests. And it’s long, but But what I liked so much about doing it that way from like ideating, is that I like to really do my podcast and mini series. So right now we’re stuck right in the middle of a podcasting series. But I knew that when I plan to the content out for this, there were specific topics that were more, this is the wrong word. But beginner related, like I had to introduce these things before I could talk about maybe something more strategic or in depth, and how they related to marketing. So I knew there was kind of like a natural five episode show that I could do. Well, I look at my idea list, I look at my guest list. And that’s how I can start to piece together the content strategy that I’ve done. So then moving on, but still, in the episode prep phase of the work that I’m doing. The guest management could fall into things like how am I asking people to be on the show? How am I reviewing the podcast pitches I get? Do I have a system for that like a form for example? And do I have the responses that I might want to share with people, it girls and gals and guys, and whoever’s listening to this episode, make things easier on yourself, like, automate as much as you can in your podcast workflow. And you don’t have to automate like a robot, you can leave like a space where you personalize anything. But for things like podcasts pitches, I very specifically only review podcast pitches that are done. By my form. If you send me an email, I’m gonna delete it like I’m sorry, if like the queen, I mean, she’s not no longer alive. But if the queen comes out of her grave and pitches me to be on the show via email, it’s not getting read. So when I have my form done, I have three responses. Hey, I love this be on my show, hey, your pitch needs a little bit of adjustment, like would you be open to XYZ slash could you resubmit an idea? And hey, nothing’s right. So like, I don’t have to write those every single time and I just bring that up because I know personally when I think about workflows overall, not necessarily even for the podcast that I have to also think about the content that occurs within the workflow. And I always forget that, gosh, we’re really laying a lot on these people today. So I think event again, ideation, guest management, and then I think about all of those like, I don’t know if texts the right word, but like, set up things that need to get done. So like, for example, I have an automation that creates a folder within my Google Drive. And then it adds some of the like, basic assets that I always share with my guest within that folder. So I’m not recreating those things all the time. Um, maybe it’s me adding a task to my project management board to say like, the episode is actually in full swing. So that’s not all encompassing. For the prep phase. I mean, you know, off the top of my head, I think about things like coming up with the episode, interview questions, or doing research or doing the SEO research. But that’s how I personally work through planning and gas management. And again, it’s probably very different for some people. Have you thought about anything that you or your clients do differently that really needs to get covered during this phase. 26:09 So I think this is the most important part of the podcasts workflow. And I think it makes sense that we’re kind of sticking on it for a minute, because there is the goal of the podcast is to have listeners, right? That is the usually the number one goal, not necessarily to always grow the audience, or to hit a certain number of downloads, but you want someone listening, in order to get someone to listen, and then potentially say, Hey, friend, I also listen to this podcast, you should listen to this one to share it with their friends, then you have to have good content. Notice, I’m not saying audio quality. At this point, though, I do think that is important, good content, and your audience will resonate or not resonate with your audio quality. That’s another tangent when I am looking at my guest management list, it’s I actually take a very different approach to yours. I have more of a so what is your podcast about? Let me hear your podcast story. It’s very conversational. I’m not always necessarily. And this is just how my brain works. I can’t over plan it, because then I feel too can find in the conversation. And so I don’t really always let them know, Hey, this is the direction we’re going. And there’s a general idea of where we’re going. Because otherwise, why are we there? general idea, but they fill out my form. And then I actually don’t touch base with them until I am in the interview with them from that point like me personally, because I will not email them. And I know that about myself, I’ll be like, I have templates, I have email templates to set up. And I will simply move it over in my form, I will tag my EA and I will say, Hey, I highlighted this topic, this is what I want to talk about. She’ll send them all the information, I don’t want to have to go back and forth with people with their schedules. We interview international people, like I don’t have capacity or mental space for that. So my executive assistant helps with that. And I simply say this is the topic I want to talk about. She lets them know via email and handles the scheduling from there, it pops up on my calendar, the topic is already in my process, right. But I use clickup for mine. And I can see, okay, this is what we’re talking about. Cool. And I can do minimal research beforehand. Now I have another client, I have a client, who she actually goes and listens to other podcasts interviews that this person has been on, she goes in and actually plans out the questions and the direction. And we’ll actually redirect the client, the guest, rather than letting them kind of fly off the handles. Because that is how particular she is about her content. And there’s no right or wrong way to do this. Right. So like, I’m kind of like one end, you’re kind of the middle, she’s the other end. And all of these are great ways to approach your podcast dependent on your audience what they expect from you, and what you expect from your own show and from your own content. But this is hands down the most important part. Erin Ollila 29:25 And you know, it’s so funny. I’m so glad you mentioned how you do it differently. And then you brought up a client to this kind of like falls between us because it just reiterates how very important it is to make this your own thing, right, which is like I guess maybe my main goal here is like understanding that we’re going to tell you how we do things. We’re going to tell you how some of leashes clients do things but you can still adjust this. I’m going to try really hard to connect two dots here and I don’t know if my brain is going to let me but something that you got made me start thinking about the other phases right? We talked about the Phase One with planning and recording being kinda vital, right? Like there’s so much strategy and communications and like setting the stage and the creative that go into this. But stages two through five are really so process based, right? So you have according to your process editing, writing content, creating visual content, and like uploading that. And I bring this up because we talk about how things are different. But we also talk about the adding people to your workflow can adjust this. So while not that you can’t add anyone to process one, I think you actually gave up many like reason how you can like add people in, you know, for example, I have clients who have hired me to do content strategy and SEO for their podcast, I do nothing else except help them plan the topics and then do the SEO research. Then their team does well, in some cases, I do shows, but their team does the show notes, they have an editing team. So there are ways to add people in in phase one. But if we think about phases, two through five, they’re all literal action steps. So editing what happens or an editing I mean, a workflow doesn’t necessarily tell you the style of editing, right, it tells you the steps that you need to take to edit an episode, even the written in the in the graphics like you, my workflow indicates, and in honesty, because I am anxious, my workflow has step by step by step by step of everything I need to do. Now, the truth of the matter is I haven’t 99% memorized like I know exactly what to do. But I am not going to delete those steps off my workflow. Because there are times where I am, you know, feeling overwhelmed with work or experiencing some brain fog, that I literally go into the task. And I’m like, what happens during the asset phase? Like, wait, I created a couple social posts, what more do you want from me? Or when I have people who have done this with me, like, you know, assistants who have been on my team? And they’re like, oh, great, I’ll do this for you. Well, I need to show them and it’s written into my workflow. So it’s the point that I’m trying to make here is, is I think it’s really interesting. If you look at those those interior phases, at least, to take some stress off yourself. And and truly look at step by step by step what needs to occur, because you can worry less about like the strategy and less about even the creative, especially if you have graphic templates, not that that’s necessarily something that people should do. I know that Apple has now made this extra fun for us by introducing individual episode graphics. So there’s just one more you can add to your wallet. But 32:45 because all the other players have been doing this for years, first of all, Erin Ollila 32:50 yeah, well, honestly, this is why I love Alicia so much. Because I can’t tell you how many times I talked to her and I’m like, but then this and she’s like, Yeah, no, let me just tell you that that’s wrong. Or she’ll be like, wait, you just did what like I remember the last time we talked a couple of months ago, I gave you like my plan on how I was going to edit some previous episodes. And I had this like to do list of this little edit and you were like, or you could just do this one simple thing. And I was like, and this is why I’m friends with you. This is the importance of having people who do what you do, like podcasts as an example. But they approach things differently. I mean, working with clients within your, your organization, you your clients do things differently. So you’re able to kind of learn and see and make the adjustment. Yeah. But like, hearing me say that, because again, we didn’t talk about what we’re going to cover here. And I just kind of thought that based on how you were describing it to me, could you see a different approach for those like for interior phases? Or does it sound right or fill fill in the blanks here. 33:53 So we’re at the point now where we are at about 1600 episodes that our company has produced. That is a lot of podcast episodes. And that is a lot of different clients doing things very differently. But all of these interior steps are almost identical. And that is that the client drops the audio into a folder, our team handles it. This is the number one thing that people tend to say, Okay, I can’t handle this, I don’t have capacity to handle this, or I hate the sound of my voice and I don’t want to listen to myself again. So like, there’s a lot of different reasons why people tend to say I need to hand this off to whomever. And so a lot of these tasks do end up being clumped together or grouped together. And like I said, I like to do them all at the same time. Most of the time there is depending on like, whether it needs to be double checked, what gets done when but for the most part, it all gets done together. And I think that that helps people write to think. Okay, so I’ve focused really heavily on the strategy, I focus really heavily on recording it showing up. How perfect does it actually have to be there are templates, like you mentioned, for graphic templates, or for social, sorry, shownotes templates, even social templates, like we have ones for clients that are like, this is about what we’re going to say in here, we’re just going to fill in the blanks, keep it super simple for yourself. It is not going to make or break your show. At that point. It’s what’s in the podcast that is going to and that is why that part is so important. Erin Ollila 35:38 Yeah. And I think the final phase, which is the marketing and promo, I kind of break that into too many phases. And for me, it’s promo, which I think some of the promo stuff I could be wrong is things that you’re already doing in that middle phase. So for me, it’s scheduling it into my social media scheduler, making sure the blog post is actually going to go live when the podcast episode goes live. But the reason I separate them is I kind of have what I call like the post live tasks, and they’re things that are not necessarily promo related, like, for example, doing a story on Instagram, or adding a poll to LinkedIn or something like that. They’re more personalized, or like, they’re just tasks that happened. So and you don’t need to do this. But do you do something like sending a handwritten thank you note to your guests? Or do you maybe take each episode that you create, and then do a complimentary blog post, if that’s the case, not that you need to do it immediately. But you wouldn’t need to do some kind of signal to yourself. So for me, after the episodes are done, I just switch the task into a different project in my project management system that says, hey, this episodes done, everything’s created. Now, you might want to consider this as being like an idea of something you can ID a blog post around, or things like forward social scheduling. So you know, it’s you don’t want to just promo your show the day it goes live, you want to do it into the future. Maybe you really liked your guests so much you want to collaborate with them on something else, right? Are there anything else is there anything else that I’m missing that maybe your guests are doing during the final phase? 37:14 No, a lot of it is on the either social media side or future collaborating with the guest. I think one key important part here is to remind people that they don’t have to show up everywhere. And if you have to choose talking about it, and showing up everywhere, find a middle ground. Like you should be talking about your podcasts, you shouldn’t be telling people that you have a podcast, but find a platform that feels really good for you. And don’t stress out about it too much. The number one way that you’re gonna see your show grow, at least that we’ve seen is by being on other people’s podcasts, and so well, promoting the podcast to your audience, whether that’s via email list, or social media or whatever to your core audience that you already have. It is important that you are finding ways to get outside of your sphere to reach new audiences to then pull in new people I was gonna say drag, that’s not the word pull in. Erin Ollila 38:17 drag those people right over in your network, whether they want to be there or not. That is such a valid point because I think that so much of the promotion people do and and so much of the promotion I just mentioned will only get to the people within your small immediate network, your email list your social list. Your friends who are maybe are subscribed. They cannot be your only listeners. And not that podcast guesting is the only way to do that. It’s definitely the smartest because whoever’s listening to that podcast episode you’re on is very likely going to be willing to listen to another podcast episode. But it’s it’s a great way. And I we did a great episode with Andrew Trueblood about like how to pitch yourself for podcasts, but specifically the type of copy and things that you need in order to pitch yourself that I’ll link to in the show notes. Okay, we have talked a while I think if you don’t have some ideas of how to start creating your podcast workflow, like it might be hopeless at this point, because we have gave you a long list of things to think about. I know Alicia, that you have a great resource that I’ll make sure I put in the description in the show notes about the different phases of your podcast workflow, specifically how to break it down into both sections and actions. So I will add that but before we go, the one final thing I want to cover is how do you know when to make adjustments to your podcast workflow once you’ve created one. 39:47 So this is something that I think you have to really just kind of lean into and understand is that if one thing goes wrong, that does not mean that you need to change In general, if two things go wrong, you need to consider it. So you could be having a bad day. And it just the flow is not flowing, like we’ve all been there, that does not need mean that you need to revamp it. And it could potentially mean that you’re just trying to get some have something else to do than to actually do the work. So if something falls through the cracks, cracks twice, though, I do recommend just reviewing it and seeing where that is happening, and how you need to adjust it. Also noting that does your workflow, take your values, your priorities, your mental health into consideration, one thing that I will constantly be on my soapbox about is that your podcast is not more important than you. So creating workflow that is stressing you out and making you not show up, the way that you really want to show up in a way that is encouraging people to join you is not going to be worth it. So create a workflow that feels good, that works with you works with how you like to work. And if you need support in doing that, then you need to hire someone right to help you or to even create a format or talk to someone like Aaron mentioned, get in the Facebook groups or whatever communities where there are podcasters, where you can kind of say, Hey, how are you doing this? And how does this work for you? That is it. Erin Ollila 41:33 That’s a lot. No, and it’s honestly, it’s so it’s so huge. And I think that it’s really key that you say that as an example of what we’ve both reiterated a few times, my anxiety needs me to detail, detail things like did you turn off? Did you turn off your ringer on your phone? Are you sure do not disturb is on your computer? Yes, those are two tasks on my workflow, because they were things I was noticing I was forgetting. Whereas that would probably drive you bananas. Right? So it’s like knowing your own self, you can support yourself and how you do your workflow and what is listed within those sections. Okay, final final final final question, because I’ve kept you for too long already. If you could give a homework assignment to my audience based on the conversation that we’ve had, what would it be kind of on paper, and it could be super tiny pen and paper, 42:23 write out what your current workflow is that that’s a starting point, right? So then you can kind of see it on paper and say, well, that doesn’t make any sense. Or I think I got this in the bag. We’re good, right? So quick and easy, actionable thing you can do. Erin Ollila 42:37 Perfect, everyone, go do it. We will see you here again next week where we finish out our podcasting series and we talk all about audio SEO and the differences between approaching optimization when it comes to podcast platforms and things like your website. So until then, see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Top copy to me. If you enjoyed spending your time with me today. I would be so honored if you could subscribe to the show and leave a review. Want to continue the conversation. Head on over to Instagram and follow me at Erin Ollila. Until next time friends