Hello, hello everybody.
I hope you're doing well.
I am here streaming.
We're going to talk about hopefully a fun topic, which is how to figure out what to
automate.
I'm really excited about this because it's something that I get asked about all the time.
And so we'll dive into that.
I'm just going to do the rounds of making sure I am where I need to be.
Clearly I am on YouTube.
If I head over to the old LinkedIn to see if I'm streaming there, which yes, I am.
Very exciting.
And then over on Twitter, make sure I'm streaming over there.
If you are watching, let me know.
Say hello.
Let me know where you're coming from.
And if you have any questions about automations, I'll bring up the comment doc right here.
And I'm really excited to talk about this.
So I guess the other thing, if you're watching on YouTube, Twitch or Twitter, then the comments
should come through.
If you're watching on LinkedIn, I will do my best to make my rounds over there and see
any questions that pop up.
But like I said, today we are talking about how to figure out what to automate.
And the reason that we're talking about that is because I am writing a book.
I'm writing my next book.
It's called tentatively called podcast cheat codes.
I am indifferent.
Well, I'm not indifferent.
I really like the name, but I'm also not opposed to changing the name of the feedback I get
is, hey, this is bad.
This is not very good.
So I will have a separate landing page for that soon.
But in the meantime, you could always not there.
Where can you sign up?
This is where you can sign up.
You can join my mailing list at podcastworkflows.com.
So they'll be the first to know when I'm opening things up to beta readers.
But soon I'll have its own sign up form so that you, if you just want to beta test and
you don't want to be on my list, you can sign up over there.
And for now, podcastworkflows.com slash join, join the mailing list.
I send emails to help you improve your podcast workflows, which is what we're talking about
today.
So earlier this week, I put out a video where I drew this, this graphic, right?
I was, if I'm being honest with you, I was watching the Yankee game.
It was my father's day because my wife had to work on actual father's day.
And so on Saturday, I sat down with a cigar in the morning.
I love a morning cigar.
Some people think that's lunacy.
And I just got to kind of sit and think.
And I thought about my friend, Justin Moore, and how he has all of these great acronyms
for all of the kind of frameworks and stuff that he does.
And I thought, I want that, right?
It's, it's, you know, the way I teach automation right now, it's like, okay, ask yourself these
four questions and then make a list of stuff.
And the four questions are not even easy enough for me to remember all the time.
Like I still got to check one of the four questions.
And so I wanted to create something that's easier to remember.
And I thought of the per method, P-E-R.
And so automate per task.
The first thing that you should do is perform the task.
This is really important, right?
So you should actually do the task and then record or document it.
Recording and documenting it in some way is super important for a few reasons, right?
So first of all, you are making sure that your process is repeatable.
So you have a checklist, right?
I'm always hesitant to cite the checklist manifesto because I feel like citing the checklist
manifesto has been done to death.
Like everybody talks about it in every book that's ever been written about productivity.
But I was talking to my wife and the author of the checklist manifesto, whose name is
escaping me right now.
So I'm going to a tool Goandi.
I hope I'm saying that right.
So wrote the checklist manifesto, but is also a surgeon.
So he's a doctor.
And so my wife knew about him because of a different book he wrote called being mortal.
I think that's it, right?
Because she's looking into palliative care.
It's a whole thing.
And so she really wanted to read this book, found out he reads the checklist manifesto,
knew that I regularly lampooned the checklist manifesto.
Not because it's a bad book, but because everybody recommends.
It's like me at at this point, asking somebody like, Hey, have you seen this movie called
Star Wars?
Or Hey, have you seen this movie called Lord of the Rings or any of the Avengers?
Right?
Like, yeah, probably like if you haven't, that's great.
But I'm not going to I'm not going to present it as if you know nobody has ever heard of
this thing that everybody's heard of.
In any case, I've softened on that stance because she got a lot of she got a lot out
of the checklist manifesto.
So if you haven't read it, I recommend it, right?
But that's the core of perform is you should do the thing you're doing and be mindful of
what you're doing because you are going to now make a checklist of this task.
And I have this for like everything.
Like live streams, I have a document in obsidian that is like my live stream.
I don't even know what I call it like my live stream process, live stream and webinar checklist.
Right.
And Web webinar protocols is what I've called it.
Optimize internet connection, kill all apps.
I guess I could just show you this, right?
Can I just show you this?
I don't know.
I don't know why I picked such an ugly color for my obsidian dark theme appearance.
It's oh, it's probably because I picked yellow and that's just like it doesn't look great.
So let's do this instead.
Yeah, that's nicer.
How does it look in light mode?
This is quality content, my friends.
It looks great in light mode.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So this is it.
I was looking at this on my phone last night and I was like, why is this so ugly?
I'm like, yeah, my checklist, right?
Optimize internet connection, kill apps, go into do not disturb mode, which I'm in my
recording focus mode.
Plim Pro, I can delete this.
I haven't used this in a while.
Open webinar as guests in Zoom.
So this is like on my other computer.
Open up the, this is, this says webinar, it's live stream as well, right?
Hit record, ask opening question.
Then we're live and then I do need to update this, right?
Because people aren't registering for these and there's not a lot for me to do post live
stream, but this checklist is super helpful for me when I am, especially because like
I just got off of, I recorded a new podcast episode with my friend, Danny Brown over at
Captivate.
He's launching a new like, I guess I don't want to say hobby podcast, but it's not related
to his profession.
So yeah, just like a side, a side hustle podcast.
And so like it was right before this.
And so I was a little frazzled, but the checklist was like, okay, am I everywhere?
What do I need here?
And I'm ready to go.
Right.
So I have the outline.
So checklists, super important.
The other thing that you do in the perform phase is ask yourself as you're doing these
tasks, what are the inputs and what are the outputs?
Asking yourself the inputs and the outputs help you standardize this process.
So for example, when you make chicken cutlets, right?
It's okay.
I need a thinly cut chicken cutlets.
I need a egg.
I need the breading like breadcrumbs and I need some oil in a pan.
Right.
So I know I'm always going to dip the chicken in the egg, then put the chicken in the bread
crumbs and then throw it onto the pan.
That's your process for making chicken cutlets.
You have the inputs, you have the outputs, which means that you could teach somebody.
I know that because my mother taught me and her mother taught her like any good Italian
family, right?
So if you have the clear inputs and outputs, this is a good sign that your process or the
current task you're working on can be automated.
So I see some people are joining us.
If you are joining us, say hello, let me know where you're coming from.
And of course, if you have any questions about process automation or podcasting in general,
right?
One process that may not be, uh, automatable, right, but could be delegatable is research,
guest research, right?
You probably will look in similar places, but there's no clear input except for maybe
the guest's name and their bio.
Maybe the topic you're talking about because you want to verify if they actually know what
they're talking about.
But you can't be like, take these three things.
Now I have a fully researched report, right?
It's probably more like, okay, the first place I'm going to look at this person is on their
website.
What do they say they can do on their website?
Do they have any social proof?
Next I'm going to go to LinkedIn.
Has anybody recommended them on LinkedIn?
How many people are they connected to on LinkedIn?
Are they posting on LinkedIn?
Are they not on LinkedIn?
Maybe then I'll go to X.
If they're not on X, are they on Instagram?
Do they, you know what, are they making videos?
This is way more open-ended.
And so this is not, uh, something that has super clear inputs or outputs, right?
I'm not saying that you can't take it off your plate because you can, you can have like
a research assistant, but it's not low hanging fruit because it's so different.
So one of the places where I made this mistake, right, is with my VA, um, she is in the Philippines
and, um, you know, she does the type of VA work for me, um, like task completion, right?
And this is before I developed this framework, but I gave her a bunch of stuff to do, right?
Just like things I didn't want to do.
And one of them was look for conferences for me to speak at.
I want to speak about these things, right?
Give her no other parameters and just figured she would into it, the type of, uh, conferences
that I wanted to speak at.
But what did I, what I ended up getting was just a list of conferences that could be good
or bad.
Some of them had already happened.
Some of them weren't expecting, uh, or accepting speakers.
And that was my fault, right?
There was no clear input.
There was no clear output.
And so the task didn't go so well.
I would need somebody who knows me extremely well to do that for me, right?
Um, but one thing she does extremely well is transcribe my podcast episodes, right?
Because the input is the episode or it's the, it's the episode transcript from another
service that I have my RSS for you hooked up to.
And the output is a cleaned up verbatim transcript of what we talked about without spelling errors
or like mess ups and names, right?
Very, it's a, it's a clear input and output.
She does that really well.
So as you are thinking about what to automate, the first thing that you need to think about
is the P in per, which is per form.
Okay.
Do the tasks, document it.
And I'll say like the best way that I have found to document my tasks, this is one of
the things that my VA does.
I record myself doing the task.
I talk through the task and then I tell her transcribe the video and write out the steps
for this task.
And I will be able to review if I want, I haven't had to review her work in a while,
but then I'll say like, if you have any questions, let me know.
And this is great too.
Because again, even if you're not doing this for yourself, like AI tools are pretty good
now.
Capshow just announced next gen.
So I need to check that out.
I have had meetings all day and haven't been able to attend their live event, but you know,
AI tools are probably pretty good now at saying like, take this video, transcribe it.
Like they'll do that.
And then I, you know, say something to the effect of I am performing a step by step task
in this video, write out the steps.
I haven't tried this, but I'm going to guess it does a pretty decent job at doing that.
Like unless you're all over the place, I guess, but it's really good for my VA because she
can watch the video and see what I'm saying and then say like, Hey, you clicked on this
thing but didn't say anything about it.
What is that thing?
Right?
Or you went over here, but you haven't given me access to that yet.
Do I need access to it?
Right?
So, um, because if you're performing a task, you perform all the time.
It's easy to forget like the setup you did or the things that you needed.
And so this process has been especially helpful for me when it comes to working with my VA.
If you come into automation, so now this is where the E in per comes in, right?
That's evaluate.
And you can see I have a lot more questions here for evaluate.
First is do you need to do it?
Right?
Another way to put this, because you might think, Oh yes, I need to do this.
This is something that I need to do.
So another way to put this question is can only you do it?
And the answer 99% of the time is going to be no.
Do I need to transcribe my podcast?
No.
Do I need to research the guests?
No.
Do I need to find the guests?
That's closer to yes, but that's still no.
Do I need to schedule the call with the guests?
No.
Do I need to send them an email reminder?
No.
Do I need to host the podcast?
Yes.
Do I need to come up with the questions?
I would argue yes here.
Some people like they'll have their assistant come up with the questions, but I like to
come up with the questions, which I'll touch on in a minute.
Okay.
Do I need to edit the episode?
No.
Do I need to find the pull quotes?
No.
Do I need to record the cold open intro?
Yes.
Do I need to set up the webpage?
No.
Do I need to upload it to my host?
No.
Do I need to add it to my website?
No.
Do I need to promote it?
No.
Do I personally need to do those things?
No.
Right?
Can only I promote my podcast?
Absolutely not.
Can only I edit my podcast?
I would argue that I can't even edit my podcast.
Right?
Can only I interview this person in the context of your podcast where you're the host, where
you're the interviewer?
Yes.
You can have a guest interviewer sometimes, but if you remove yourself from that part
of it, right?
Or if you have a solo show that's about your expertise, yeah, only you can do that.
Only you have your expertise specifically and your life experience.
Right?
So framing that, like, do you need to do it as can only you do it?
And I promise you, even if you have, I had, I custom built my WordPress.
Site or experience, I guess, for my, for my podcast.
And it was a mess.
Like you had to upload the sponsor separately and the transcript separately and the episode
separately.
And I thought this is too confusing for anybody to do.
I recorded the video.
I recorded it for my VA.
She publishes my podcast now.
And honestly, if I have to, if like she's out or like I'm late getting her some episodes
or something, it's probably like usually I'm recording a solo episode the Friday before
it's supposed to come out.
So I just ended up doing it.
And I'm like, am I forgetting stuff?
This is, I'm bad at this now.
Right?
So you don't need to do 99% of the things for your podcast or whatever you're thinking.
Right?
Like it could be, whoops, even if it's not for your podcast, but for your processes.
Right?
Um, I know somebody who did client work and like she would send the contract and then the
contract would kick off a bunch of automations.
Oh, the contract signs automatically sends the invoice.
Invoices paid automatically adds them to our system, automatically on boards them, automatically
sends them a video, then sends them a calendar link to get set up for the, for the first
meeting.
But all of the communication was automated.
Like she didn't personally have to send that.
And I would argue that that would be just like an insanely terrible use of her time.
And it turns out of anybody's time.
So, um, do you need to do it?
Frame that as can only you do it.
And you'll probably be surprised at how much you don't need to do.
Okay.
This alluding to the, to the perform stage, right?
Are the inputs clear and are the outputs clear?
I said this a lot before, but so if the inputs and outputs are clear, then, uh, you have a
better chance of easily automating or delegating, right?
Again, it doesn't mean that you can't, right?
Because then if that was the case, then nobody would have any employees doing anything.
Right?
But if we're talking about like automating process tasks or low level delegation inputs
are clear, outputs are clear.
Then we get into the question I think causes the most trouble.
Like can another person do it or can a computer do it?
Um, so yeah, like this goes, can another person do it goes hand in hand with can only you
do it?
If, if you're the only one who can do the task and you have to do it, otherwise another
person can definitely do it.
Um, just depends on their skill level.
Like, like I said, when you do guest research, yes, another person can do that.
Right?
Uh, my friend Terry writes, I was on his podcast a while ago and, um, you know, he has a rock
solid assistant who, um, it's like his right hand gal.
And so like she does all the research and all the communications.
I don't have a person like that in my business right now.
So I opt to do the research.
I can automate some of it and I'm working on a video for that.
Like a concept more or less.
Um, cause like there's some basic things you can do now with AI, but that's like, there's
no way it could ever stop at that point.
Um, so that's what you would want to consider.
Like if you're considering can another person do this.
Um, and then, uh, can a computer do it?
So here's how you answer the question, can a computer do it?
Am I sending a very clear input from one application to another application and can that application
take the input and do something with it?
So I'll go ahead and show you my make account to show you what I mean by this.
This is like a list of all of my automations, which by the way, you can get for free over
at podcastwareplows.com slash join.
You sign up for my mailing list and you will get a database of, uh, all of my, um, on an
automation templates is what that is.
Okay.
So let's go into make and show you all the things.
Okay.
So some things where the input and output is clear.
I need to turn this off.
Goodness.
Um, add member to transistor, right?
So why is this clear input and output watch tag added when someone gets tagged with the
how I built it pro tag, which is, I think called the members tag now, um, create a transistor
subscriber and then update the transistor with their member feed, clear input, a user
with the tag, clear output or clear outlets in this case, let's say outcome, right?
The clear outcome is that that person has a private member feed for my podcast now.
All right.
Calendly router will skip over.
Um, but, uh, let's do create new notion doc, uh, entry from Google doc.
Right.
So what this is, the clear input, if it loads, maybe it doesn't is it's watching a folder
watch documents.
So this is watching documents in a specific folder.
It was called LinkedIn texts, but now it's just like anything, uh, when a new document
hits that, get the content of that document.
That's the input, create a database item in notion.
And this is good because I'm basically just storing like I'm putting all of my content
in a place that's searchable.
I prefer to write.
I don't really like writing in notion.
Um, I like writing in Google docs and then in Google docs, my via, this is like an easy
place for my VA to get it and post it to social media when I was doing that workflow.
So that's clear input, clear output.
Right.
Um, here is an intra app input and output, right?
Because I'm going to soapbox here for a minute, my friends.
Um, something that really bothers me is half baked software and half baked features.
Um, and while I won't name other names right now, um, notions, automations are half baked
if like half could be generous.
Um, and I assume that they are half baked because they launched their automations right
around the same time.
Generative AI was getting super popular and they panicked and they went, Oh God, we need
to add an AI assistant to notion.
So they put all of their resources towards that.
And I'm going to tell you, you didn't know, almost no one needs to add an AI assistant
to their app.
I know it's sexy and cool, but you don't need to do that.
Certainly not at the sacrifice of truly useful features.
That's just crazy to me.
Right.
Uh, so anyway, notions, automations are half baked to the point where you can't even create
a new database item inside of notions, automations, when like you change another database item
because it's all static info.
It's lit.
It's a use case that makes literally no sense.
So I had to make the automation to make watch database items.
This is specifically for my CRM when I went to coaching client, when I win, when I sign
a coaching client.
If I update an item in this database to the status one, then create a database item in
my coaching database, because then that'll help me keep all of their stuff organized
over there instead of having to keep it in my CRM, which is basically like my sales and
leads database.
All right.
So let's do one more example.
And I will do where is Cal.com?
Oh my gosh.
This is cal.com.
Did I just turn off something?
I definitely shouldn't know.
No.
Okay.
I mean, this is basically the same thing, but the cal.com one's like a little bit simplified.
Cal.com.
Okay.
Scheduling router.
Right.
So a little bit more simplified.
So here's what happens, right?
The clear input here is someone books an event with me.
Okay.
So this is all events.
When someone books an event with me, it kicks off this automation.
Then if the event name is called streamlined solopreneur, kick off this automation.
So this is the clear input.
And these are the outputs.
A Google doc from a template that's going to serve as our show notes document, a database
item, which is my podcast planner.
So like their information gets added to my podcast planner.
So then I could assign an episode number to it and an air date and all that.
And then send an email.
This email, send an email to my task manager because I use things three and that doesn't
have a direct integration with anything outside of iOS, but you can email stuff to it.
So I'm basically emailing saying like, Hey, don't forget to do the post interview summary
with this guest.
So that's, that's one set of outputs or outcomes.
And then this router discovery, there's only one, which is if they fill out my discovery
form, add them to my sales and leads notion database so that I can keep notes on our conversations
and follow up when I need to.
So those are some examples of automations where the input is clear, the output is clear, and
I am connecting apps, right?
When something happens at Cal.com, do a thing in notion or do a thing in Google docs.
When something happens in Google docs, do a thing in notion.
When I accept a guest from my guest application form in notion, send an email in Gmail, right?
All of those things are the thing, the input, the triggering event is very clear and the
output or outcome is also very clear.
You should know what you get and you know it's coming out.
So and then again, if that's between apps or within the same app, then it's probably
something a computer can do, right?
But if it's, you know, post the things to my website in this order, computer can't really
do that yet.
Not well, right?
And so that's, that's when you would assign it to a person.
The last question in evaluate, excuse me, the last question in evaluate, which I feel
people might disagree with me on is ask yourself, do you want to do it?
Because let's, let's be honest, right?
If you are, especially if you're running your own business, you got into running your own
business because you want to do your own thing.
And so, yeah, there's a few things I do in my business that I definitely don't have to
do, but I like doing them, right?
I honestly can't think of an example right now that's not just like create content.
But you know, maybe it's like take my podcast and throw it through Cast Magic or Cap Show
and grab the assets, right?
My VA could probably do that.
But I like doing that because I, as a content creator and a writer, feel like I don't want
to outsource that job to either my VA or an AI.
Like I'll just straight up say like anybody who says like, oh, AI can write your blog post
for you.
They're writing crappy blog posts, right?
Anyone who says, oh yeah, you could totally write your book in 48 hours with AI.
You're writing a crappy book, right?
And if you don't care about the quality of your book, then totally, right?
But if you care about the quality of the thing you're producing, then you should produce
it, right?
And if you don't want to, then don't.
I guess that's the point, right?
And so like the point of this question is like, do you want to do the thing you're doing?
Are you doing it just to say you did it?
But if you're not, and it's not something you want to outsource, then that should be part
of the calculus, part of the evaluate, right?
Okay.
So do you need to do it slash can you only do it?
Are the inputs clear?
Are the outputs clear?
Can a computer do it?
Can another person do it?
Do you want to do it?
That's how you evaluate your task.
And the last thing here in per is the R, which is remove.
Now we're going to remove it from our workflow.
So determine if a computer or a person should do it and ship it off to them.
So one thing that I was going to ship off, but didn't because a person can't do it or
not at least not my VA right now is schedule my live streams, right?
I have the next 10 live streams at least planned.
And so I could have my VA go to, I would have her do it on Ecamm live because that's going
to guarantee that it shows up in Ecamm live schedule a live stream for the date with the
title, create the thumbnail, right?
And I'll have like some kind of loose guidelines on that because I could always change that
later and then schedule it in Ecamm live.
And the reason she can't do it is because she doesn't have a Mac.
And so she can't download Ecamm live.
But if I decide I want to use a tool that she can also access, I mean, I probably won't
because I love Ecamm live.
You know, that's something she can do.
Or if I decide I only, I only want a live stream, like this is maybe something I need
to test a little bit more, right?
Maybe this is something I need to go back into the do phase or the evaluate phase and
see if there's a way that she can do it.
Maybe I just have her create the live stream on YouTube and then maybe I can add other
destinations later in Ecamm live, right?
Because then she's already doing the hard part, which is scheduling it with the thumbnail
and the title and the description, right?
So that's something to think about.
So that's something I'd like to remove from my plate.
I just need to figure out in the evaluate phase, like how I can make the, how I can
make the inputs and outputs clearer, right?
But something I've definitely taken off my plate, like I said, is transcripts.
I don't, I don't do the transcripts at all.
I don't hit a button in Cast Magic or in Descript.
Anna handles all that, right?
Publishing my episodes.
I don't publish episodes of Streamline solopreneur either in my podcast host or on my website
anymore.
I don't publish the, the members episodes anymore.
I don't even, this was like something that I thought would be too complicated, but it's
not.
Right now my ads are dynamically inserted and they are like, they're for all intents
and purposes baked in because like they don't change based on the user or really anything.
But you know, Anna needs to go in and select the campaign and then pick the timestamps
and my editor, just when he sends the episode back, he includes the timestamp for the sponsor
break.
And so she takes that timestamp and she knows to add the campaign, like the dynamic ads
at that timestamp.
I don't need to do that anymore.
So now it's like I do the interview.
I do the post interview summary.
That's still really important to me.
It's something I want to do because I'm going to read the intro.
I want to tell the right story because I know how important the intro is in hooking the
listener.
And so I want to make sure I get that right.
I'm not going to outsource that to AI and be like, summarize this episode and then just
read that because it's going to be like in this episode of the streamlined solopreneur
host Joe Casabona delves deep into SEO with Lauren Gadgioli.
Strap in for a deep dive into learning all things SEO and Google.
And that's dumb.
That's terrible.
So that's not something I'm willing to outsource.
But for everything that you can determine if a person or a computer should do it, remove
it from your list ASAP, right?
The next time you do it, record yourself doing it and send it to your VA.
And if you don't have a VA, that's another topic I'm going to cover on another live stream.
Or figure out, okay, I'm doing this thing in Google Sheets.
And then I'm copying that data manually into notion.
Guess what?
Inputs are clear.
Outputs are clear.
You can automate that using Zapier or make.
So that is the per method.
Automate per task, perform, evaluate, remove.
And then I guess the super secret second R in per that I didn't add is repeat.
Do this for every task.
Now there is, let me see.
So there is more to this graphic.
So let me just see if I can maybe bring this up.
Can I zoom out of this note?
I've started using Apple notes more.
And it looks like I cannot zoom out, which is crazy.
Oh, no, it's just that.
Oh, the keyboard shortcut for zooming out is inexplicably different in notes than like
everything else.
Is this right?
Is this it?
This is dumb.
No, that's not right.
Okay.
And it's like not even really zooming out.
Oh, it's not, boy, oh boy, that's dumb.
Actual size.
Okay.
Well, the drawing is not zooming out.
So maybe there's something I can do to shrink that a little bit and make it more manageable.
Okay.
So I'll just switch to the screen.
By the way, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them.
I haven't seen any come in.
This looks like spam to me.
What the theme are you talking about?
Talking about automation, Frendo.
So okay.
So let's do this because then you can see it a little bit better.
Also sorry if you're a real person, I just called you spam, but you've got like the,
you know, just like the default icon.
What is this?
What theme are you talking about?
And you know, questions a little bit big.
So sorry, five star.
If you are not spam or you're not whatever.
Let me know if you're not, I guess.
Okay.
So there's a little bit more to this graphic.
Meet the process.
And then I just kind of have like some other ways to visualize this.
These are pretty raw.
But this part I think is good.
So if I expand this a little bit so you can see that better.
You know, okay.
Perform evaluate.
When you evaluate, you ask, do I need to do it?
Could you explain why automation is, oh, I'm pretty new to this.
Okay.
Yeah.
Five star.
First of all, sorry for assuming that you weren't a bot.
Not a bot.
Sorry about that.
I've got egg on my face now.
This is a really, so this is a really good question.
Yeah.
Okay.
Really good question.
Sorry if I've lost you now.
That's obnoxious of me.
Can you explain what automation is?
I'm pretty new to this.
This is a great question.
So thank you so much for this.
And the way I explain automation is you get a computer to perform tasks for you, right?
Or you basically have a computer or a machine do something so that you don't need to do
it.
The thing that I'm sure a lot of us already do that is automation is bill pay, right?
How many of you are automatically paying your rent or your mortgage or your water bill or
your electric bill or definitely your cable bill, right?
I don't think cable companies or cell phone companies accept checks anymore, right?
So this is happening so that you don't have to remember to do it, right?
And the way I'll drive this point home is when we first moved into our house, I didn't
realize that the water bill was quarterly and I didn't realize that our water bill and
our sewer bill were different because they're basically the same price and they come from
the same company.
And so I paid our water, I paid our sewer bill and then we got the water bill and I
just assumed that it was the same bill so I didn't pay it.
And then while they claimed they sent two warnings, I can assure you that they didn't.
And when I said, I think it got lost in the mail, they're like, yeah, that happens, but
we also put like a sticker on your door and I'm like, I didn't get that either.
And they were like, oh, well, it gets windy sometimes so it might have blown off.
And I'm like, this is terrible because after that, they just shut off your water.
And so like they turned it back on quickly and I'm like, you shouldn't really, you should
have knocked on my door and told me they had like a good reason for not doing that.
But after that, I was like, never again, right, I'm going to make sure I have automatic bill
pay.
And so this is something great that is an example of automation because it's something
that surely, surely everyone is doing.
And so the types of tasks that I think you can automate, I have here, let me see, I have
like a nifty graphic for this.
So let's do this and then share the screen so you can see it.
We can remove your comment here, five star.
So I think that the things that you can automate are commonly and easily repeatable.
So like the someone fills out a Google form and I want it to go to Notion, that's a really
good example of a common and easily repeatable task.
In frequent and high level of effort, I mentioned my freelancer friend who has like the whole
onboarding process for her agency automated.
This is something I don't do a lot of contract work now, like a lot of like this sort of
contract work.
So when I have to spin up a contract, get it signed, send an invoice and then add them
to my system, there is a lot of effort there.
And so like this is a great candidate for automation where maybe I use something like
DocuSign.
Also I should say that like PDF signing, like document signing services, charge an obnoxious
amount of money for API access.
And I say it's obnoxious because I don't feel like it's relative to the cost of the actual
service like you could pay like $10 a month and then the API is like $100 a month.
And I'm like maybe just like a few actions in Zapier would be fine.
But anyway, so maybe like, yeah, if I'm using DocuSign, when a client signs in DocuSign,
send that information to QuickBooks or FreshBooks and spin up an invoice, right?
And then, oh, once that invoice is paid, send them the welcome email, right?
That's stuff that you can do with automation.
Quick timing required, this is like you, when someone becomes a member of my podcast, I
don't want to have them wait.
Like if they sign up on like a Friday night, they're going to have to wait at least three
days or two days to get the members only feed if I was doing that manually.
And then things you can't forget, again, like automatic bill pay.
I think I have some examples here.
Yeah, so send an email to your mailing list when a new episode drops.
That is easily repeatable and common.
Send invoice when a contract is signed, right?
That is high level of effort, maybe infrequent.
Give access to a private podcast feed.
And then thing I can't forget, upload videos from Dropbox to Vimeo.
When I create a new video for my members, I want to make sure, or like I do a live stream
for members only, I want to make sure that they have the replay immediately.
And so I was uploading them to Vimeo for a while until I had an automation doing that.
So I hope that helps.
Five Star, if you have any, personally, I think automation is very complicated.
It can be, right?
So the thing that I would say here is don't start by climbing Mount Everest.
Start by climbing a set of stairs.
You can, automation can be very complicated, right?
And like some of the things I showed you here and make are, right?
Like my calendar, my scheduling router, that's complicated, right?
Or this thing that has like routing and stuff.
But it could also be simple, like this notion to notion automation.
I make a change in notion and a new record is added, right?
Automation fills out a form on Google Forms and they get added to a Google Sheet.
That's a two-step automation.
That's like climbing stairs, right?
Whereas this is climbing Mount Everest, right?
Because this is like multiple actions and multiple paths.
And like this was even more complicated at another point.
So that's like climbing Mount Everest.
I think like something that you could probably start with is automation inside of the tools
you're using.
So like don't think about, don't think about Zapier or Make right now.
If you use Notion, look at the built-in Notion automations.
Or if you use Airtable, look at the built-in Airtable automations.
If you have a WordPress site, you can find a plugin that will do the automations for
you.
If you have a podcast and you're using a host, you know, and you have a podcast RSS
feed, you can, if you use ConvertKit, for example, you can connect your RSS feed to
ConvertKit.
And so like ConvertKit reads the RSS feed and sends out a notification to your mailing
list with a new episode, it drops.
So yes, it could feel very complicated.
But if you start small, it doesn't have to be.
I have a lot of complicated automations.
I've been building automations for like almost a decade now.
You know, it's been my main focus for the last few years, but I was challenged in, like
shortly after I had kids, hey, take stuff off your plate.
If I'm being honest, I'm pretty young.
I joined your live stream to learn and it's been really great here.
I'm enjoying it.
Well, thank you, Five Star.
I appreciate that.
Put that up on the big screen.
I'm really glad you're enjoying this.
And you know what?
Like, young is a great place to start, right?
I made my first website when I was 14 years old and I like stumbled through it and I learned
the hard way and I used an app called Microsoft Trump page, which I'm pretty sure is dead
now.
But that led to me being a web developer for 20 years before moving into podcasting and
automation.
So, you know, I think one of the benefits of being young is you have time.
You have time to explore and learn stuff and mess up and it's pretty low stakes when you
mess up.
You know, if I mess up an automation for one of my clients right now, it would be bad.
They'd be like, what the hell happened, right?
But like, you know, when I was learning how to do this and it was pretty low stakes or
when I was building websites just for myself and I took the website down, it didn't really
matter, right?
I was just trying to figure it out.
So this is great.
I really appreciate you being here.
I appreciate you confirming that you're not a bot.
I feel like an idiot now.
So yeah, if you have any other questions about automation or like connecting tools, right?
You know, I think WordPress is a pretty good playground if you're interested.
What's a web developer, if I may ask?
Someone who makes websites.
So yeah, so I don't know what they, I don't know what it's called now, front end web designer
or implementer or no, it's somebody who makes websites, right?
And so I would use WordPress for making websites.
I was writing them, I was hand coding them when I was a kid.
So yeah, that's good.
I appreciate you being here and asking questions.
Definitely keep asking questions.
Curiosity is the best thing.
Okay.
And then for anybody else who is joining us, I'll check LinkedIn.
I've been neglecting LinkedIn.
I'm really sorry about that.
So I'll just go over here and see if questions are coming in.
I don't see anything.
I'll go over to Twitter and see if anything's coming in.
I don't see anything.
So that is, gosh, that was a really good question.
It kind of, it's like all the way to the end basically.
So yeah, so the per method, that's what I was talking about, perform the task, record
yourself doing it, evaluate the task, remove it from your list.
Oh right, I started to show you notes, sketches and notes, right?
So let's go over here because I drew a little flow chart.
Now it's all coming back to me now, which is a song that I suspect our friend Five
Stars is too young to get.
I just, I age myself a lot.
Okay.
It's really good though.
Check it out.
It's all coming back to me now by Celine Dion.
Okay, perform, evaluate.
Do you need to do it?
Yes.
So okay, no, it's removed, right?
Easy remove.
If you say yes, you need to do it, you can ask yourself, can it be reduced?
Like the question here is, can I only do part of it?
And this is where the automation for guest research that I'm thinking about comes in,
which is, are you going to change theme soon?
Like maybe about religion and geography and stuff like that.
I am not.
I am very bad at geography and I don't generally talk about religion on my live streams.
So I usually talk about podcasting and automation.
So that's what you can expect here on this channel.
I appreciate you sticking around and asking great questions though.
It's really great.
Okay, so do you need to do it?
Can it be reduced?
So the guest automation thing I'm thinking about, right?
The first part you probably could automate, right?
The way I'm envisioning it is I have a form for people to fill out if they want to be
a guest on my podcast.
That gets added to notion, right?
But what we could do in the middle there is send the information to an AI tool like ChatGPT
with a prompt.
Now you'd want to really like get the prompt right here, but you might say something like,
I'm considering interviewing guest name about and then the topic they proposed.
Here is their bio.
Here is their website.
Can you generate a list of sources where they talk about topic?
This could be blog posts that they've written, other podcasts they've been on, or any other
content that fits into what they want to talk about.
Can you please also find the links to their social channels?
And then maybe the last thing I would say is, can you summarize all of this for me?
And the reason that this is not where you stop is because like summary is dumb and bad,
right?
Like it could hallucinate stuff.
It may not highlight the things you want to highlight, but instead of you going to Google
and going to their website and finding blog posts and things like that, the automation
is doing a lot of that work for you.
And then you could take what it found and dig deeper.
So can you break up tasks into smaller tasks?
Right?
Yes, if it can be reduced, then remove parts of it.
Or maybe like we want to swing this back up to perform each of those tasks.
Can it be reduced?
No.
And then fine.
Reaffirm that you have to do this and add it to your list.
So that was a fun little flow chart that I drew.
That's like pretty raw.
I think I need to tighten that up a little bit.
Five Star coming in with a question here.
What do you think is the best thing about automation?
For me, it saves me time.
Like at like 40 hours a month.
Because if anybody who knows me knows I have kids and I'm trying to run a business and I
have three podcasts and client work.
And so I wouldn't be able to do all of that stuff without automation.
I certainly wouldn't be able to do it efficiently.
And so I think that's the best thing about automation.
I also, I love automation.
I'm a problem solver.
And I love puzzles and stuff like that.
And automation is I can't do anything with my hands.
I can't like build stuff or fix things.
Though I did fix our fridge.
So maybe that's not fully true.
But I can build stuff with automation.
And that's really fun.
Five Star asking what is the main idea of automation?
I guess in this context, and I think we're coming to the top of the hour.
So this will be the last question I answer.
What's the main idea of automation?
Right?
That's a pretty philosophical question.
I think it's, I always, the funny and weird way I put it is it's getting robots to do
things for you so you don't have to.
But really the main idea is you are considering the tasks that you have to do.
And then you're telling a computer to do the other ones.
So I think that's really, that's the main idea.
And that's where we'll leave it.
So thank you, Five Star, for your fantastic questions.
I appreciate it.
Thank you for everybody else who tuned in and is watching.
If I didn't see your question or get to your question, I apologize.
But thank you so much for being here.
Let's see.
I will check LinkedIn really quick.
Cool.
Thank you so much for being here.
If you want to learn more about what I'm doing and then get, you know, be one of the first
to know when my, I'm starting the beta reading process for my books.
You can join the mailing list over at podcastworkflows.com.
Five Star, thanks for your great questions.
I love answering questions.
I'm a teacher at heart.
So I'll happily answer the questions during these live streams.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you to everybody who watched silently.
No shade.
That sounded like shade.
Thank you for everybody who tuned in.
I really appreciate you.
And until next time, I'll see you out there.