If you're overwhelmed by a chaotic business that's stealing time from your friends, your family, and your life, Streamline Solopreneur is for you.
Hey, everybody. My name's Joe Casabona, and I've been there. And on this show, I will show you how to build space in your business by taking control of your tech stack so you can escape the hustle.
I have a confession to make. I'm getting a little tired of the conversations around Taylor Swift, particularly around Taylor Swift going on the New Heights podcast. And not because it's bad content. It's very good content, and it's brilliant for both Taylor Swift and the New Heights podcast. But there has been, over the last couple of weeks, as I record this far too big focus on what it means for podcasters, content creators, business owners, marketers, and what we can learn. What did they do that we can take and then do for us?
It's kind of like saying Gordon Ramsay just made the best beef Wellington he's ever made. What does that mean for cooking at home? It means literally nothing. Ramsay is a skilled chef and perhaps the most recognizable one in the world.
The same thing goes for Taylor Swift and the New Heights podcast. They are all huge names in their own right. Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce have both won Super Bowls, and Taylor Swift is the biggest pop star in the world. The views, streams, downloads, and buzz that they generate can't be a lesson for us to extract and apply to our lives and our situation because it's so vastly different from our lives and our situation. Taylor Swift did a single podcast interview, and that podcast is co-hosted by her boyfriend. So like, is the lesson here be Taylor Swift's boyfriend?
The wider world is talking about this particular episode of New Heights because Taylor Swift announced a new album. She could have announced a new album using a CB radio for those of us who remember CB radios, and people would still be talking about it, and it would mean nothing for the trucking industry.
No, the things that help podcasters, content creators, small business owners, the things that helped us before Taylor Swift's appearance on New Heights are the same things that will help us after Taylor Swift's appearance on New Heights. We need to know our audience, which Taylor Swift and the Kelsey's know very well. We need to create great content for them. Again, check and check on that episode. We need to tell people about it, and we need to experiment.
I suspect many of us already know that this is the answer. But in our constant pursuit to find shortcuts and apply something that makes sense to us, to our business, without having to take too much risk. I think we were hoping for just an amazing strategy that definitely works.
This is why Alex Hormozi makes so much money, right? He is promising that you are going to make nine figures, except what no one, very few people talk about is how aggressive and disrespectful he is in trying to make those sales. They want the promise and the glory without the work. The real problem isn't that we don't know what makes good content. It's that we don't have the time to spend on what it takes to create it. So what do we do? We fill in the gaps.
Gaps is my framework for building more space in your business. It stands for gear, automations, playbooks, and support. You need to make your life as easy as possible when it comes to creating content or just running your business in general. That means you don't want to spend your time fighting gear or setups, doing everything manually, reinventing the wheel, or doing everything yourself. By filling in the gaps, you can focus on what really matters: defining your audience as clearly as possible, making sure your content serves them as best as possible, and building space into your schedule to not just create the content, but promote it. Or not just create the product, but market it. And then once you're doing those things, you can experiment because you're actually putting content or products or things or services in front of people, and you're getting feedback and so that allows you to try things.
So what does filling in the gaps look like? Well, you get a good mic and an easy-to-use camera, so you don't have to worry about quality.
One of the reasons that I have the setup that I have is because I don't want to have to stop recording when my kids are playing upstairs or when my dog is barking. So I got the gear. That means I won't have to stop and start, and do extra edits and reshoot things.
It means that you use tools like ECAMM Live and TELA to make creating and editing videos easier. I'm recording this with the ECAMM Live virtual camera so I can easily switch scenes and add overlays. And then I'm recording it in Riverside, and they do editing by transcript. You set up simple automations in Zapier and Notion to manage communications and move files for you so you don't need to remember to do that. You create standard operating procedures so they act as step-by-step instructions that can be clearly followed either by you or by someone else. And you hire a Virtual assistant, an editor, or anyone else who can do a job better than you so that you can focus on what matters most. And this will definitely take some investment, both time and money, but the ROI is invaluable. I've been able to save 10 to 12 hours per week by implementing my GAPS Framework.
And this summer, this summer has been hectic. We are at the tail end of my parents' visiting for two weeks. My wife is going back to school, the kids didn't have summer camp, and we vacationed a lot. And my business, while I had long days, I've been able to take that time off more or less worry-free. That's what filling in the GAPS does for your business. Or maybe to think about it a different way. You're creating gaps in your life so that you have more space in your life.
And I do want to share one more example here with a woman named Margaret. She wants to start a podcast for her school district. Her official title is Work-Based Learning Coordinator, and she's teaching high school kids really valuable stuff. But she booked a coaching call with me on how to launch her podcast. And this is, you know, she doesn't have a huge budget. She is time-starved because she is doing a bunch of other things. And she thinks the podcast can save her time while still creating great content for her students and their parents. So, here's how we applied the GAPS framework to make this happen for her.
First of all, gear. We start with a sub-$100 microphone like the Samsung Q2U. It's beginner-friendly, it's portable, and it plugs right into a laptop, so she doesn't have to break the bank on gear.
Automations. We talked about the tools that she can use so that she's not trying to do too much or move things too many places. And we settled on Riverside for remote interviews. But also, Riverside has editing right in the platform. So she can also, like I'm doing right now, record solo episodes in Riverside and then edit them and publish them.
And for publishing, I recommended RSS.com, and full disclosure here. I am an RSS.com evangelist and I, you know, I create content for them, and I'm on their payroll, but they also have an educator's discount, and they have everything that she needs to make sure her podcast gets everywhere it needs to be. Wherever students prefer to listen, wherever parents prefer to listen. And, there are a whole bunch of other tools built into the platform like Automatic Transcription, associated, or our Podvis technology that will send a more engaging video to YouTube because she doesn't want to do a video at first. So that's Gear and Automations Playbooks.
We walked through her basic workflow right on the call, a clear path from record to publish so that she doesn't have to figure it all out on her own. And then I gave her the documentation and the recording so that she has it for her and support. In this case, Margaret might not be able to just hire on her own, but she has access to students to whom she can give these work-based learning experiences. And so we talked about how she might be able to delegate editing, graphics creation, and even bring students on as co-hosts so that she has the support that she needs to make this happen.
And now she's launching, she's getting things ready, and she's confident that she's going to be able to do this without dramatically adding more work to her plate. Ideally, this is actually going to take stuff off her plate. So that's it. That's the GAPS framework. It's gear, automation, Playbooks, and support.
If you want to learn how you can fill in the gaps of your business, let me know. You can go to streamlined.fm/overwhelm. There you'll take a simple six-question quiz, and then you'll get a personalized plan based on your answers.
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur. I hope you enjoyed it, and until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.