Online business expert shares time-saving strategies for podcasters (Tasha Booth, How She Did That)

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by a free AI transcription tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors. Tasha Booth 0:00 You know as much as a process person that I am, a lot of times I spent so much time inside of my clients, businesses, supporting them with their processes that I wasn’t really taking the time to do the same thing for my own podcast. Melissa Guller 0:14 That’s Tasha Booth, the founder and CEO of the Launch Guild, and the host of How She Did That. Tasha’s podcast is for Virtual Assistants, Online Business Managers, and Project Managers, so it’s fitting that today we’re going to talk all about podcast processes, and how you can save time by working smarter, not harder. First, Tasha explains why she started a podcast instead of a blog. From there, she talks about some of the early challenges she faced as a new podcaster, and how switching to her current batch working process completely changed her process and perspective. If you’ve never heard that term before, “batch working,” Tasha is going to walk us through her process and teach you how to use batch working strategies to save a ton of time as a podcaster, no matter how new or seasoned you are. Finally, we talk about repurposing your podcast content, and how you’re probably missing out on opportunities to get the most out of your episodes. Let’s say hello. Announcer 1:16 Welcome to Wit & Wire, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes with podcasters and industry experts to help you start and scale a binge worthy podcast of your own. Here’s your host, Melissa Guller. Melissa Guller 1:33 Hey, everyone, I’m Melissa, and I can’t wait to introduce you to today’s guest. Tasha booth Hey everyone, I’m Melissa and I can’t wait to introduce you to today’s guest. Tasha Booth began her journey in the online business space five years ago as a virtual assistant when she decided she was tired of living an ‘ordinary’ life on someone else’s terms. As her business grew, so did her commitment to helping others figure out how to make the life they craved a reality. Whether she’s leading her team of 18 to support established coaches and course creators as the Founder and CEO of The Launch Guild agency, coaching virtual support professionals as they start and scale their own business, or hosting the ‘How She Did That’ podcast for VAs, OBMs, and project managers, Tasha is always helping other entrepreneurs live more fully in their zone of genius. When she’s not supporting her team of 18, she proudly spends her time as an Air Force wife to her husband Scott, stepmom to Grace and Meredith, and work from home dog mom to Stanley and Boomer. So Tasha, welcome to the podcast. Tasha Booth 2:40 Thank you so much for having me. Melissa Guller 2:43 I am so excited to learn more about you and to nerd out with a fellow process person. And to kick things off, maybe you can take us back to the start. So you first got started with a blog and what things look like for you in the very early days of your business. Tasha Booth 2:50 Yes, so the early days, I was still juggling a nine to five with being a full time or part time VA at that point and I quickly got to the point of Where I almost burned my whole business down because I was totally burned out, I was doing a lot of the things that I now tell the people that I coach not to do, which is to, you know, take on a lot of clients, I was charging, not charging nearly enough and everything. And then quickly realized that if I wanted a sustainable business, I had to do things differently. So I got a coach myself and just started really pivoting my business to only do the things that I love to do and only offer the things to my clients that I love doing, and only work with clients that I love working with. And surprise that works. So yeah, I was able to build my business pretty quickly after that left my full time job, eight months after I started. And the rest is kind of history. I think the reason that I pivoted to kind of having an agency model, which is what I have now with a team of 20 instead of just being a solopreneur was the fact that so many of my clients that I was working with had so many different needs and I didn’t want to be a jack of all trades, because I don’t think that that is the best way to serve people. Because you end up not being good at one or two of the things that you’re trying to do at least. So I decided, why don’t I create an internal team where we can, you know, support our clients in a lot of different ways. And as they grow, and as their needs grow and change, we’re able to grow and change with them. I think Melissa Guller 4:21 that’s so smart. And even though it may sound obvious now, and you’ve been doing this for years, so it’s so efficient. I do think it is probably the instinct of a lot of business owners and podcasters to assume that the best way forward is to do it all yourself. Tasha Booth 4:36 Yeah, I definitely see that. And when you’re thinking about it in terms of just dollar cost, a lot of times it seems way easier. You know, like, oh, I’ll just learn how to do XYZ and do it myself. But I’ve heard from so many of our clients and I’ve had the experience as well, in my own business of just having that mindset of Oh, I’ll just save some money and do it myself. And it takes me so much longer, I end up procrastinating on it, because it’s not something that I feel confident in. It’s not something that’s in my zone of genius. And so a lot of times I end up hiring somebody either to redo my stuff because it wasn’t great to start with, right? Or I end up you know, it just ends up taking a lot longer to get it out into the world, and to serve the people that I want to serve. So I, as a business owner, have definitely learned that lesson. And I know that a lot of our clients have started out with that lesson and have learned over time that lots of times it makes sense to hire a person or a team to support you. Melissa Guller 5:30 Mm hmm. And when you put it that way, I’m probably spending more time which ends up being more money to do something that I didn’t even like in the first place. Exactly, exactly. Well, we’ll talk about I think, maybe more production and even outsourcing since that’s something a lot of podcasters can relate to, but I still want to hear about your podcast. So was there a specific moment or motivation or inspiration that hit when you decided to start your podcast. Tasha Booth 5:56 I had been thinking about it for a while but it really boiled down to I knew that I wanted to grow my audience, I wanted to grow my reach. And I knew that I did not want to commit to writing a blog post weekly, or multiple times a week or anything like that. I go in and out of like writing blog posts and everything, but it’s some, it’s not something that I can really commit to and be like, Okay, I’m definitely going to do this. And so I needed to figure out what my long form content was gonna be and how I could support my audience and grow my audience also, to be honest. So podcasting, it was, I’m a people person, I really like talking to people. I like connecting with people. So being able to have a conversation with people and have guests on my podcast like I do, and just being able to verbally process things in my solo episodes and talk things out. It just makes sense from our perspective. So it was really something that was easy to make a decision on. Once I laid everything out and realized, Oh, this, this totally makes sense. Melissa Guller 6:54 And before we gloss over something interesting, you said, you mentioned that you knew you needed long form content, but didn’t want to do blogging. So for somebody who maybe that’s a new point for why was long form content important for you and your business, Tasha Booth 7:09 I think that a lot of times you can utilize long form content to be able to pull apart for social media. So when you’re thinking about a lot of times, people are like, Oh, I don’t know what to talk about on social media. Well, you can pull apart and repurpose all of those things that you’re saying in long form content. And also, it gives your audience an opportunity to get to know you to get to know your insight on things like your unique perspective on things a lot better than just a sound bite or just something short, like something that you would have on social media, right? So it’s a way to begin the conversation and then deepen the conversation in that long form content, then you get to like pull it apart and take all those really fun sound bites and turn them into social media content as well. Mm hmm. I love that. And I think that’s such a great way to think about it because it’s not that one podcast episode. Load equals one social media post. Instead, there’s probably so much good stuff within that one episode that can be used during the week it goes live, but also months later you could refer back to something that an earlier episode said, and it’ll still be so valuable. Absolutely. The other day, I was reading over, I think it was like a pitch deck, or it was something that one of my one on one clients is working on. And she sent it to me to review. And she used one of my quotes from one of my podcast episodes in it, and I was like, I should use that on social media first, like, that’s really good. You know, so there’s all there’s a whole bunch of tidbits and yeah, all it takes is like, a few minutes to upload it to something like Tomita IO, which is a 10 cent per minute. What is that thing called transcription service? And you know, you can just read over the transcript, highlight some things and find so much content in there. Melissa Guller 8:52 Great tip to right there about using the transcripts to find info because it’s so much easier to skim through the transcript than it might be to listen to the audio for an episode. Tasha Booth 9:02 Exactly, exactly. Melissa Guller 9:04 Mm hmm. So in the earliest days of your podcast, what were some of maybe the early challenges that you faced as you were figuring out the whole podcast world, Tasha Booth 9:13 I think definitely figuring out how long everything was going to take me and setting aside the time to do that. So there were way too many nights and days where I was recording the next day’s episode, like the night before. And that was definitely not helpful to me. It wasn’t helpful to my team who was trying to help me but often couldn’t, because I was always waiting until the last minute. So I think, you know, as much as a process person that I am, a lot of times I spent so much time inside of my clients, businesses, supporting them with their processes, that I wasn’t really taking the time to do the same thing for my own podcast and my own life just in terms of just my business in general. And so when I decided, you know, what do I want my business to look like and what do I What the podcasts look like. And in order for it to be what I want it to be, there needs to be some consistency. And that’s when things kind of change for me. Hmm, consistency as a podcaster, I think is so important because it’s not a process a lot of us have done before. And I think there are a lot of steps that you don’t think about until you’re knee deep. But what’s great about a podcast is that every episode, in a good way is Melissa Guller 10:25 a repetition of the one before from a process even though the content can be totally fresh. So what were some of the ways that you were able to streamline your own process? Tasha Booth 10:35 So we first started out really figuring out the podcast project plan and we live by Asana. If it’s not an Asana, and if it’s not scheduled with a person and a due date, then it doesn’t get done. So that’s kind of a rule. And we figured out okay, what do we like, what do we do in every single episode? What do we do if it’s a solo episode? What do we do if it’s a guest? episode? And we really created a fantastic project plan so that we all knew we’re all on the same page in terms of what needed to happen and when it needed to happen. And then I started to secondly become really strategic about what I wanted my episodes to look like and when I wanted to record and launch certain episodes, and then the third piece, which I hope we’ll dive into a little bit more is the fact that I actually batch record full seasons in one week. So I am loving batch recording and the great thing about it is that it’s a crazy week, but then once it’s over, there’s nothing else left for me to do for my podcast. It’s just my team that’s doing the rest of it. Melissa Guller 11:41 Okay, yes, I can’t wait to talk about all of these. So before we get to the good stuff with batch recording, my like, Asana loving inner project manager nerd is just freaking out. And I’m so excited about all of this. If it’s not an Asana, it doesn’t exist. I relate to this on a very deep level. Tasha Booth 11:56 Yeah. So yes, Melissa Guller 11:58 Let’s talk about the project. Plan. So can you tell us exactly what does that look like? Is it a checklist? Is it a document? Tell me everything? Tasha Booth 12:07 Yes. So we have ours basically as a checklist. And it’s so it’s a project plan template inside of Asana, that has the pre production, which all includes like the guests invitation includes double checking that we have things like the guest bio, or if they’re going to do a freebie or an opt in making sure that we have all of that, making sure that I wrote out the questions. And so I have an idea of what I want to ask the guest, although those pieces and then actual production, so the recording and everything, sending it off to the editor, all those pieces, and then post production, which includes Jackie on my team who’s kind of like podcast manager, or podcast VA, her going in and doing all the social media, graphics and everything. And then of course, scheduling the episode, sending it out to the guests scheduling those emails and stuff. And then of course, actually promoting it on social media and everything. So A lot of different pieces. So we kind of break it into sections for each episode. And that has been so hugely helpful. Mm hmm. Great tip. And you also mentioned that you wanted a plan for every episode and what that would look like. So what does that look like for you maybe as an example for listeners? Yes. So I am finally at the point in my business where I can plan out basically my entire year, a couple months before the year happens. So I’ll give you an example for this year, what we really worked on was looking at, okay, what launches Do I have coming up? Like, when are my launches going to be for the year for all of my different programs and stuff like that? So once I have those laid out, then of course, I want to make sure that I’m reverse engineering that process and looking at what does my ideal client need to know what education Do I need to give them before they’re ready to say yes to whatever I’m selling or offering and so we want to take a couple weeks or up to like four weeks ahead of time to really be creating content that surrounds them, and enables them to be able to say yes, when it’s finally time to launch that thing. So for an example, one of my programs built a profit is all for new v vert, virtual assistants. And so before that, we might have some content around like how you balance a nine to five and being a part time VA, right? Or myths about becoming a VA, or how to find your first client like stuff that they’re already probably asking in their head, but they’re not sure about. And so I want to get in front of their questions or their objections. And we can do that really, really well in podcast, production and in podcast content. So you have podcast episodes then that are getting released during this month leading up to the sale of the program. Exactly. So we have the episodes that are getting released up to the sales program, and we want to make sure that we’re playing those out in specific places. So when we’re creating our podcasts, Calendar, we want to block those off for those specific episodes and don’t want to put like, some guest episodes may be in there and instead of like solo episodes so that they get to know me more or something like that. So you really just want to make sure that you’re laying out your content and laying out your content calendar ahead of time, so that your content makes sense and has kind of an arc for your ideal client. Melissa Guller 15:24 I think that’s such a great point, because I think early podcasters and I’m sure you know, I was guilty of this. And I’m sure we all do this and many things beyond the podcast, but it’s easy to just plan one episode at a time. Maybe you’re even a couple episodes ahead. But then you lose out on this huge benefit of how can my podcast episodes actually serve a bigger picture in my business for me? Tasha Booth 15:47 Exactly. I love that. Yes. And that is the question. How can my podcast episodes really serve a bigger picture in you know, for my audience and everything, and in my plan in terms of my entire business instead of just for my podcast. Hmm, well said. Melissa Guller 16:01 So I think this leads us nicely back into batch work. So it’s slowly becoming clear to me how critical This must be as you’re planning out a full calendar versus just a day or a week at a time. So maybe for people who haven’t even heard the term before, can you tell us what batch work means? Yes. So Tasha Booth 16:18 it means basically, you’re doing one type of work at a time, and a number of them at a time to get everything done for that specific purpose or that specific thing all at one time. So a lot of people will batch their blog posts, right. So the start of it will be that they’ll write out 10 different topics that they want to blog on. And then they’ll go to the rough draft, and then they’ll edit all of them at the same time. And then they’ll create the graphics all at the same time. So it really kind of helps your brain also a lot of times just to not have to context switch on and off and be able to stick with that one thing instead of Oh, I’m going to work on this for a little bit and then like two weeks later, I’m going to come Back to it and finish it up. And I do the same thing in terms of my podcast. Melissa Guller 17:05 So can you walk us through what that looks like for you? Tasha Booth 17:08 Yes. So we actually pick my batch weeks, all at the end of the previous year. So all of the batch weeks for this year were chosen last year. And then what we do is a month before, so we accept like an episode, or guests, invitations, basically, or guests interests throughout the entire year, but we save them for right before our batch week. So about a month before I go through all of those. I check off the ones that I want to send invitations out to and then Jayla Ray, my director of operations, sends out invitations and gets some scheduled for that one week that I’m going to record so I clear my calendar of everything else for that entire week. I don’t do any client coaching calls. I don’t do any like client meetings. I don’t do any team meetings, nothing else except for recording. I opened up my calendar, usually for like 7am to 6pm, every single day and then a half day on that Saturday. And I literally just record all of my episodes. So all of my guest episodes, my solo episodes, everything gets recorded in that week. Melissa Guller 18:17 Well, I’m impressed. Melissa Guller 18:20 It’s, you know, and it is a lot. It’s a really long week. And by the end of it, I’m just like, I don’t want to talk to anybody. You know, I don’t want to see anyone, it’s an energy drain, but at the same time, it’s really energizing. Because I just get to talk to so many amazing women that week, you know, and it’s just such a like, by the end of it, I’m just like, I get to do like, I have the coolest job ever. So it feels really good, even though I’m exhausted and drained by the end. But yeah, so by the end of that week. So on the back end, what is happening is we use Google Drive to house all the episodes and every single episode has its own sub folder in Google Drive. And so every time I’m recording one of our VA on my team is at the end of it like uploading it to zoom, putting it in its own folder, so that the next thing that happens is like my copywriter can start editing and Jackie can start creating the graphics. And all of that can be happening even during that batch week as things are going. And it’s just such a really cool process to see. Melissa Guller 19:27 And it sounds like because you’ve got a team versus it just being you. They’re all doing their own batches. But even for a solo podcaster they could still take on some of the same principles where they could do a ton of recordings during one week, then maybe the next week starting to focus on the post production. So there are ways that even a solo podcaster could use this process. Tasha Booth 19:48 Yeah, and I’ve thought about that too. And I think like if I were a solopreneur and I was still doing it as a solo podcast, what I would do is basically turn it into a batch monk. So I would do maybe like every recorder, I would have a week that I would record, maybe not an entire season, but maybe like 12 episodes for that quarter, or however many you wanted to create for that quarter. And then the next week, I would edit all of those, you know, so you’re always a quarter bit ahead, basically. And in that circumstance, where in the final week, you’re, you’re scheduling all the social media, and actually scheduling all the podcast episodes and everything. So you could definitely do it, it would just take you a little bit longer, and you’d have to be, you know, gentle, more gentle with yourself on it. But I definitely think that batching is still very, very possible as a solopreneur. Melissa Guller 20:37 Well, I love the idea of doing batched work as well, because like you said, you had full focus on the recordings that week. And I’m sure it leads to even better episodes because they’re getting all of your time and attention. But also your brain is so fresh with other things that you’ve just talked about with other guests. And I wonder, are you getting benefits out of just having it all fresh in your mind as well? Tasha Booth 20:58 Absolutely. I’m so glad you brought That up, there’s so many times where there’s some overlap in terms of what I’m talking about with one guest to another. And even as I’m on that episode, as I’m recording the episode, I’m able to say, you know, oh, well, I just talked to Michelle, a couple weeks ago about this topic, and we talked about XYZ, and then I’m able to remember like, Oh, I need to schedule this episode, you know, after the one with Michelle or something. So I think that definitely, like if I was just doing it, week to week, like I used to be in the very beginning, I wouldn’t have remembered, you know, what Michelle said two weeks ago, because it would have been longer than that. So I think that there’s definitely benefits in that way. Melissa Guller 21:38 Oh, and something else that you said is if you have two guests, and you realize that one episode should follow another, you have more flexibility in your publishing schedule, too, rather than just recording every week and then the order kind of dictates itself. Tasha Booth 21:53 Exactly. And there’s so many times when one concept that one guest has talked about builds on another Or vice versa. And it’s so easy to be like, Oh, I think I’ll just put that one there. I’ll put that one here. Or if I feel like, oh, there’s a lot of overlap, I can really split them apart. You know, and it won’t be, it’ll be like a couple months before that next episode comes up. So it’s, it doesn’t feel as though like, Oh, this is really redundant. Hmm, great tip. Melissa Guller 22:20 So batch work is obviously a great strategy to use, but what other production tips do you have for new podcasters to maybe help them stay sane and organized? Tasha Booth 22:31 Yeah, so definitely, the whole Google Drive thing I and my team and I should say, we’re really big on Asana for the actual project plan, but every single task in Asana, if you go into the description box, it has everything that you need in order to complete that task. So what that means for us, is that like for let’s say, it was Episode 80, right? It wouldn’t just say like Episode 80 and have all the tasks for Episode 80. It would also have the link in that the Description Box and Asana to the Google folder for Episode 80, so that we’re not constantly hunting around and wasting time, valuable time, finding things that could just be all in one place. So I definitely think that when you’re working on a deadline, and when you don’t have a lot of time, you want to streamline and think, what am I going to need? And how can I keep it really close? To me, it’s the same way that like many people organize their desk, right? You don’t want to have your pens in a place where you have to walk across the room to grab a pen every time, right? So you want to think about it in terms of that, that you want all the things that you utilize a lot in your podcast to be really close and at hand in one spot, so you can get it whatever you want. So that’s one of my tips. I don’t know if that makes sense. But I like the pen analogy. Melissa Guller 23:44 It makes so much sense. And can I just say that now I’m imagining pens all over my apartment in all different places, because that is how a lot of people treat their files. They’ve got some in the Downloads folder. They’ve got one in Google Drive. They got things all over the place, and I’m just mentally giggling about this pen thing. I’m definitely going to think about that later. Because I have found like to quote you that whole Google Drive thing, I think it’s so key. But a lot of people don’t appreciate how much it can help them stay organized and Marie Kondo their online existence. So whether it’s Google Drive, Dropbox, like the method to the madness doesn’t matter, but just keeping everything organized in a way that you can find it later will make such a huge difference. Tasha Booth 24:25 Yeah, I love that. I think the other thing is around social media. So one of the things that I see a lot of new podcasters forgetting to do is the fact that like your podcast can have a life outside of that one week right that the episode actually airs. So while you’re scheduling all of your social media for that week for the premiere of that podcast episode, also consider scheduling the social media for like a month later and then maybe like six months out for another, like remember when posts kind of for that social media for that for that podcast episode. So that was Once again, you’re saving time because you don’t have to go back and remember like, oh, that episode, I wanted to schedule XYZ place, you can go back and create a routine around when when you remind people about that episode and like the key takeaways from that episode that can be done a month, and then six months, and then even a year later, so that that that whole episode gets a little bit more, you know, social media juice. Melissa Guller 25:23 I love that tip, I’m definitely going to steal it. Because I think the other thing that we don’t often think about is that people find us all the time. So six months later, somebody maybe has just found you a week ago, and they didn’t see your podcast episode six months ago. And so they’re getting to see it for the first time and it would be a disservice for you to not bring it up again. Tasha Booth 25:43 Yeah, I love that. And I absolutely agree. And I totally forgot about that when I first started and I have so many episodes that probably did not get the attention they deserve just because my audience was smaller back then, you know, and so even now I’m thinking like, I should probably do something with those episodes and bring them up in social media again, because some of those are really good. Melissa Guller 26:04 Yeah, I think that’s something that’s really wonderful about podcasting is that, sure, sometimes we’ll do episodes that are very topical, very, you know, current, but a lot of episodes will be just as good a year or two years later. And so you can take different pieces of episodes like you’re suggesting and bring them back a month later or six months later. But I hope that people don’t, like you said they’re doing just keep it to that one release day, because there’s so much more value that you can get out of it. Tasha Booth 26:33 Right, totally. Melissa Guller 26:35 So I think we have covered a lot of really great productivity tips. And I’m hopeful that people have been, you know, taking furious notes. But maybe for anybody who is still in those early phases of launching, or maybe even they’re feeling stressed after their first couple of episodes. Is there any other advice that you would want to share with those podcasters? Tasha Booth 26:55 Yeah, I would say the hurdle isn’t starting, like starting and Also being consistent like we were talking about before. And so be gentle with yourself in the starting, like, if you need a couple extra, you know, weeks to get your podcast off the ground. That’s okay. And I also want you to remember to be consistent and the fact that there are so many podcasts out there that I think I read a statistic about podcasting and the longevity of podcasts and how there isn’t a lot of longevity. So most podcasts only exist for 174 days. So if you can just give yourself the momentum forward to hit 175 days, like you’ve already succeeded, right? And that’s when we start seeing the momentum pick up in terms of people finding you and you know, people wanting to listen to your podcast. So don’t be afraid of starting small and don’t be afraid of starting slow because if you start small and start slow, but are consistent, you’re going to have lapse so many of the other podcasts out there. Melissa Guller 27:59 Mm hmm. I love that we’re ending on this note, because I think it would be maybe frustrating without this advice to see your podcast on day one, and maybe you’re not seeing the types of downloads you want to see. But podcasting is a long game. And on top of that, not a lot of people are playing the long game. Yeah. So if you do stick it out, it’s really going to make a difference. And then you won’t succumb to what’s called pod fade, where after, you know, seven to 10 episodes, people just kind of fade out. So I think this is really like inspiring and motivating to hear that if I just stay consistent over time, then slowly things will start to really come together. Tasha Booth 28:38 Absolutely. Melissa Guller 28:40 Well, Tasha, it’s been such a pleasure having you on the podcast before we wrap up. Where can people learn more about you? Tasha Booth 28:46 Yeah, absolutely. They can find me at thelaunchguild.com, and tashabooth.com. So I’ve got two websites since I’ve got kind of two sides to my business, but both are there. You can find my podcasts and you can find all my social media and be happy to continue the conversation. Melissa Guller 29:01 Well, perfect. I’ve absolutely loved all the tips that you’ve shared today and I hope that listeners have to. So thank you again for joining. Tasha Booth 29:08 Thank you. Melissa Guller 29:10 Thank you so much for joining us this week. To learn more about Tasha the launch guild, how she did that or our free podcasting resources at Wit & Wire, check out the show notes at witandwire.com/9. The show notes also include an amazing resource from Tasha, her SOP template which stands for standard operating procedures. Solid procedures are the foundation for a well supported business and documenting the How to have the things you do is what allows you to streamline processes and awkward tasks to a team. Grab your templates for free at tashabooth.com/wit or in the show notes at witandwire.com/9. Lastly, I do have a quick favor to ask before we go. In order to help our podcast rank higher in search results. I’m asking listeners Leave us a quick review or rating and Apple podcasts, reviews let Apple know that great listeners like you enjoy our show. And that helps us expand our reach in search results. So it really does make a difference and I can’t thank you enough. Thank you again for joining me, Melissa Guller In this episode of Wit & Wire, I’ll see you next time podcasters.