Outsourcing Podcast Tasks Isn't Always the Best Option

option. And what you need to do instead, first, so let's get right to it. Welcome to the profit podcast where we teach entrepreneurs how to start launch and market their podcast. I'm your host, Krystal, Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Because if you've been trying to figure out the world of podcasting, think of this show as the time saving shortcut you've been looking for. So let's get right to it, shall we?

share my experiences with working period. So I got my first job when I was 15. I was I think it was technically 14 It was one of those like, paid in cash like under the table type things. My dad had done some work for the local lady who had a bridal shop y'all dream job I think I've talked about this before but holy moly, I'm literally got to try on dresses on wedding dresses, which is so funny. All my anytime I watch scenes in movies, where people are like, they're really fancy bridal

shops trying on dresses. I'm like I've 100% did that when I was 14 and 15. I put on trs I put on bodices, I put on all kinds of ridiculous things. And they had this mirror that was like, you know, where you could step up, I don't know what that's called, because I'm not a fancy person. But like, you know, where you would step up, and you look like you're a princess and a ball gown. Like, that was my experience in 14 or 15. This was my first

job. And I loved it so much. When prom season came around, I get to help all my friends buy prom dresses, I got to you know, I got my own prom dress for free. I got to pick it out in special order. It was just, it was an amazing first job. But the thing is, is that this job kind of spoiled me for every other job that I would have later in life because it showed me what was possible whenever you try something yourself. And I'm so so grateful to the boss that I had, because I would

ask her a question. And it was almost like a parenting technique. She was like, I figured out like I don't have time to like, I don't have time to do it, figure it out. And it never came across as like a rude thing. I've never, in my mind ever thought rude. I was just like, Oh, she's busy. I need to just figure this out myself. And so that's really the mentality that I've had, like, you know, I get a box like there'd be a shipment and she'd be busy with customers. And we lived in a

really small town. So I knew that there weren't people coming in and out of the door all day. So if I came in the shop, and she was with a customer, I knew instinctively, oh, she's trying to make a sale, I need to shut up, go in the corner and do like unload this box and figure out what I'm supposed to do with it. And if I don't do it, right, then she can tell me it's kind of like that idea of ask for forgiveness instead of permission. And so, and maybe that's just my

personality. But I remember, you know, unpacking these boxes and doing these things, and she was like, How did you know I wanted you to do that. And I told her I was like, I don't know, I just kind of got in there and got busy because I knew that you didn't want me to interrupt you and I just assumed you wanted me to you know, unpack these things, and then I wouldn't put them away. I

would just you know, it's like inventory. If anybody's ever done retail you've ever worked in a retail shop, you know that inventory is important. And it's got to be done a certain way. So I didn't

go and like start messing things up. I just started taking things out of the box in a specific way and long story short, I just got in there and did it and I bring all the Get up because oh my gosh, y'all I, we could have a whole episode on my previous jobs that I've had in my life from working in fast food where I'd go home every night smelling like ice cream and hamburgers and chicken strips to working, you know, the outlet store at Nike and folding clothes for ever just to have

some kids come in and just like, knock the whole thing off. Have you ever worked in retail, you feel me like you totally understand. But I can also after you work at a shoe store, if you've worked at a shoe store, you will totally understand what I'm talking about. You know how the shoe boxes have that little hole that's like a lip y'all I could hold like 10 or 12 boxes of shoes, Nike boxes all together, get one size out, put them back like it's it's like a dance like I

can still do it today. And it's so funny because my husband's like, why don't you do that? When we go to academy, and we're picking out shoes for the kids? I'll have like all these boxes. And I'm like, Oh, look, I can still grab all of them at once. He said, How do you like, well, when you work summers for a long time. At Nike. It's just

something that you learn. But I bring all of this up because I don't want you coming into your podcast and immediately looking around and saying all this looks kind of hard, I'm just going to have somebody else do it. I don't think that that's the way to do it. And I know that this is my mentality. And so I'm telling you that that's what this is. It's not me saying this is the only way to podcast or this is the only way to create

content. But I'm telling you, I approach things as putting in the sweat equity up front, to figure things out will always pay off in the long run. And that doesn't mean that you should, you know, flounder and not have anything figured out and then wake up in six months and say oh my gosh, I wasted so much time I could have had someone else

helping me that does it so much faster. I think that it's really important, especially in the beginning, that you do some of the podcast things yourself, and then eventually hire someone not right at the beginning. There's a few exceptions to this, and I have some really great episodes that I want you to go check out.

outs of what that can look like. But then also I did Episode 117, where we talked about seven people that you can hire to help you with your podcast. This is when I really break it down. And I know there's a lot of people in this audience in particular, I see all I see all on our Facebook group and you're you're wanting to be podcast managers or podcast, production teams, you want to run studios, like there's so many different aspects of podcasting, that are in this community.

And I love it so much. I'm so happy that you're here. You're dedicated to your craft of getting better and learning how to serve your podcast hosts. So I applaud you so much for showing up. And I'm happy that you're here in our community. But I think that people also need to understand that. And maybe this is something that y'all can

do. If you're a podcast manager, if you're a production person, then I encourage you to help your host understand the mechanics of podcasting before you just take over everything from them. And the reason why I say that is not to put you out of a job and have people doing DIY stuff and doing everything themselves. It's because I think it's important for people to understand how all of the processes work, so that they can get better at

them. And I say that because if I hadn't done so many things that I had done with my podcast, I would have never have known how to tell someone else to help me with it. Right. So whenever I have asked people like project managers to come into my business and help me behind the scenes, set up my courses, make sure that my videos are done correctly helped me with uploading PDFs and doing a lot of the backend logistical pieces of it. If I hadn't done that myself, I would not be able to

tell them how to do it. Now I do want to give you a disclaimer, I edit my own podcast, I edit my own videos. It's something I creatively really enjoy. So I that doesn't get outsourced. I do all of that. But I wanted to give you an example of me hiring people in other places of my business to help me kind of streamline everything, but it wasn't something that I was brand new to and there's a few reasons for that. One is I want to know how it works in case Something breaks, I

don't want to have to wait on someone. This is one of my biggest things. And it's one of the reasons why I've done my own website. From the very beginning, I had heard a few horror stories like unfortunately, there were several people that we all kind of started around 2014 2015. And people hadn't really figured out a lot of the drag and

drop builders on WordPress. If you don't have a WordPress site, simply that means that WordPress is open source, meaning you could create a whole custom website on top of it and like all these other things, but the drag and drop builders what you know today, if you have like a Divi or an elegant theme, like if you have any of those, that is a drag and drop builder. And it is a lot easier today than it was back in the day back in 2014 2015. And beyond, it was definitely a lot more

complex. And so people were charging 10s of 1000s of dollars to build these websites. And I had a good friend of mine who was an author, she was also launching books and writing books. And that's what she really wanted to do. And when she told me that she had this website, but she couldn't make changes to it, she realized there was an error on her site. And she was like, Well, I can't get ahold of my guy who does my website, and I can't make this change. And I have my big launch coming

up. And it's gonna send people to the wrong place. And like my head was spinning for her because she was so flustered, so frustrated. And so I think about that as a new podcaster. If you were to just go into your studio, go into your office and record your podcast, and then hand everything over everything, right you hand over your recordings, you hand over the show notes, you hand over the marketing, you hand over everything after you do

the recording. It makes me a little uncomfortable that what if one of those people called in sick?

What if all of a sudden, you know, someone's kid had to stay home from school, so they're at home, and they're like, oh, you know what, I can't finish doing this show notes, you're going to have to do them or someone else on the team is going to have to pick up that slack, you would be looking at them like a deer in headlights, like what I'm about to spend the next 17 hours of my life Googling, how do I do all these things, whenever you could do it from the beginning, it's not going

to be perfect, it's going to be sloppy, but at least understanding the processes of how everything works will be so much more valuable from the get go. Even if you don't do it. Right. I'm not saying you have to do this for months and months and months. But I do think you at least

need to have the processes written down. So that if something does break, if someone does go on maternity leave, if all of a sudden, you and this contractor don't work out anymore, and you're left high and dry, with a podcast to manage with a whole social media account that you're like, I don't even know what's been going on here. I just know that people DM me from time to time and say, Hey, everything looks great, awesome. You don't want to do that. You don't want to be in that

situation. So well. I think hiring at the right time can be super, super valuable to your business. I also don't buy into the idea that you have to hire people, just because and this is another thing that goes back to kind of how I was raised and the different things that I saw as my dad had his own business, right. He was a plumber. He had his own business for years and years. And I watched him as he hired people. And I would see that there would be times when he would struggle

to make payroll. And he would dip into his own funds, like our household funds to pay people if a check was late on a job, or if something wasn't working out just that way. And that always made me very weary of making sure like, oh, I don't I don't ever want to be in that situation. Like it stresses me out. It is like, oh, like the fear and anxiety of it is exhausting to think, oh my gosh, someone else's livelihood is dependent upon me.

And I don't think that that's the kind of pressure that we should put on ourselves in our businesses as entrepreneurs, I think it's fantastic. If you can hire a whole slew of people, a whole team of people that can help you create awesome content and do amazing things with your podcast. I encourage it, I hope that you do that. But if you can't, if you cannot afford it, if your budget cannot afford it, don't feel like you have to go

out and hire a whole bunch of people. And, uh, you know, people will say, Well, you can hire, you know, a va in a different country and it's a lot cheaper or you can do this on Fiverr. And you know, and just get someone really cheap off there and they can do all these things for you. I think hiring at the right time is great. But I don't think that you should hire anybody in your business for your podcast until you know what you

want, and you know what you're doing? And this is another reason why I think outsource We're seeing isn't always the best solution. You don't know if you're getting taken advantage of this, Oh, y'all, my stomach hurt when I go to a conference and someone tells me how much they're paying a podcast manager in. Okay, this is like not against podcast

managers. But I want to be very, very clear that I value a podcast manager that is very upfront about what services they provide, how long they've been doing it and for what podcast hosts they've been doing it for, because there are some really freakin awesome podcast managers that I know. There's some people that are killing it in this industry that are behind the scenes of some very, very big podcast, very big podcast, and they're doing amazing things. And they have the right to

charge what they charge. But whenever I see a brand new podcast manager coming out of the gate, they've never had their own podcast, they've never done this for anybody else. But they're just like, You know what, I'll just figure it out on the job. And they're charging these outrageous prices, and they're not delivering, it's one thing to say you're gonna charge something and then being able to deliver and figure things out on the fly.

That's fantastic. It sounds like you're kind of skating on ice, but you know, more power to you. But for those of you that are paying an arm and a leg, and you're like, What am I actually paying for? What is that? Like? I feel like I'm still doing the majority of the work. I have like, sorry to tell you, I feel like you're getting scammed. And I'm seeing it a lot more. Because the demand for podcast management and podcast production has just grown. And I think that you just got to be

really careful. Always ask for references. This is something I always do. This was a lesson learned. And 2020, I had a bad experience with a contractor. And I learned I learned I didn't ask for references. I thought I knew that this person was going to be a great fit for the project that I

was working on. And it turned out it wasn't. And I think that this is just an ever growing process that we have to go through as we work with people as we hire virtual assistants, project managers, team managers, like just anybody in general for your business, you got to know, what are they capable of? How is this going to work out. And sometimes you just have to do trial runs. But I'm getting off on like a tangent inside of a tangent.

ever. And then I want you to upload it to Buzzsprout or whatever hosting site you're using. And then I want you to do the show notes, like go through all the steps. Even if they're crappy, and you're like I need somebody to come in and fix this later. That's totally fine. I just want you to go through the steps and write them down. So you know what it is that you want. This is actually the second point. So you need to know how to use them. But you need to know what you want.

Because you may have this idea and I get I'm getting this a lot more lately is like I want a podcast just like Amy Porterfield, I want a podcast where my show notes look like hers. And it has these transcripts and these beautiful sound bites and all this and I'm like, I'm here to tell you all she has a team of people behind her. She does. She's got a awesome team of people, I've met some of them in person, I've met them virtually, they are freaking killing it behind the scenes.

But if it is just you and you're like I want to outsource to someone, you've got to know what you want, you have to be able to tell someone this goes back to not getting taken advantage of right? You have to be able to tell someone, okay, I'm gonna hire you for these services. I want you to do x, y and z, then I want you to jump up to B and then go through C D, E F G H, like, you got to

know what you're talking about. Because I think that that's when people they're preying on people that are podcast hosts that don't know what they're doing. And I just don't want that to be anybody in this community. I want to make sure that if you're outsourcing, you're outsourcing for the right reasons, but you actually know what you want people to do. And don't you sit there and say, Oh, well, Krystal, I don't know what I would

have them do. Yes, you do. Go back and listen to hundreds of episodes of this podcast where I tell you exactly what to do. I tell you how to create

show notes. I tell you how to launch a podcast I tell you how to upload things market things on social media, like you don't have an excuse here you have tons of outlines of information if you're a profit podcasting student, you know what the processes are, you know what behind the scenes are, you could hire Someone and give them your login to profit podcasting and sit here, go through this course, I'm going to go through it

with you. And then we are going to do this together and be able to, you know, have like be on the same page. That's like one of the biggest things is you want to be on the same page as your team member as someone else that is walking in this journey of content creation with you, you just want to be on the same page. So you want to be able to say, this is what I want. And then the third things we talked about, I want you to learn

the platform, right? You need to know how everything works in the workflow, you'll be able to know what you want. That's number two. And number three, you're going to know where you can save time and save money. This is a really big deal for me because I do not like spending money where I don't need to. That's like plain and simple. And when it comes to outsourcing things, I think what I realized is I don't need to hire someone part time at this moment for everything

that I'm doing. Don't get me wrong, I would love to. But at the same time, I look at all the processes that I'm doing and what I want to focus on. And y'all I love doing the content creation. I love recording the podcast, I love editing, and doing the videos and doing the planning like creatively, it comes to me better, because I'm in it. I'm in the thick with you. And it blows my mind. And this is me like just like I said earlier, it's it's a tantrum inside a rant inside

a tough love podcast. Like it's all the things today. I'm just letting it all out on the table here. But it drives me bonkers. When I meet podcast coaches that don't have a podcast, they've never been a podcaster. They don't really know anything about it. And I'm just like, it just blows my mind. I'm like, How can you teach this and do these things? If you've never done it

yourself? It's a red flag for me. So when I go to conferences, and I am part of these virtual events, and someone's like, oh, yeah, I'm so and so podcasts manager. And I'm like, Oh, awesome. What's your podcast? Oh, I don't have one. I've never had a podcast. And I just think, wow, okay, that's okay. That's fantastic. I just, it makes me immediately not trust them as much because they're

not relatable to me as a podcaster. Right. So like, even if they were to give me advice, I'd like kind of have this idea in my head, like, do they really know what they're talking about, though, because they're not doing all the things. And so that's one of the reasons why I do all the things one, because I enjoy it, but to the content creation becomes so much more natural to me, whenever I'm doing it. I'm recording the podcast episodes, I'm editing the podcast episodes, I'm

uploading them, I'm creating the show notes. And yeah, I know there will come a time when I do start outsourcing things to maybe a whole team of people. But for now, it's really helps me understand what I want. And when I hire someone that is full time or part time, and I hand off a specific piece of the content to them, I'm going to be able to tell them, look here is our process here is what I'm expecting as an employee or as a

contractor. These are the deliverables that we need to see each week or every other day or whatever that workflow process looks like. But I wouldn't be able to do that, I wouldn't be able to do that from the get go. So I'm not saying outsourcing is terrible. And then it's not something that you should ever do. But I think that you should evaluate where can I save some

time for myself? Where can I save money, and money plays into the factor in, there's a lot of contractors out there that are totally worth their money. And that is why a lot of them, I have had to let them go. And it's not that they're charging too much. I want them to charge charge what you're worth, please, I just can't afford that anymore. And it was a really hard like humbling experience to have to let go of a project manager that I can

no longer afford. But it was also really fulfilling for me because I told her I was like I'm so proud of you, but I can't pay your rates anymore. This is nothing against you. It's I'm actually applauding that you are growing into the next phase of your business and what you're branching off to do, but for me that money could be spent elsewhere in my business right now. And so what I've done and outsourcing is not necessarily to people, but it's to automation

processes. I use Zapier. Zapier, however you say it right like what's the jury's out? I've no idea how he says happier but we'll just I just kind of go back and forth between the two But I spend a lot of money in software's and different types of automations that I can use in my business, because that's the piece that makes my life easier. I started using Adobe Audition instead of just Camtasia to make my video editing better, because

I can't hire a video editor. And somebody would say, yeah, you can, it's only so much not when I have the vision that I do for my content. Because you see, the content for me, plays such a big role. It's not just about connecting and showing up every single week, it's the bigger vision of what I have for my business and hiring someone to outsource, my editing would just slow me down.

Because I'm doing three videos a week for my YouTube channel, I'm doing two podcast episodes a week for my podcast, y'all, this would cost me 1000s and 1000s of dollars every single month that I don't want to spend on that stuff. So going back to the sweat equity that I talked about earlier, that is what is important to me, I know there's gonna come a day where I say, Okay, I just don't have time for it anymore. I can't do it. But for now, in the season that I'm in with my business, I

really do enjoy it. I enjoy doing the things that I have in my business. So I encourage you to look at if there's something you don't enjoy in your business, how can you outsource that? And what could that look like? But before you do that, make sure you know the systems, you know the processes, and you know what you want? I think that that is really the biggest takeaway is understanding what you want, and not just blindly saying, Oh, sure, I'll go record my podcast. And then you just send

someone a check every month. And you're really disconnected from all the processes because what if that company goes away? What if they folds overnight, they go out of business, they can no longer do your services, and then you're left in the dark with like, I don't even know how to do anything with my podcast. I don't know how any of this works. I don't know how to edit, I don't know how to upload, I don't even know how to get in, I'm locked out of my Buzzsprout account, because I

don't even know how to get in there. I just I don't want this happening to anybody in this community. So if you have any other questions, or actually even better, if you listen to this podcast, and you're a member of our Facebook community, I would love for you to go into the Facebook group say I listened to this episode of the podcast, like make sure you put the episode number or the episode title in there and say, This

is what I do in the podcasting industry. Don't put any links to anything because we don't do self promotion, except for on our plug your podcast on Wednesdays. But I want you to tell people, This is what I do in the podcasting industry. And this is how I help podcasters because maybe somebody is looking for exactly what you do. Or if you've been thinking about hiring someone in the podcasting space. And you're like, This is exactly what I need. post that in the group. If you're not sure.

And maybe you want to start a conversation and say, Hey, I need to outsource but I don't really know where I just know I don't like doing this thing or whatever. Like let's start the conversation around hiring people. What it looks like to work with a podcast launch manager like go listen to episode 117 where I talk about the different people because there's seven different

people that I think are really important. If you're thinking about hiring, to help have someone help you with your podcast, please go listen to that episode because it has a podcast, Launch Manager and editor, a Podcast Producer like all the things that I think would be really helpful for you to consider as you look at outsourcing. Like I said, it's not always the first option. I would love it if you would put some sweat equity into your podcast before you start handing those

off to someone else. Oh, okay. So like I said it was a little bit of tough love a little bit of rant, a little bit of like all over the place like it's a it's a messy ball of love.

the things we talked about today. If you are brand new around here and you are not already following the podcast, please subscribe, follow wherever you are listening so you don't miss our future videos that we put out every single Tuesday and Thursday you find a brand new episode of this show. And I'm so grateful that you're here listening to it today. But as always remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.