Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey everyone. I am the host of the Creative Architects by Casts podcast, and today I'm doing a solo episode that'll be a little bit different from the ones that we've seen, but will hopefully tie into the themes of creative communities, creative tech, and creator education here on the show. This episode is sponsored by Casts More on them. Later
Speaker 0 00:00:27 You will find that at least for you know, kind of your startup years, which I call your first three years of business, you know, it is going to be mostly you doing a lot of the work until you can get to a point where you can automate or delegate. This podcast is brought to you by CAOs. One of the best ways to learn something is to go directly to the top people in that field. At CAOs, we do just that. Each episode of creative Architects features creators who have taken their work to the next level. We hope that by watching and listening it, it'll inspire more creativity in your work along the way. Cast Os wants to be a part of your creative journey. From our suite of tools, feature rich hosting platform, and even our production services, we're here to help connect directly with us by emailing
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Speaker 0 00:01:15 Thanks for tuning in. It means a lot. I hope you enjoy the show. Using AI to supplement the podcast creation Podcast is a fairly hot topic these days, but automation in the creative process in general isn't really new. Automations help you set time on repetitive tasks, it consistent results on social media, growing your email list and things of that nature while also building systems that make creating easier. Creating simple systems is way better than creating complex systems, especially for task and things that you know you're going to do every day. There have been a number of companies like cap, who we've had on the show, as well as Swell AI and others who really help make writing podcasts supplemental materials like your show notes, episode descriptions, blog posts, social media captions, and more. Super, super easy. I think one really big thing that we have to remember is that not everyone starts a podcast to become the next guy, Raz, to become the next, you know, financial feminist or things of that nature.
Speaker 0 00:02:17 <laugh>, we're typically starting it because we just love whatever topic we're about to talk about on our show, but growing your show is so much more than pressing record on your phone, on whatever recording device that you have writing for your podcast can grow your show exponentially. And one way to do that is to use AI to supplement that writing. So one way that I use AI is to, I used it to create a blog template and notion AI that I can use repeatably for each podcast episode that I put out for my other show, honey and Hustle. And then I have Swell AI write five key takeaways from Epi episode and I put those in the podcast blog. So that's really helpful for me in creating a repeatable process in which I can share my podcast in another form other than just uploading to YouTube or uploading onto streaming platforms.
Speaker 0 00:03:06 It also allows people who may be seeing the blog posts for the first time, and that may be their way of discovering the show to kind of at a glance, see the value proposition of the show, understand the key takeaways and have an incentive to listen and learn more. If you've used AI or are considering using AI in your podcast, let me know in the comments how you've used it, how you wanna use it, and what you're curious that you can use it for. And current podcast Tech News, descrip has bought Squad, if you're not familiar with either, the script is a video editing, text-based video editing platform and squad cast fm is kind of like Riverside, which is what I use to record my video podcast on, and it is a video recording platform. So combining those two things, I think is a win-win for podcast creators and video creators everywhere.
Speaker 0 00:03:56 You get an all-in-one solution now where you can record and edit in one place and this makes script a direct competitor with the likes of Riverside and that you can go there to do all the things rather than having two separate subscriptions for one show in Riverside. They did recently add text-based editing and they do have something called Magic Clips that is, you know, AI powered video clips. And I think that this makes script kind of, maybe gives descrip a little bit of an edge in that. Descrip is kind of like branded video short clips and branded video content. So having your brand colors, your brand text fonts, you know, your brand style kind of already in the script, if you're a Descrip user and maybe now you're, you know, ready to go all in on their full platform, I think that gives them just a little bit of an edge of a Riverside and I think makes them super competitive.
Speaker 0 00:04:45 I can't wait to see how the company continues to grow now that they've added some heavyweights to their team. Mike Blatt, who is, you know, for all intents and purposes one of the biggest community creators in the podcast world right now. Since starting this show, I've had a couple of listeners send me questions that they wanted answered both privately and publicly, so hopefully you guys are okay with me answering them here. If you have questions in the future that you would like to submit, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter at a G Hollowell on LinkedIn, my full name Angela Hollowell. Drop a comment on a YouTube video, send us an email, send us snail mail, send a parent with, you know, a letter attached to a foot, whatever you feel <laugh> is comfortable with you, happy to answer any questions you have on creative business, entrepreneurship, podcasting, the whole like, so two of the questions that we got from one listener were how do I go about raising rates and how do I go about moving on from clients who can no longer afford my new rates?
Speaker 0 00:05:46 So for me, I really didn't have a system of raising rates regularly, um, until I took a course in January of 2020, so right before the pandemic, so perfect timing, <laugh>, I took a course from a wedding photographer out in Asheville, North Carolina, and one of the value propositions they had of the course was, you know, we averaged $10,000 on a wedding, we're gonna show you how to do that too. And I thought that was an insane amount of money for a wedding photographer, but I knew that if I could reframe my thinking about selling and sales and finances, I could grow to have rates that I was comfortable with and that earned me a really good living. So one of the things that they said was just have a system of raising your rates every year. And some of the, you know, kind of framing they had around raising their rates for new clients or continuing clients was, Hey, you know, it's June, which is when I raise my rates every year and you know, we're raising our rates in conjunction with the cost of living, running our business expenses and per diem and travel that we're doing as a result of increased business.
Speaker 0 00:06:52 That kind of framing was really helpful for me. I think when it is explained to current and future clients that way people are really understanding, you know, you have to eat and live and pay bills just like everyone else. There's no difference there in terms of maybe people are saying, oh well you know, I'm glad that you are in a place where you can raise your rates and that people are willing to pay that, but unfortunately that's just not in our budget anymore. I think that at least opens up the conversation for you to say, okay, well if my new rates aren't in your budget, how can we get the scope of work within your budget and within my new rates parameters. So you may have to scale back a little bit of the work that you're doing, but still provide value in, you know, a way that you feel comfortable with for the amount of money that's being exchanged.
Speaker 0 00:07:34 Another question we got was how do you balance, you know, your creative work with the work that you have to do, which I'm assuming <laugh>, it means kind of the administrative work, the marketing work, the operations work. And I think that is probably, it was probably, at least for me, the biggest shocker in creating a balance within my work. When I first went full-time as a creative entrepreneur, I really thought <laugh> very naively that I was gonna get out of emails, as many emails as I was getting at my full-time job. I thought I was gonna have less meetings. No, that was just definitely not the case. I think you have more meetings as a business owner now than I did when I was at my nine to five. And more importantly, I have to be engaged in all of those meetings. Like there is no, I just sit back and listen to a presentation or listen to somebody else talk.
Speaker 0 00:08:23 There is some listening involved, but I do have to be an engaged participant in every meeting that I'm in, or at least you should. You shouldn't be taking meetings where <laugh>, you know, you're just like, it's a waste of time if you're not being engaged and there's not something that, you know, you're getting out of it or putting into it. I believe that finding the balance really is about number one, understanding what needs to be done to run your business efficiently. There are some tasks that we put a lot of time into that really don't grow the business. They're just things we like to do. Like maybe we like being on social media a lot, but the way that we engage on social media doesn't really grow the business that much. Or maybe we could still grow on social media with a lot less time spent on social media.
Speaker 0 00:09:07 So I think like that's one thing I had to understand, like there are things that feel great, sound great, you know, maybe look great on social media, but the reality is they just don't grow your business. You don't need to be checking your email every five seconds. You don't need to be checking your bank account every five seconds. That is kind of a waste of time. You know, your time probably be better spent, you know, reaching out to people specifically who you'd like to do business with is spent probably learning more about maybe an aspect of the business you're weak in has probably spent doing a passion project or a spec project to get more business or just figuring out how to make your existing business systems work better for you and for your clients. So those would be my recommendations in terms of, of one, the understanding of how a business runs just outside of being a creator.
Speaker 0 00:09:52 If everybody that was talented as a creator, you know, ran a business and didn't have to think about all that stuff, everybody would do it. But that's just not the case. And I think more often than not, you will find that at least for, you know, kind of your startup years, which I call your first three years of business, it is going to be mostly you doing a lot of the work until you can get to a point where you can automate or delegate. So that would be my recommendation for finding the balance is just learning what you need, automating what you can, delegating what you can, what you have the money to delegate, and, um, going from there in terms of buying your time back so that you can spend more time focusing on creating and not just on running your business. In a bit more podcast news, we have an incredible announcement from Spotify and Patreon announcing a new and more integrated way to disseminate a private podcast for paid subscribers.
Speaker 0 00:10:42 So Patreon, as many of you know, has been around for ages and has offered a lot of integrations with YouTube integrations with all types of platforms to allow you to get paid directly from people who are fans of your work. Spotify has been a little more rigid, <laugh> as you could say, <laugh>, um, I think when I first started podcasting I did use Anchor, which is now and even was then a direct product of Spotify and they did have an option for you to create, you know, paid subscribers or a paid membership and offer subscriber only content. This is a little bit different from a private podcast in that you know, you are still creating content on the r s s feed of your current podcast. A private podcast can be a separate podcast that only paid members or paid subscribers have access to. So by Spotify really integrating with Patreon, I think this is just a continuation of Patreon making, you know, paid content on exclusive content, more accessible for creators.
Speaker 0 00:11:42 So really happy to see them take a step in that direction. But if you're already hosting your podcast and you're curious about how you can have everything all in one place, rather than having one podcast on Patreon, one podcast on your hosting site, that takes us to our incredible sponsor, that is CAOs. CAOs is your all-in-one simple podcasting solution. You can host your public podcast and your private podcast directly on Casto, collect paid memberships there and connect with your fans directly. If you're curious about how to get involved with this, send us an
[email protected] and we will get you all the information you need to get up and running and start your podcast today. That's it for me. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll catch you guys in the next episode of Creative Architects by Casto.
