3. Guide to DIY Podcasting vs. Outsourcing Podcast Editing

Guide to DIY Podcasting vs. Outsourcing Podcast Editing

In this episode of the Free Podcourse, we delve into the realm of podcast editing strategies. I share insights on one of the most frequently asked questions for beginner podcasters: When is the right time to DIY your podcast, and when should you consider outsourcing podcast editing? Let's explore the nuances and benefits of both approaches, together. Here’s a glimpse of what’s inside the episode:

Drawing from my corporate life in commercial real estate asset management, I share a valuable lesson about manually calculating loan payments. This experience highlights the importance of knowing how to do something before deciding to outsource, setting the stage for our discussion on podcasting.

The DIY Advantage:

You’ll hear my personal journey, having spent over $14,000 outsourcing podcast editing and content repurposing in four years. Discover the liberating benefits of DIY podcasting, from creative freedom to flexible timing and the empowerment that comes with mastering the process.

Transition to DIY:

Find out why I made the decision to start editing my podcast episodes personally, breaking down the barriers that often hinder quick turnaround times and creative expression.

Outsourcing Options in Podcasting:

Explore the various aspects of podcasting that can be outsourced, from editing and graphic design to show notes creation and content repurposing.

When is the Right Time to Outsource:

Learn valuable insights about the optimal timing to outsource. Whether it's after mastering the basics, finding financial comfort, or embracing the evolving nature of your podcast drafts, discover the sweet spot for bringing in external support.

Tune in, and let's get your podcasting strategy on the road!

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Transcript:

Another thing about DIY ing this is it's very empowering to know how to do it, right? It's, I've talked about this in other categories of doing business of taking your power back in your business.

This is one of those ways when you know how to do it, it doesn't mean that you always have to do it or that you'll never outsource it. But knowing how to do it takes your power back and that if and when you do decide to outsource any part of the process. You'll know exactly what you want outsourced.

You'll know exactly what it takes to create whatever the thing is that you're outsourcing. So you can more efficiently hire and outsource that project without feeling like you have no idea how long that particular process takes. And you're just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall when you're outsourcing, trusting people to give you the most realistic exchange, IE packaging and pricing.

Hello, and welcome to the pod course. This is a mini course delivered to you via podcast, and it's on a channel that's separate from, but also connected to my original home podcast, which is the Nicole joy show. The intention of this pod course is for heart centered entrepreneurs who know that you have an important message to get out and who feel like podcasting may be the thing.

And you can see yourself as a podcaster, but maybe really overwhelmed at how do I get from, this is a great idea to I'm actually launching a show.

So a couple of things to know before you jump into the episodes, one, something that I get asked quite a bit by people who just get started podcasting. What are all of your favorite tools, the software, the hardware, all of the pieces. So what I've done is created an email with all of the links for my favorite items to help you get started podcasting, doing it yourself right now.

There's a link in the show notes that you can enter your email address and I'll send you an email with all of the links. Number two, if you listen all the way through, you really appreciate my perspective and the way that I teach about podcasting. I highly recommend you check out podcasting with heart.

I'm going to link it in the show notes. It's a self paced on demand course that will teach you everything that I know about podcasting and note that private podcast consulting is an option as well. Just reach out to me. Number three, if you watch all of these episodes and you feel complete, that's perfect too.

I invite you to go check out my main show, the Nicole joy show, where I share a lot more about business, spirituality, energetics, a dose of motherhood and how all of them kind of work together. And again, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Enjoy.

Welcome to the second episode in the pod course for heart centered entrepreneurs who are podcasters to be. This episode was originally 189 when to DIY versus when to outsource. And I kept the title mostly the same.

Goal being to share everything that I have learned with you, because I did outsource a lot of my podcasting process for the first few years, really. And then only in the last several months have I've been DIYing it

I don't gatekeep.

Here's everything I know about DIYing and outsourcing all of your podcasting tasks.

This is the second episode in the podcast curious series. And in this episode, I'm going to talk about when is the correct time to DIY. When is the correct time to outsource parts of your podcast?

Before we jump into DIY versus outsourcing, I want to share an example from my corporate life, actually, that's really helpful at explaining why sometimes it can be helpful to start with DIY and then eventually to outsource. So if you have never heard me talk about it in my corporate life, I worked in commercial real estate asset management.

In short, we were managing real estate investments on commercial properties. One of our jobs was to make sure that people were making payments, that companies were making payments for their loans. And we did have a software program that would calculate and show us exactly how much all the loan payments were that were coming due.

And so when I moved into this company, when I first started. With this particular company and we kind of inherited a group of loans to keep an eye on the system would tell us, okay, this particular company owes this much every month in their mortgage payment. Something that my boss had us do that I thought was really profound is instead of relying on that initial number and assuming that it's accurate.

Before we did that, we had to take everything outside of the box. He didn't want us to look at these monthly payments. And keep them in this like black box of not really knowing exactly what's correct, but instead he had us manually calculate each loan's correct mortgage. So what are they paying in their principal interest taxes, insurance, and breakdown exactly what's owed exactly when, and then to match it up.

What I liked about that is that it reinforced this concept of. The value of knowing how to do something first, and that's something that I have found really important as a business owner, as an entrepreneur and starting building, running your own business is knowing how to do something before you outsource.

And I was talking to a friend of mine recently about outsourcing. And what came up was that like, as we were learning how to build. Online businesses. So I don't know, four or five years ago, there was this big push. And in some corners of the internet, there's still this big push of outsource everything.

Every little thing needs to be outsourced. And sometimes I think that what that leads to is over outsourcing and this lack of. Really knowing how to do little things sometimes in your business. And that doesn't mean that I want you to spend in your wheels to do every single little thing. But sometimes I do think it's very helpful to know how to do those things.

So for example, if you are like me and you need to move quickly on ideas, it can be really tricky for me to outsource all of my sales pages to somebody else. Because I have to wait. Of course it makes sense. I have to wait to be on their timeframe and on their calendar. If they have a backlog of clients who are waiting on pages, I have to wait until I'm next up in the queue.

And that doesn't always work well with me because I want to move quickly. When I have an idea and I'm ready to move it forward, I need to be able to move it forward right away. Does that mean I'll never outsource pages? No, it just means that hopefully, ideally one day I'll have somebody on payroll, not a subcontractor, but somebody on actual payroll in house.

And so I want to apply this concept to podcasting because when I, a little bit of my own history in podcasting, I was outsourcing quite a bit of my podcasting obviously other than me going in and actually doing the recording, , over the last four years. And I outsourced different pieces of it at different times, but I ran a quick calculation the other day.

And I have spent. 14, 603 in outsourcing the editing and outsourcing the content repurposing. Et cetera, and that's not a terrible thing. I learned quite a bit in doing that, but then recently when the podcast came back from summer break, so September of 2023, the very last thing that I had not yet done myself, I started DIY and that was editing because again, I am not somebody who necessarily can.

Batch a ton of content in advance. It just doesn't always work well for me and give it to my editor with enough time for them to be able to turn around. Sometimes I want to share an episode the day that I report it, and that doesn't always work well if I'm outsourcing editing, there's a lot more behind my decision to DIY that we can talk about at a later date, but for now, when I want to show you is when is the best time to DIY, when might be a good time to outsource.

Let's walk through DIY podcasting first. And DIY means you're doing it all yourself. And I know it sounds really overwhelming, really intimidating, but I can promise you as a self taught elder millennial, it comes to technology is not that hard. There are tools available literally at our fingertips now that make it so much easier than what our head is making.

I think it needs to be. And there are several benefits that I have found in the short time that I've been editing and DIY ing my entire podcast. Number one, You have creative freedom..

So sometimes when you outsource the editing of your show, you're paying, let's say, for example, for episodes a month, approximately 30 minutes an episode, there's a little bit of this feeling that I noticed within myself. I feel like my episodes needed to be at least 30 minutes or ideally within that range for it to make sense and for it to be worth it to spend money and pay an editor.

Whereas when I started editing my own podcast, I felt this creative freedom of my show can be five minutes. If that's what it takes to get that message out for the week, it could be 10. It could be 50. I am free to talk for as many minutes as I want to get the message across how I would like for it to be received.

Number two is what I mentioned a little bit earlier about timing of. Recording and sharing your episodes, right? So if you're not somebody who wants to batch content, or you're not necessarily somebody who wants to commit to weekly episodes, when you do it yourself, there's not that pressure of feeling like you need to get episodes to an editor to be on their schedule, which I get it, right?

Like they have to have time to turn it around and you remove that pressure because then if you record something today and you want it out today, that's feasible. If you need to get something out right away. Or if you don't want to feel like you have to put out four episodes a month, if let's say you want to take the summer off, or if you want to take your birthday week off, or if there's a lot of shit going on in the world as there is, and you need to take a break for your mental health, there isn't that added pressure of feeling like you have to get an episode every week, but instead.

Putting episodes out when they feel correct. And a lot of podcasters do that. I don't know that we really sell that story online. I feel like what we're told is if you want to have an engaged community, you need to be putting out new material every week. And I don't think that that's true. In fact, there have been a lot of breaks in my podcast and you probably didn't even notice.

Number three, you get to choose which clips. Of your show you use as promo out on social media or on other channels. And can, even if you outsource this stuff, you'd probably be doing that anyway, because it's really difficult for somebody who is not in your body to know. Which parts of the episode were most profound that would really land with your audience in another space and invite them to come listen to the full episode.

Now, they can do the very best, but it is tricky for them to be able to know. And so even when you're outsourcing that, you're probably already going to be going through and identifying use this section, use this section, use this section. So when you DIY it. It really is only a couple of extra steps to manually choose your own pieces.

And there's also, of course, cost savings. And that is a very real thing for many of us, right? There is a cost associated with outsourcing your editing, with outsourcing your content, repurposing, as I mentioned in the four years that I've been. Podcasting between content, repurposing and editing, I've spent over 14, 000 and that's fine.

I'm not saying that that's a problem, but it is a cost and it doesn't have to be that way. You can literally podcast for free when you DIY. Another thing about DIY ing this is it's very empowering to know how to do it, right? It's, I've talked about this in other categories of doing business of taking your power back in your business.

Finally, it is a great exercise in allowing yourself to heal from those old perfectionist stories that we have been conditioned to believe that anything we do, including putting out a podcast has to be perfect. FYI, that is a load of crap does not have to be perfect. And if you DIY it, as I have been for the last month, there are so many imperfections and I've reached a point in my life and in my business where that doesn't actually matter.

The transition from. The announcements to the episode and the opening thing. None of this has to be perfect. What matters more than the perfectly polished episodes is the potency of the message. And this podcasting and DIY podcasting is a beautiful way for you to embody that. Imperfectionism. And if you feel like DIY podcasting is a little bit overwhelming, I am going to be showing you how I DIY my podcast as part of the podcasting course.

Now I'm also going to show you outsourcing. And that's what we're going to talk about next is what are your options for outsourcing? Okay. Number one, obviously editing. So this is somebody taking your raw video or audio clip and editing it so that it's in a format that's ready for the podcast platform.

So. Putting it somewhere where people can listen to it in a final version. They might be attaching music to it. They might be attaching an intro and outro, whatever. And again, for the first three and a half years of my podcasting journey, I have had a couple of different editors. Number two, graphic design.

For your podcast graphic. So when you put out a podcast, you need to have a picture, right? So when you go to my podcast, wherever you're watching or listening to this, let's say listening, if you go to Apple podcasts, there's a little square picture. Somebody needs to create that square. And there may be times you can DIY that there may be times that you can outsource that.

Another thing you can outsource is your show notes. So if you also go to my podcast and you click the show notes so you can read about the episode, there's a description of what you'll hear in this episode. And it includes things like links to things that I mentioned in the show. And that's something that you also can outsource.

And then finally repurposing. So this is when you take your podcast. Content. We'll think of this as like your big pillar content. My podcast tends to be my pillar content. Most weeks I have one big episode and then you can repurpose it in lots of different ways. And you see me do this on Instagram. For example, I will extract really potent 60 to 90 second chunks of the episode and put them into an IgE reel.

Sometimes I'll also take a really important quote that something that I said in the podcast that I feel like would do really well on a quote graphic. And I'll copy that. Okay. Language and put it on a quote graphic and share it to Instagram. There's lots of different ways to repurpose that I'm going to go into greater detail in one of the modules of the podcasting course.

For now, it's important to know that that is also something you can outsource and it does tend to be the more costly of the outsourcing options. So when is the right time to outsource? And I can tell you after having done this for a very long time. One of the things that I may have done in retrospect, and I get that we're all on our correct journey.

So I don't want to say it was a mistake, but my advice to you based on what I learned is to DIY it first and only after you learn how to do the basic things to outsource so that you can hire someone who will do things your way. And now, you know, your way, because you've done it your way and we'll do it efficiently.

And of course, it's helpful to outsource. When your business reaches the point that it doesn't feel like a financial strain to be paying for these things to be outsourced and the expense of outsourcing the different components doesn't feel so tight and constricting. We don't want the money thing to feel tight and constricting in any department, but that's for a separate conversation.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say. Maybe even outsource only after you've had the first couple drafts, because here's the thing that a lot of podcasters and a lot of people perhaps don't share because I didn't know this in the beginning was that this first version that you're putting out is a, is a rough draft.

We are always working on our first. Rough draft when we start something. So you get in your head that you want this first podcast to be perfect. You want the perfect title, the perfect episodes. It is not the final version. That first podcast graphic with the title and the picture that you're creating Canva is probably going to change.

It's probably going to evolve. Your IG handle has. Probably evolved since you first started your business. And if it hasn't, then are you even expanding? Are you even growing? Are you even allowing yourself to evolve and shift and pivot? And that applies to your podcast as well. And so it can be really costly to outsource too soon.

And then to go in and change everything and outsource all of that again. Now, is that an option? Yeah, of course it is. Particularly if you have more dollars than you do time, but when you get into this. Mindset of knowing and expecting for this to be the first draft and allowing things to evolve and be different than when you get to your next versions, you'll know when the time is correct to outsource.

I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you'd like a list of my top tools, both hardware and software, if you're just getting into podcasting, enter your email at the link in the show notes, and I'll send you an email with the links of my favorite podcasting tools.