The Podcast Workflow Audit: Systems, AI, & Automation to Get Your Time Back

Podcasting can be one of the most powerful ways to grow your business, but if every episode leaves you feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and scrambling to keep up, something needs to change. Sustainable podcasting isn't about working harder—it's about building systems that support you behind the scenes. In this episode of Podcasting Unlocked, we're opening the vault and revisiting some of the most impactful conversations we've had about creating a podcast workflow that actually works.

This special compilation episode features insights from four podcasting experts who have mastered efficiency, automation, and sustainable growth. From custom GPTs and project management systems to editing shortcuts and intentional calendar management, these strategies will help you streamline your process and reclaim your time. Whether you're a solo podcaster or managing a growing team, you'll walk away with practical ideas you can implement immediately.

This week, episode 289 of Podcasting Unlocked is about building a sustainable podcast workflow!

In this episode of Podcasting Unlocked, I’m sharing expert-backed strategies to simplify your podcasting process, reduce overwhelm, and create systems that support long-term success.

I also chat about the following:

• Creating Custom GPTs as SOPs: Learn how Marci Rossi uses custom GPTs to automate repetitive podcast tasks while maintaining her unique voice and content style.
• Building Repeatable Systems with Project Management: Discover why Jacki Hayes believes every podcaster—even solopreneurs—needs a documented workflow and how tools like ClickUp can keep your process organized.
• Editing Smarter, Not Harder: Hear Joe Casabona's simple note-taking strategy that can dramatically reduce editing time and make collaboration with editors easier.
• Using Recording Markers and Timestamps: Explore practical ways to identify mistakes, highlight great moments, and streamline post-production without re-listening to entire episodes.
• Managing Your Calendar with Intention: Learn Lance Cayko's mindset shift from "scheduling" to making appointments and how intentional time management creates more freedom and balance.

Podcasting shouldn't constantly feel like you're running behind. The right systems can help you stay consistent, protect your energy, and make podcasting enjoyable again. This week, choose one workflow improvement from this episode and commit to testing it in your own process.

Be sure to tune in to all the episodes to receive practical podcasting strategies, expert insights, and actionable systems that help you grow your show without burning out.

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the episode to post in your stories and tag me! And don't forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast and tell me your key takeaways!

Learn more about Podcasting Unlocked at https://galatimedia.com/podcasting-unlocked/

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MENTIONED EPISODES:

Episode 236 with Marci Rossi

Episode 253 with Jacki Hayes

Episode 157 with Joe Casabona

Episode 143 with Lance Cayko

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Transcript

Alesia Galati: 0:00

We often talk about growth strategies on this show, but none of that matters if the process of podcasting is burning you out. If you're scrambling every single week to edit, write show notes, get the episode live, then this episode is your intervention. Welcome to Podcasting Unlocked, the show for purpose-driven podcasters. I'm Alesia Galati, founder of Galati Media, and I'm here to share actionable strategies to help you amplify your message and grow your audience. Hey friends, it's Alesia. This episode is going to be a good one. We are compiling four specific strategies from experts that have been on the podcast who have mastered the workflow of podcasting. Now I am at the point where I am feeling this burnout. I am feeling this overwhelm, which is why, if you've been listening to the podcast for a bit, you know that I am going to be stopping this podcast at episode 300 and then seeing what I want to do next, give myself some time and some space. Maybe I'll be back, maybe it'll be something completely different. We'll see, but I wanted to kind of open the vault. Let's talk about this topic of creating a podcast workflow, auditing your podcast workflow, and making it work better for you. We're going to be covering custom GPTs. I know that is a big topic right now. Some quick win automations, the power of SOPs, and how to manage your calendar so you actually have a life. Let's go ahead and get into it. So, first up we have Marcy Rossi. We all know that AI can write content, but usually it sounds quite robotic. In this clip from the episode with Marcy, we're going to be breaking down exactly how Marcy creates a custom GPT that acts like a standard operating procedure, or an SOP, so that she never has to repeat her instructions. So, let's talk through how you created this custom GPT and what it looks like,

Marci Rossi: 2:01

yeah. So, I mean, first thing about me, I really hate doing things that are unnecessary, like I'm about efficiency, I want things to be smooth and simple and effective, and so if I'm doing the same thing over and over again, I'm going to get annoyed. And when we talk about creating a great prompt, we have to also recognize that whatever AI tool that we're using, I'm just going to use Chat GPT throughout the remainder of this, just make it easy, but they have a limited memory, so if you have a long conversation, you can test this. You can say, "Hey, what was that first question I asked you? And it's going to get wrong at some point, because it can only store a certain amount of tokens. Now, when you have a custom GPT, you can upload files, and it will refer to those files every time, so it's refreshing its memory on these things every time, and so, for example, I'll have files in my custom GPT that's like Marcy's writing style, and it'll say Marcy does not say words like fluff or girl boss, and Marcy is obsessed with using adverbs like really and actually, and she curses a little bit, and you know, these are things that are about me, and that's already in there. I've also included a file, it is kind of going into what you were talking about, and hopefully this doesn't get me into too much trouble, but what I did was I uploaded the list, not into the custom GPT, but first separately in a prop, I uploaded a list of podcast titles from a podcast host that I really like, and I said, help me analyze these, why do these work? What is the technique here? What is the tactic behind what is driving these things? And it came up with a list of these are these are SEO optimized, they have a lot of keywords, there's a bit of intrigue in there, there's whatever. So it would describe the types of titles that I personally found appealing, and I've used that description to train ChatGPT to say these are the kinds of titles, not the actual titles from this person. And then I've uploaded all of my show notes from the past, but these are all my show notes. And so now you know Marcy has this, and the key actions, and it always ends with a thrive in five. And so it can refer to that every single time, instead of every time I have to have a prompt, have all these pieces here. So you know, as I'm creating these podcasts, I realized there's so many pieces, you have to have a podcast title, you have to have show notes, you can add on more things from there, you can add a LinkedIn post or a Instagram post, or whatever, you can turn it into a blog, which is something that I've done, where I've taken the episode and turned it into something where they don't have to listen to the episode at all, it's the same content, but in a written format, different pieces that you can do there, and every time I have to ask it, it's just an extra step for me. Versus now I have a GPT trained on my podcast specifically, I upload a transcript, and it says, okay, what do you want? And normally the process goes, I want a title, okay? Now I want show notes, okay? Now I want a blog post, okay? Now I want the LinkedIn post, and it can go step by step, referring to the example documents that I've given it, so that I each time don't have to say no. Chat GBT is actually supposed to look like this, so it's definitely saved me a lot of time. It's a little bit of setup in the beginning, but not nearly as much time as you have to do correcting Chat GBT. Of don't forget every single time my show needs have to end in this format, or whatever. Yeah, when you say like I have a custom chat, do. Pt, what does that mean for people? It's not like, hey, I just opened up Gemini and I'm like, new chat, that's not what it is for people who are like, what do you mean custom again? I'm a nerd, so sometimes I forget that, like, not already has like 40 custom GPTs like I do. So basically, when you have a Chat GPT, Gemini, clot, etc. it's trained on, like, I don't know the number, but just like, say, like, all of the knowledge. Let's just go ahead and say it's got all of the knowledge. It's pulling from the web, it's pulling from apparently trademark sources, it's pulling all of this information in. And when you have a custom GPT, we are, you can still allow it to look for other things, but you can tell it, I want you to look at these things. So, instead of just doing what it's generically trained to do, you say no, no, I don't want you to just respond however you feel like responding, I want you to ask me this question, and then do this thing, and then do this thing. So basically, you are instead of just having a chat, you're having a chat where you designed it exactly how you want it to go. Now the output is still going to be the way Chat GPT comes up with it, but generally you're saying this is the flow of things that I want to do, and you don't get that control in a chat. So, when you're building these things, there's kind of two things I'm going to go through. How you do it in Chat GPT, essentially there's like a explore GBTs on the side, and you can create one, and if you have already really well-targeted instructions, which again goes back to the prompt, the better we can inform Chat GPT what it is we want, the better output we're going to get. But if you don't feel like writing these instructions, or if you're not very familiar, there's like a basically like you have a chat to create the custom GPT. It's like, what do you want this to do? How do you want it to look? And it'll write the instructions for you. So basically, you're kind of just designing your own model, where these are the steps that I want you to take, and then you can upload that support to say this is the file that I want you to look at each time you create that show notes, so that each time it's exactly the way that I want it.

Alesia Galati: 6:53

So pretty much you're handing it an SOP and saying do

Marci Rossi: 6:57

it. Absolutely, yes, SOP is my favorite words. So yes, you're saying these are the steps that you need to follow in this exact order. Don't get creative here, do this thing and it'll do this thing. And sometimes that's honestly all we need. Like, creativity is fun and all, but like sometimes I just need you to do the thing.

Alesia Galati: 7:13

Now that you have your AI helping you with the writing, what about the project management? This is a big part that a lot of people get wrong. Jackie Hayes is a systems strategist, and in this next clip from her episode, she explains why you need a workflow tool, and this is even if you are a solopreneur. Now, if you're wanting to grow your team, this is non-negotiable. Please, please, please do this. Now, let's go ahead and listen to how she uses Clickup, my favorite platform to ensure no step ever gets missed? So, you work in systems, and my background is in manufacturing and supply chains, so I love good SOP and workflow, but how do you tie that work into what are some of the things that you do with your podcast specifically that really help you already having this expertise on the back end.

Jacki Hayes: 8:07

Yeah, like you, I'm gonna guess you probably think in the same way. It's just automatically workflows in your head. Yes, you know, people ask me, I'm like, it's just magically there. I don't know what to tell you, but it was very important to me from the very beginning, because I had helped clients with their own podcast. Oh, I want to do a podcast, and all of a sudden they get overwhelmed. Okay, let's, let's figure out how this should work, and where am I supporting you in it, and what's for you to do, etc. Because they hadn't even thought through, well, how am I going to invite guests, and how am I going to all of those things. And so, having had the experience supporting my clients, I knew from the start. Okay, I need to make sure I know how I want to invite guests. How will I take pitches? How will I decide if somebody's going to be a guest on my show? What are all the steps that actually have to happen for my podcast to go live for the world to listen to? And I think that's one of the things that I'm very good at doing is saying this is the end result. What are all the teeny tiny steps that we all tend to forget about that need to happen for this thing to go live? And so it depends on the kind of format of your podcasts, you know, producing one that's solo can sometimes be easier for editing purposes, etc. Unless you hate your voice, unless you hate your voice, I had an entire season that was solo. I hated it. I would like to delete the entire season. I am not a solo person, so it's awful. There was a lot of clapping when I was recording episodes on that one, so I would remember what to edit out. So it became very important to me to be like, okay, what are my steps? And I'm a solopreneur, I don't have a team, but I use Clickup because that's the kind of person I am, and I have, I have basically my SOP in Clickup is it's the steps, it's a sub task for each episode. Did you send the thank you for the guests that you recorded with? Did you let them know what day the podcast was going to go live? Did you create the Google. I folder that all the stuff is going to live in, and so it's all right there in my Clickup. So, as soon as a podcast recording is coming up, it will remind me you need to do this today if you haven't already. And then I go to my Google Gmail templates, and I pull that up, so I can send it, and I know from you that you have a great system being your guests, of like, these are the things you need to remember as a guest, you know, quiet room, etc. And so, you know, coming on as your guest, I knew exactly what was expected, when, and all of the things, and it just alleviated a lot of the anxiety of, like, there's been shows that I've just shown up on, and I'm like, I don't know, do it, but I'm

Alesia Galati: 10:42

here. Yes, I love that. Even though you're a solopreneur, you use Clickup every time that I hear someone asking me, like, "Hey, what project management tool should I use? I'm like, "Do you have a team? Because if you don't have a team, I don't know that it makes sense to use Clickup, but with the way that yours and my brain work, I think that Clickup works so stinking well, because you can see it any way you need to see it. It's got the automations in there, which makes it super easy. So, all right, I create a new task for an episode. Great, it automatically adds my entire checklist to each of the episodes, and then my team can see that they know what they're doing. We keep all of our SOPs in there, in documents with screenshots, et cetera, and it just makes it so much easier to manage, like you said, even if you don't have a team, but even if you're someone who's considering hiring a team, having that information somewhere is going to be so helpful with onboarding that new person. I was talking to someone recently, and she was like, "Oh, I'm using interns to edit my podcast, and my intern just left, so now I gotta get a new one. And I'm like, "Do you have SOPs in place, or are you doing brand new calls with each person? And she was like, "I didn't even think of that, and I was like, oh my goodness, like no, please, please, please don't do that. And so I like to use there's a tool I use on Chrome's browser, there's an add-on you can do called Tango, and if you select it, and then you're working in Chrome, that Tango allows you to create SOPs based on where you're clicking, what you're looking at, and it makes it so easy to just copy and paste that into a Google document, and then here you go, intern, or here you go, new virtual assistant, or whomever, to be able to manage it. So, there's so many ways to make this work for you.

Jacki Hayes: 12:38

Yeah, it's, you know, some folks, Clickup doesn't work for them. They need a piece of paper. I've got a lot of clients who are paper pencil people. They're like, I won't remember to go into Clickup. I don't care if it gives me notifications. I'm a paper planner type of person. Like, okay, then just have a checklist that you print off for each episode, put it on a clipboard, and then you can just manually check it out. Some of them are like, that's the dopamine hit I need that I don't get from Clickup or Asana. I'm like, that's fine, but have a checklist, at least for a short time. I did have a VA helping me with my podcast, and so all the communication that needed to happen about that episode was right there at Clickup. I have the outline for my, like, the format of my show notes is in the description, so it's easy to see. We need to have the guest links here. This is where the topics covered goes, so they could write my show notes for me. They could find the Google Drive folder without too much hunting, and you know, looking around, because it was linked right there on Clickup. So it made it so much easier for me to hand off even a small portion of my episodes to somebody else, which in the long run is, I think, one of the keys to continuing to love podcasting is having somebody else help you with

Alesia Galati: 13:46

it, right. All right, so we have the AI, we have the project management tool. Now, let's save time during the actual recording. Joe Casabona is the king of podcast automation, and he shared a tip that changed how I looked at editing, taking notes while you record, so that you don't have to listen to the whole thing again. This is a game changer, especially if you are someone who is editing yourself, you don't have a team, or you have a team and you want to make sure that they're taking out the parts that are really important to take out, yeah, and there's so many different ways to go about it, right? Like, like just the editing specifically. Obviously, we do a ton of editing for our clients, and we go really deep in the editing side, so like a lot of production companies, they're like, "Sure, we'll take out the ums, the ers, the false starts, all that, we clean it up, whereas my company were like,"No, we'll take out the bad joke that landed wrong. We, and we take more creative liberty with our clients, and that's what they want, right? They want someone who can make sure that the podcast, especially in election years, is aligned with their brand and with their values, right? So that's very different, but not everyone wants that. Some people are like, keep in the um. I'm keeping the oh wait, I didn't mean to say that, and that's fine. There's two completely different types of people there, and I love what you said about the quick wins, right? So, what are some other ones that, if people are like, okay, I'm thinking about my process, and let's say I just write it all down, what does my current workflow look like? Where are some places you mentioned the scheduler? Where are some other places where they can really get those quick wins?

Joe Casabona: 16:09

I think that there's the next part in scheduling, right, scheduling to some sort of planner, right? Because you, if you don't have a planner, you're either doing this, you're publishing week to week, and that's how you miss an episode and get overwhelmed, you're like, I gotta publish now, or you're trying to keep track of five four episodes, maybe eight episodes in your head all at the same time, and so if they don't have a preferred, let's say project management tool, but that's like a very generous nomenclature, if they don't have one, I'll usually recommend Trello or Google Sheets, those are free and easy to use, and we just send me the information over there, right. And then the other thing that I'll recommend they do is, and this does take a little bit of time to like training and kind of like practice, is I tell them to take notes during the interview, and they don't have to be super deep notes, it could just be like time dash edit, right? Because most people I talk to them will do the interview, they'll be fully engaged, which is really important, right? You need to be fully.. this is why it takes practice, because I'm fully engaged also taking notes, right? But then you don't have to go and listen, even if you're listening at 2x right? You don't have to go listen to that again. You can just send it to your editor and say, "Hey, here I messed up Alicia's name, so can you cut that out? Right here, I made a joke that didn't land, so can you cut that out? Right at 15 minutes, 15 minutes, maybe we hit a really good cold open. Like, can you use that quote in the cold open? Right,

Alesia Galati: 17:43

yeah.

Joe Casabona: 17:44

And with tools like Descript, if you have the timestamps, or just like the words now, like you can search the transcript there, so that will speed up your process a lot by basically cutting in half the amount of time you have to listen to your episodes to figure out what you're going to edit,

Alesia Galati: 18:00

and pro tip for solo episodes, pause, I tell our clients this constantly, so often we try to barrel through our mistakes. It's so much more difficult to edit after the fact. When, if you just take a breath, what was I talking about? Okay, restart that phrase. You can see very clearly, see that long pause in the either, whether you're using audio or if you're using the transcript, you can see those pauses really easily, especially in Riverside and Descript, to be able to make those edits. So, pro tip for those who are doing solo episodes, but yeah, for guests it's so hard because you are trying to be very engaged and excited and keep it okay. Where was my next question going, or what were we talking about? So I like that idea of just like even a little note. I know in Riverside they also have a mark clip, so you can add a marker of like this thing, so you just click as like a note of this timestamp. So that's really cool too. I don't know if the other tools have that I like Riverside, so that's why I mentioned that one.

Joe Casabona: 19:07

I did try Squad Cast for a while, because I was paying for Descript anyway, and then, like, I ended up not paying for Descript, and not one, and, like, going back to Riverside. It was like it was a rough loss for Descript, I feel. But yeah, I really love Riverside. I'll clap my hands, because that makes, like, a long line on the WAV file, but a long pause, if especially if you're using Descript or Riverside, probably works a little bit better, right? Because in Descript they have like the little like gray icon, like gray dots for the length of the pause, so that's maybe a little bit more visual.

Alesia Galati: 19:37

And then finally we have Lance Caico. Lance runs an architecture firm, is a professor, a builder, and has released over 500 episodes. When I asked him how he does it all, he gave me a simple mindset shift: stop scheduling and start making appointments. Yeah, how do you make time for all of that stuff?

Lance Cayko: 19:59

I do exactly that. I make time. I make time for it. I'm very intentional with my time. I used to tell folks when they would ask me that question, How do you manage all this? And I would say that I schedule everything, but that it seemed the framework of that in your mind when you say that to me, at least I was always it didn't feel as pleasant as it could be. I would say, and so what I do is that I shifted my language to say I make appointments for everything. I make appointments for my friends, I make appointments for my family, I make appointments for myself, taking care of myself, doing self-care, going to the dentist, getting my ears cleaned, doctor's checkups, doing push-ups, drinking healthy shakes, all that kind of stuff. And then, including professional business as well, so I have a calendar. That's usually jam-packed, and it looks like maybe I'd be overwhelmed, but in fact I just have time for everything in that way.

Alesia Galati: 20:52

That's a really unique way to do it. Whenever I think about, like, scheduling things on my calendar, and I've tried to do that for myself. This is just my own personal thing. When I try to do that, I'm like, "Man, past Alesia didn't know what she was talking about, there's no time for that, but if you create that structure, then it sounds like you're able to make it work for you, right? And then making sure you have that time.

Lance Cayko: 21:17

Yeah, another phrase I like to use with that is, like, discipline equals freedom. So, if I have the discipline to make appointments for myself and allocate time and make space for those things that are important to me and my business and professional and personal wise. Then having that discipline equals the I have the freedom to do a lot of things and tune them, hopefully do them well, and then still maintain a good work-life balance.

Alesia Galati: 21:43

How often do you kind of audit that, because I know that's really important, right, with like keeping up with the things that are important to you, because life obviously changes, and certain things might be important to you one quarter, but maybe not the next. How often are you auditing that?

Lance Cayko: 21:57

That's a really good question. I think it's the most concise way I can answer that would be now it's down to the semester, is when the audit happens, so the last semester in fall of 2023 is when the first time that I taught at two different universities in two different cities. One is close to us, I've located in Longmont, Colorado, CU Boulder is about 20 minutes away, but the bigger one, and there's my alma mater, which is further away, distance wise, bigger distance wise, is North Dakota State University up in Fargo. That was a very intense semester for me, and I'm using semester just as a frame for time, and so what I found is kind of relating back to the podcast was I need to consolidate and reassess when I could even give interviews like this, or I can host interviews where I have people on our show, and it's like nine to 9:30am Tuesday, Thursday, that's my slot, pretty much. Sometimes Fridays, but mostly that's all I have space for again with that. So, there's definitely times where I don't have it all figured out, and I didn't last semester. I had to reschedule a lot of people, including myself, for those times that were available, and it's kind of like anything you do when you teach a course, first time is you get about 50% of it right, second time 75% and third time about 95 then you continually just hone in that last 5% as you teach and teach and teach until you maybe, maybe get burnt out on the course, honestly,

Alesia Galati: 23:23

right? So it's

Lance Cayko: 23:23

the same, it's the same sort of thing here, is okay, so this is the second semester in a row where I've had a schedule that I know about, I understand the problems that I have to solve and the lectures I have to give, and what's expected of me, and all of that sort of thing. That's when I sort of hone in on it. So it's trial by error, there has to be some error involved, but if you don't recognize the error, then you're kind of missing out on the whole lesson.

Alesia Galati: 23:48

Marcy's incredible custom GPT, Jackie's Clickup workflows, Joe's editing game changer, and Lance's appointment calendars are all so important. These are not just hacks, these are the infrastructure of creating a sustainable podcast. If you're feeling overwhelmed, pick one of these to implement this week. Maybe you just start taking timestamp notes during your next interview. Start small, get your time back. And if this still feels overwhelming to you, I promise I've got you. Go to helpmypod.com Let's talk through where you're struggling, where you might need support, and if it's not with me, with someone else, but creating a workflow that's going to work for you, your life, your schedule, and your podcast. Until next time, happy podcasting.

Unknown: 24:47

Bye.