Revolutionizing Your Podcast Through Automation and Networking, with special guest Kevin Snow

Have you ever wondered how automation can catapult your podcast to the next level? Then, you're in for a treat! We had the pleasure of chatting with Kevin Snow.  As a tech-enthusiast and sales expert, Kevin shared exciting insights on how technology has drastically transformed over time and how you can leverage it to focus on expanding your business instead of dwelling on sales.

The co-host of the top-100 Apple Podcast Growth Mode, Army Veteran, CEO of Time On Target, and COO and Co-Founder of Success Champions, Kevin Snow is a sales expert and a serious technology geek who knows how to help his clients take their automation game to the next level and is changing the game of business development.

With a 20-year career working with brands like Frontier Communications, Nextel, Salesforce, and BNI, his knowledge, skills and understanding of communication and technology are getting real results for the businesses he works with. Kevin knows how to integrate digital technology with your sales process in an authentic, professional way. He’ll show you what you’ve been missing in terms of ensuring an effective system of outreach, and trust-building. 

Part entrepreneur, part salesperson, part networker, part technology master and part Star Wars fan…how can you afford not to have Kevin on your team this year?

Check out Kevin's FREE Gift!

Text Sell Smarter to 612 429 4298

Time On Target Website

https://www.time-on-target.com

Growth Mode Podcast

https://growth-mode.captivate.fm/listen

Networking

http://successchampionnetworking.com/ 

Badass Business Summit

Contributing Author to the Book The World’s Worst Networker

https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Worst-Networker-Lessons-Absolute/dp/1453866809

Connect with Kevin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinesnow/

https://www.instagram.com/kevinesnow/

https://www.facebook.com/kevin.snow.9659

Got a question about something you heard today? Have a great suggestion for a topic or know someone who should be a guest? Reach out to us:
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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Carl Richards, Kevin Snow

Carl Richards  00:04

Welcome to Podcast Solutions Made Simple. It's the podcast that's all about podcasting. I'm your host, Carl Richards. You know, in my 25 plus years in the broadcast and speaking world, I've noticed a lot of overwhelm when it comes to podcasting. And I'm here to tell you, it doesn't have to be that way. If you're a coach, consultant, or other subject matter expert, and the thought of starting a podcast seems too technical, too confusing, too time consuming, or just way out of your reach, then this is the podcast for you. On this show, we give you the tools, tips and techniques to run a kick-ass show and share stories from people who have been there, done that and are enjoying massive success with their own shows. Oh, and if you're an existing podcaster, this show is also for you. The mics are up. So let's dive into today's episode.  

And our guest today is no stranger to the world of podcasting. Like every podcaster he has a story as to how he fell into this space are going to get that story momentarily. And then we're going to talk about automation and what that is all about and how you can usually- how you can apply this- easily apply this to really ratchet up your show. So our guest today is Kevin Snow. He's the co host of the top 100 Apple podcast Growth Mode and CEO of Time On Target. He's a sales expert and a serious technology geek. So who better to talk about automation than Kevin? He knows how to help his clients take their automation game to the next level. That is what we're talking about today. It's game changing, especially when it comes to business development. Kevin, welcome to the podcast. 

Kevin Snow  01:38

Hey, Carl, thanks for having me today. I'm really excited to be here. 

Carl Richards  01:41

It's a pleasure having you here. Now I also understand you are a part entrepreneur, part salesperson, part networker, part technology master and part Star Wars fan. Let's talk about the Star Wars fan piece. Because speaking of technology, you know, thinking back to 1977 that technology was brand spanking new, non existent, futuristic back then. But, looking at the- it's not even a trilogy anymore, I remember what it was a trilogy. 

Kevin Snow  02:07

Yes!

Carl Richards  02:08

But looking at the Empire, it's- wow, you've seen changes in automation, and just in that particular franchise. 

Kevin Snow  02:15

Well, and it's, it's always funny for me when I watch some of these universes that have been around since the 70s, since I was a little kid, and now they're continually coming out with new movies, new series, new everything. And it's they're trying to you know, it's one thing if you're always going forward in time, because then you- with the new technology that we have now and everything you can make stuff look brand new, and it looks great. But when you try and go like backwards in time, and you know, like Star Trek, when released, like Discovery and some of the stuff that's like pre original series pre Captain Kirk, like, those ships look way cooler, the technology looks way better than the flip switches and stuff that they had in- on the original enterprise. But you know, that's a cool thing that- I think that's why I really love automation and what I do with sales and marketing so much is because there's always new stuff. 

When you look at sales training, you know, the concepts are all the same, they have not changed a lot other than application, since I got into sales in the 90s. But the technology, you know how CRMs work, you know, when I sold Salesforce at one time, it was still salesforce.com. And it was actually a software that you had to install. And you know, now it's so much more and there's so many options, and there's you know, all these little things you can do now that are that's just amazing. That allows you to do some really cool stuff and free up some time. So you're spending more time in front of your clients or your guests if you're a podcaster and actually working on scaling your business. 

Carl Richards  03:49

Which is pretty cool. When you- it's funny you mentioned sales because the other piece that hasn't changed over probably several years either is people still don't like being sold to. They didn't like then-

Kevin Snow  03:58

No!

Carl Richards  03:58

-They still don't like it now. So all the tools in the world are fantastic. And the technology certainly is great. But that's another call altogether talking about sales strategy. But let's talk about firstly, let's talk about your podcasting journey and how you got into this world to begin with. 

Kevin Snow  04:12

Yeah, so I'm still kind of relatively new to the podcast game actually. Yeah, Growth Mode is like my only podcast. I've been on a ton of them. But I, I had not done a podcast until my business partner Donnie is like, "Hey, we're gonna start a new show. And you're gonna be the co host." I'm like, "Okay, sure." And so then I had to start getting on podcasts to figure out my story and how I wanted to present myself and then we started recording together and I had to learn all the things like you know, don't look at the screen where the person I'm talking to on the screen because it doesn't match up to where my camera is.

And I had to start figuring out all these things about how I was showing up on camera that I had never even thought of before and I didn't think the- (I) didn't even know was a thing. But even before that, though, I had been working with other podcasters I knew what they were I wasn't a complete troglodyte. But I knew what a podcast was. And I understood the process to publish them. And I done tons of stuff, helping them automate their processes. And so it was really cool. But you know, I'm an introvert. I'm a high C on the DiSC profile, so the idea of having a podcast, I was like, "Eh, no, I'm not, no, I'm good." But then Donnie got me on Growth Mode as his co-host. And we've been going three years now, we just launched our third year with that. And it's been awesome. And it's been huge for me as an individual. So- 

Carl Richards  04:18

Oh, ok! I find it hard to believe Donnie Boivin just basically said, Hey, you're co hosting a podcast, he doesn't seem like that type. 

Kevin Snow  05:42

No! He doesn't do that at all!

Carl Richards  05:44

Not at all! And Donnie when you're listening to this show, you're going to be like, "Oh, shut up, guys. That's- of course, that's totally my modus operandi. And the way I function." But yeah, Donnie Boivin by the way, who we hope to free up, yeah, he gets some free time on his schedule. So we can have him as a guest on the show as well, because he's a phenomenal individual, you and Donnie, full disclosure and shameless promotion for you here. If you want to plug this have started something that goes beyond just regular networking. And I want to mention this because just before we get into the automation piece, that's the main reason why we're here. But what you're doing to just in the networking space is something that's radically different, just like technology radically changes all the time. So does the world of networking. Talk about that a little bit. 

Kevin Snow  06:23

Yeah. So back to the beginning of March of 2020. Right when the world was going into the lockdowns for COVID-19 for the pandemic, we were a month out from launching or for having a huge in person event in Dallas, Texas with like 150 people flying in 17 speakers, that whole thing. And we had to postpone it. And Donnie happened to be at the hotel doing all the final planning meeting, when they got the call from the city saying, "Hey, you can't have any more live events. And if you do, we're going to show up and arrest people." So, and one of the questions he asked was like, how are you guys going to survive? You know, if this lasts longer than the two weeks they say it's supposed to last? How are you going to survive? And they're answers like we don't know. 

And that was the common theme that we heard from everyone that we talked to, and this was going on. And our clients are all small businesses. And we're like, we need to do something, but we don't know what. And we realized that we had been working online doing sales and business development for years. So we understood this whole concept already. We knew how to do the online thing and actually grow a business. But we realized that our clients don't. The people we had been working with, the people in our in our Facebook groups had no idea how to do any of that. And that was really the driving force behind launching Success Champion Networking, SCN, was figuring out hey, how do we do a virtual networking group where people actually engage, they talk to each other, they actually spend the time working and building on their businesses, not just showing up to a room listen to other people pitch. And that's what we did. 

And so we launched it like a week later, Donnie called in a bunch of favors from local people he knew in the Dallas Fort Worth area. We launched our first group. And then it was we started putting it out to our community. And it grabbed traction really quick, you know, our next group wasn't, you know, in Dallas, or Fort Worth our next group with is was in Bethesda, Maryland. And it just went across the country really quick. Now we have like 50 groups going all over the United States, we have a group in Canada, we have a group starting in the Philippines now. And we have other people saying, "hey, how do we have a group here?" 

And it's really cool, because it's fixing all the stuff people hate about networking, and actually giving them a place where they can work on growing and scaling their business. You know, we tell everyone that we're a business growth firm with a networking problem. Because we don't want it to be about the networking, we want it to be about, hey, how do you grow your business? How do you come into this organization? And when you leave in a year, two years, three years, four years, however long you stay in the organization? How do we make sure that your business is at the next level and as grown as bigger and is providing you the things that needs to so that you can have your own business freedom and your own financial freedom. 

Carl Richards  09:12

Which I think was the attraction piece for me is; it is not like your typical networking group. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even like to be referred to as a networking group Don- and if you asked Donnie, he'll say "the last thing on planet earth I wanted to do was start a networking group or organization." So the fact that it's completely different and kinda turns networking on its on its ass, so to speak, because and, and really dangles, what conventional networking is, dangles the feet to the fire, because, again, like technology has evolved. We'll talk about that momentarily. 

So has the world of networking. So has the world period has evolved, networking has evolved. So what worked 20 years ago in those coffee klatch type organizations, there's nothing wrong with them. But are they still functioning the way that they were intended to function or the way they did 30 years ago? And again, networking is different. We're all on. We're in a virtual world now. Yeah, events are coming back in person, but there's always going to be that concept of not What do you know? Or why should I hire you? Or why should I use your services? It's, How can you help me? Who do you know? 

Kevin Snow  10:18

Yeah.

Carl Richards  10:18

That whole concept, which I think isn't, in most networking groups, as much as we'd like to think it is.

Kevin Snow  10:25

Well and that whole concept of "who do you know, and how can I help you?" Has really been bastardized over the last two or three decades of business networking. It's gotten to this point for a lot of organizations where the whole concept now is if I give you referrals, you're gonna give me referrals. Like that is the most basest form of entitlement there is, no, I'm going to help you. But then you have to give me stuff. Why aren't you giving me referrals? I gave you these referrals. You give referrals, and you make introductions, because it's the right thing to do. Because you actually want to help people. If you don't want to help your other members. Why are you even in that group? 

You know, I have a lot of history with networking, Donnie launched a bunch of groups in Dallas, Fort Worth at one point. So we've have experienced in these groups where it's a lot of pitching, and it is people come in, and they think, Oh, this is my prospect base. Now, no, this is not your prospect base. This is the people that are supposed to be opening doors for you. And people just don't get the whole concept of wanting to help see your members succeed. Because then as they succeed, they're naturally you're going to get better, and you're going to be stronger as well. So- 

Carl Richards  11:36

And I think it's partly because we we've been in that environment. In some cases, people who've been in business for 30 plus years, that's been their experience with networking is I go to a meeting, I eat a you know, horribly overpriced breakfasts every Thursday or Wednesday or whatever day of the week. 

Kevin Snow  11:52

Yeah. 

Carl Richards  11:53

And I pitched my 32nd thing for my business. And so does everybody else. And then there's usually a speaker from the group that's doing a longer presentation about their business. And then we do announcements, or we do a quick round of referrals. And then we go home. And that's it. 

Kevin Snow  12:08

Yeah, exactly. And you know, those, there's some things that we got rid of like that presentation about your business. So I'm like "Really? Do we need someone to stand up and tell us how their business was started in 1949 by my great, great, great grandpappy and here's everything we've done since then?" No, because that doesn't help me make introductions at all, you know, so we really focused in on with our members and teaching them to figure out, "Hey, who do I need to meet? Who do I need to know who do I need to be in conversations this week? And how you then train your members to make those introductions. And taking all the focus off of "hey, I need to make a referral."  That has a business conversation implied to Hey, Hey, Carl, I want to introduce you to Bill, I think you guys could do some really cool things together. I don't exactly know what you guys could do. But you do need to talk, and just getting your members into those really cool conversations where they can, you know, be creative and figure out "We could do this. And we can have this type of thing going on, right? We could totally do this with our clients." And let them figure it out. Because it's those collaborative conversations that are going to drive more introductions for those people with each other. 

Carl Richards  13:19

And by the way, if you'd like to find out more, and yes, I am a card carrying member of Success Champions Network, which is a great organization, by the way. Thank you, Kevin, to you and Donnie, for- for starting it. We're going to make sure that the links to the website and everything that we need don't have that is in the chat too. But just like Kevin has indicated, you know, networking has evolved, networking has changed. They're approaching it differently. And so should you be approaching, if you've been podcasting for- well, actually, it really doesn't matter how long you've been podcasting, but you haven't- if you haven't considered some of the way cool tools that are out there to help you- you know, whether it be weekly posting to your podcast, or whatever it is, you might be doing yourself a disservice. So, that's why I wanted to bring Kevin in to talk about the automation piece, because there are some really cool things that that you can do with that. 

Kevin Snow  14:08

Yeah, I am a process guy. I love understanding how things work and why things work. And, you know, and all the steps and all the details about things. So, you know, it was really fun. The first time I had a client, that's, hey, you know, how can we use this automation tool that we're doing email stuff with? For the podcast? And I'm like, Huh, well walk me through it. You know, share with me what your process is, you know, from a where we want to guess to the you know, we have an episode out and about so we really walked through and I started looking at how we do things within the systems I work with. I'm like, Oh, we totally can build this out with automation. We can totally set up triggers that when certain things happen, you know, will send out emails put tasks and assign and literally we'll walk an episode from, "Hey, we want this person as a guest." To "Hey, we're publishing the episode and we're pushing out the blog and all the social media stuff." 

So it was really fun for me to, you know, that was really my first experience in the podcast world was helping someone figure out how to apply tech to it. So you know, there's a ton of things you can do from helping automate the booking process for a guest, if you're a podcast that has guests on it, to then managing the actual publishing process. You know, when we launched Growth Mode, and I then got to see all the behind the scenes stuff for how episode gets pushed out. I'm like, "there is 22 steps in publishing a Growth Mode episode." When you break it down to all the little things that need to happen. You know, you got to record the episode, you need to then get get it to your editor to do that piece, you got to get a transcript, you got to get that to the blog writer, you got to come up with the title, the cover image, you know, all this little stuff that happens to get an episode out on YouTube, and then on your host. 

So, you know, we looked at how do we utilize our technology, our automation tool and our project management system to get rid of all the manual steps so that the stuff will flow in a timely manner, and that we are able to consistently you know, we're making sure our big thing is we got to have episodes on the pipe that we've recorded so that we were ahead of time, and we're not like, "Oh, my God, we have an episode on Thursday and we need to we need to record something." So that this process can run. And one of the big things we figured out really, you know, after we kind of drew out the process that we brought in themes, like does this make sense. 

And the first thing we learned was that we need to figure out timelines, you know, we need to understand, "Alright, so how long does it take you to write a blog?" "I need at least seven days." So, I'm like, "alright, well, that means a transcript needs to be to you here, so that you have seven days to write it before we are, and then I get a couple of days to proofread it. And then we have time for the person who's uploading it on the website to do that." We had the backwards plan and figuire out all these timelines. And we ended up finding out that "oh, so we need to record an episode 22 days ahead of time." To give everyone the time they need from editing and all that stuff. So that was huge for us. 

Carl Richards  17:13

That's actually I'm glad you mentioned that, because that's quite often one of the questions that I'll get, especially from new clients who come to us, who come to Podcast Solutions Made Simple and say, "Okay, well, hey, I need a podcast. And, you know, what's our timeline?" And we'll say, "Okay, well, we're going to launch and it's usually six to eight weeks, and we'll launch with 10 episodes, and there's a whole system and a reason and a process for that." Then usually it's somewhere in the discussion it's "okay, so worst case scenario, I'm down to no episodes, I'm not working ahead. What's the timeline? How fast can you turn something around?" So I'm glad you said that in that situation with you with you guys. It's a several days or a couple of weeks process. It's probably the same for us. I mean, we can turn something around in three days. But it might not be as good as you want it to be. 

Kevin Snow  18:02

And no one's going to be happy about it. 

Carl Richards  18:04

Ah, yeah, no, no. And I actually come from an environment where years when I worked in radio every now you get a client that will come in and say, "Okay, I need my commercial changed." Well, there's a difference between changing a 30 second piece of radio copy that can easily be revoiced, in some cases by anyone. It doesn't necessarily have, you know, wouldn't have to be me. That can be changed and turned around fairly quickly. Versus "Okay, I'm recording my podcast episode on Thursday. I need it to go live Monday, and it's already Thursday at four o'clock in the afternoon. 

Kevin Snow  18:36

Yeah, exactly. 

Carl Richards  18:37

I already know that my editor doesn't work Fridays. So how are we going to get this done?

Kevin Snow  18:42

Well, and then even you know, the editing, yeah, that takes some time. But that's not even the longest timeframe in our process. You know, our editors like yeah, once you get me it, I need like four days. 

Carl Richards  18:53

Yeah.

Kevin Snow  18:53

I need four days lead time to get stuff done. We're like, "Sweet, awesome!" Our copywriter, because they're a professional copywriter. We're not their only client. They're not on just a Success Champion Networking employee. They're like, "yeah, I need two weeks, so that I make sure that I can go through the transcript, and I can write everything." And because they'll go through a couple of revisions and reviews before we ever see it. So they're like, "Yeah, we need two weeks." So I'm like, Alright, so we're already up to 18 days, plus, I need two days of reads and now we're at 20. And then we need all the other stuff that has to happen at that. So that was our first big thing is figuring out alright, so how does this actually flow? You know, what steps are dependent on other things.

Carl Richards  19:33

Right.

Kevin Snow  19:33

So I can't do this if this doesn't get done, and what things can happen at the same time. So you know, like coming up with the title coming up with a cover page, you know, writing up all that type of stuff can be done at the same time that the blog is coming up. So we're able to shorten the process a little bit by figuring out alright, so what's up we're gonna we do while we're waiting for the blog, or we could get all this stuff done. Awesome. Now it's just sitting there waiting. We have titles we have stuff pre planned and pre set and then we'd- it's just uploading the video and uploading the audio and then putting the blog in and we had a bunch of buttons. And look, we have an episode. So-

Carl Richards  20:09

Yeah, yeah. Are there specific tools that aid in the automation process here? 

Kevin Snow  20:15

Yeah, so my favorite tool, and I talk about this one to every one is an automation system called Ontraport, "o n t r a p o r t." And I love it. Because unlike most of your other email systems that do email automation, they allow outside people to impact the actual workflow. So this is why I love it for sales automation, because let's say you're the sales guy, and you have your sales process. Alright, I meet a lead comes in, they set an appointment with Carl, Carl needs to meet with them. And I don't want to send an email until after that meetings done. I can give- when the meeting comes in, I can assign a task to Carl that says Carl, go meet with this prospect. And when he completes that task, that is now the trigger for that email to go out. So I don't have to worry about an email going out without knowing that Oh, Carl rescheduled this meeting. So now they get this, "Hey, it was great to meet with you on Friday", when Carl's like "I didn't meet with them, we rescheduled to next Thursday."

So this third party individual that can now say, yep, this thing is done. So then it can fire off the next step in the workflow. And that's been the big thing for us when I've automated different podcast items, is, you know, we send out the email to the guests, hey, schedule your meeting. And then it waits for that field to get updated. Because they've actually scheduled the meeting, we know they're going to be recording on Tuesday at three, and then that'll trigger to someone else to start doing whatever the next step in the process is, when they complete that task, then it triggers the next thing. So you can literally see in almost like a pipeline that you do for sales where every episode is in the process.

And you can say why is episode 100 Still sitting at, you know, at editing, when 101 102 and 103 are further ahead in the process. And you can then go fix it and get whoever's dropped the ball to get caught up. Or you're able to adjust your process and your flow and say alright, so Episode 101, is now Episode 100, we need to update the graphics and do these things. So you now have this visual representation of everything that's going on at a moment's notice. And Donnie, and I do that all the time with Growth Mode, because we have so many people touching it we'll literally, pretty much on a daily basis, look in our in our project management system and say, "All right, where are all the episodes?" And which one is sitting at editing, which one sitting here and we can literally know what's going on without having to call people. 

Carl Richards  22:54

So this is not your project management system, then this is a one of the tools that's part of the process, then. 

Kevin Snow  23:00

Yeah, we have two different systems. We use Asana for our project management for all our task management. And then we use Ontraport for all the automation and the brains. So Ontraport sends out the emails. So like when someone registers to do an appearance on our show, that gets added into the system. And now that is sending out emails to people saying, Hey, here's your information, blah, blah, blah, reminders, don't forget, you're appearing on Growth Mode tomorrow at one, "Hey, you need to be here in an hour, because we're going to record and it'll be boring if you're not here." and we do SMS and everything right from there. But then, you know, it communicates with our project management system to update stuff as things happen. So we use both. 

Carl Richards  23:46

Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned Asana, because for project management, I know there are several other programs out there. But I too love Asana, it's great, it's very easy to use, especially once you get in there and play with it a little bit. And it's it's phenomenal how they can set milestones and all kinds of different things there too, by the way, we're gonna post the programs that Kevin is talking about, we'll make sure all of those links should pop up in the show notes as well. So if you want to test drive them for yourself, you'll be able to do that. How has the automation just made the process easier for you? 

Kevin Snow  24:16

Well, it gets rid of a lot of the redundant manual tasks. So and this was the big thing with sales too, and this is why I loved it as a sales tool is because you know, there's certain things that you have to do for every episode of a podcast. You need to reach out to guests, you got to reach out to prospective guests, you need to get them scheduled to record, you need to send them stuff, you know, you need to give them access to content and all that type of stuff. 

The automation, if you set it up correctly, will do all that for you. You know, you'll just have to give it the information say "hey, alright, here's the graphics for this episode." And then it'll send it out for you at the right time. But, I don't have to- someone wants to be on the show I add them in the system as a prospective guest. And then we send them an email, "Hey, here's your link to schedule your recording." If we don't get a response in a couple of days, we don't see that they've done it, then the system automatically sends them another one. Hey, did you forget to do this? And I'll keep sending different reminders. 

So we get to the point, I think we have it set up like three. After the third reminder, it's kind of the while, you know, you said you wanted to be on the show, we thought you'd be a great guest, but you still haven't scheduled. Maybe this isn't a good fit, you know, please click this link and schedule or, you know, this is gonna be the last time we remind you type of thing. But you don't have to do any of that follow up then. And you know, or if you're doing a weekly show, you're actually reaching out to more than one guest a week.  

And, you know, we're right now we're booking guests into June and July to do recordings to make sure that we have our pipeline filled and we are filling up, you know, we have episodes ready to go. In the event that something happens, you know, I have to take off for two weeks every summer to go do annual training. We don't do a two week hiatus from the podcast. So we have to have all these episodes booked up. So the automation allows us to keep scheduled out far enough ahead of time that if you know Donnie goes on vacation, or I'm off doing a National Guard stuff for the army or something happens where we can't record for a bit. 

And we've had that especially as we get really close to Summit in September, our calendars get just really crazy. We have we have a backlog of episodes, because we're using the automation to keep things flowing and keep a steady flow of new guests coming in.

Carl Richards  25:50

Oh, absolutely. Then, like you said, just because the automation is there, it allows you to see what's happening. But if something needs to be changed, like you said, if episode 100 is still somewhere in the ether and not ready to go live, you know, 101 can become 100 and 102 could become 101 and then 100 can become- unless there was some specific reason why it had to go in that order. But again, it allows you to troubleshoot that fairly quickly, without having to scratch your head and go, "Oh, where was that? And was that that?"

Kevin Snow  27:17

Yeah, we literally just did this for an episode that was that we pushed back a couple of weeks because we were we changed our format a little bit, we do the interview. And then we come back and record the intro and an outro for it where, you know, we talked about how we're going to apply what the guests taught us that day. And we got to start recording the outro and it was like a week later, we didn't do it right after the interview like we normally do. And we're like, "what did we talk about?" Or like, like, because we talked to so many people and we're both of us are on so many shows, let alone just recording hours every week that we're like, "oh crap, we need to go back and listen to this so that we can remember what we talked about. 

And we can do a really good job for that the last part of the recording." So we're like, "Alright, so we're gonna move this back because we're- it's going to take us a week to go listen to this and then we could come back to our normal recording and do it." But you know, if you didn't have that pipeline, seeing where everything was, you'd be like, alright, so why is this one still? You know, what happened to the bills episode? Oh, God, let me go look, let me go find, I know we have notes somewhere on what's going on. We could literally see oh, look, we don't have a link to that video yet. Crap. We have to go do this. Do you remember what we talked about? No.*expletive* We need to go listen. All right. So that was literally a conversation like "son of a gun." But because it was all right there. And it was automated we had the process documented, we could make those changes really quick. And no one even really noticed that we switched episodes or like yo, my, their task was changed. And they were good to go. So-

Carl Richards  28:49

I love it. I love it. And I'm glad you shared your processes a little bit. Once an episode has gone, gone live, it's been promoted. It's now out there. It's in the podcast universe. Do you guys have a system also in place for replaying that episode? Or is there like a sequencing setup? So it does get more traction, say even six months down the line?

Kevin Snow  29:12

We haven't set up that long term of a replay or re push process yet. We've been really focused on on growth for the downloads, and how we get that immediate hit on the episodes. That's been our big focus the last couple of months. So we our process right now is you know, our episode comes out on Thursday. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are pushing the current episode, all the snippets and all the reels that we push out on different social media and then Tuesday and Wednesday is preview. "Hey, you guys are gonna love this episode!" And we'll have the, you know, little teasers for each one that we do. So that's really our process right now. And then if we have something going on with a guest, so you know if the guest is going to be at the Summit in September, pre that, pre that appearance at the summit, we'll then like, "Hey, we're really excited that you know, Carl is going to be speaking at the summit." Hopefully that's gonna actually be a thing. We're excited. Carl's gonna be speaking at this.

Carl Richards  30:21

I haven't heard yet. So I'm hoping so too!

Kevin Snow  30:25

We're meeting with Stevie on Monday. So-

Carl Richards  30:28

I'm hoping that she got the application. I'm hoping I hit the send button and not the cancel button.

Kevin Snow  30:32

No. It did go in. I saw it was There I saw it. 

Carl Richards  30:34

It did? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. It's official. You've heard it on this podcast. my application did go through to speak at the- It's called The Bad Ass Business Summit and comes up every fall. Yeah. Okay. All right. 

Kevin Snow  30:47

Well, then, you know, when we will usually do stuff like, hey, you need to check out this episode we did with Carl, he's gonna be speaking with us. He was badass. And that's new this year, because we literally just launched the guesting thing in January. So our previous two seasons of Growth Mode did not have guests, it was just me and Donnie talking on business development, sales, and how we screwed up our companies, and then what we learned and how not to do that to your business.

Carl Richards  31:12

Which is still fine, by the way. I mean, I think- I don't mean to cut you off there. But I think that's still very important that people know that you're not just bringing in all these, you know, cool and awesome guests that you actually have been there done that got the t shirt, heck, you own the t shirt factory and ran it into the ground or whatever you did. And you've learned from that, because that I think is that, I know this word gets tossed around a lot. But it's that authenticity piece, you're not just a coach or a mentor saying do this, you're actually living it because you can say, "hey, I dropped the ball, I screwed up, you know, here's how you don't screw up. And then you're bringing the guest to support that. So it's great that you're following that for sure.

Kevin Snow  31:49

Yeah. And that's one of the big advantages of our show, and why everyone actually loves listening to us, because we aren't the perfect business owners. You know, we go on, and we heckle each other all the time about the stuff that we've each screwed up. And we know each other's stories, and we know all the stuff. And we're not afraid to you know, stick our finger in the in the wound and make it hurt even more for each other. So, but that's how you learn. And we tell people if you're not, you know, if you're not breaking stuff, when you're growing your business, you're not doing it right, you're literally just staying at the status quo. 

And it's the same way with your podcasts and your processes. You know, we constantly break our process, which drives me nuts, because then I have to go in and fix automations and make the right changes. But that's how you improve, you know, go in and say, "hey, I want to automate my guest booking process, I want to do that automation first." Go in and screw it up, and let your guests know, hey, I'm testing out this new automation system, and you guys are gonna be my guinea pigs. Please let me know experiences and how it worked and what you liked what you didn't like. And if you know, if you're not seeing things that you thought you're going to see, please let me know because we can fix it. But that's how you you improve. And that's how you scale is you find the processes that work. And then you automate it so that you can make it go bigger and do more of it.

Carl Richards  33:11

Yeah, yeah. Wow, Kevin, this has been a phenomenal conversation, I can talk to you all day. I can't, I'd have to break this into 12 different episodes, which is cool. But it's definitely incentive to come back and get some more insights from you. In another episode, for sure. But I did want to give you the opportunity to pass along any any tools or resources that whoever's listening to the show can help that, as I said, I will make sure all the links that you've been talking about all those those get posted there. Is there anything else you can pass along to people?

Kevin Snow  33:39

Yeah, you know, I can give you a whole list of really cool tools and stuff. We've talked about Ontraport, Asana, Monday is another really cool project management tool. You know, there's a ton of them out there. But the thing I'm going to suggest to all your listeners is test out a few try them out, you know, get on their free trials, most of them will give you a free trial, Asana, and Monday actually give you like free accounts, you can get all the basic stuff that most people need. But you know, test them out and figure out which one actually works the best for you. Because the- some user interfaces are going to be easier for you, Carl, than they are for me that I'm gonna like other ones because they make more sense to me. 

And that was one of the things I learned right away when I started doing CRM and integrations for clients is the ones that I always thought were the coolest and easiest. Other people didn't always agree with me. And It was okay that they didn't, because we would find them something that worked best for them. They're like, Oh my god, this is so awesome. Like, really, I could never use this one. So you know, that's what you need to do. Go find a couple tools that you think will do what you needed to do, and then play with it, test it, break it and figure out oh, I love this one. Then you got a tool and you have the one that's gonna work for you. As opposed to just saying, you know, a lot of people, gurus out there. It's like, "Oh, you got to use this tool." Why? There's so many that do all the same things. Find the one that works best for you and run with it.

Carl Richards  35:00

Yeah, because everyone is different. Everyone's business needs are different. As you say, Kevin, just because it works for you doesn't necessarily mean it'll work for me. And even if it does work for me, it doesn't necessarily mean I have the bandwidth to use that particular tool, I might need something that I'm not a technical wizard, I might need something that is so blatantly simple. You know, a monkey could do it, you know, that, you know, versus something that's a little bit more in depth. So, wow. Phenomenal conversation, Kevin, before I turn you loose to save the world from all of their technical whimsies and stuff, I'll leave you with the final thought.

Kevin Snow  35:36

The final thought is just go try it, just go find a little part of your process for your podcast that you want to test out on some technology. It could be the booking part, it could be the editing, tracking, you know, find a little piece that you're like, you know what, this takes a ton of my time, I'd love to find a way to do it more time efficiently and free up my time to do more stuff to grow my business, and test it, break it and just go do it. And if you like it, and it's working, then add to it, you know, but if you don't test it and you try it, you're gonna get stuck doing it the way you are now and eventually you're gonna hate it because it's taking up too much time. You're not gonna enjoy your podcasting journey anymore.

Carl Richards  36:15

Phenomenal we'll leave it right there, Kevin. All of Kevin's links, rather will be in the show notes. If you want to follow up with him after today. He would love to have a conversation with you. Kevin, thanks for being my guest today. 

Kevin Snow  36:25

Hey, thank you for having me, Carl. This was a really fun conversation.

Carl Richards  36:28

And thank you for joining us today. Special thanks to our producer Aidan Burrows, our production lead Kieran Doherty, our music guru, Nathan Simon and the person who works the arms, all of our arms actually my trusty assistant, Stephanie Gafoor. If you like what you heard today, leave us a comment and a review. And be sure to share it with your friends. If you don't like what you heard, please share it with your enemies. Oh, and if you have a suggestion of someone who you think would make an amazing guest on the show, let us know about it. Drop us an email. AskCarl@Carlspeaks.ca. 

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