Episode 263 with Joe Casabona: Boosting Business Efficiency

My guest on this episode of the Ready Yet?! podcast, is Joe Casabona, podcast systems coach and software engineer. Join us as we dive into the concept of achieving more by working less. Joe shares his journey from selling mixed CDs in high school to becoming a successful podcaster with over a decade of experience. We discuss the importance of creating efficient workflows, automating tasks, and focusing on quality over quantity. Joe emphasizes the significance of having the right mindset and strategies to work smarter, not harder. Whether you're a business owner or aspiring entrepreneur, Joe's insights on balancing work with life and leveraging technology to reduce workload are invaluable. 

GUEST RESOURCES

Joe Casabona is podcast systems coach who helps busy solopreneurs take back their time. Some even say he perfectly blends content creation and technology like it’s the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had (he says that). Joe's strategies come from his many years of experience: over 10 years creating podcasts, more than 15 years teaching, and over 20 years as a web developer.

https://casabona.org

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

https://www.youtube.com/@JoeCasa

https://www.instagram.com/jcasabona

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Transcript

Episode 263 with Joe Casabona: Achieve More by Working Less and Boosting Business Efficiency

Transcribed by Descript 

Erin Marcus: All right, welcome, welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast with my guest today, Joe Casabona. We have been having a blast. I just, I love your energy, your approach to all of this. You seem to have the same, I gotta laugh at myself, because Why else are we doing this? So I can't wait to get into everything with you about doing less work.

Erin Marcus: That's a great topic. Let's do less work. But before we get in all that, why don't you tell everybody who you are and what you do? 

Joe Casabona: Thank you, Erin, for having me. I've already had a blast with the pre call and then this, like just so much fun. So excited. So I am a nerd, a big time nerd. I have my backgrounds in software engineering.

Joe Casabona: I would make money like selling mixed CDs in high school. That was like, I was like a realistic Zach Morris who was like a lot less handsome. But I would just figure out ways to make money in high school. Today I am. You made money 

Erin Marcus: in high school too, but it wasn't stuff we talk about on recording.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, right.

Joe Casabona: And I'm a podcast systems coach now, and I've been podcasting for over 10 years. And this allows me to combine my love of leveraging technology with my love of helping podcasters do less work as you said, right? Or at least spend their time the right way. In their podcast. And yeah.

Erin Marcus: And one of the things that I've been really focusing on lately is this idea of less work, but here's the thing. I never said I don't want to work hard. When I work, there's a big old work ethic. What I want to do is work less frequently. 

Joe Casabona: Yes. Yeah. And that's, I think that's really important, right?

Joe Casabona: Cause it's really easy for, if you have a nine to five that you hate, it's really easy to like clock in at nine and clock out at five and go home and never think about your job again. But I am lucky enough to be self employed and have a spouse who fully supports that, even though we have three small children.

Joe Casabona: And I'm always thinking about work or I'm thinking about it a lot because I love it. It's when your business is your 

Erin Marcus: baby. Yes. It's hard to walk away from your baby. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. And it's, I've, I built a career about around solving problems I want to solve. Which is really cool. But right. That also means like you need to have some guardrails in place so that you're not.

Joe Casabona: working 12 hours a day. And having, having kids makes those guardrails a little bit. Yeah. 

Erin Marcus: But here's the thing about if you, and here, if you love working 15 hours a day and there is no other pull on your time, then absolutely go for it. But I really come from the approach one, I'm getting older.

Erin Marcus: I don't want to work that out. I want to do all the other things I want to do. All the things that I can afford to do because I do this work, right? 

Erin Marcus: But at the same time, I think the other thing that happens when work expands to fill the time given. And so when you tell yourself that you're a hard worker and that you have this great work ethic and that you work a lot, The work expands, so I don't think, truthfully, I think there's probably a negative correlation between how many hours you spend and how effective you are during those hours.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, that's absolutely right. There's fatigue, right? There's so much science now between understanding the importance of sleep and well resting and even walking away. I'll tell you what, I was trying to figure out this programming problem in college. And I was like sitting in front of my computer for hours, like spinning my wheels.

Joe Casabona: And my friends like Joey, anybody who knew me before 2009 calls me Joey. Joey, why don't like, there's a coffee house event. This guy's really good. Let's go just watch him. We'll take our mind off of it. Halfway through his set. I in a movie, I literally wrote the solution down on the back of a napkin, or on the front of a napkin, 

Erin Marcus: your brain can't solve a problem staring at the problem. That's not how it works. Your brain your brain goes, Oh, look, a problem. It identifies a problem and it does everything it can to reinforce the fact that it's a problem. 

Joe Casabona: Yes. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love that framing, right? Because then you're just like, it's like how my, my daughter tries to, she's seven.

Joe Casabona: She like tries to do something that I know she can do, but because I'm telling her she has to do it, she's I can't do this. I'm like, all right we'll walk away then. And she's wait, no. And then she does it. And I'm like, what? Weird what? 

Erin Marcus: And so I always laugh that for me, I need almost to get to the point of reduced oxygen.

Erin Marcus: to solve problems to burn, burn off the extra energy, the monkey going. So whether I used to go for a run or if I'm going for a walk, I call the process, take a walk, take a shower. I go for a walk out in nature and I just spout off on all of the problem and get it out.

Erin Marcus: And then when I'm in the shower and I, yeah I could write my own shower thoughts book. I do have a writing pad with a pencil in the 

Joe Casabona: shower. Oh my gosh. I love those things. That's so good. 

Erin Marcus: You're thinking differently. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. And this is why I also like. When I was in the WordPress space and the web development space this is like a, during my time, which was like early WordPress, we were all self taught and like super passionate about this project.

Joe Casabona: And I would talk to people and be like, Oh, so what hobbies do you have? And they're like, Oh, I don't have hobbies. I just like work as my hobby. And I'm like, that is maybe the saddest thing a person can say to me without it trying to sound sad. Cause you don't think it's sad. But what you're saying is nothing else interests me.

Joe Casabona: To the point where I, I need to do it and like switching contexts and trying other things broadens your worldview and makes you better at your job. 

Erin Marcus: And there's also this whole piece where it's in, I love the phrasing in the book, 10 times as easier than two times about this, that a highly tightly scheduled entrepreneur has no room for growth.

Erin Marcus: So this badge of honor of constantly working actually prevents you from leaping forward. Because there's no room. 

Joe Casabona: Right. 

Erin Marcus: There's no space. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah, and then like it just gives you a very narrow world view like I'm very grateful. Actually I was out My wife had taken the kids to a playdate and I got the very rare morning cigar.

Joe Casabona: I love a morning cigar because it's like 

Erin Marcus: such a, like a horrible idea. I'm like, you do 

Joe Casabona: you I'm approaching middle age. I'm a New York Italian, like I'm a living stereotype. You're a little genetically obligated. Yeah, exactly. So I'm sipping a cup of coffee. And I see our mail care, our mail carrier, our substitute mail carrier delivering mail.

Joe Casabona: And she takes a different route than our primary mail carrier. And I start thinking. I wonder what their process is, like, how do they decide where they're going to park their car and how much mail to carry and the our substitute mail carrier like delivered packages at the same time as the letters and primary does the packages first.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. So it just got me thinking about that. And I feel if you feel like you have no space to just. sit and think or do something different than what you're doing eight to 12 hours a day. You don't have the opportunity to consider there's something beyond your worldview, or maybe there's a better way to do your job based on how you see other people do their jobs.

Erin Marcus: And so many times people go into business for themselves to either create more money and, or create more freedom. And then they create a cage that gives them neither of those things. 

Joe Casabona: Yes. Yes. 

Erin Marcus: And it's brutal because it's frustrating and it sounds so counterintuitive that if I say to you, if you tell me things aren't working, my first response to people is what can you stop doing?

Erin Marcus: And most people think you need to add things. No, if things are, if you're not getting the results that you want in your business, My first challenge to people is go cut out half of what you're doing. 

Joe Casabona: I'm a huge baseball fan, right? And this is 

Erin Marcus: genetically obligated. It's also 

Joe Casabona: genetically obligated, right?

Joe Casabona: Also, like the way I just said huge, like that's, I didn't realize I was saying that word wrong until my friend. Was like, Oh, huge. Is your humidor huge? And I'm like, yeah, he's I'm making fun of you. And I'm like, he's you're not saying the age it's huge. I'm like, I don't know. So anyway, I'm a huge baseball fan.

Joe Casabona: And this is like one of the things they talk about with like rookies or slumping veterans when they're at the plate, they're always saying, they're trying to do too much at the plate. They got to tighten up their swing or simplify it. Just put the ball in play. Go back to the 

Erin Marcus: foundation, right?

Erin Marcus: Go back. Yeah. Thanks. 

Joe Casabona: But if you're always trying to crush the ball, then, and you're not focusing on the fundamentals and you're doing too much, then you're going to strike out or fly out. Like you're not going to have a productive at bat. 

Erin Marcus: And there's a flip side to this. And I know it's part of your personal story and way it's a part of all of ours where mine to a lesser degree, because I didn't have kids involved, but other things have happened where.

Erin Marcus: Things happen. If we've learned nothing from the pandemic, it's that something will always happen. Yes. I think we're all pretty solid on the something bad will always happen. We're all on the train. But if you are so tightly packed and everything is dependent on doing so much work, when, not if, when something happens, You're screwed.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. If you have no margin, then it's all going to fall apart. I, I've had friends who said I had a friend who needed an emergency C section and she is like in the hospital, like texting her clients sorry, I can't meet, or I might be able to meet. And I'm like, and luckily their partner stepped in was like, stop, you're about to go under the knife.

Joe Casabona: But, it's it's easy to build in our mind, like that we can't stop and we can't need to keep doing this work because the more work we do the more money we'll make, but 

Erin Marcus: it's not how that actually works. 

Joe Casabona: No. And like in software engineering, there's this article called the it might be a book, the mythical man month where.

Joe Casabona: This idea of throwing more at it means we'll prob this, we'll solve the problem faster when actually there's diminishing returns, right? So like software companies used to say Oh, we'll just put more programmers on it and finish it faster. But at some point more programmers slowed down the project because, too many cooks or not enough communication or whatever it is.

Joe Casabona: And like you said, doing less will help accelerate your business. And again, I'm like living proof of that. 

Erin Marcus: Because, especially when you're forced to do last And I think too many of us wait until we're forced, right? Whether it's all of a sudden you have a house full of kids that need to be zoom schooled because of a pandemic, or in my case, I'm on the other side of it.

Erin Marcus: I have aging parents that evidently I have to travel around the country, taking people to doctors now. And now I have to do research because, don't even get me started on needing a medical degree because you can't trust anybody you're reading their stuff, right? If I didn't have the space in my life, in my business to do it, I could lose my business.

Erin Marcus: Because of that, and I think, isn't it a shame that we wait until the disaster to be able to look at our business and realize, like, how much wasted time have I done in the last year with stuff that I don't have time to do now, but things are going better. 

Joe Casabona: And I, my hand was forced, right?

Joe Casabona: It was during the pandemic. This is video. So I'm just going to point out that I love your mug, your Punisher mug. 

Erin Marcus: Oh, my favorite. I, the thing that's so weird. So I have my, I'm surrounded by my uplifting art and my Punisher mug. That's really all you need to understand. That's it in a nutshell. That's 

Joe Casabona: fantastic.

Joe Casabona: I couldn't let it slide. And if it was audio only, I would have. So I 

Erin Marcus: am uplifting art work in nature and a little bit of a punisher bug. So that's amazing. 

Joe Casabona: It was just like, yeah, it was unexpected, right? Like it was a strong pattern interrupt. But yeah, my hand was forced, cause I was doing this, I was like trying to switch from web development to podcasting and change my niche.

Joe Casabona: And we just had our second child. And I or we were expecting our, no, we just had our second child and my wife's a nurse and it's November, 2020, like pandemic is in full swing. And I had my first and only ever panic attack. I just remember being so stressed and like sitting down. In my kitchen and like crying.

Joe Casabona: And my daughter who's three years old at the time comes up to me with a towel and a bottle of water and says, it's okay, daddy, everything's going to be okay. And it is brutal. And I was like, this is not fair. Like she shouldn't be taking care of me. And I made a promise, like I'm not going to let this happen again.

Joe Casabona: And the next week I started looking for a VA and I dedicated all of my extra time to looking at all of my processes and automating even more than I had been doing. And so like about a year later, because we're, Good Catholics. We had our third child. And Again, 

Erin Marcus: genetically required. 

Joe Casabona: Yes. We had our third child and I took the whole month my, our youngest was born on Christmas Eve.

Joe Casabona: Oh, okay. And so I took all of January off. To spend time with my family and no panic attacks, no stress, nothing fell off the rails. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah. 

Joe Casabona: Everything went great. 

Erin Marcus: That's why we do this, right? We do this for the freedom to be able to live life on our own terms and whatever that means for you.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. And this is why, one of the things that I say, my approach to everything I do and all the products and services I create is I work at the intersection where what you need to do meets who you need to be to do it. Because the plan doesn't matter if you can't do the plan. And my brutal awareness awakening was coming to realize working harder wasn't going to do anything.

Erin Marcus: That it was all how I was thinking. Scarier work will get you so much further than more work. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love that. That should be on, that should be on a mug, right? 

Erin Marcus: That's Unpunishable. It's not more work, it's scarier work. 

Joe Casabona: That's how you grow, right? That's how you evolve.

Erin Marcus: Right, and going back, working 15 hours a day just to get tasks done has no growth. There's no growth in there. 

Joe Casabona: That's and it's it's, and this is a lesson that I mean, at least I have to like constantly learn or remind myself of like, maybe it was last year I was like, Oh, I'm going to have a whole social media strategy.

Joe Casabona: And then I was spending time posting on social media, telling myself like, Oh, like it'll catch eventually. And then I'm like, this is dumb. Like I'm going to, I'm going to make useful content. And that will catch eventually. Why am I putting all these hours into like threads on Twitter? 

Erin Marcus: Exactly. And there, there's a, it's an art, it's not a science.

Erin Marcus: And I call it putting bumpers in my gutters between I want to try new things. But I don't want to, I will not do things, and this could be an age thing or just a Gen X thing, I won't do things I don't like doing. Or maybe it's just an Aaron problem. I won't do things I do. This is not new. I won't do things I don't like doing.

Erin Marcus: And if I don't like doing them, I will suck at that. And what is the point of, Dialing it in. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. 

Erin Marcus: That is, there's no outcome there, right? So like you, I'm not great at Facebook. I'm not great at LinkedIn. I do telling stories. I love talking to people. And so I had to make a bunch of mistakes and sign on for a bunch of programs that tried to convince me I had to post a million things.

Erin Marcus: And you know what I'm really good at? A 15 minute YouTube 

Joe Casabona: video 

Erin Marcus: where I can just tell a story. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. 

Erin Marcus: So you got to test things. You got to be consistent, but I really believe you got to find what it doesn't matter. There's no right answer. The right answer is the version that works for you and speaks to your strengths.

Joe Casabona: And and people can tell if you're phoning it in okay, Bruce Willis. When he was on Friends, he was on Friends because he lost a bet with Matthew Perry on the set of The Whole Nine Yards. Yes. I know this is very like we're both showing our each ear a little bit, right? Like, but there were times where like you could tell he didn't really want to be there.

Joe Casabona: He was It was just 

Erin Marcus: being him, right? He was Yeah, 

Joe Casabona: right. Yeah, exactly, right? He wasn't really acting. He wasn't even trying. He was just being Bruce, right? Like he lost a bet and he was there and he was honoring the bet. And like you can tell, right? Exactly. People can tell. And so like when I post on social media, like I'm not, my most popular posts on social media on Twitter was me saying This week I read a hundred and twelve books.

Joe Casabona: Here's how I did it. And it was just like nothing else. Like I was making fun of a thread. And I'm like, this is my most popular thing. It's not helpful. It's making fun of other people. 

Erin Marcus: And my most popular stuff is, forget all the curated content. When I share pictures of me at the wildlife rescue. a mismatched clothes covered in dirt and the possums chasing me or the squirrel jumped on me or i got bit by something again that's what right when i used to release the baby ducks every morning and i would show them rush to the pond that it's the real we want to people want to see the real you so whatever However, you can show up and wherever you can show up.

Erin Marcus: That's why it's scary or work going back to this idea of working too much. When I was still had jobs, I was a manager of apartment complexes, which makes me laugh now because I was like 27, I was 27 years old. And somebody put me in charge of their like multimillion dollar asset, right? What were these people thinking?

Erin Marcus: But. The woman who was the assistant manager used to work like 12 hours a day. And I realized she's hiding from her family. She's not working right. What, if you're not sure it's scarier work, not more work. If you're doing a million things, you're hiding from the scary thing that would actually propel you forward.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. 

Joe Casabona: Yes. And this is like the reason that we're both in business, is because we don't like doing things that we we don't want to do right. I would, my managers, the ones who wanted to prove their authority versus 

Erin Marcus: versus like 

Joe Casabona: getting good work. hated me because I would be like, why?

Joe Casabona: Like I had a project manager at my last job that put a meeting, I had paid paternity leave, which is like super rare. So like kudos to that company. But I had a project manager put a meeting on my calendar for a week before I was supposed to come back. And I was like, Hey, I'm still on paternity.

Joe Casabona: And she's Oh, I know. But like this other person's going on vacation and you guys need to talk. And I was like, Oh, I think you misunderstood me. I don't exist. 

Erin Marcus: As far as your company is concerned. Until 

Joe Casabona: April 7th. Like I don't exist until that day. And she's but what if you guys need to talk?

Joe Casabona: And I'm like, interestingly, we have this thing called Slack and this other thing called email. 

Erin Marcus: That I will answer on April 8th. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah, because I don't exist. And she like never liked me after that. But I was like, Hey, this is, I'm not going to, and that was my first child. I'm not going to miss time with my first child for a meeting that doesn't really need to happen.

Joe Casabona: Or like I was told one time, this is when I knew it was time to quit. Because for a year, for. Our year anniversary, we had tickets to Hamilton. 

Erin Marcus: Oh, cool. 

Joe Casabona: And another project manager was like, Hey, if you want to get paid on time, you need to work this weekend. And I was like, I guess I'm, I said, first of all, that's not like the social contract that we have cause I'm not a freelancer.

Joe Casabona: I'm on a payroll. And also, I guess I'm not getting paid on time because I got tickets to Hamilton and I'm celebrating my anniversary and that's more important. 

Erin Marcus: Okay. So if you take this idea and bring it into your business, And I think that's one of the things you can add to your clients, right?

Erin Marcus: Is not just, I know what steps to take to do the thing, but. And I worry about saying this because I don't want anyone to think that I believe there's not hard work to do. There is work to do. This is not build it and they will come. This is not dream it and vision it. And it just shows up. 

Joe Casabona: It's a passive income, right?

Joe Casabona: No, 

Erin Marcus: that's hysterical to me. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Cool. You're Warren Buffett. That's 

Erin Marcus: and he won't be the first one to tell you there's nothing passive about on top of his details. He might not be digging ditches, but there is nothing passive. 

Joe Casabona: Right. 

Erin Marcus: Please. There's work to do, but overworking. Work ethic is not overworking.

Erin Marcus: There is no badge of honor that gets you more by taking more time to make it harder. And I think, here in the Midwest with our hard work ethic, it takes longer to unlearn 

Joe Casabona: that. 

Erin Marcus: And the faster you can let go of it, the more amazing things can happen. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. I it's, Work ethic is not about hours.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Just like school is not about busy work, right? If you're getting busy work in school then school is not being done the right way. 

Erin Marcus: Hence me not really go. 

Erin Marcus: In hindsight, we can see the pattern. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah, 

Joe Casabona: this is why I was like, my therapist was like, do you have a problem with authority?

Joe Casabona: And I'm like, only in so far as there's arbitrary and capricious rules. That's what I have a problem with. 

Erin Marcus: I have a problem with stupid things. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. 

Erin Marcus: No problem with people. I have a problem with doing stupid things that don't make sense. Yeah. 

Joe Casabona: You 

Erin Marcus: know the dare, the challenge, the invitation I give to my clients and I try to remember to do it myself.

Erin Marcus: If you take away nothing from this conversation, take a, we were saying if you were to take a blowtorch to your to do list, what would happen? What would be possible? What would happen if you could only do 25, 30 percent of what was already on your list? And that was all you got to do quantity wise.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. This is, I tell this to all of my clients, right? This is, they hire me for their podcast because they spend too much time and they're not growing. And I say, all right, let's make a list of everything you do. And now put a checkbox next to everything that you personally need to do. 

Erin Marcus: And now get a little more realistic about your ego.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, oh I need to publish it. Why do you need to publish it exactly? This is a tool, like if you're publishing through a host or a WordPress site, like this is something that millions of people do. What's special about you doing? 

Erin Marcus: You pressing the button. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Oh I need to gather the show notes because I know that no, you can just check the work of your assistant.

Erin Marcus: I don't even do that. 

Joe Casabona: Me neither. 

Erin Marcus: Because here's one, I trust her, but two, we add too many people trap themselves by acting like everything is the end of the world. 

Joe Casabona: Right. 

Erin Marcus: I, to me, I consider a mistake in our show notes, a typo in our new, I can, I consider when that happens, a gift. It is a gift to the people who are waiting to prove how smart they are by telling you made a mistake.

Joe Casabona: And you know what? So 

Erin Marcus: it's a gift to those people. 

Joe Casabona: And if someone reaches out and tells you about the mistake. 

Erin Marcus: You say thank you. 

Joe Casabona: You say thank you and it shows that people are actually paying attention to what you're doing. There's a mistake and no one's telling you, then maybe it's like, Oh, maybe no one cares.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. But you know what, when I get a typo in a blog post or like a link that's wrong, or it goes nowhere, I'm like, Hey, thanks for consuming the content I made. 

Erin Marcus: So if people want to continue the conversation and see how you can help them do so much less work and get so much more results, seriously that's the key.

Erin Marcus: That is so the key. What's the best way for them to find you? 

Joe Casabona: They can go to podcastworkflows. com slash Aaron E R I N. I've been told that I say Aaron the wrong way. It's like Aaron is I guess how a lot of people say it. I 

Erin Marcus: have a total Chicago accent. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah but anyway, podcastworkflows. com slash Aaron.

Joe Casabona: There you will get my 40 plus automation database, like templates. Nice. So that. Even if you never implement any of those, you will see a list of 40 ideas for things that you don't personally have to do. And then there will also be ways to connect with me on social media over there as well. 

Erin Marcus: Love it.

Erin Marcus: And we'll make sure the link is in the show notes. So you're just a click away. 

Joe Casabona: Excellent. 

Erin Marcus: Thank you for hanging out with me and having fun conversations. I like this stuff is so important, but we don't have to be miserable about it. I laugh at myself all the time. Cause why wouldn't I? So yeah, thank you for all your insights and for hanging out with me.

Joe Casabona: My absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.