Tracy Hazzard Explains How Podetize Uses ClickUp to Scale Up Their Operations From The Business Infrastructure Podcast with Alicia Butler Pierre

Looking for a project management tool that’s efficient, time-based, affordable, and can help track multiple talks and a large team? ClickUp might be what you need! Join as Tracy Hazzard explains how Podetize uses ClickUp to scale its operations. She joins Alicia Butler Pierre from The Business Infrastructure Podcast to detail how they use the program and why it works. As a CEO, Tracy recognizes the need to work on your business rather than working in it. That’s why it’s important to have project management tools that help and also measure progress. Plus, she discusses ways to optimize the tool for your business without breaking the bank. Stay tuned!

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This episode is brought to you by Equilibria Incorporated. Scale your fast-growing business with less pain by hiring the right people, implementing the right processes, and leveraging the right technologies. Learn more at EQBSystems.com. It’s season fourteen, everybody, and we are exploring game-changing technology and how you can potentially use some of these technologies to revolutionize the way your company operates.

Adding to the lexicon is the one and only Tracy Hazzard. She is joining us from Foothills Ranch, California. She’s the Cofounder and CEO of Brandcasters Incorporated, the company behind Podetize. It is the largest podcast production and alternative monetization company in the world. Tracy is also an Inc. columnist, and she has even been featured on Larry King Now as an industry expert. Although Tracy has quite the podcasting pedigree, we are going to focus on one of the technologies that she says has changed the game for how she and her teamwork. That technology is ClickUp. Tracy, it’s such an honor to have you here. Welcome to the show. How are you?

Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to talk about business infrastructure, which is just odd. Let’s talk about the techie behind-the-scenes stuff.

That’s a great segue to what I wanted to mention first to those who are reading. I have the pleasure of being a guest on one of your shows, The Binge Factor. I was pleasantly surprised when I received an email from your team saying, “Your interview on The Binge Factor was cited in Tracy’s Top 20 Interviews or best interviews.” Mine had the designation of being the most unexpectedly interesting.

I had trouble naming what to give you. First off, this was a 100th episode celebration. We looked at them and said, “Which ones did the best in terms of who got a lot of listeners and had an interesting topic?” If they didn’t stand out in my mind as being memorable, then I nixed them off the list, even if they were a top show and episode in that case. Yours stood out to me, and I was just trying to figure out what to give you because it was different in our conversation about what your show is like in the way that you run your show. That’s why I had to feature you. Congratulations.

Thank you. It is indeed an honor. Can you tell us more about Podetize and Brandcasters? Is it correct to just say Brandcasters or Podetize, or both?

Podetize is our front-facing brand, and you know how companies are. No matter what their company name is, they become known as their trademark as their front-facing brand. We have been known as Podetize. We are a combination of mass marketing as a service and SaaS, Software as a Service. For marketing services, we do just about everything imaginable related to podcasting: the video, audio, blog and social share.

We handle all of that for our clients. On the SaaS side, we have admixing and hosting combined uniquely. We are driven towards business use of podcasting, not sort of that entertainment use, although we do have entertainment networks that use our podcasting system as well. That’s what we are. We are just like the full-service podcasting company.

Something that I have read consistently across all of your different websites as well as your LinkedIn profile, I see you and your information online. We always hear about vanity metrics. The number of downloads being one of them, the number of reviews. I clearly remember having a conversation with you after you interviewed me on your show. You know about Apple Podcasts. Do you have to make it hard for people to leave a review?

They all do. It’s crazy. The best one out there to leave a review is the Goodpods. They have one of the simplest. You are reading it and you are like, “This is a great episode.” You can rate an episode, not just the whole show. It’s one of my favorites. All you just do is you click your star and type it in, and you are immediately sharing that. There are a few that are full. It’s run by JJ Ramberg and her brother. They do a fabulous job. It’s just starting to take off.

The reason I brought that up is that something that I have seen across your materials online, no matter where I happen to land, is that it’s not just about those vanity metrics, especially when you are talking about using your show as a potential business development tool. I appreciate that because you are right. That has definitely been my experience. Podcasting has breathed new life into my business because things were getting stale.

That’s common, in a sense, we measure the wrong things all over the place. We measure the wrong things, a lot of times, on social media for measuring followers and friends. We are not measuring engagement and conversion. How do we get to the measurements and things? That’s something that drives me. I’m always trying to figure out, “How do I maximize anything that I can do for my clients that they can do?” We are looking at measuring the right thing and making sure that it’s making a measurable difference in our business because otherwise, it’s not worth spending my time. I am a busy person.

Speaking of being a busy person, you have such an interesting background. I noticed you have a Fine Arts degree in Product Design as well as Textile Design and also an advanced degree in Writing. It looks like your podcasting journey started with your first show. Is it WTFFF?! 3D Printing? Was that your very first show?

It was. It was my very first show. It’s called WTFFF?!. FFF stands for Fuse Filament Fabrication, which is the geeky term for 3D printing. It was our first show, and we started that in our design business. We had been designing products for mass-market retail, things you buy at Costco, Walmart and Target. You can still buy our products anywhere. We have a platinum record office chair that they still sell and probably sold better in the pandemic than ever before.

That’s the business that we had before, and we thought we were going to break out, and we are going to move into 3D printing. We want to develop all these extra services, and we might do some consumer-direct stuff. The show was simply a test to see if the market wanted what we had to sell. In the end, we determined the market didn’t want it. It’s a good thing we didn’t invest all this money into our business in that format and hired all these designers that we were going to hire.

Instead, they wanted the information we had, and they wanted more of it. WTFFF?! was a test to see if people wanted to buy what we had to sell. In that case, it would have been a bunch of designs, and we would have had to hire a lot of designers. I’m glad we didn’t invest that in our business because it turns out they didn’t want that at all. What they wanted was information about 3D printing. For us to become that resource was extremely valuable.

We ended up creating a whole extra passive income strategy for ourselves within that business. Even more, other podcasters came to us and said, “What are you doing? Can you tell me exactly how to do that for myself?” When we would tell them, they would say, “Could you just do it for me?” They would shove their credit cards at us. That’s how we ended up with a whole spinoff business.

That’s a nice thing for someone to do is to shove their credit card at you.

They could sense our hesitancy trying to decide if it fits our business, which it didn’t. Eventually, we had to completely reform a new company, and that’s how Brandcasters Inc and Podetize came about.

You have built this amazing team. I was looking at some of the stats that are on the homepage of Podetize.com. Up to this point, you have produced over 550 podcasts.

I think it’s a little out-of-date. We are over 600 now and easily. We have almost 100% team. It changes all the time. We have 90 people working around the clock around the world.

ClickUp: In order to follow up and make sure everything was in place, we also needed to have really dynamic standard operating procedures.

That is impressive. With 90-plus people, I’m sure there are many moving parts and that you all definitely have to have technologies, especially being that they are in different parts of the world, different with working around different time zones. You have to have good technologies that can bring everyone together and make sure everyone is on the same page. Communication and transparency are key. I’m wondering, is that what led you all ultimately to select ClickUp?

It did in an indirect path. The reality is that when we set out to do the business, we didn’t want something to become completely templated and cookie-cutter, which is why there is no technology on the production side of things. It’s not a Canva drag and drop graphic. Our graphic group makes custom graphics. It’s not automatic editing for video and audio systems. We have real live editors who know what they are doing, listening to things and moving things.

We created a system that needed to be bespoke and at the same time, extremely efficient so we could produce podcasts in 7 to 10 days. That is what led us to have to put tight controls over it so that we could identify exactly where a podcast was in that 7 to 10-day process and who was touching it at that moment in time with the large team that we have.

To follow up and make sure everything was in place, we also needed to have dynamic SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures. We had to make sure that all of that was the case because every podcast is different. We wanted to allow all podcasters to have their workflow, style, and brand to be able to shine in whatever we did for them so that this felt like it was truly their production and not ours. That’s what led us to find something flexible and trackable at the end of the day.

For those who are reading who are not familiar with ClickUp, can you explain what exactly ClickUp is?

It’s an interesting mix of things. It’s workflow management, tasks assignments. You can follow them through. There are sub-tasks. It’s not all that different from other project management style software but it has a little bit more communication through it. You are almost like getting your Slack communication and your chat in there at the same time that you are getting your workflow going. They’re combined together nicely, but the best part about it is everything is tracked from a time standpoint.

Every single one from the moment someone says, “I’m taking this assignment to edit the audio of Alicia’s podcast.” The minute the clock starts ticking, then we know when it’s done. It immediately flows into the next person because we have all the automation set in through the process. It’s highly automated. You can template things and save them. Each podcast can have its same workflow again and again every time an episode gets submitted, and it integrates perfectly through an API with our portal where people upload their episodes, too. The minute you upload, your episode is in production.

If I were a podcast host who was a customer of Podetize, the minute I record audio and download that audio, I would then upload it to the Podetize portal. Then it somehow communicates to ClickUp, and that lets your team on the backend know, “It’s time to trigger that 7 to the 10-day production process?”

Exactly. If you weren’t doing video, then it would skip the video step for you because it’s all customized to your show. The same thing for people setting up shows. If you have never launched a show before, we have complete launching services, and we do the same thing. We track everything through that process to make sure your cover art has done, intro, outro music, all the fancy stuff you need to syndicate everywhere around the world, through Apple and Spotify and all those places. That’s all taken care of through its own process as well.

You mentioned an API integration that works directly with the Podetize portal, but from me tinkering around with ClickUp, I know that it also offers many other integrations with off-the-shelf solutions like Monday.com or maybe even Asana Slack. You mentioned Slack earlier. Are there any CRMs? Does your team leverage a CRM component of ClickUp or do you have it integrate with a CRM that you are using outside of ClickUp?

We use HubSpot, and ours integrates directly with HubSpot as well. The emails are triggered through HubSpot. If we were working on your launch of a show and your cover art was completed, it would trigger an email from our HubSpot system to let somebody know, “Here’s your cover art. Here’s the link to it that you can review.” We use a heavy Dropbox integration because our clients’ files are large. Using them within ClickUp is not sustainable. We use the Dropbox integration as well.

We use a lot of Zapier for just random things that you need to do because you might need to zap some numbers over to QuickBooks, or you never know where you might need to send stuff out to. We do use that a lot in our portal. With our Podetize system, our whole software, and everything that we do, I have a development team in-house. We do all the API integrations and things ourselves for those systems. Not the ones that are standard like HubSpot. That one just works.

As I’m listening, especially what you all have going on with the integration with your customized patent-pending Podetize portal and how that’s integrated with ClickUp, is that something that I, as a layman, could do?

Probably not integrate your own portal. That’s a little harder, but if you’ve got a system, they make the integration fairly simple. It’s not that difficult for your team to understand what to do if you are doing a custom-coded website of your own that you want to integrate with. We do also have some integration. When somebody purchases and buys, we are also tracking how many episodes. That’s within our own portal. That doesn’t go through ClickUp but it does let ClickUp know that it crosses through there. That’s where we might use this Zapier integration to say you have 25 episodes left on your account. It’s just letting the system know that this one was approved essentially.

You mentioned the importance of measuring the right things earlier. I’m curious, are you all able to produce any types of reports in ClickUp, or is that maybe also through another type of integration that you are looking at like some reports on the backend?

No, we have produced reports through ClickUp and HubSpot. They might be more sales and customer-focused in HubSpot, and more episode and staff-focused in ClickUp. We track our entire staff. We track our departments. We assign bonuses based on their performances. How efficient are they? How many change requests come through? Is there quality control up there? We measure all of that through ClickUp, and it’s all automated reports that we receive every month, and we make some determinations on our bonus payouts.

From what I do remember about ClickUp is that one of the very first things that you do when you sign up for an account is create these workspaces.

Every team has a different one in our company. That’s how we do it.

Again, there’s that level of transparency. The other beautiful thing that is such a plus with a tool in ClickUp is the visualization aspect of it all, being able to color code things and have icons. That’s powerful because even with using something like Dropbox, it’s just a bunch of folders, and it’s very easy for information to get lost. Sometimes it can take maybe someone a little bit longer to find what they are looking for but having that visual component to ClickUp, do you find that to be true as well?

I do. If you organize your workspaces well. We organize our work safe basis that might be people who are in the launching space or have their website upgraded and are working on social media asset programs. We have them up segregated. The reality is by just auditing it and quickly looking, I can see how many are in that process and what the names of their shows are because everything is an acronym of your show like The Binge Factor is TBF. I can quickly look at them and find them quickly. If I can’t, I can type it into the search bar, “The Binge Factor,” and I will be able to find my own show, and how my episodes are doing if I want to look at them.

I never looked them up. I let the team handle that because I don’t need to. I know they are on time. It’s much simpler to review it and look at it and then also, because you can control who sees what, you can work with your outside contractors or with uncomfortable people. I have leaders of certain departments that are just uncomfortable with all the technical.

We can limit and say, “You are in charge of all our social media. You only get to see all the things that are in the marketing workspace.” While you may not use any of the other things but the social media section where you are being tagged and other things like that as your tasks are going through. It allows you to be able to see what other marketing initiatives are going on in the company. We usually try to keep them broadly open to a single workspace unless they cross multiples.

ClickUp: We created a system that needed to be bespoke and, at the same time, extremely efficient.

I think ClickUp is still relatively new.

We have been using them since they were in beta before. We have been doing it for several years now. We were one of the early adopters. We didn’t pay anything for the first nine months we used it. We paid $50 just to get in on the beta program or something like that, and then didn’t pay anything. All of a sudden, they switched their model and it is based on per-user. By utilizing only the team approach, sometimes we don’t have to expose the ClickUp process to every member of the team because that’s not how it gets used. Only the leader of a specific team might use it, and then assignments are laid out. It has allowed us to keep it affordable for us as well as we have grown.

Everyone who’s reading, what Tracy is talking about is the fact that you can look at a particular team, and you can assign different levels of access rights. Some people may have full access rights, for example, the leader of a particular team. To your point, there may be some who only have View-only access or they may be able to view but they can’t comment or maybe they can comment, or it’s different access levels. I think that’s important. That also determines the pricing per month if I remember correctly.

It does. It greatly changed. We pay a different amount every month because we are always getting new employees in and it’s always adjusting. For us, it’s still extremely affordable. It’s probably the best price out of any of the software and systems we use. HubSpot is extremely expensive and inefficient for what it does compared to ClickUp for us.

It’s fascinating to know from you as the leader of a company that is actively using ClickUp because we have looked at it for a while, and we were like, “This is cool but it might take us forever to set all of this up.”

I’m lucky that I have two amazing women leading my company in very specific areas. My Head Production Manager, Marge, is over in the Philippines. She is tech-savvy and really programmed in all the automation and systems. It is my daughter who is my COO, and she built the system from the ground up and has made it work. If it wasn’t for her system’s brain, we would not be functioning at the peak of efficiency at this stage.

We would have had to get a whole bunch of teams in, but it was her brain from the beginning that saw the potential here and convinced us to move from what we had been hacking together ourselves. She changed everything for us when she went to the system. As they have added things, she has been able to automate more and add more things. She and Marge working together have just been fantastic.

Speaking of product updates, I received an email from ClickUp earlier about some new features. I can definitely attest to the fact that they are constantly improving and adding new features to the product. This is all fascinating. You have already touched on some of the key people on your team that helped put ClickUp in place and maintain it on a day-to-day basis. You have also talked about your 7 to 10-day production process, but I do have a few more questions about both of those areas.

You were telling us all of the amazing things that you and your team can do with ClickUp and the beauty of it that serves as a hub for many other applications that you all are using. I’m wondering if we can talk a little bit more about the people and the processes behind ClickUp for Podetize. For those who are reading this for the first time, let’s officially define what Business Infrastructure is. It’s a system for how you link your people, your processes, your tools and technologies to ensure that growth happens profitably and sustainably. I must say, shout out to your daughter. I did see her headshot on the Podetize.com website. I don’t remember her name.

It’s Alexandra. She’s married but she kept her last name and took ours. We are absolutely happy to have Alexandra as part of the company.

I was going to ask you about her anyway because when I saw that her title is a Chief Operating Officer, she likely introduced ClickUp, and you just confirmed that. Some of the other people that you mentioned that you have are integral members of the team are live editors, live graphic designers. You also talked about these in-house developers that you have who can make some of these custom integrations possible with ClickUp.

We talked about Alexandra and Marge. Who are some of the other key people? Do you have Project Managers who are also overseeing these? I’m just envisioning these different timelines and Kanban Boards. Is that how you all are looking at what stage a particular podcast might be in within that 7 to 10-day window?

We don’t have to look at it that way. We are all set in terms of automation in the system. We have each department and they all work under Marge Marata, who’s our Production Manager over there. Each team has a team lead. Our graphics team, our audio, and our video have a lead. It’s all like that. They each have a blog. We have transcriptionists, and we also have what we call an audit team. They are the ones that might do a final quality control check. We have all of that, and each one has their own team that they manage. When a task moves, a client submits an episode, it goes immediately into ClickUp. There might be a quick review, and that might be an assistant of the very first team lead.

In other words, if the person had the video in their package, it would go to the video assistant first. The assistant would check and make sure it was there if their files missing or anything missing, they double-check that, and then would reach out to our customer service team and say, “Can you get with this client? Their files are corrupt or it’s not where they said it was.” The wheel can go from there.

Once that happens, then the team lead assigns them to whoever is allocated. We have allocation levels. Only you can work on many. We have measurements that we expect you to do, many episodes per week or execute many videos per week. It’s all balanced based on the number of minutes and the workload that you particularly have. We have people who job share and do other things.

Everybody has a different workload. That’s all in there. The team lead couldn’t assign someone, something that was over-allocating them. It would alarm us. ClickUp will let us know. There isn’t much for us demand assigned everything flows through. If the team leads only have to check reports every single day and say, “Basically, did all my people turn in things overnight, or in the last 24 hours? Why didn’t they follow up with them and check on things that don’t seem right?” That’s it. They check on the things that are red flags, and that’s all their job has to do in addition to having their oversight to help train people, make sure that the work is at the quality that it needs to identify problems. That’s how it works. It’s super simple.

You say that but we both know when things look simple, that means there’s a lot of foundational thought and work that’s gone into putting together that final automation.

That’s the thing. We didn’t have it automated from day one. What we typically do is we will test the workflow manually for a time. When we feel that we’ve got it optimized, then we turn it into automation. For us, there’s always that manual test process. Typically, I’m the guinea pig. I start a brand new show every single year. When I’m testing something new, we might include it in the next six months. In this case, I’m about to start a new show. That is a review-style show, so I’m reviewing products. As you mention, I’m an expert in products. Tom Hazzard, my partner and husband, we are both going to review a show where we talk about products. We are not going to earn any money from them.

That’s not the point. The point is to test out a process by which we can build affiliate links and build review programs within the website for our clients. We are testing out this model of what would that look like and what the workflow looks like behind the scenes. That way, I can see the results as if I were the customer. When I look at that, is it doing something valuable for my business, for my website, for the traffic going to it or is this not doing much for me at all?

In that sense, we are tracking all of this. How hard is it? Do I have to provide a lot of data to our Podetize team to make them successful or make this get to accomplish it? If my clients have to do a lot of work, they are not going to be happy. I have to streamline it. I’m streamlining from training my clients and teaching them what the best workflow is and getting the team able to build a process in place that they feel comfortable with that they can then automate and replicate.

Another thing that’s coming to mind as I’m listening to you, there are all of these moving parts, all of these different people around the world and different time zones. Are there alerts in the form of maybe an email communication, or even if you download the ClickUp app to your phone, can you receive notifications to remind you when a certain task is due?

The notifications part is my personal favorite because I don’t have time to be in there all day. That’s an oversight. They can create and place me as a watcher so I can see how something is going. We have about a dozen different things through the graphic team that is for an upcoming trade show. It’s outside the normal system of things and they can create me as a watcher, so if I want to check it out and see how it turned out, how a banner or sales sheet turned out, I can just peek in and take a look at it because I’m watching that tab. It alerts me for things I’m tagged in. I love the phone app because a lot of my team is overseas.

I get a lot of evening pings. It means that I don’t have to have my computer handy. I can look at it for the most part. Sometimes it doesn’t appear. I will have to jump on my computer and check out whatever document they want me to review. For the most part, I can just quickly look in there. If I need to chime in, I can. If I just need to approve it, I can approve it as well. It keeps the process flowing and moving. The notification system is dynamic. I stopped adding it to my email only because I get thousands of emails.

It’s way too much. That’s the beauty of being able to download the app directly to your phone. You can just skip the notification on your phone, but not necessarily a notification in the form of an email, because it would just be way too much, especially with over 600 shows.

I definitely don’t watch the production side of things unless it’s a high-profile customer. That’s getting set up in our process and I’m a hand holding a little. I might watch for a little while just to make sure things are going smoothly but for the most part, I hardly interfere there. It’s all these extra things, all the things in the marketing department I’m watching at any given time because we don’t fully have a CMO yet. We are transitioning to that happening in the next six months. We are just trying to hire the right person. The person who’s handling our marketing is a little bit lower level. I need to keep a bigger vision on that.

ClickUp: Because you can control who sees what, you can actually work with your outside contractors or with people who are uncomfortable.

I knew this was going to happen. We are getting to the peak of things. We are going to have to start wrapping it up. Before we do, you have been great about sharing the details of how you all set things up on the backend to even be able to fully utilize ClickUp and all that it has to offer. I’m also wondering, are there any other resources that you can share with our readers that you have found helpful in improving back-office operations? You were very good about mentioning Zapier. You mentioned Goodpods for a place where it’s easy to leave a podcast review but I also love for you to talk about your Inc. column as well because I’m sure you cover different technologies there as well.

I don’t actually write for Inc. Magazine anymore. I stopped writing for them in 2020 because of the difference in editorial opinion. The reality is that there are a lot of publications out there where their direction isn’t where I think the value is for the reader. They are following that clickbait model or a model where it’s all about how many eyes they can get on it, not how useful is this information for those eyes. It’s a difference of opinion. I felt like it wasn’t worth it. I had written well over 480 articles there. I was done and I did this, but I do write for lots of other publications on occasion like Authority Magazine and Grit Daily.

I think there’s a new one coming up on notification that hasn’t launched as a publication yet. All of these things there. I have a workflow in ClickUp that was built for me to basically have these edited produced so that I can run them for me. I write them but I’ve got to have somebody who will load it into the portal for me. When you work with all these publications, you have all these different portals so it can get overwhelming.

I have to say that the hardest part about writing isn’t the writing part. It’s the running and working with the editors because every one of their backend systems is completely customized and different, and they are glitchy. They are always upgrading them and changing them. When you think you’ve got it, they change them again. I can imagine for most, it’s frustrating. Lucky for me, I just passed that on to my team.

I know you have other shows as well. There’s The Binge Factor, Feed Your Brand, The New Trust Economy.

That one is on blockchain and the newest one that’s coming out is The Next Little Thing.

What’s that about?

That’s the review one where we are going over the product. It’s not like big products or big things. These are little apps and things that you might give us gifts again and again because they are good. They have to be something I would personally recommend or they don’t make a list.

Tracy, there’s much to learn from you. Do you ever sleep? How many hours a day?

I do. I sleep well. I do take melatonin. It has helped me a lot. There’s a stage of business where you get to where your team is running and your job is only on the visionary side of things. You have the people you can talk to who will implement and do it for you. As a CEO, when you get to that stage, it’s fantastic. It’s a great place. I’m always onto the next thing onto the next division we are going to be working on. My big headache is a couple of new programs we are going to be launching. Those are keeping me pretty busy. My to-do list is as long as every day. I have a couple of younger kids, too. They make me give them time. That’s always helpful to keep you grounded.

What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you or to connect with you in general?

LinkedIn is probably the best way. My email is slammed with things and everything else but if you want to get my attention, I do go on LinkedIn at least twice a day. Usually, in the morning and the evening because we are running programs and systems through there. I’m always checking my messages and accepting friend requests and things through there. That’s the best way.

This has been eye-opening. You have taught me even more about all of the capabilities and the possibilities with ClickUp. It’s something that my team and I looked at and we were like, “It looks cool. I’m sure it can do some great things.” We had some great conversations with some of their sales reps but we just never moved forward. Thank you for sharing exactly how you all are using it and how robust of a toll it can be, and relatively inexpensive to your point compared to some of the other platforms that are out there, supposedly for small businesses. What I would like to do now is to quickly recap some of the things that you shared with us.

Thank you for explaining what Podetize is. You described it as a combination of Marketing as a Service, MaaS as well as SaaS, Software as a Service. It’s taking the best of both of those worlds and combining them. I appreciated the fact, especially because I’m a process and systems person. I appreciate you are talking about the importance of measuring engagement and conversion when it comes to marketing and making sure you are measuring the right things.

You talked to us about this very large team that you have at least 90 people, and it can fluctuate anywhere from 90 to 100 on a day-to-day basis. It sounds like what I’ve got from this conversation is the importance of first, understanding your workflow. Don’t get into a tool like ClickUp and just think you are going to start building things because you can very easily create a chaotic mess and that defeats the purpose but be thoughtful and intentional.

It sounds like Alexandra is the person who made sure that you all knew all of the different workflows. You test those manually first, work out the kinks, and then you figure out how to automate them. In this case, ClickUp happened to be the platform in which you all were able to automate many of those workflows. Thank you for sharing some of the different types of people that are working on your team. You mentioned live editors and live graphic designers. You have your own in-house developers to again make sure that those custom integrations can take place seamlessly.

Here’s the other important thing because things will break, especially if there’s an upgrade on either side of integration. You are going to need someone on your team who can manage that and maintain it. I also appreciate the fact that you have this automated workflow on the backend of Podetize. Once a team lead assigns different tasks or activities to certain people on the team, everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing. Thanks to notifications and thanks to some of the other integration tools with communication apps like Slack, for example. Tracy, this has been absolutely phenomenal. We didn’t even get to talk about the SOPs. I know you referenced some dynamic SOPs.

We didn’t get to mention that, but we have a whole exact portal that we created internally for that and then it integrates the little details we will integrate but we have a portal over where our clients can review their SOP and update it.

That is fantastic. I’m definitely curious. I don’t know about you that are reading, but I’m curious to learn more about Podetize. I have watched the video on the website. If you want more details about Tracy, Podetize, and how she and her team at Brandcasters can manage your podcast’s back-office operations, then make sure you connect with her on LinkedIn. That’s @TracyHazzard. It’s Podetize.com. That’s the website where you can find out more about the service. It’s an amazing Marketing as a Service, as well as Software as a Service platform that they have created. This has been amazing. Thank you, Tracy.

Thank you, Alicia. I enjoy getting to talk to you all the time. We need to have a more regular phone call.

Everybody, don’t forget to check out BusinessInfrastructure.tv. When you get there, you will be able to access links to all of these resources that Tracy was kind enough to share with us. You will also find more information about our sponsors. Make sure you support them because when you do, it helps us keep this show free for you. Thank you so much for reading and for being a loyal subscriber. Remember to stay focused, be encouraged. This entrepreneurial journey is a marathon and not a sprint. Keep operating as good on the inside as you look on the outside. Until the next time.

Important Links:

• GetMyTablet.com
• EQBSystems.com
• ClickUp
• The Binge Factor – Past episode with Alicia Butler
• Goodpods
• WTFFF?! 3D Printing
• Podetize.com
• Monday.com
• Asana Slack
• HubSpot
• Dropbox
• Zapier
• Authority Magazine – Tracy Hazzard
• Grit Daily – Tracy Hazzard
• Feed Your Brand
• The New Trust Economy
• The Next Little Thing
• The Binge Factor
• @TracyHazzard – LinkedIn
• BusinessInfrastructure.tv

Watch the episode here:

The Business Infrastructure Podcast with Alicia Butler Pierre