Just yesterday I was lamenting that I can no longer use PodHighligher, a service that will let you, “capture highlights from your podcasts in Overcast and sync them with Readwise, email, and more.”
I no longer use Readwise, and use a bunch of podcasting apps. My current daily driver is Pocket Casts.
Today, thanks to Podnews, I came across an incredible app called Podcast Magic that will let you just email a screenshot to them. They email you back a transcript and audio clip.
I tried it and it worked like gangbusters. You can get unlimited* moments for just $20, and it was the easiest $20 I’ve ever spent.
It’s from the makers of Sublime App. They reached out to me earlier this year and offered a free early adopter account. I haven’t given it a fair shake, but I will now…especially since I moved on from Readwise. It looks really great.
And the best part is while they claim it only works with Spotify and Apple Podcasts, I found it also works with Pocket Casts AND Overcast.
I’ve used Whisper Memos for a while now, and really, truly loved it. But the last four or five notes I’ve tried recording with it were completely lost. No transcript, no recording, no summary.
When I rely so heavily on a tool that becomes this unreliable, it’s time to move on. So after a brief stint with Whisper Transcription, I’ve decided to look at superwhisper.
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with an amazing thought and then said, “I’ll remember it in the morning?”
I have. And just like death and taxes, it’s a guarantee that I’ll completely forget it in the morning. As my friend Cat Mulvihill pointed out on social media recently, “if it’s important enough, I’ll remember it,” is a lie.
If it were true, then we’d always remember birthdays, milk, and our kids’ lunchboxes in the fridge as we’re running out the door.
Without the right systems in place, we’d forget more than we remember.
That means following up with clients, fixing our product, and great ideas for podcast episodes.
That’s why idea capture is so critical to me — and why my system might seem like overkill.
But today I’d like to walk you through all the ways I easily capture ideas and thoughts — and the system I put in place, so I don’t miss anything.
My grandfather came to the United States from Italy in 1949 and worked in New York City for much of his life — primarily in construction.
Both he and my parents moved out of the city (though I wouldn’t say Upstate), after he retired. But he continued to do home projects as I grew up. My dad would say he could paint an entire room in a 3-piece suit and not get a drop on him.
For as long as I can remember, he had this big, metal toolbox — you know, one of those big grey ones with the curved top and the center latch. When he passed away, he gave it to me, and I still have and use it to this day.
In fact, most of the tools in his toolbox, Pop had for decades. When he found something that worked for him, he held on to it, and took care of it. There’s a hammer in there that has to be as old as I am.
And when you think about it, the hammer is a pretty good analogy for our digital tools. It’s a basic device, but there are countless variations, purpose built for specific tasks. Much like a task manager or notes app, you mostly know what you’re getting — but you may want something a little more specialized for your needs.
Imagine walking into a room with a wall full of switches. The wall is broken up into columns, and you need to choose 2-4 switches from each column.
You can choose any combination, but some will be better than others.
That’s what making a membership website is like.
There are a million things to consider, from deciding on the levels and benefits, to figuring out how to get people to join. It can be overwhelming.
And let’s not forget about marketing – that’s a whole other ballgame. But fear not! I’ve got a solution for you. Uscreen is an all-in-one platform that makes it super easy to create a stunning website for your membership. And today, I’m going to show you how.
January has come and gone, and I’ve made the decision to fully move from Zapier to Make. I’m pleased with the functionality, the workflows, and the considerable cost difference1.
Here are my thoughts after one month with Make:
I really love the route building and general design of the scenarios better. The interface is much more intuitive. It’s easier to move things around, insert actions between other actions, create filters, and add routes.
MUCH. Easier.
You do need a little more know-how than with Zapier. Zapier has some tighter integrations with Dropbox and Google. For example, if you want to use your personal Gmail account, you need to spin up an API key for certain actions, instead of just authenticating.
It is a lot more secure though, as you’re not giving complete access to an app. You’re explicitly choosing the services you want the app to have access to.
Along what that know-how, you need to be mindful of how often your scenarios run. Since Make charges per operation, you can’t just let your automations run wild. I ended up hitting the 10,000 operation limit within 2 weeks.
Luckily, I was able to dial them back a reasonable amount and now I’m well within the limits of 10,000 operations per month, giving me wiggle room to add even more scenarios. And for what it’s worth, Zapier has this baked into their much higher cost.
The way to manage operations is to not have them run as often. The default is 15 minutes. I have some run every 2 hours, and some that run every 2 days. This is perfectly fine for me. They still run often enough that it doesn’t bottleneck my workflows. The hardest part was coming to terms with knowing they aren’t constantly running.
Make is much more affordable. I’d need to pay for around 90,000 operations to hit the same monthly costs as with Zapier. If I doubled my monthly operations, I’m still saving $55/mo on the billed monthly plan.
Finally, thanks to re-evaluating my automations, I was able to create more efficient actions, as well as move some automations to the native apps. For example, Vimeo has direct integration with Dropbox. I don’t need Make or Zapier as a third party anymore.
If you have any questions about Make, feel free to leave them in the comments!
I got a few people tell me that the time savings is worth the month. My friends, the wealthy didn’t get wealthy by wasting money. And IMO, using Zapier over Make if you have more than 5 automations is a waste of money. ?
Here’s the shot from my iPhone on the mount, first with, then without, Center Stage:
Here’s what I like about it:
It’s compact and folds up nicely
It’s fully adjustable for tilt, and the head slides so you can adjust the phone to sit closer or further from you.
It can be mounted on a tripod. This will likely replace All of the other phone tripod mounts I have.
The MagSafe is quite strong. I have the Peak Design case1 and the phone stayed mounted no problem.
All-in-all I’m really happy with this purchase. I highly recommend it if you have a monitor and want to use your iPhone as a webcam — whether or not you use Continuity Camera to do it.
I’m a huge fan of Airtable; it’s the very basis of my podcast planners. But up until now, I haven’t been using it to its full potential.
I do some cool things, especially when it’s paired with Zapier (soon to be Make), but there are a ton of features I’m not taking advantage of.
This was made incredibly clear to me thanks to two recent experiences:
The first was Justin Moore sharing his sponsor tracker in Notion. I took a look at how he was doing things, and there were some very complex functions in there.
The second is friend Brian Richards. He created an incredible system in Airtable that tracks and building sponsorship packages, leads, and all sorts of other information for his virtual events.
I have a few ideas, one being a content dashboard to track the various pieces of content I’m working on across different platforms and clients.
The other is my own sponsorship tracker; I have some pieces of this already for How I Built It, but I’d like to formalize it better.
Finally, I want to be better at social media this year. Part of that will be posting consistently (and better), and part of it will be bringing in my VA to do more.
I’m excited at the prospect of building better systems to help us work.
If you want to see BTS videos of what I’m working on, you can become a member of How I Built It Pro.
The social media platform wars are an ongoing nuisance for content creators. It seems like you need to be on all of them all the time.
But with claimed that Twitter is dying1, and a potential ban on TikTok from the US Government, the push and pull of where to be continues to be a constant question.
Upon reflection, I’ve realized that I get the most engagement, growth, and positive leads from LinkedIn. This is likely a result of my niche — marketers and business owners who are serious about making a podcast part of their business — being there primarily.
