How To Effectively Repurpose Content To Increase Value (with Sean McCabe from Seanwes)

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Ben Aston

Welcome to the Indie Media Club podcast. I'm Ben Aston, founder of the Indie Media Club. We're on a mission to help independent bootstrapped media entrepreneurs succeed to help people who create, promote and monetize through content, do it better. Check out indiemedia.club to find out more.

So, today I'm joined by Sean McCabe and he is a content machine. He's a podcaster, he's an author. He's a content creator, of course. And he's a course creator too. He got more than 70,000 followers on Instagram. Sean is the real deal and he's on a mission to help people learn how to make sustainable money, sustainable businesses from their passion. Building that brand, growing that audience and overthinking less and making more, making more content and making money too. 

Now most recently, and what we're going to be talking about today, Sean's been working on this new project is called the Daily Content Machine, and it is a new service that takes long form video and helps people turn that into short clips for social media. Enables content creators to be able to drip feed content and stay top of mind for that audience.

So, keep listening to today's podcast to learn how to better repurpose your content. Hey, Sean, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Sean McCabe

So glad to be here, Ben. Thanks for inviting me. 

Ben Aston

And I want to start by for those people who might not know who you are and where you've come from. Can you start by just telling us a bit about your brands and how you've transitioned really from being a designer through to a content creator and how that kind of evolution happened going from design to content?

Sean McCabe

Yeah. So, going way back started my first business about 15 years ago, I'm 32. So that was pretty young. And I was repairing computers and, you know, working with clients and invoicing and taxes and accounting, all that goes with running your own business. So that's kind of where I learned business, but then I got into art, like drawing, hand lettering custom letters, you know, like the Coca-Cola logo. It's not a typeface, it's not a font, it's custom, you know. 

I would draw letters like that, just for fun, you know, on the side in my nights and weekends. Uh, but that kind of flourished into a bit of a business. I started getting commissions and requests for that, like magazines and, you know, these different businesses, like City of Las Vegas did like a B2B ad campaign for them, like really fun stuff and was making good money from it.

And so I kind of, just moved into the art world and use all of the knowledge I'd gathered about business to succeed as an artist where I found a lot of starving artists trying to figure out, like, I love my art, but how do I make this my full-time thing? You know, how do I make money? I had all the knowledge about pricing and clients and taught myself about licensing.

So I was getting like quarterly royalty checks and stuff, and like, it was going great. And what's funny is like the people who were in my audience at the time from me posting my artwork were wanting to learn like, yes, how to draw, how to do lettering. But also how was I making a living as a hand lettering artist?

So I started teaching the business side of art. Put together a course called Learn Lettering and worked on it for several months and launched it. And this was my first course is like seven years ago. In the first three days, it made six figures, this like hand lettering course. And I was like, wow, that's crazy.

Uh, I did not expect that at all, but, um, that's kind of what got me into just teaching what I was learning as I went. I started podcasting like, here's what I'm learning about marketing. Here's how I launched a course. You know, here's how I work with clients and price my services. And so gradually, I kind of phased out of art more in favor of teaching the business side of things.

And so that was really, really fun for me. And so that's kind of what I focused on kind of building a community and we've had a conference around that and just teaching people the business side of creative pursuits and more recently, um, we started, cause I would go to conferences and stuff and they're like, Oh cool.

So you make all this content. Can you do that for us? And I'm like, Oh no, no. I just, I just teach how to make content and distribute. But then I thought, wait a second. If I have this demand and I have this community of people who are talented designers and writers and content creators, why don't I just merge the two and start saying "YES" to the inquiries I'm getting and then find the people who are talented and bring it together.

And that's what we've done with our, uh, seanwes Media Agency.

Ben Aston

Awesome. And so obviously you have like two different audiences or all started off there, the people who liked lettering and then when they, then the same people who liked your art enough to be. Was it designers who then were like, Hey man, I really like this stuff.

I want to do this too. Or how did you, how intentional were you about building an audience of business orientated or business? There's a, I guess, a desire to be more business focused artists. 

Sean McCabe

Yeah, it was, it was an intentional pivot, I would say, because over, over a number of years I made about half a million dollars with lettering related educational content and, like, obviously that's, that's incredible, like, like for an artist to be able to do that, like, that's, that's huge, but like, I, I just have a bigger vision for what I want to do. And I realized there is a ceiling on that, you know, I could only grow so much. I could build a team around myself, but I wanted to build something bigger.

And as I started teaching and sharing what I was learning about business, as I went. I found even more passion in that, like helping people get unstuck and pursue their own passions and, and learn how to make money from it. And so I made an intentional pivot to teaching business and sure, some of the artists came along, but like once I started teaching about like course launches and marketing and copywriting, that started kind of garnering more of a generalized audience around business.

Ben Aston

Right. And so obviously content has been part and parcel of what you've been doing right from the start. And obviously lettering in and of itself is very shareable, um, it's engaging, it's visual. Uh, so that helps you build your audience to begin with, but how intentional and purposeful were you in thinking, man, I've got to grow an audience because I'm going to, uh, build a course out of this.

How, I mean, told me about the kind of evolution of your vision as you went from, Oh, I can do this side hustle, which is fun and making money too, man. This is a business. And how, how did that kind of Genesis occur? 

Sean McCabe

Yeah, very unintentional. So at the time I was running a web firm of very small web firm and I was just doing lettering on the side basically every day.

For about two years, every single day, I was just posting a new drawing. And in the beginning those first two years, no one really seemed to care or notice. But somewhere around the two year mark of showing up every day, people, it was like, there was an inflection point and people were like, Ooh, can I get this on a t-shirt?

Can I get prints of this? Or can I hire you to do a logo or a commission? And it was, it was kind of like very slow for two years, and then all of a sudden. So it was definitely not an intentional thing. It was just like, Oh, like there's clearly demand here. There's interest. And I was getting like these inquiries, like, Hey, how are you doing this?

How are you doing that? And I started getting a lot of the same questions. I'm like, you know what? Instead of answering these same questions every day over email, I'll make a little guide. And I just put a guide up on my website. Didn't know anything about email marketing, you know, or anything. I didn't even put an opt-in.

And so like over the course of a year, 200,000 people read that guide and it was number one in Google for the phrase lettering. And I'm like, Oh, I could go deeper here. Like, there's obviously a lot of interest. And I put like an actual email opt-in and like, thousands of people signed up for that. And I was like, okay, I, I could make a course here and go a bit deeper, but it was very like, unintentional.

I kind of just stumbled into this resurgent interest. Like if you look at search trends for lettering or hand lettering at the time, this back in like 2011, you know, it, it was going up like a thousand percent. And I just kind of found myself in the middle of it where it was like, it was pure luck, but it's that kind of like, you know, luck favors the prepared, you know. I'd been like showing up every day for two years with no results.

And then all of a sudden I was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time. 

Ben Aston

Yeah. So, talk to me about those two years with no results because I've been there as that as well. How did you, how did you maintain that tenacity to keep showing up every day, to keep producing content when you're not getting any good feedback? What kept you going? 

Sean McCabe

I've been thinking about this for years. What is the difference? Where, where do you draw the line between this, this tenacity? Like you said, it's almost like a stubbornness of continuing to push forward, determined to see the results, even though they're not there every day. And like, maybe this isn't working. Maybe you should pivot.

Maybe you should stop. Maybe you should do something else. Maybe that's a sign. Like, where's the line between those two things? And I think for me, I can't say that I knew at the time. But I think it was more that I enjoyed the process. I was really passionate about the work. I was doing it for myself. And if no one else saw it, I was still enjoying what I was doing.

Ben Aston

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. And so obviously you lost 200,000 people that first year, because you didn't have an opt-in, uh, but then you had an opt-in and you began to be more intentional about growing your audience. Over the, you know, the time that you've been working on seanwes, can you share maybe looking back what you think your biggest screw up has been in building that audience and building that brand? What's some of the big learnings that you've had?

Sean McCabe

Yeah, there's a few. Uh, the first one was, you know, I was doing a lot of things back in 2010, I would say. Like I was doing, you know, as the web firm era for me. So I was doing user interface design, and I was doing screencasts. I was doing an animation iconography. I was designing fonts. I was doing hand lettering, you know, writing blog posts.

And what I did, it was I would project everything that I was working on. I would tweet everything. I would post everything on Dribbble. I would post everything on Instagram, just anything I was working on. And the problem was, you couldn't really figure out what I was about. And what people do is they, they, for better or worse, they're going to put you in a box.

They have to, you know. Dunbar's number 150 close relationships beyond that we have to simplify. And so when people come across to you, they're like, what are you about? I need to put you in a box, you know, like categorize you so I can wrap my mind around you and we think, Oh, but I'm interesting. I'm different, you know, I've got all these interests and it's like, we all do.

But if you don't clearly curate what you're about, you, you know, selectively project that single focus thing, you go in the junk box. Cause people are like, I don't, I don't know, you know? And so just like with following or subscribing to a magazine or, you know, a TV show. Like, we follow, we're subscribed to things because we want more of the same.

We expect more of the same. We follow someone on Twitter because we're interested in startups and they tweet about startups, you know? Um, and so if you have a clear focus, you're able to get traction. And then of course, over time, you can share more about yourself and your personal life and things like that.

But I decided at that time in 2010, I'm going to stop posting about all of the interface stuff I was doing. All of the illustrations I was making. I said, I'm only going to post lettering. And that was a clear inflection point, but like I was spinning my wheels for the first few years before I did that.

Ben Aston

That's yeah, focus being single-minded and, uh, and being there in front, I think is, is really solid advice. Now I want to kind of switch gears and talk about creating content. We're going to talk about repurposing content, but let's talk about the process of content creation for a minute, because that's how we get to the point of being able to repurpose it.

So can you talk me through, as you create and curate content, um, what your, what your kind of process is? How you develop your backlog of ideas or concepts, and then how you translate or transition those into content, which then we can, we can repurpose? Where do you, where do you start in your ideation process or your, uh, messaging process?

Sean McCabe

Yeah. So it starts with capturing just all of the time, all of the places being ready, having places to capture those ideas as they hit you from. For me, um, obviously on the desktop, I use, uh, the Things app. And so I've got a global keyboard shortcut to add entries to that. And so I use a project that's like, you know, content creation ideas, or blog post ideas, or podcast ideas.

So just immediately, as soon as something comes to me from a conversation like this one, or, you know, a Twitter conversation, I can just add things that way, but when I'm away from my computer, I don't want to lose those ideas. You know, how you always get the best ideas in the shower or like on a run or something like that.

Uh it's because your mind is able to wander. You've given yourself some space while I've got waterproof notes in the shower, and I've got, uh, an LTE Apple watch with the, you know, Siri like AirPods. I can just speak something and it's captured for later. It's so worth it to me. I've gotten $10,000 ideas, a hundred thousand dollar ideas on a run that once you lose that, you know, you, you often don't get it back.

And so for me, it's worth the $15 a month or whatever it is for the LTE on the Apple watch, you know, because it's like, that idea is super valuable. So just capturing. Capture, capture, capture. Separate between creation mode and editing mode. That's a really big one. So like when you're writing, what'll slow you down with writing is trying to edit as you write. You've got to clearly delineate these stages. It's like capture. And then you look at all the ideas you have. What do you want to work on? Okay, let's schedule that for a day. Are you going to record a podcast? Are you going to record a video? Are you going to write a blog post? Whatever it is, produce, record. Get that first draft out and it doesn't, it should not be perfect.

Like if it's perfect, you know, you weren't focused on just getting the raw material out. Like a lump of clay on the table that you can later sculpt into what you want. The writing of that first messy, rough draft is the getting the lump of clay on the table. And so taking that and then editing it and polishing it and then putting it out.

And maybe we can talk about like, how do you determine what format to create in? Like, how do you determine whether you write first or you record a video first? Or, or, or things like that. 

Ben Aston

Yeah. So, well, I'm curious, how did you make that content engaging and how did you know whether it's, uh, an engaging idea or no? Because once we've got a lump of clay on the table, uh, and we're just pouring, pouring out, we just creating, we're not in edit mode, but in that creation mode, how do you stay focused on, uh, whether or not something is going to be engaging, going to be share-worthy? 

Because, uh, at that point we're just kind of in create mode. So when does that kind of share worthiness, or is this good enough to keep on working on to sculpt this into something really beautiful? Or is this just going to stay a lump of clay? Because that's really all it is. 

Sean McCabe

That's such a good question. And I'm so glad you asked that because what makes something shareable and resonate and, and, and actually like have a chance of maybe going viral even is not determined by how you shape the lump of clay. It's it's before that, right? It's, it's the idea in the first place.

And so you want to differentiate between ideas that you just have somewhat randomly and ideas that you've observed in the marketplace, in conversations between people in your target audience or prospects or things like that, users, um. That's where the best things are going to come from. So you want to read minds, you don't want to guess. When it comes to content creation, I've spent years just making whatever came to top of mind and like, I try and make it interesting.

Cause I'm passionate about it. And maybe some people pay attention, but never like, when I simply grab exactly what people are saying, like when you entitle something. The way people phrase it, you know, in those email replies to your autoresponder, in the tweets, in the comments, you know, that's huge when you see patterns there. And that you have to talk to people, you know, like Gary V is really big on this.

Like what he consumes is like the content of the comments on his content. He's not even consuming what a lot of us are producing out there. He's just looking at the people following him. What they're saying and how they're saying it and responding to that. And that's why his content resonates so deeply with his followers.

Uh, but, but it's reading minds, you know. You don't want to ever guess when it comes to content. So it's one thing. If you've got this idea on a run but did that just come randomly or did it kind of resurface from a conversation you had on Twitter that, you know, Oh, this is what people are struggling about, and this is how they describe it.

Ben Aston

Right. So, and I think know being insight driven is so powerful. Um, well, partly because it's way more efficient. We're not just producing what's on our heart and our passion, but we're actually responding to what people really want. So, I mean, you talk about. Listening to what people want, but how, how do you do that?

What's your process? You either talking about keyword research, you're talking about comments and replies and how do you begin to filter this? Is it just a sense that you get, or are you a bit more process-driven about it? 

Sean McCabe

Only very recently, I've been even more intentional because in the previous iteration of my business, I was just creating content about whatever.

And even when I tried to be purposeful in the sense of creating content, at least about what I see people talking about, I wasn't as purposeful about it in terms of connecting the content I created. That was what people were talking about with what I had to offer in terms of what my business sells and how my business makes money and how my business succeeds.

And it's really easy to get those out of alignment. You know, you've kind of got these like three different things. You got to get all in alignment, like what people actually want. I break it down into struggles and goals, you know, what is it that they're struggling with and what is it that they're aspiring to?

What do they want their life to look like? What problems do they want to go away? And then how do they describe that themselves? And then the content I create on those topics. And then those topics being aligned with something that I sell. Because I used to make really great content on topics that didn't relate to things that I sold.

And it's like, great. You have a sales funnel that leads to nowhere. 

Ben Aston

Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. I'm being so guilty of doing this, doing that as well. And I think the challenging thing about it is that we, it can be easy to follow the things we're passionate about. All we think, Oh, well that's low hanging fruit, but then yeah, if it's not taking anyone anywhere, uh, with regards to any kind of a sale process or funnel, then it, it just stands as an island.

And we're like, well, great. We're getting thousands and thousands of views on that, but it's not doing anything for us. So I think that's a good challenge to be presenting ourselves. Now, like, the other thing here is like the cost of creating this content. And I'm curious for you, do you, uh, do you measure ROI on content that you create?

Do you know how much it costs you to produce content or is that, do you use a different metric? 

Sean McCabe

For many years, I had no idea. And especially in the early days, I wasn't calculating it very well at all. And I would think of it as just free if I wasn't paying to have it produced. And it's like, no, that's time.

You know, you have to think about the value of your time. And really, especially a lot of small business owners when they don't, when they're not actually, uh, an employee like on paper and employee in their business, like they don't pull a salary and it's just like, Oh, I have this business. And sometimes I move money from a business bank account to a personal, or maybe it's one, one account, you know, I hope, hopefully, you're separating those. Uh, but it's very easy to get kind of mixed up in all of that, you know, and, and the, the waters are muddied and it's not clear, um, especially when you're not paying yourself, but you have to think in terms of, even if you, yourself, the business owner are producing the content. 

That's not free. You have to think in terms of what if someone else were to do this? What if I were to hire someone to record my podcasts? What if I were to hire someone to write this blog post? How much would that cost? That's the true cost of creating your content. Now, fortunately, that's a little bit easier for me now that I have this agency where we do that for clients and I can be a client of my own agency and the actual cost is very transparent because I know my cost. I know my margin and it's like, okay, cool. I don't have the markup, but this is the hard cost. So if we want to put this out, that's what it costs. As far as like ROI on that, I don't have a super good handle on that.

I mean, I know, like I know how much I'm making from each client. I know our close rate. I know that margin, but like, connecting like quantifying the ROI of like social or other efforts with actual converted clients. That's, it's tricky. I mean, I know you can, that's probably a weak point for us though.

Ben Aston

Yeah. So I'm curious because as we think about like repurposing content and then therefore the effectiveness of content. So, for me the idea of repurposing content would be that, uh, a it's less work just because you don't need to create new content all the time. Uh, most of your audience isn't going to see your thing. So, we can present it a number of times, and then you're not really going to get fatigue because people haven't seen it yet. Just the way the algorithms work when we're thinking about sharing stuff on social. 

Um, but obviously, so it's less work, but also it's more efficient, um, because we're able to create something once and use it again and again. And obviously then our ROI, the return that we get potentially increases because we're able to create one piece of content and use it lots of time. So as we're thinking about, okay, well, how can I be more efficient about the way that I'm creating content?

Um, how can we create content that has legs? It, are there some characteristics of content, and as you're thinking through, again, go back to our lump of clay intrinsically, we want to have something that is built on insight. Is built on something that we know people are going to be interested in.

Uh, but what else do you consider? What else is on your checklist as you're thinking about whether or not a piece of content is worth creating? And how to make it something that is innately repurposable? Are there some characteristics or checklist that you use to kind of evaluate that? 

Sean McCabe

So it all starts with writing. Writing can turn into anything. You read what you've written and you record yourself into a microphone. That's a podcast. You read what you've written. You film yourself while you're recording with a microphone. That's a video. You can turn words into graphics, into websites, into guides, and courses, and books.

There's so much you can do with words. It really all starts with writing and the message. What do you have to say and who is it for? So the way I like to approach it is to create an outline initially. So just, you could think of it as a list of bullets, you know, maybe half a dozen bullets or something.

And what, who, who is this for? What problem are we trying to solve? And what do you have to say? Those are your list of bullets. And then I like to, and I realized, like, not everyone's comfortable on camera, but, um, I would say lean into whatever is your strong suit. If you're a really good writer, write. If you're really, you know, animated and engaging on video, record video.

But the reason I love video is it is so repurposable. Like it can, it can just turn into so many different things. You strip out the audio, you've got the podcast, you clip it, you've got an Instagram post or a Twitter post, or there's just so much you can do. Then you've got the long form video you can put on YouTube.

So I like to start just with a little outline. If you're just beginning, you can make it a little more verbose, maybe closer to a script, right? So you've kind of written this out. That written piece can then become a blog post or it can become an email newsletter, but it's also your reference, your outline for recording that video.

So you record that video long form 20, 30, 60 minutes, however long you want to do. That's a podcast. It's a, it's a video podcast. It's an audio podcast, but it's also a blog post. It's also a newsletter. And then you have this outline where, you know, okay, I touched on these six points. Well, you can then trim out or clip out those moments from the long form video and turn those into individual posts on various platforms.

And so that's kind of a way to get a bunch of pieces of content from just one recording session. 

Ben Aston

Yeah. Which I think is it, which I think is a brilliant idea, because I think sometimes as content publishers, we can think, Oh, we need to publish all these different things. And, um, yeah. And maybe that's the case.

If you're, if the type of content that you're creating is more, um, current, but if we're creating evergreen content, which I think a lot of publishers are doing, because it has legs and last longer by writing 5,000 words, and you've got a 30-minute script, uh, which you can then repurpose in so many different ways.

Uh, and I think also just that, um, that idea of having thematically for the audience, understanding that this is, Oh, you know, Sean's talking about this month. Uh, that that's his thing, um, is actually helps build the brand as well, rather than have lots of different things going on. So in terms of clarity of messaging, I think it, there's also a lot of benefits there as well.

Sean McCabe

And you can think in terms of series too. So, to make it easier for you in your topic planning, and I've got a, I've got a great video lesson. It's from one of my courses, but I make it free. If you search for 'How to Create Five Months of Content in Five Minutes', it's like my editorial calendar method where like really quickly, you can, you can create this series that spans over months and you just have all your topic planned out for the next three, four, five, six months.

It's really great. But you can think in terms of a series where you pick a theme, like build a profitable agency and then break it down into parts. Part, you know, four or part five, and each of those parts can have a few sub-bullets, you know, and, and each one of those becomes a recording or an episode or a blog post.

And so you think you, you sit down once. You have a planning session and you just break it down, you know, what's, what's the end result? We want a profitable agency. Okay. Well, there's a lot into that, you know? How do you, how do you start? What's your flagship service? How do you price it? Where do you find clients? What about hiring? What about process? 

All of those things can become parts and individual serialized episodes, and just really quickly, you're able to iterate this series that spans months where you don't have to plan again till the next quarter. 

Ben Aston

So obviously this is, or the success of repurposing content is predicated on the fact that we're creating content.

Initially, that initial lump of clay is built upon and an insight. Someone has a problem. We're presenting them with a solution and we're building, expanding on that solution so that it's relevant. But do you ever come across where this time where you've tried to build some content around an insight and you soon realize you've created all this content, but then you realize that you're not really hitting the mark?

Um, but you've just then put all this effort into creating and repurposing all this content. And have you ever come across that or had to help to reconfigure? 

Sean McCabe

Yeah, I would say most often, most often it's as a result of just kind of spraying and praying, you know. Just throwing things against the wall, seeing what sticks, like not really having an ear to the ground or a finger on the pulse of that market or that audience, you know, like you're just.

Oh, I think I should create content on this topic because reason, you know, or it's trendy or whatever, but like, are you actually talking to people in that space? You know, do you really have a sense of what's going on and what they're struggling with or what their goals are? And when I do that more often, the content that I create resonates. And the other thing I would do, that's just, you know, a mistake is.

Just once again, making content about whatever. Just whatever I'm feeling instead of something that relates to what I sell. So if it relates to what you sell, chances are you have better insights because you've worked with clients or customers in that space and that those insights are going to make your content better.

And then just as I'm thinking about it on the, on the topic of ROI, you can get a better as well. It's, man. It's so hard to try to quantify the true ROI. We wanna, we want to connect it to like dollars and like accounts converted and whatever, and like, like, okay, that's, that's the ROI. But I think there's a lot of intangible ROI that you get from content, which really content is just building brand. Brand is reputation.

You know, every one of us has a reputation. It can be good or it can be bad. But as people we have reputations and we call that a brand. You know, when some people are like, Oh, it's a buzz word. But like, that's really what it is. It's its reputation, its expectation of quality of, you know, customer service of whatever, right? 

And that reputation is facilitated by conversations you have with people. And word of mouth and people spreading the word. And before the internet, we're just having conversations one-to-one and then you know, maybe you're on a stage and it's one to many, and then they talk amongst themselves.

But the internet is just scaling those conversations. Content is conversation at scale. And so you're building your reputation. You're building your brand at scale. And what is the value of a positive brand perception? What is the value of a good reputation? What is the value of when I put content about like here, want clips, we can make clips for you. Go to DailyContentMachine.co, and someone sees that, and they're not in my target audience. And they're not going to sign up for me and they're not going to become a client, but they come to know me as the guy who does the Daily Content Machine, and it can help you repurpose your content. 

And they tell someone else about me. Like, what is the value of people who won't even buy from me, but know what I'm about and spread the word? That's something that you can't quite quantify. And, and I think people may give up on content marketing a bit early because they can't see, uh, they can't see the value of that for the next one or two years.

Ben Aston

Right. Yeah. And I, and sometimes that's how long, that's the lead time it takes for someone to go through the funnel from unawareness through to awareness, through to developing trust and believability, and then really evaluating what you have to sell. And then, finally deciding to buy it. Um, I think that journey is rarely a Oh, like a five minute thing. In our case, in terms of the course that we sell, like it's six to nine months between someone first coming to our website to actually buying something.

And through that time, everything that we're pushing out, everything that we're publishing reinforces that brand identity positively or negatively. Like, should I, should I trust these people? Are they worth paying money to? Um, so yeah, it can be good. 

Sean McCabe

You don't, you don't see the impact of that content when they're, they're making the buying decision. And they're, they're about to make that decision and what pushes them over the edge is like, I trust these people cause I, cause I've seen them over time. Like you don't see the influence that has on the decision in that moment. 

Ben Aston

A hundred percent. So in terms of, I mean, we've talked about creating scripts, outlining content, making sure it's based on insights.

What other kinds of ideas do you have around making more of content that we're already creating? How do you, how do you help, how do you help content have legs? I mean, sure we can, we can chop it up into lots of different pieces, but, but what else should we be thinking about when we're thinking about repurposing our content and making sure that that's effective?

Sean McCabe

Yeah. Okay. So a few things. First, first one is realize that different people consume differently. Different people learn differently and they're different from you. So you don't watch YouTube. You don't use Pinterest. You don't use TikTok. You know, when I said that just now. One of those you're like, yeah, I do.

And the other two, you're like, Oh yeah, I don't. You know, but like, we're, we're all different. And so we, we tend to want to prioritize the, the ways and the mediums in which we consume and discount those that we're not fond of, but everyone consumes differently. That's why it's so important to repurpose because some people just want to read.

And that's how they consume better. And they'd rather read a transcript of your episode than watch the video or listen to the audio. Other people are like, I don't have time. The only time I have time is when I'm at the gym or I'm running and I want to just have it in my ears and give me the audio version.

I don't want to read the 5,000-word blog posts. So just formats and different consumption and people learning differently. Uh, that's important. And then, remind me the question. Um, cause I had a couple others. 

Ben Aston

Yeah. How, how can we get more out of the content that we created?

Sean McCabe

Oh, thank you. Yeah. So what I, what I tell clients is there's a few, like basically you're working too hard. In a lot of cases you're actually already creating content and you don't even realize it. And so here's what I mean, like one really low-hanging fruit is if you ever are on a podcast interview, for instance. Oftentimes, these podcasts interviews are audio-only much to my chagrin because I tell everyone, film your podcast, film your podcast.

It's free content, but even if you're interviewed on someone else's podcast and it's audio only, turn your own camera on. You know, webcam, iPhone on a stand, whatever, just film yourself while you're being interviewed. And when you're being interviewed, you're going to deliver naturally in these bite-sized pieces that make perfect little clips and you can just clip out that moment and post that. That's free content for you. You're already creating it. 

Another thing we tell clients is we, we love Q and A. Q and A is so powerful. Uh, whether it's a live Q and A, you know, on Instagram or YouTube or wherever else. Or it could be you solicit questions in advance. You know, reply to this tweet, reply, reply to this newsletter with your questions or a Facebook group or wherever it is, right? 

And you solicit those questions in advance. And you've got a list of maybe 20 or 30 questions. In 30 minutes, you could answer all of those. Say the next question is this. Every single answer to a question is a clip. And when I say clip, I just mean a piece of content. Like it could be a video that lives on Instagram or Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever, but it could also be transcribed as, you know, three, you know, three answers in this week's newsletter and you drop that in your newsletter and there's content there. Uh, so Q and A is also really good. 

Uh, what was the last one? Oh, it's just, yeah. When you show up to record a podcast or whatever, you know, obviously we have Daily Content Machine for our clients. We're creating daily content. There's seven days in a week. Every day, we're putting out content for them. So if we tell them, Hey, you give us the recording, we'll find all the best moments. 

You don't have to tell us the timestamps. You don't have to come up with the titles. We have writers. We're going to do all that for you. So like, don't worry, we'll find the best stuff. But, if you want to, you can prepare seven bullets or seven takeaways in an outline. And so you show up. You don't have to go to minute 60.

You don't have to record an hour. Maybe it only takes you 28 minutes to cover the seven points. Well, there you go. That's guaranteed daily content for seven days. So just thinking in terms of sevens and like chopping something up later, you're covered for every day of the week. 

Ben Aston

That's awesome. Yeah. And one tool, if you are trying to do this, just so we're going to talk about your service in a second, but one of my favorite tools at the moment is Descript.

Uh, I don't know if you've come across that, but it's a service. You just record something, plop your video in, it transcribes it instantly. You can edit it, um, on the fly. Take out your ums and ers, but also it enables, makes, you can annotate it makes editing a lot quicker to find, okay, what are those interesting parts of it?

Sean McCabe

And then the, the killer feature is, is by, so you drop your video in. It transcribes the whole thing. Instead of editing the old way, scrubbing on a timeline, looking at wave forms. What was this that I said here? You just delete text. So there was a sentence where you went on a tangent and you said, Oh, nevermind, select the text of that sentence.

Hit backspace. It doesn't just remove it from the transcript. It removes it from the media. It actually cuts that out of the video. So you edit media by editing text. Descript is brilliant and I love it. 

Ben Aston

Yeah. So, I mean, tell us about your Daily Content Machine service, which I know you've, you've been on a hiatus really for a while, as you've been developing this service and working out.

Okay. How can you actually turn repurposing content into a service that people can buy? So tell us a bit about how that works and relates to what we've just been talking about. 

Sean McCabe

Yeah. So Daily Content Machine, we turn your long-form show into daily short clips for social media. So the biggest value of the service is all you have to do is press record and then stop.

And you're done. The end result is you get to be everywhere every day, automatically. We find all of the best moments in your hour long show or whatever it is. Every single thing you said that was insightful, or maybe your guests said that was insightful. We're finding that. We're moving the tangents, the ums, the us, the likes, the, you know, is all the filler content.

Nothing is left, but just the essence of the message. So we make you look good. Our clients say, I can't believe that was me. You know, I just looked like a professional speaker and I know I stumble over my words all the time. We make you look good. And then we write engaging titles. So we do research, learn about your audience and what is it that they want to know.

What would they search for? How would they search for it? And so we're writing behind the scenes. We actually write 10 titles for every clip every day. And two writers narrow it down to the best title. So we really work hard on that. And everything's polished. The captions are better. I'll be watching Netflix and I'm like those captions, that wouldn't have passed our quality standards, you know. Like just perfect flawless captions and, you know, designing the cover images and all of that. So it's all the different aspect ratios, fit to the proper length and then writing custom descriptions. So our writers write descriptions so that when we post the clip, it's not just like, uh, watch the video, you know, it like it summarizes it. It's engaging.

So all you have to do. I built this for myself. I was like, all I want to do is show up once a week and just hit record and sit here for an hour and then stop and sync the footage over Dropbox. And I don't want to be, I don't want to be involved with anything else. Just make me look good and put it everywhere.

Ben Aston

Yeah. And I think that's, that's great. Isn't it? Cause I think as a content creator, I think one of the most, uh, boring things, I'm going to be honest. It is watching yourself again and again and again and again, and I think you begin to lose sight. As the, as the creator, you can sometimes lose sight of the insightful things that you say, or the interesting things you say, because to you, it's so obvious because you said it. But when someone else gets to edit it for you, they bring a perspective and a point of view that's different and unique from your own, which I think can actually help that process.

So actually just turning up and recording and letting that be, um, I think is brilliant. 

Sean McCabe

That's a great observation. I hadn't ever even thought of it that way, that. Sure. The nice thing for you is you don't have to say, Oh, at timestamp 28 minutes and 34 seconds I said a good thing. So clip that out. Like that's nice. But I didn't think about the fact that it's actually better if you let someone on the outside, who's not you with a fresh perspective. Who's thinking about what is the audience get out of this? And they find the good moments and they're filtering it through that thought process. You're totally right. It's going to be even better than if you did it yourself. 

Ben Aston

Yeah. And so obviously this, I mean, the other benefit is that you're not doing the work yourself. So can you talk me through, I mean, you talked about the writers, you obviously got some editors in there. What's the, what's the process that happens once the video gets dropped? Um, well, how do you choose these highlights? You write the clips around them, but what's the kind of team that's involved in making all this happen? 

Sean McCabe

That's a great question. Yeah. I mean, if you were to hire a full-time employee to do all of this, they would have to be a rockstar. So like number one, they'd have to be the most talented person. They'd have to be like a designer, an animator, a marketer, a copywriter, you know, like just so many things.

Quality assurance like a project manager. They're on time. They're, they're organized. It's it's like, it's, it's crazy. So you don't obviously have to pay them a lot. But then someone who's that talented, it probably doing something on their own, you know. So we have like, uh, three or four different people that are involved in any one batch of client work.

So in a given week, our team is performing 1300 tasks to produce one week of daily content for you. Which by the way, those, those clips are optimized for the top platforms. So you're actually getting 150 video posts per month. Like that, that's the output for showing up once a week and recording for an hour.

Um, but we've got writers, we've got video editors and then we have quality assurance persons. Uh, so, so like the last one is what I see, uh, almost no other service having. Like, first of all, other services, they're going to ask you for timestamps. They're going to ask you what template do you want? What title do you want?

Where does it start? Where does it? And it's like, this is a whole job. I have to fill out a 20 field form every time I want to clip. We're just handling it all automatically for you. That's really nice, but I, uh, maybe, maybe some people don't care. The thing is we, we care. We think all the small details add up to a quality perception, you know. A quality brand for our client cares about their brand.

They sweat the details. They care about quality and we make them look good. We actually care about it just as much as you. So like, the captions. They're not flashing with blank white frames in between. They're not rapping with one lonely word and looking unbalanced, you know. They're ending at the end of a sentence.

They're ending at a comma like a human is editing every single caption card. So there's other services like, Oh, auto transcribe. And it just like, wraps it at the end of the line and it flashes and like we're actually sweating the details. So yeah, it's a lot of work, but, um, we've built a lot of systems for it.

Ben Aston

Cool. And so obviously, yeah, you've been working on this project spinning up this service for a year or so. What's, now that it's done, what's next for you? What's uh, yeah, what's the next big thing you're gonna be working on? 

Sean McCabe

Well, I wouldn't say that it's done. Um, but, but we've, we've been really focused on Daily Content Machine, but behind the scenes we've been developing out other services.

So we, we're not like, you know, public with this, but we have a video podcast magic service. So we're actually doing full podcast, video podcast production. So your video podcasts, your audio podcasts, summary, shownotes, compilation of all the links mentioned in the episode, transcript, title written, cover graphics made, scheduling automatically for you.

Uh, so we do that. And then, um, a little preview of the future is another service we're developing is called, uh, Just Video Magic, where for clients who want like a, a fancier, polished, animated, engaging weekly, medium form, like YouTube video. Where you just show up, you record like raw footage, but then it turns into something engaging with music and cuts and B-roll in texts and titles and animation.

Uh, we're going to handle that for you as well. So, uh, I'm all in on seanwes Media, uh, over the next, probably five years and just going to focus on, like, we've got this pool of talented people to do creative stuff. I want to help people like me, busy business owners, you know, get out there and get the word out and make them look good without them having to either do the editing work themselves, or try to piece together a team that can do all of this because we've streamlined it so much.

You're going to get a higher quality for a lower price by outsourcing. 

Ben Aston

Yeah. And what else beyond the world of, uh, the agency that you're working on and the services that you've [00:46:00] created with that, your own content that you're creating? Um, tell us out what else is on your mind at the moment? 

Sean McCabe

Yeah. So I would say a big passion of mine is, uh, sabbaticals and like purposeful time off.

So in 2014, you know, I'm kind of an all-or-nothing guy. Like I have workaholic tendencies, you know. Like I would just go, go, go, and, uh, you know, I was realizing as much as I love my work. I can't work, you know, 18 hour days, seven days a week all the time. And I just didn't know how to slow down. Like what is slowing down look like, uh, for an all or nothing kind of person? 

So I'm like, I think I need to go all in on a break and like, what does that look like? I start researching that and I come across this concept of sabbaticals and like, Oh, you can take a year sabbatical, like professors in academics. Like they take a year sabbatical to study and travel and whatever.

And I'm like, that's too long. I need something shorter term. And so it just not a play on numbers. I'm like, well, there's this there's seven days in a week. And there's these professors taking off a year, every seventh year. What about every seventh week? And so I said, okay, I'm going to just experiment. And I just started sharing this journey.

I'm like, I'm going to try taking off every seventh week and do these seventh-week sabbaticals. And it was a game-changer. Like I've just got so many ideas. I was so refreshed. I came back recharge and I was like, how am I going to make sure the team's working while I'm on my sabbatical? I'm like, wait a second.

Do I believe in this concept or not? You know, if I believe in it, I should give it to the team as well. Like, you know, well-rested, happy people do better work. That's a competitive advantage. And so I started paying my team to take off every seventh week as a sabbatical. And it's like, the heartbeat of the organization is just been so incredible.

Like our one employee was working on an album for like six years. In a couple of sabbatical weeks, he finished recording his entire album. You know, and another person worked on a book. Another person worked on a short film and another person traveled to, you know, on a trip to the beach. And like, it's just so cool to see that.

And it's, it's such cool stories. And so my vision for this is like, I think we're chronically burned out, uh, at a low level as a society, you know. We're just kind of pushing forward, pushing forward. You know, you've got two weeks vacation out of the year, you know, everyone's looking forward to that, but like, we're just burned out and, and we can pretend like we're not.

I think it's better to treat employees and, and your workers as humans. You know, we're human beings and we need that rest and that recharge. And it needs to be more often than just two weeks out of the 52 weeks. And so my, my mission, my vision is by the year 2047, I want to get every company in the world to pay their employees to take off every seventh week as a sabbatical.

And I think I can do it. And I think I can show them. This is a competitive advantage. And when you share the stories of what your employees have done on their sabbaticals, what they've created, you know. Like Google used to have this 20% time on Fridays, they could work on whatever they wanted. That's how Gmail was born.

You know, there there's all these cool things that are gonna gonna come as a result of purposeful time off. So that's something I'm really passionate about. 

Ben Aston

That's cool. Yeah. I, I, uh, I really liked the idea. I mean, I take quite a lot of vacation myself already, but I think being, um, what I think is interesting about it is it's a it's on a cycle and it, it, it's introducing healthy rhythms into people's lives. 

Where I think often we can get caught up in the kind of yeah. The conveyor belt of stuff to do, but forcing that break for people and thinking about, okay, what's the most impactful thing that I can now work on in my next seven-week period. Um, it's it's like the idea is a personal sprint, et cetera.

Sean McCabe

Yes, exactly. It's these built-ins sprints like six week sprints instead of like, pushing on for forever. It's like, what do we want to accomplish in these next six weeks? You know, what, what are you going to accomplish? And it just, it's these nice little sprints that, that just get created automatically to where, you know, people think, Oh, well, that's good.

You rest and you recharge, maybe you don't get as much done. And I'm like, no, no, no. We're more productive because we're thinking every seven-week period, it's like, okay, what do we want to get done? And let's get it done in six weeks. And that's so much more purposeful that it's net more productive. 

Ben Aston

Yeah, that's great.

Well, let's wrap up with a lightning round. I want to just ask you a few questions. I want to know, firstly, what is the best advice you think you've ever received? 

Sean McCabe

Wow. The right advice at the wrong time is the wrong advice.

I've found that one the hard way. 

Ben Aston

Tell me which of your personal habits do you think has contributed most to your success? 

Sean McCabe

Building a writing habit. It will change your life and change your career. You don't have to write a lot. It's not about the number of words that you write every day. It's just about consistency. If you can write a sentence a day, that turns into a paragraph, turns into, you know, 20 minutes or whatever, whatever it is, just some kind of consistent writing habit.

That's the fuel for everything in your business. Like the current iteration of my agency, that's now like 80% of, of revenue for all of our businesses. It was an idea that I wrote on a waterproof notepad in 2015. You know, so a writing habit, uh, write ideas down, don't try and remember them in your head. That, that that's going to be huge.

Ben Aston

Can you share, uh, a resource or a tool that you absolutely love, that you personally use regularly? 

Sean McCabe

Yes. Grain.co. Grain is a game changer. It will transcribe your zoom recordings automatically in real time and allow you to, with keyboard shortcuts, create highlights or clips from your zoom calls. So you highlight what you said in the transcript.

You can see it happening in real time. The words appear in front of your face. Highlight it. Click create highlight. You have a video clip that you can now share with someone on the team. You can, you can grab client testimonials. You can grab customer user stories. You can post it in Slack. You can embed it on your website, share it into tweet.

And with Zapier integration, you can even have this all happen automatically where you're in real time, on a call, something happens. You hit a keyboard shortcut, it clips that moment and automatically post it to a Slack channel. That's and there's so much more, you can like combine highlights into stories like Instagram stories.

It's the future of remote work and any company that has remote workers who doesn't use Grain is at a serious disadvantage. So grain.co. Big fan. 

Ben Aston

Cool. Well, book would you recommend, and why? 

Sean McCabe

I would say The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone. Um, that's just going to get you to think bigger and increase the amount of action that you're taking.

Uh, it, it, it will just completely rewire the way that you're thinking and you'll realize how small that you're thinking and how, how disappointing it can be to reach a small goal. And, and just it's, it's just such a, it's just such a good book in terms of mindset. So, yeah, best book that I would recommend is The 10X Rule.

Ben Aston

Cool. And for someone at the start of their content community creation journey, what is one piece of advice that you would give them to help them succeed? 

Sean McCabe

Pick an audience whose problems you're comfortable living with every single day, because if you're going to succeed, you need to know your target audience intimately. Ideally better than themselves.

So when I was writing the Overlap book, for instance, which is start a business while working a full-time job. I'm learning about people in that position. I had, you know, pre-pandemic times, you know, 300 com in-person conversations with people over several years at conferences and meetups to learn, you know, what was it that was keeping them stuck.

And after hundreds of those conversations, I was able to articulate how people felt better than they ever could. And often in cases where they had never articulated how they felt, I was able to tell them exactly how they were feeling, because I knew them. And so many people start a business or a community, or start creating content in a space or for an audience or market that they think is just going to be opportunistic.

Like, you know, Oh, Bitcoin's popular, I'll get into that. And it's like, you have to know who you're trying to reach, and you have to be willing to sit with them and listen to them and live with their problems. And that needs to be something you're passionate about. So if you don't have that and you don't, if you think about the problems your target audience has and it just roll your eyes and you don't like hearing about it or listening to it, you're going to have a hard time. 

Ben Aston

Good stuff. Thanks for all that advice. Um, so where can people find you? Where's the best people to find out what you're doing about the services you provide? Um, where should they go? 

Sean McCabe

Yeah. DailyContentMachine.co. You can find out about our Daily Content Machine service. And then, um, uh, you can find me on social media at seanwes.

So SEANWES. You can find me like Twitter, Instagram, places like that. 

Ben Aston

Awesome. Sean, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been great having you with us. 

Sean McCabe

Thanks so much, Ben. 

Ben Aston

And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on indiemedia.club. Until next time. Thanks so much for listening.