We are always interested to learn about the different ways people are building sustainable, profitable businesses using no-code tools. In this series we talk to founders and team members of companies to see how they have combined technologies together to create their own no-code stack that works for them.
Bringing you inspiration on how you can solve your own operations challenges, find new alternative tools and discover creative ways to combine code, low code and no-code tools to create your own business.In this series we’ll be sharing the no-code stack of a company or project, breaking it down into the component parts to show you behind the scenes to see how it’s all done!
This week we are chatting to Jaclyn Schiff from PodReacher.
PodReacher provides content writing services for podcasters.
Hey Jaclyn, welcome to the No-Code Stack series. Can you give us some background on PodReacher. What is it, what products and services do you offer and who is it for?
PodReacher is a specialized writing service that transforms the spoken word into text. We turn podcast episodes (or any form of recorded content) into SEO-optimized blog posts. We also create high-quality podcast show notes.
So can you take us through the background to PodReacher. How did it start out, what was the first thing that you created?
As an avid podcast listener, I’ve found the growth of the industry exciting. A while back, I noticed people looking for writers to re-purpose episodes into blog posts. I’ve worked in journalism and content strategy, so I immediately understood how re-purposing could be very valuable. Around the same time, I also noticed that a lot of the top podcasters invest heavily in re-purposing and distributing their content. I decided to start testing the market for the service in 2018.
In the beginning, PodReacher offered edited transcripts, and I thought most people would gravitate towards that. But it soon became clear that the biggest value was from turning episodes into articles/blog posts. Now, we focus on that and have repurposed 1,000+ episodes, including some that have gone on to be published in Business Insider, TechCrunch, CIO and several major industry publications.
Let’s take a look at your current no-code stack for PodReacher today. Let’s break down the tools you use, what you use them for and how they all fit together.
Website Builder
I used Umso to create v2 of our website. The tool offers some excellent templates that I was able to work from and then I got a developer to create a customized WordPress theme based on what I’d put together. I found it much easier and faster to make it and tweak it myself than to try to explain the ideas in my head to someone else and then have them come up with a design. I can thank Tyler Gillespie for the inspiration.
Payment Platform
We use SPP, which is integrated with Stripe. We offer subscriptions as well as a-la-carte and custom options and SPP offers a good billing solution with an integrated customer dashboard system.
I use MailChimp for emailing our full list, and I often use GMass to communicate with current and past clients as well as for occasional special offer emails. With GMass, I am assured that emails land in the inbox (not the promotions tab). We also leverage Sumo list builder tools to help build our email list.
Design & Branding
This is an area I haven’t put much emphasis on yet, quite honestly. I see a lot of people who start businesses and spend a lot of time and energy fussing with website design, a logo etc. Creating the logo for a new business is fun, but design won’t get you customers in the early days. PodReacher’s current logo was thrown together by the first web designer I worked with. I wanted to hit a certain revenue goal before getting it professionally designed. We hit that a while ago, but I keep focusing on other aspects of the business. I do want to create a logo that better communicates our brand, so it’s on my priority list. I’ll likely use one of the crowdsourced design platforms! As for other tools, we use Canva for blog and email images. So easy!
Organisation Tools
We use ClickUp docs for our SOPs and client briefs. It is helpful that you can embed videos in the doc, so you can see everything you need within the same interface. I’m also a fan of Google Keep for my own tasks and checklists. Everyone seems to be in love with Loom these days, and I am totally on that train! I often share team feedback in Loom, and I also use it with clients and prospects.
Project Management Tools
We use Trello. I have always really liked the interface and I appreciate some of the recent changes on the platform — like the enhancements they’ve made to cards. We keep editing and writing resources on devoted cards.
CRM
We use Streak. I love that it seamlessly works within G Suite.
Are there any other no-code tools that you use that are specific to the services that PodReacher provides?
Transcripts are integral to what we do. Many clients use Descript (which we love!) and share the transcripts with us that way. Internally, we use Otter.ai and Happy Scribe to generate AI transcripts. I am very curious about all the emerging AI writing tools like Copy.ai and Conversion.ai. I think they can help us deliver even better content more efficiently, so I’m exploring ways to add them to our process.
Are there any parts of your business that you found required code snippets, low code, or custom coded tools or apps to support your business. Perhaps to deliver features that weren’t possible with no-code tools at the time?
The website is custom code. We also leverage Zapier quite a bit to get information from our client dashboard (SPP) to Trello and that has required some custom code.
Is there an integration, feature, or new no-code tool that you might add to the PodReacher no-code stack in future?
There are so many tools out there that exist already that I’m curious to see how they could help us! So many I haven’t had time to try out yet. Bubble is definitely one of those!
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