Rosa Linda Román: 00:00 Hey everyone, before we get started, a quick note. This is one of the early episodes recorded back in 2015 before we left New Mexico and moved onto the sailing catamaran Dawn Treader and before we became a fulltime traveling family. As you can imagine a lot has happened since this was recorded but I do hope you enjoy hearing this backstory. If you want to stick around until the end I will share how to find out what we are doing now. But first, a step back in time before we went from New Mexicast to New Mexi-Castaways. Enjoy! Rosa Linda Román: 01:19 Hello and welcome to New Mexicast audio edition. I'm Rosa Linda Roman, your host and creator of the show New Mexicast, which if you're new here is an enchanting show featuring interesting people in places in New Mexico and beyond. But here on the audio edition, this is my sounding board. It is a place that I, Rosa Linda, share tips and tricks and thoughts along the way as I am working to revamp the brand New Mexicast and really create some new, uh, things that I think are going to be a lot of fun. So welcome, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I'm just finished dropping my kids off at school and I am heading to go do a Blab show with Natalie Goldfein of My Habit Upgrade and I'm also trying to connect with Jason Rullo. Jason is a drummer in a band called Symphony X. He's actually world famous and he also happens to be one of my good friends' husband. Rosa Linda Román: 01:39 So, um, and he's become a friend of ours, um, over the years and they have two kids that are close to my kids' ages. And so anyway, long story short, I thought it would be very appropriate because Jason just went on tour with his band and they're on their European tour. Uh, I thought it would be very appropriate to start doing some interviews from the road, especially because if you go back through the archives of New Mexicast, uh, I, the TV show, I did a story about Jason. Not only does he have this band that he's in, but he also owns a food truck called Joe Mamas Famous Foods. And it is some of the best food that I've ever had. His Green Chili meatball sub is amazing, um, or meatball sandwich. And, uh, I think all of you should, if you come to New Mexico, you gotta find Joe Mamas. Rosa Linda Román: 02:39 But as I'm doing all of this experimenting and setting things up and figuring out what the next chapter is going to look like, I am really trying to make sure to stay on top of the new technology and test things out in real time. Part of it is, as I've said before, is just ripping off the bandaid and doing it and not letting my fear of not being perfect get in the way of actually doing it. So in the case of Blab or Periscope, which are the two live streaming, um, programs or apps that I'm currently using, I really just have to set aside my need to have it perfectly produced like I have in the past with stories that I've produced for New Mexicast and simply get it done. And that's part of what I'm doing today. Natalie and I have this agreement with her My Habit Upgrade app where we are doing live shots are live shows twice a week and this allows her to get her message out there, uh, for her brand because she has these great techniques that help people improve their lives. Rosa Linda Román: 03:57 And it also gives me the practice of hosting the show again and testing out the technology. A lot of troubleshooting. We've had a lot of trouble because she's on a PC and she's got a lot of security installed on her computer and she, and so we've been trying to troubleshoot that. We've been troubleshooting audio and trying to figure out why she can't, um, have a microphone plugged into her computer at the same time as a headphone or, or hear anything. Um, so she could, I could hear her, but she couldn't hear me. And there's all of these little things that we're working out by doing these twice weekly shows. Um, the funny thing is we don't really have any viewers yet. Some people will watch it in replay, which is nice, but we'd have one or two people checking into the show. So obviously if anyone thinks this is like the way to get a windfall and, and, um, overnight make a huge financial success, uh, I, I would say that's not true, but for me it's perfect for experimenting. Rosa Linda Román: 05:07 It reminds me a lot of my days back when I was trying to figure out how to build a website with Wordpress, trying to figure out how to um, create a feed through Feed Burner. Uh, this is back in 2007 and 2008 that I was working on building New Mexicast, the video podcast and the technology was pretty new. There were a lot of things that I had no clue about based on my broadcasting background. If you're new here, you can go through the archives to hear the story. But basically I'm a long time traditional broadcaster who made the transition into independent work and I'm still making the transition. I still learn every day something new and that's what this audio edition is for to share some of that with you and really just, um, brainstorm and vent and maybe a little bit about the process, uh, today. Rosa Linda Román: 06:01 What is on my mind besides going home to do these live interview shows, if you will. Hopefully I'll connect with Jason who I think is in Manchester today. Um, and if we haven't been able to do one yet, uh, we just started the process of trying to figure out how to do it. They have limited internet capabilities where in the venues he's at, they're very slow, very pixelated. So we're trying to make it work. But either way it's a good learning experience for me and hopefully it helps both Natalie and Jason in their brand building process. But the thing that's on my mind right now is not just brand building but team building and this is a big thing for me and it's not easy for me to break through mentally as you know, if you follow the show for any length of time. I have always been a one woman band as long as I've done independent work. Rosa Linda Román: 07:01 And even when I worked at stations, it was a small team that I worked with. It was either I was a one woman band or I worked with photographer and an editor or maybe a photographer who served as the editor. And we put together stories and we worked very quickly, not so quickly as an independent person because I'm doing everything. But over the years I've done every part of New Mexicast everything from the website as I mentioned to getting the feed out and editing and reporting and hosting and logging and you name it. I did it. Uploading the episodes, getting it on the air, doing the promotional stuff, trying to drum up sales for ad revenue and all of it was done by me. And I am learning thanks to Chalene Johnson and Team Johnson. I know I mentioned them a lot, but that's who I'm listening to right now. Rosa Linda Román: 07:57 And so I got to give credit where credit is due. I know that what she teaches about the need to outsource is critical to my making the transition and turning this show into what I envision it will be. It's not automatic for me to know how to do this. It's not like I have, um, a sense of how to manage a team or help people, um, know what to do to help me. My biggest inclination, and this is true from parenting too, is I can do it. I'll just take care of it. It don't worry about it. I got it. And that has served me very well in the past. Um, when I was the first person ever in my family to go to college, uh, out of a very large family, I really found a way to make it work. I paid own way. Rosa Linda Román: 08:55 I did not. I did, you know, find some scholarships and I got help where I could. And I got creative and I really, it, it's a source of pride for me that I figured out how to do it myself. And so from that I learned that if I wanted something done or I wanted to achieve a big goal, I needed to do it myself and I needed to do everything myself. Well now I'm a grown up, or at least I like to pretend to be. And I realize from listening to Shalene and other mentors of mine, virtual mentors, that this does no, this idea of I have to do everything. It does not serve me anymore. And the reason it doesn't serve me is because I'm busy spending my time doing things that I'm not good at or learning how to do things and become proficient at them or sufficiently proficient to get a job done. Rosa Linda Román: 09:54 When if I can hire someone to do that task, they can do it in a fraction of the time and free me up to do the thing that I am best at. And so that's what I'm working on. Outsourcing and learning the process of outsourcing. Now saying what I'm best at is a big step and hard for me. Very hard for me. But I know as I'm talking to you on this, on this recording, I am best at connecting with people. I'm best at interviews and helping to tell people's stories and shining a light on the thing that is great about that person. I feel like I'm really good at being a bridge between people. I can take complex things and boil them down into ways that other people can understand, maybe who are not in the industry of the person I'm interviewing. And I just love seeing the light in a person and sharing that with the world. Rosa Linda Román: 10:52 That is the work I want to do and that is what I'm working toward. And in order to do that, I need to stop doing the things that suck my time and uh, don't really support that part of what I enjoy and what I'm good at. And a big part of it is I am a full time mom. I take care of my kids. Obviously when they're in school, I have some time to work and I'm getting things done. But as my family is preparing to move onto a boat, a big transition we have to make is we are going to be homeschooling the kids. And so I want to manage my schedule and my business in a way that not only supports my brand and allows me to explore these fun technologies that I'm so excited about, but also allows me to be present with my kids. Rosa Linda Román: 11:43 Especially as we start to explore the world in new ways. I want to share that with people but not to the detriment of my relationships with my kids and my husband. So all of this to say that I am thinking a lot about outsourcing and I had a really big um, moment, if you will, yesterday when I finally posted my first job posting on Upwork. Now Upwork used to be ELance and I believe it also used to be ODesk. Upwork is a, for those of you that don't know, it's a place that you can hide, find and hire freelance workers and you can hire them all over the world. But in this case, um, well I dunno, I don't know yet who I'm going to hire. When I posted the job I a, first of all it was very scary. Let me back up a minute. Rosa Linda Román: 12:37 So now I can get nice and quiet cause I arrived at my location so I can talk for a minute before I have to go in and get ready for the interviews. So the thing that the process of posting a job on ELance or now a Upwork is you have to write a title and you have to write a description and then you have to decide if you're going to be paying them by the hour or paying them by the job. You have to decide how long you think the job is going to take and um, give as many details as you can, put some tags in there for what you're looking for in terms of, um, you know, the kind of skills the person needs. So in this case, I posted a job for final cut, uh, editing. I want the person to be final cut editing on FCPX, which is Final Cut Pro 10, because I'm a certified pro in final cut 10 and I would like to be able to see if the person is, has, has a good sense of editing and it's easier for me to do that in a program that I'm familiar with. Rosa Linda Román: 13:52 So I feel like since it's my very first time trying to outsource, I wanted it to be in a program that I know. And also if it turns out to be total disaster and the job they do is not what I wanted, I can still just clean it up and edit it myself. Um, so I posted that I'm looking for an editor for a quick edit job and that it, the ideal candidate could potentially lead to more works in the future, more jobs in the future. Uh, specifically what I'm doing is I'm helping a friend of mine, um, and I may have met, mentioned her on a previous, um, audio podcast and I've, I'm helping my friend Mita shoot an online course of her book binding, um, skills. So she, she has this class that she teaches in book binding and she's incredibly amazing. Rosa Linda Román: 14:44 And I told her, I said, you need to, this is something you could create as an online course and make available to other people even though they can't be in Albuquerque and help you, you know, and come to your class. And so we have been working for several months on getting that done. Well, I shot the stuff a few months ago and now I run into the problem I've had with New Mexicast, the TV show and the video podcast. And that is, not, you know, take it, I get the things shot, but then life gets in the way and the editing process takes forever and eventually I'll get to it, but it'll take away from the time with my kids and I'll, you know, my house needs cleaning and my things have to get done. And you know, life happens. Like today I've got to go to Chicago unexpectedly cause my dad is having some health challenges and so I can't get to the editing the way I know I'm a certified pro and yes I should, in my mind I should be able to do that. Rosa Linda Román: 15:42 But the reality is someone can do it quicker and much more efficiently and better than I can. I know that. I know that's true. As much as I love editing, this seems to be one of those things that I have to let go. And that is so hard for me. Already I've gotten 12 applicants and um, I'm so nervous about how to manage them and how to handle the whole thing, but I'm not going to give up. So I'm gonna pause this and I'll come back to talk a little bit more. I'm going to check the applicants and I'll come back and talk about kind of what it looks like because I think it's a fascinating process. I'm basically reaching out to people around the world to ask them to do a job for me that I know I can do, but my time is more valuable than the time I would spend on this task, which is helping a friend and is great. But I also have so many other things I'm working on and building. So I'm, I'm gonna pause this and I will come back after I do the Blab with Natalie and hopefully one with Jason Rullo. So I'll talk to you in a little bit. Bye. Rosa Linda Román: 17:01 All right, I'm back. And it is actually a few days later as I am recording this and a lot has happened since my last recording, so I would, I decided I would try to get you up to speed and fill you in on some of the exciting things that have happened. So first off, I did manage to do the Skype. Oh, it's not a Skype anymore. Yeah, well we start on Skype, but I managed to do the broadcasts on Blab with both Natalie and Jason Rullo. Um, Jason's was much tougher because his internet and the places, places that he is and his band Symphony X or doing these shows is very sporadic. Uh, and so he managed to get some solid internet at a club that they were performing at in Glasgow, Scotland. And it was good. It was, it, the video was really red. Um, you can go to my YouTube channel on YouTube. Rosa Linda Román: 18:01 It's New Mexicast TV on YouTube and check out the video of Jason Rullo in Glasgow. I'm hoping we'll get many, many more of these during the course of this tour, but so far it's still been very hard to connect. Um, the, the huge time differences, one thing and then the limitations on the Internet from his end are another. So, but it was great. It was nice to just chat and test out the technology. Blab worked really well in that case and so that was nice. And they have a function where you can upload it straight to YouTube. So that's why I'm telling you to go check it out there, which was very nice. Makes my job much easier. Uh, okay. So that was that. And then with, as for Natalie, I guess since I recorded this, I probably have done two more. Um, Blab broadcasts with My Habit Upgrade founder, Natalie Goldfein, and we are getting better every day. Rosa Linda Román: 18:57 Every time we do it, I think it's getting better and more, um, just smoother. Everything's moving smoother. Um, we're working out the kinks on the technology end. Um, for, for the first few broadcasts, every time we replayed the broadcast, she was frozen. You could just see a still shot of her. You could hear her voice, but you couldn't see her. Um, and now it seems like that might be resolved and I really don't know if it's the, the stuff we're doing to troubleshoot or if it just happens to be the timing with blab because they're really working hard to upgrade and update and get everything, um, functional in a way that it, it still, you know, it's in beta. So there's a lot of experimentation and learning from things that don't work. And, um, finally in theory it's going to end up being an amazing thing in the long run. Rosa Linda Román: 19:50 I believe in, in Blab and I believe in, uh, the technology and what they're creating. That community is really great. Um, so there's that and that went well and were we finally decided and made the commitment, which is so hard for me. And I think it's probably just as hard for Natalie to have a set time that we do our broadcasts and it's gonna be every Tuesday and Thursday at 10 o'clock Mountain Standard Time or mountain time, I guess. Um, and were there not long? They would be no more than 15 minutes long. But it's, it's a chance for me to get in the habit of broadcasting on a regular schedule, which is really important as I'm moving forward and I'll talk in the future about my vision for the show and for what I want to create with New Mexicast and, um, some other properties that I'm developing. Rosa Linda Román: 20:45 Um, but part of developing those properties and getting to the point where I can create a regular show is getting help as I mentioned. And so I have been working with this Upwork. Um, uh, I posted this job on Upwork and that was huge. Just posting the job was really hard for me. Um, but I ended up with 14 solid applicants in just like 24 hours. They came in really quickly. Um, it was even hard for me to to narrow it down to half that, or even less than that. I had a really hard time. These were all, most of them look like solid professional editors that had great potential to put together the what I wanted. But there were a couple things with this job that are different than what, well, first of all, handing off an editing job is so foreign to me because I'm really used to doing it myself. Rosa Linda Román: 21:44 So I had to back up and think mentally about how I could hand it off and how much prep work I needed to do and what needed to happen in order to get the editing job to the editor, potentially halfway around the world. Um, so while I was trying to even just figuring out what the job was that I wanted this person to do was really challenging for me, but I narrowed it down and I, I, with thankfully with like Natalie's help and my husband's help, I really tried not to overthink it. I tried to just let it go. Um, I, I told myself it didn't have to be my way. Perfect. It has to be done. And then I can always tweak it and, you know, decide if that's working for me. But this is my first hire. Um, as you know, freelancing and hiring a freelancer to handle something that I'm so used to handling. Rosa Linda Román: 22:41 So with that in mind, I created the job posting and the idea was I was going to have this person, uh, edit what has been shot up until now for my friend's book binding course. And it, I did not shoot it like a professional movie where you know, you have a slate and you mark the times and you, you say what's on each tape and you know, it's, it's basically I set up three cameras. I recorded different angles on Mita. One is a medium shot, one is a closeup on her hands and one is kind of an establishing shot on a, on a lower quality um, camera. It wasn't necessarily the shot that I wanted to use but I, I had my friend's camera and I borrowed it since it was at my house anyway on a previous project. And so I recorded on that as well, just to give the editor options. Rosa Linda Román: 23:36 But it was basically just a big pile of files in a Final Cut Pro library. And I s I decided rather than my normal prep work where I rename every clip and I, I tag everything and explain what everything is. I just said, I gotta let this go. That's time that I can't afford to spend right now, but I do want to get this done. So I put the job description in there as this is, this is really a test, um, project. This project potentially could lead to more projects, more work in the future, but let's see what they have to do. Um, and so I narrow, I was trying to narrow it down and I really got stuck cause I don't know how to say, I don't know how to pair things down. Whether it's media, I hate throwing things away. I'm not a pack rat, but I'm so afraid I have this like fear of doing it wrong. Rosa Linda Román: 24:30 Um, that I ended up doing nothing or I ended up going in circles, which I hopefully some of you at home can relate to. Uh, but anyway, thankfully I have a partner in my life who helps me when I get stuck in situations like that. And he's like the guy that purges everything. If it was up to him, he would own nothing. So, um, in this case, Nathan sat down with me, my husband and he, we went through the candidates and he's like, you know, if I even had the slightest hesitation or not red flaw flag, it wasn't like any of the candidates were bad, but anything that didn't feel right, he's like, nope. Declined. And so it gave me a chance to say "No thank you, we found other applicants." And that first step, pairing down the applicants, was hard, but it really helped move it forward really fast. Rosa Linda Román: 25:20 Um, because after that I was able to get into a rhythm and think, okay, what do I really want to accomplish and does this candidate seem like they could do the job? And then from there I went and looked at, I narrowed it down to four applicants and one was in Nairobi, one was in Montreal, and uh, two, one was in Los Angeles and one I think was either in Utah or Maryland or somewhere, I don't know, somewhere in the U.S. So, I narrowed it all down to these four and I looked at their demo reels based on that. And then, well, I narrowed it down after looking at the demo reels. And in the end I sent a note to one guy, um, Ryan, uh, Lagu is his name. He's in, he's the one in Montreal. And I sent him this note because his, his cover letter suggested that he edited in Final Cut Pro 10, which is what was required for this project. Rosa Linda Román: 26:18 But in his skill set, it didn't mention that he had Final Cut 10 as a skill. And so I asked the question, is this something that you do? Um, you know, are you proficient in Final Cut X? And he wrote back right away and he said yes. And, um, and then I noticed in looking further, his profile had all audio work. He was an audio editor and so, well on the one hand with stuff like this that I'm working on with audio that was very exciting for the potential for the future, for the purposes of this job. I was like, well, I would need to see some of your editing work, some video work. Um, and he said he had some, the video that was shot that he edited the video was lower quality, but he sent me a link so I could see a music video that he edited. Rosa Linda Román: 27:09 I liked the work he did, but even more than that, meanwhile I'm corresponding with the other guys asking for clarification and just kind of trying to get a better idea about what they were all about. This guy Ryan wrote, wrote me back and basically said, listen, I'll do the, I'll start on the project right now. I work very quickly, I'll do the edit and if you don't like it, you don't pay me. It'll be a hundred percent money back guarantee. And so after seeing his editing job on the music video, and then I did a Skype call with him, um, I was, I was sold. I mean, really in the end, this is a test project. Any one of those four candidates would have been great. Um, it was a fixed price that I had posted for this job. So I knew I was paying the same amount and if, if I didn't have to pay it, if I hate it, and you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to be a jerk, but if it's nowhere near what I needed and if it was a terrible editing job, then I would not pay it. Rosa Linda Román: 28:11 But I was pretty confident from his confidence and from the body of work I had seen and heard that this guy had the skills that I needed. The question, of course, is does he have the creative ability to, um, put it all together in a way that works for this project. So long story short, I ended up hiring this guy and it was just two days ago. And so he is well on his way to editing. Um, this book binding course, module one. So I'm super excited. I haven't seen what he has done yet, but I've needed to upload some more files that I still had. And with my very, very, very, very slow Internet up here in the mountains in New Mexico, it's actually taking like another whole day just to get him the additional footage. So the project is slightly delayed, but we're going to get it done and really think about it. Rosa Linda Román: 29:07 I shot this stuff like two months ago before the holidays and it's now the end of February, so almost three months ago. Right. So the fact of the matter is if I shot this whole thing to that, you know, that long ago, even if it takes him a week and a half or two weeks to edit it, I'm still ahead of the game because I had no prospects of even possibly getting to this edit until probably another month from now or at least two or three weeks from now. So I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do once I get him all the files. And I'll keep you guys posted on a future episode. Uh, I think that's enough going on and on for now. I just want you to share the process with you as I'm going through it. And, um, I hope it is as interesting to you as it is to me. Rosa Linda Román: 29:54 I mean, you know, figuring out how to transform something that I've worked on for almost a decade in a way that, um, not only maximizes the use of the new technology, but also frees up my time so that I can have more fun and enjoy my family. Um, that's very exciting. Very, very exciting. And I'm going to continue to share it here on New Mexicast audio edition. If you have listened this long, thank you so much for tuning in. And if you like what you hear and you want to know more about some of the work I'm doing, you can always find me on almost any social media platform as New Mexicast, you can find me on Facebook, but of course you can always just go to NewMexicast.com and look through the archives and see some of the stories that I have produced. Um, I hope you enjoy them and I look forward to talking to you next time. I'm Rosa Linda Román Theme Music: 30:51