How Daniel Hacks Audio to Save Himself Time

Hey Sustainability Entrepreneurs!

Just the other day I was talking to one of my customers. He told me that he has a specific idea for my service that he’d like me to develop and integrate. There’s only one issue… he hadn’t got around to writing it down and putting it into words.

I said to him, “You get the bus to work, right? Why don’t you put your thoughts into an audio file on your phone with the built-in recorder? If you send me that file I’ll get it transcribed and from there I can work on the update”. He had never thought about it. We went on to talk about how audio recordings and transcriptions save me many hours of time every month.

I get a real buzz out of solving problems for my customers and I know for a fact that many of them are severely pressed for time. I’m sure many of you Sustainability Entrepreneurs are in the same boat.

There’s a powerful quote I once heard...

"Don't be a person of success be a person of value"

It’s been attributed to Einstein, a man who spent his whole life solving some of the world’s greatest scientific complexities. He was a man of value rather than success. If you’re always providing value, you can’t do much wrong, can you?

Why bother typing out content when you can have it transcribed?

I’m a big fan of transcription and how much time it saves me, so I’m going to share my process with you.

1. I make a list of things that I need to record in my Evernote app. I have this folder saved as ‘Content that needs to be recorded’
2. When I have a bit of time, I sit and record the ideas, just speaking into my phone from my own knowledge, using the voice recorder app. I do this on walks, runs or even when something just occurs to me randomly as I am going about business. 
3. Those audio recordings then get sent over to rev.com, which I can vouch for. (The $1/min charge I square away because it saves me time which is worth more than  $1/min)
4. A few hours later the transcript gets sent to my email inbox in a word document.
5. I can turn this document into a blog post, email, case study, guide, or a whole host of other things with the help of my team.
6. Free version just as good but a bit slower. If I am in a quiet space and want to cut out the middleman, I can talk directly into Google Docs. It can take a while to get the hang of it, especially when you’re a Geordie and you have to say the punctuation out loud. See here. 

What can you do now?

Here are some important links for you to check out.

Voice recorder for iPhone is found here.

Voice recorder for Android is here.

There is a good article here which assess the various transcription services but it misses out Google Docs!

Let me know how you get on!

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