Video rendering/export is very slow (Mac)

Hi there,

I've noticed that videos are taking way longer to export than they should.  I'm using a Macbook Pro 2018 with a 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Interl Core i5, which isn't the most powerful but should (to my knowledge) be sufficient enough to render at a reasonable speed.  The media I'm rendering is about 6 minutes long and contains fonts, music and animations - when I go to export it the process easily takes an hour.  I'm not using any 4K footage and I'm also editing off of a 14 TB WD external hard drive.

Am I overestimating my computer's ability or are there ways I can speed up the render/final export process?  Thanks!