Podcasting with Aaron

A 30 Minute Guide to Starting a Podcast

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 20:26:00 -0000

Hello friends! I need to republish an episode for work stuff, so I thought I'd share this one from 2021 again and say hello!

Also I'd love to hear any questions you have about podcasts or podcasting, please visit this Google Form I set up and fill it out if you'd like to share your question(s)!

Hope you've been well!

Aaron Dowd,

Fort Worth Texas

November 16, 2023

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My goal for this episode is to give you a big picture roadmap for how to start a podcast. You give me 30 minutes of your time, I'll tell you everything I know about starting a podcast.

This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive guide that covers everything you’ll need to know (that would take awhile longer and I'd like to keep this pretty short), but my hope is that it gives you enough information to help you start making progress on starting your own podcast.

If you’re listening to this in a podcast app, I’d recommend pausing it and switching over to my YouTube video. I’ll be showing some screenshots and other visual aids that I think you’ll find helpful. Here's the link: https://youtu.be/4zfglqqHHtA

Connect:

Website: https://www.aarondowd.com/

Threads: https://threads.com/aarondowdtx

Send me your podcasting questions: https://forms.gle/mGtoq9dQZjBrJNKt9

Aaron Dowd

Granbury, Texas

December 20, 2020

(Last updated November 16, 2023)

94: How to Get Good Sound for Your Podcast Part 6: Talk To Your Guests and Co-Hosts

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 10:00:00 -0000

94: How to Get Good Sound for Your Podcast, Part 6: Talk Through Audio Gear with Your Guests and Co-Hosts Before You Start Recording

Good sound quality isn't the only thing you need to be successful in podcasting, but bad audio quality will cost you listeners. It only takes a few minutes to talk to your guest or co-hosts about their recording setup, but it can help you identify and prevent potential audio issues.

The good news is that you don't have to spend a lot of money or have an expensive studio to record quality audio. You just need to know a few things about recording audio, and follow the tips and the recording checklist I'm sharing in this episode.

This is part 6 of a 7 part series about how to make sure your podcast sounds good. You can listen to the other episodes at podcastingwithaaron.com, or watch the video on Youtube here.

Today's podcasting tips:

1. Talk to your guests and/or co-hosts about their audio recording setup before you start recording

It only takes a few minutes to talk to your guest or co-hosts about their recording setup, but it can help you identify potential audio issues and prevent them. I'd recommend doing this a week or at least a couple days before the recording. For example, maybe your guest didn't know that they need to wear headphones or use some kind of microphone.

2. Be prepared to provide gear recommendations

Not everyone knows what kind of gear they need to sound good on a podcast, so keep a list of affordable recommendations handy! I have my podcast gear recommendations listed on the kit.co website, so I can share it with anyone who asks.

(Pretty much anything is better than a built-in computer microphone.)

3. Podcasting with a co-host? Make sure you're on the same page about gear and audio quality

If you're starting a podcast with a co-host, talk to them about investing in a good recording setup. If you're recording from different locations, you'll both need a microphone and headphones. If you're recording in the same room, buy an audio interface and a couple of microphones as well as headphones.

It's always a good idea to record a couple practice episodes to make sure you can dial in your settings and record audio that sounds good. You want your first episode to sound good!

4. Podcast Recording Checklist for Guests or Co-Hosts

Wear headphones or earbuds while recording.
Double check that the correct audio input device is selected in your recording software.
If possible, find a quiet room to record in.
Turn off fans, AC units, heaters,or anything else that creates noise in your room.
Disable system notifications and/or set your phone to silent (Airplane Mode works best).
Put any pets in a place where they won't make noise or disturb you while you're recording.
Quit or pause Dropbox, Google Drive, Backblaze, or any other file syncing or bandwidth-heavy tasks before the call.

Recap:

Talk to your guest or co-host about their recording setup in advance.

Give them recommendations: Record in a quiet room, use a microphone, wear headphones, set cell phone to airplane mode.

If you're starting a podcast with a co-host, ask them to invest in a microphone and record a couple practice episodes to make sure you can record audio that sounds good.

Follow the podcast recording checklist and sharing it with your guests and co-hosts.

Talk to your guests and co-hosts about audio quality! You don't have to make a huge deal about it, but it does make a difference in the success of your show.

That's all for this week's episode. Next week will be the final topic in this series, I'll be talking about learning the basics of audio editing, mixing and mastering.

Thanks for listening

If you have any feedback or questions, visit my website at podcastingwithaaron.com. I've got links to the social media accounts and my email address there. I'm back on Twitter and Instagram as aarondowdtx, so you can follow me there and ask questions if you'd like.

Connect with me here:

Ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify are always appreciated as well.

Till next time, happy podcasting.

Aaron Dowd

September 28, 2022

93: Good Sound Part 5: On Recording Remotely

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 22:50:56 -0000

If you only need to record your own voice, or maybe a couple people in the same room, you won't have a hard time ending up with a podcast that sounds good.

However, if you want to record interviews or episodes with guests or co-hosts that are in different locations, getting good sound becomes harder. You won't have any control over which microphones the other people are using, if they use good mic technique, if they know how to set input gain levels correctly, what kind of room or location they're recording in, and so on.

It's always a good idea to have a conversation about someone's recording setup before you sit down for an interview or start a new podcast with a friend who lives in a different place, and that's something I'll be talking more about in the next episode.

But the the software you use to record the interview or conversation is going to play a big role in whether or not you end up with audio that sounds good.

You have three options for recording audio for a podcast:

1. Talk with your guests or co-hosts using a chat app like Zoom or Skype, and have everyone record audio locally on their computer or phone, then put the audio files together afterwards for editing. This is easy enough for shows with the same co-hosts every time, but not always an option if you're doing interviews with new people every week. Your guests might not be willing or able to record an audio file to a computer or phone.

2. Use the recording functionality from a chat app like Zoom or Anchor, where you end up with a single audio file that has everyone's voice in it. This is easy, but often causes issues with sound quality (more on that in a moment). This was very common in years past because there weren't any good apps that made it easy to talk to and record multiple people at the same time and get an individual audio track for each person.

3. Use an app specifically made for podcast recording, like Squadcast or Zencastr. This is the best option for most people in my opinion, as these apps allow you to talk to multiple people and will also record an audio file for each person on the call that you can put together and work on in your audio editing software later.

The pros and cons of recording everyone to a single track

Pros:

It can be simpler, easier
Less friction or work for your guest(s)
Editing is less complicated (this isn't always a good thing, though)

Cons:

Less control over editing and mixing
You can't adjust the volume levels for each speaker without doing lots of editing to move them to their own tracks

The pros and cons of recording a track for every person

Pros:

Far more control and flexability
You can edit out more
You can adjust any person's gain level (how loud they are)
You can do unique audio processing on each track if you need to

Cons:

It's a little more time consuming and complicated to edit three audio tracks at the same time instead of one
If you do want to do processing for each voice, you'll need to know about EQ, compression, noise removal, and limiting (although I'd recommend learning about those things anyways if you're going to be editing your podcast)
Good software costs money ($20/month for Squadcast, plus whatever software you use for multi-track audio editing, Logic Pro or Audition)

So which should you choose?

I believe Squadcast is currently the best and easiest way to record conversations remotely. It's not free, but it's worth the cost.

If you disagree or if you have a different solution you like (there are many remote chat and recording options, like Zencastr, Cleanfeed, Zoom Pro, and so on), leave a comment on the YouTube video and let the other listeners know, or send me an email, aaron@thepodcastdude.com.

Thanks for watching or listening, be sure to subscribe if you'd like to get future episodes as I publish them. If you're finding this show useful, please tell a friend about it or leave me a rating and review in Apple Podcasts.

You can find more at podcastingwithaaron.com.

Next time I'll be talking about what you should discuss with your guests and co-hosts before you start recording.

Till then, be well and happy podcasting.

Aaron

92: Good Sound Part 4: Your Room

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 18:24:11 -0000

Last episode I talked about mic technique and how to set gain levels. This week I'm going to talk about how the room you're recording in might affect the quality of your sound.

The most important thing is to pay attention to how you sound in your room.

The room you're recording in is probably only going to cause problems if there are a lot of hard surfaces that reflect your voice back enough to make it hard to understand what you're saying. If you hear an echo in your recording that bothers you, figure out how to address it.

Example: When I started recording podcasts back in 2013, I was recording in my “office”, which was just a small dining room with a standing desk in it.

It was a small room with almost no furniture in it, so there was a fair amount of echo in my recordings. I tried to compensate for this by bringing in some big couch cushions. That helped a little, but I ended up moving my desk and recording set up to my bedroom and building some sound absorbing panels to help reduce the echo more.

The ideal room for recording will be a room with quite a bit of soft stuff in it. Furniture like chairs, couches and bookshelves can all help absorb and break apart sound waves so you don't hear as much echo. This is why bedrooms can actually be ideal rooms for recordings. You've got a bed and a closet, and probably a carpet; all things that can help absorb sound.

Important Things to Remember:

The room you're recording in is only a problem if there are a lot of hard surfaces that reflect your voice back enough to make it hard to understand what you're saying.
The most important thing is to pay attention to how you sound. If you hear an echo that bothers you, figure out how to address it.
The solution to this is to add more soft surfaces or things to absorb some of that sound: Blankets, pillows, couch cushions, clothes from your closet, foam sound absorbing panels, carpets, etc.
Just a reminder: Eliminate potential distracting background noises before you hit record. Turn off fans, AC, or heaters, and set your phone to airplane mode, put your pets in a different room, etc.
It’s possible to improve sound quality a little bit with post production, but it's pretty hard to remove echo from a recording in a way that sounds natural. It’s better to fix the problems before you start recording.
Finally, don't stress too much about your room. If you follow the tips I shared last week about mic technique and setting gain levels correctly for your recording, you probably sound good.

Recommend Reading:

Thanks for watching or listening to this week's episode. If you have questions, please leave a comment on my YouTube channel or send me an email, aaron@thepodcastdude.com

If you like this episode, please give it a thumbs-up on YouTube or leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and be sure to subscribe to get future episodes for free and as soon as they come out.

You can find more episodes and other cool stuff at podcastingwithaaron.com.

Next week I'll be talking about why you should record an audio track for each person that's going to be on your podcast, and some easy ways to do that.

Till then, have a great week, and happy podcasting.

Aaron

91: Good Sound Part 3: Mic Technique and Setting Input Gain Levels

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 19:38:12 -0000

Last week I talked about how to connect your microphone and headphones and make sure you're ready to start recording.

This week I'm going to walk you through the basics of microphone technique and how to set the input gain levels (or recording levels) so you can sound good anytime you want to record some audio.

Just a heads up: If you're listening to this episode in a podcast app, I'd recommend switching over to the YouTube video, as I believe it's easier to understand mic technique and input gain levels if you can see what I'm doing and talking about.

Watch the video version of this episode here: https://youtu.be/hn09tFzJ0PQ

1. Mic Technique

Gotta be close to the mic (but not too close).

Make sure the right side of the mic is pointed at you.

You don't have to speak directly at or into the mic. Try putting off to the side a bit (still keep it pointed at your mouth).

For most mics, the closer you are, the more bass the mic will record. (This is called the proximity effect, if you want to do some research on it.) So if you have a naturally loud, low, bassy voice, you might want to keep the mic a little further away. In most cases, keeping your mouth 3-6 inches away from the mic should probably work great for you.

This is also something you'll want to play around with. Make some practice recordings to hear how you sound at different distances from the mic.

2. Setting Input Gain Levels

Most USB microphones and audio interfaces have input gain knobs or sliders that allow you to control the strength of the signal your microphone is picking up.

The goal is to get a recording that is loud enough but not too loud.

The best way to do this is to position the mic close to you and start talking like you'll be talking on your podcast. Then watch the input gain meters in your recording software and adjust the gain knob or slider on your mic or interface until the peaks of the signal are getting up to about 75% of the way to the top of your meter (or the red zone in most software gain meters).

(If the gain meter in your software is vertical, that's the top, if it's horizontal, like in GarageBand, that's the right side.)

Here's another way to think about it: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being way too quiet, and 10 being too loud, you want your signal to average around 6 or 8. So not always hitting that top limit of 10, but probably somewhere about 5.

If you find your recording is a little too quiet after you're done recording, you do have the option to add more gain to increase the level of your audio track later.

Important Things to Remember

You don't have to speak directly into the mic. You can talk past it. As long as it's close enough to your mouth, you'll still sound good.

Make test recordings to see how you sound! Try recording just to play around with mic technique and input gain levels. This will help you get comfortable with how your gear works, and how your voice sounds at different distances from the mic and at different gain levels.

Recommend Reading:

Gain Staging Like a Pro from Sweetwater

Podcasts and Capital from Justin Jackson

Thanks for watching or listening to this weeks episode. If you have questions, please leave a comment on my YouTube channel or send me an email, aaron@thepodcastdude.com

You can find more episodes and other cool stuff at podcastingwithaaron.com or aarondowd.com.

Next week I'll be talking about how the room you're recording in can affect how you sound, and I'll share a few tips about how to fix a few common issues related to that.

Till then, have a great week, and happy podcasting.

Aaron

90: Good Sound Part 2: Connecting Your Microphone and Headphones

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 20:41:51 -0000

Watch the video version of this episode here.

Welcome back to another episode of Podcasting with Aaron.

I hope you're having a good week so far. I know I certainly have. This past week has been one of the better weeks in recent memory. Possibly the best week since 2016, actually.

Last week I talked about the importance of getting good sound for your podcast. I talked about why good sound matters, what it means when something sounds good, and why you should get yourself that nice podcast microphone you've been looking at.

This week I want to talk about something that might seem basic to you if you've been podcasting for a while. I want to talk about connecting your microphone and headphones, and making sure you have your microphone (or audio interface if you're using one) set as the input source for whatever recording software you're using.

I remember the first time I bought a microphone and a little audio interface. I probably spent close to an hour trying to figure out how to record an audio file because I didn't know that I was supposed to set the audio interface as the input source for the recording software I was using, and then also that I needed to select the channel my mic was plugged into (channel 1) as the audio source for the audio track in the program.

You'd be surprised at how many podcasts are recorded where someone forgets to set their good microphone as the input source, and ends up with a recording that was made with the built-in microphone on their desktop computer. Which makes them sound far away and thin and not good.

And the goal here is to sound good.

The Essentials: Connecting Your Microphone and Headphones

Step 1: Is everything plugged in and turned on?

USB Microphones

If you're using a USB microphone: Is it plugged into your computer? Yes? Good.

Now, which program are you going to use for recording? You need to make sure your microphone is set as the audio input source for that program. Usually you select your audio input source in the settings, or the preferences area of the software.

If you're having a hard time finding how to set your mic as the input source for your recording software, do a quick search on Google or YouTube.

Next: Does your USB microphone have a headphone port on it? (A place to plug in your headphones.)

If so, plug your headphones into that. This is a good idea because it will allow you to hear what you sound like in real time. You'll hear people refer to this as "monitoring yourself".

You'll also need to choose the audio output source for whatever recording software you're using. Essentially, where should the audio from your computer go?

If you're interviewing someone, and your headphones are plugged into your USB mic, you don't want the audio from your computer going to your computer speakers. You want it to go to your USB microphone.

Quick recap:

Make sure your recording software is using the right mic before you start recording, and also that your software or computer is sending audio to the right place.

It's pretty easy once you've gone through this a couple times, but I've seen many podcasters struggle with this set up when they're first getting starting, and also it's important to get in the habit of double-checking your input and output settings before you start interviewing someone or recording an episode.

XLR Microphones + Audio Interface

If you bought an XLR microphone and an audio interface (like I'm using here), the set up process is going to be similar, but there's a few additional things to keep in mind.

Step 1: Plug your microphone or microphones into your audio interface using an XLR microphone cable.

Next, plug the audio interface into your computer. Your interface should have come with a right cable for your computer, but it's possible you might need an adapter.

Like if the cable for your audio interface is a USB-C cable, and your computer only has USB-A ports and no USB-C ports, then you'll need to buy a USB-C to USB-A adapter. Make sense? Google has answers for you if you're not sure what kind of adapter you need.

Quick note here: If you're using a Windows computer, I've heard that sometimes you have to update the driver for an audio interface before your computer will "see" and be able to use the interface.

A driver is just a little bit of software that tells your computer how to work with a piece of hardware like an audio interface. So if you open up your recording software and you don't see the option to select your audio interface as the input or output source for audio, you might need to download and install an updated driver for your interface.

Ok, so now you've got your mic or mics plugged into your audio interface, and the interface plugged into your computer.

Now: I'd recommend plugging your headphones into the headphone port on your interface. Also, you might need an adapter for your headphones, as a lot of audio interfaces have big 1/4" headphone ports, and normal headphone jacks are smaller, 1/8" or 3.5 mm.

Let's recap one more time. You've got your mic and your headphones connected to your audio interface, your audio interface connected to your computer. Great.

Now open up your recording software, and set the audio interface as the input and output source for your audio. You will also want to set the audio interface as the output source for your computer's audio. Make sense? The recording software should send audio to your interface where your headphones are plugged in, and your computer should send audio to your interface too.

With any luck, you'll hear everything you should be hearing through your headphones, and no sound will be coming out of your computer speakers.

One other important thing to know here.

If you're recording multiple tracks with multiple microphones:

If you have multiple microphones plugged into your audio interface and you want to record each microphone to it's own track in your recording program (as you should), you'll need to set the audio interface as the input source for the software, but also choose which channel (microphone, essentially) should be the audio source for each track.

So let's say you have two microphones plugged into your audio interface, channel 1, channel 2. Make sure you have two tracks created in your recording software, and select channel 1 as the audio source for track 1, channel 2 as the audio source for track 2.

Got it?

I hope that all makes sense, and I hope this walk-through helps you understand how these different pieces of audio hardware and recording software work together.

If you have questions: Please leave a comment on my YouTube channel.

You can find more episodes and other cool stuff at podcastingwithaaron.com or aarondowd.com.

Thanks for watching or listening, and I'll be back next week with more podcasting tips and tricks. I'm going to be talking about setting input gain levels and good microphone technique.

Till then, have a great week, and happy podcasting.

Aaron

89: How to Get Good Sound for Your Podcast, Part 1: Why It Matters

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 18:44:28 -0000

I've been obsessed with things that sound good for as long as I could remember. I've always loved music and the effect it has on my body and brain, so I got interested in the process of creating and capturing sound when I was young.

The first podcasts I started listening to back in 2008/2009 were professionally produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by folks who had been working in radio for a long time. So they sounded really good.

Then I started listening to some shows produced by normal folks, what you'd call independent podcasters. I liked the content just as much, but I noticed that the sound quality was usually a lot lower, and sometimes so bad it made me stop listening to the show.

So I started wondering, can you make a podcast that sounds good even if you don't have a lot of money to spend? Is it possible?

I figured out that there were a few key things that made a big difference. So I'm going to make a series of episodes where I share what I've learned about audio recording and sound quality, and how to make a podcast that sounds good.

Q: Does it really matter how good you sound?

Yes! The quality of an audio recording affects how trustworthy and credible listeners think you are.

As a podcast host, you want people to be able to hear you clearly and understand you. If they have a hard time hearing and understanding you, they're not going to stick around for very long. The same goes for any co-hosts or guests you have on your show as well.

There's a research article by Eryn Newman and Norbert Shwartz from the University of Southern California published in 2018 that demonstrates the importance of good sound quality.

The articles references a study in which two groups of people were shown a video of a scientific talk and asked to rate the credibility and trustworthiness of the presenters.

The first group got a version of the video with high quality audio.

The second group got a version of the video with low quality audio.

When the video was difficult to hear, viewers thought the talk was worse, the speaker less intelligent and less likeable and the research less important.

“As soon as we reduced the audio quality, all of a sudden, the scientists and their research lost credibility.” - Eryn Newman

The quality of audio influences whether you believe what you hear - news.usc.edu

It's important to learn how to record and publish audio that sounds good.

Q: When you say something sounds good, what does that mean?

I use to talk a lot about sounding good, but I never really broke it down in a way that was easy to understand.

I know because I got a 2 star review in Apple Podcasts last year from Red84604.

Red wrote:

I can appreciate that the podcast dude is a musician. So am I. But his obsession with audio quality made me look for another podcast to reach me how to podcast. Even if I came to this podcast exclusively for advice about audio, it wouldn’t be useful for that because, from the very beginning, his advice assumes that the listener already knows a whole lot about the subject (more than I know and I actually was a professional musician for a while). I couldn’t follow it. And he went on for episode after episode. I want to produce a podcast with great audio. But even after listening to several episodes I am still not sure how to do that because his advice was so technical. And his snobbery on the topic was off-putting. Sorry.

That's fair criticism. So really, you can thank Red for this whole 7 part series I'm about to make and share with you.

When I say a podcast sounds good, it means each voice that you hear in the episode is clear and easy to understand, and not difficult to listen to because of distracting background noise or other factors that make it hard to hear and understand someone who is speaking.

Let's break that down even further.

Clear and easy to understand means:

* You've got a microphone that works well for recording a human voice, and you're relatively close to that microphone when you're speaking.

* Your voice doesn't sound muffled, or far away, or distorted in any way.

* The volume level of your recording is loud enough, but not too loud.

* That volume level doesn't change dramatically during the recording. It's consistent, or gets louder when you get speak louder, and quieter when you speak quieter.

* Your audio recording is free of distracting background noise (hums, buzzes, pops, beeps, echos, reverb that makes it hard to understand you, etc).

* The volume level of your voice is roughly the same as the other voices in the recording (if there are other voices).

There's other things that can enhance the quality and impact of an episode, like sound design, music, pacing, and so on, but I want to stay focused on the basics for now.

Q: So how do you get this good sound quality?

I believe there are 7 important things to know and keep in mind when recording audio if you want your show to sound good.

I'll be covering each one in detail over the coming episodes, but this week, I want to talk about why you should invest in a nice microphone.

Step 1. Invest in a nice microphone

Your microphone is the single most important part of sounding good. It's a solid investment if you plan to start a podcast, or if you have the kind of job (or want the kind of job) where you'll be talking to people a lot from your home.

The good news is you don't need an expensive mic to sound good. Even a $60 USB microphone like the ATR 2100 or Samsung Q2U will work just fine.

What doesn't usually work fine is trying to share a single microphone between multiple people, or using bluetooth headsets, or using the built-in microphone on your laptop or desktop computer.

(These microphones will technically work, but I've heard plenty of recordings made with bluetooth headsets and built-in computer mics that didn't sound very good, so I don't recommend using them.)

I've got a full list of the gear I recommend at https://kit.co/PodcastingwithAaron, so let's take a look.

A few key things to keep in mind:

* If you'll mostly just be recording by yourself or talking to other people over the internet, a single USB mic will work fine.

* If you plan to record multiple people in the same room, you'll need multiple mics (get XLR mics ) and a way to record them all to the same device or computer (via an audio interface) at the same time. Don't try to share a single mic.

* I didn't mention it in the episode, but I don't like listening to phone calls (cell phone or land line), so I don't recommend trying to record them. But there are tutorials online if you're really set on it.

* Lav mics: Great if you want to do video presentations and don't want to have to stand in one place like I do here. But if you're mostly going to be talking to other people or staying in place, a regular mic like the ones I recommended will probably be a better option.

Recap:

* Sound quality, sounding good, matters. It affects how much people will believe and trust you.

* A good microphone is a solid investment, especially now, and especially if you plan to spend a lot of time talking to people over the internet.

* As a podcast host, you want people to be able to hear you clearly and understand you. If they have a hard time hearing and understanding you, they're not going to stick around for very long. The same goes for any co-hosts or guests you have on your show as well.

In the next episode, I'll be talking about the importance of learning how to set input gain levels and always checking your audio settings before you start recordings.

As always, thanks for watching and/or listening! Reviews in Apple Podcasts are always appreciated, and you can find more at podcastingwithaaron.com or aarondowd.com.

Till next time, be well and happy podcasting.

Aaron

88: How to Start a Podcast (2021)

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 21:40:25 -0000

My goal for this episode is to give you a big picture roadmap for how to start a podcast. You give me 30 minutes of your time, I'll tell you everything I know about starting a podcast.

I also plan to publish a more detailed version of this episode as an affordable downloadable PDF and video and checklist, so I’ll include a link to that in the episode notes as well whenever it’s ready.

A Few Pieces of Advice Before We Get Started:

Anyone Can Start a Podcast

Anyone can start a podcast! Yes, even you!

To do it well does cost some money and a fair amount of time and effort, but it’s not extremely expensive, and you don't need anyone's permission to do it.

The hardest part (from what I've seen) is growing an audience and getting people to listen to your podcast and share it with other people.

Try to make a show that other people will find valuable and interesting

A common mistake I see a lot of people make is starting a show where they just talk about whatever random subject they feel like talking about.

It can be fun to do that for awhile, but it’ll be hard to convince strangers to listen to you unless you're already known for something.

Everyone has an opinion, and most strangers probably aren't going to be interested in hearing yours. To stand out, you’ll need to figure out how to provide something valuable, useful, or interesting to them.

Aim to make your show entertaining, educational, or inspirational. If you can make it be all three, even better.

If you don’t feel like you have anything important or interesting to say, it’s ok to put off podcasting for awhile. Focus instead of becoming an interesting, experienced person who can talk about a topic or tell stories in a way that makes people notice and pay attention.

Don't give up when the going gets tough.

You’re going to encounter road blocks and get stuck sometimes.

There are answers to every question out there on the internet in blog posts, YouTube videos, books, podcasts, etc.

Be patient and learn to enjoy the process of learning. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t accomplish a task right away.

Podcasting is a marathon, not a sprint.

Success comes to those who stick with it for a long time, so don’t give up if you don’t achieve all your goals right away. Stay focused, keep working, keep iterating and getting better.

If you have questions, please feel free to send them to me, or you can find more information out there on the internet if you search.

The Ultimate Goal: End up with an awesome podcast you love

My goal with this episode and show is to help you end up with a podcast you’re proud of and that other people love, listen to, and share with their friends.

One of the best ways to do this is to learn from other people who have already created podcasts that people love. This is why I recommend checking out the top shows in Apple Podcasts and Spotify for inspiration. Pay close attention to their podcast cover artwork and their show descriptions. Look for shows that are similar to the show you want to make. Learn from them, get inspired by them.

4 Key Parts to Podcasting

There are four main parts of making a great podcast. They are:

1. Planning & Pre-Production

2. Recording & Production

3. Editing & Post-Production

4. Launching & Promoting

Let's go through each of these steps in more detail.

1: Pre-Production / Planning the Show

The Goal: Come up a title, theme, short description, branding/visual style, and format for your show, and choose a time in your schedule to work on it.

The first step is to decide:

What your show is going to be called (the title)
What it's going to be about (the theme)
What your branding or visual style is going to be (the look of your artwork)
What the format is going to be (Interviews? Fiction / Story telling?)
When you're going to work on it (In the mornings before work? In the evenings after work? Weekends?)

The Title: Check Apple Podcasts and social media to make sure the title you want isn’t already taken.

The Theme/Format: Will you do interviews? Chat with a friend about a new topic every week? Tell a story in a narrative style? Do something weird and bizarre? There’s no rules here, so you have freedom to create the kind of show that you want. I’m guessing you have a few ideas based on shows you already listen to and enjoy. Make a show you’d love to listen to, and have fun!

The Branding/Visual Style: Eventually you’ll need to create or hire someone to create cover art for your show. Your podcast cover art needs to be a square image, 3000x3000 pixels, a JPG or PNG file format.

The Schedule: Decide what your recording and publishing schedule will be. Can you produce and publish new episodes every week? Every two weeks? Want to record a season of 12 episodes all at once and then release them? You’ll want to block off some time on your calendar to work on producing new episodes, but also time to promote your show and episodes and invest in your existing listeners and also on getting new listeners. (Podcasting can take a lot of time, so give yourself more time than you expect when you're just starting out.)

Don’t worry about getting it perfect right away!

Don’t worry about getting everything perfect, just make a plan and keep making progress. You can always change things later if you decide you really need to.

For more information about planning a show, check out:

2: Recording & Production

The goal: Get some recording gear and plan and record some episodes.

Recording Gear

There are ways to make a podcast using only your smartphone, or you could spend thousands of dollars on professional microphones, cameras, and accessories. There are good options for pretty much every budget.

I recommend starting off with gear on the cheaper or affordable side, and then upgrading later if you decide the extra sound quality or utility is worth it to you. You want to avoid spending $2000 on gear only to decide a few months later that podcasting isn’t for you.

Questions to consider:

What is your budget?
What gear do you need for the format you’ve chosen?
How serious are you about podcasting?

I keep a list of my favorite gear at kit.co/podcastingwithaaron. (Those are affiliate links, so I get a small cut of the sale if you buy something using the link on that site).

Recording and Editing Software/Apps

There’s software and apps for recording and editing audio (Garageband, Audacity, Reaper, Logic Pro, Audition), and also software and apps for recording interviews (Squadcast, Zoom, Zencastr, Descript, Cleanfeed, etc).

I prefer the paid software, but there are plenty of people who record and publish using free software.

For best results, you’ll want to get an individual audio track for each person that’s on the podcast. This is why I like and use Squadcast.

You don’t want to start off with one single audio track that has everyone’s voice on it, it makes editing and balancing the volume levels of each voice much harder.

Practice recording to get comfortable with your gear and software before you start trying to record episodes that you plan to publish.

I recommend doing at least couple of test/practice episodes that you don’t plan to publish, just so you can learn how to use your gear and the software without pressure to get everything right. This is especially important if you plan to do interviews.

Creating Episodes

For each episode, you'll need:

An episode title/theme
A short description of the episode (What is the episode about? Why should someone listen to it?)
An outline for the episode (What are you going to talk about in the episode?)
Episode notes or a script (You can write this before, or after. It can be as short or long as you like)
Episode artwork (optional, but can be a nice touch)

At the very least, you’ll need to have a title for the episode, how you’re going to start the episode, what you’re going to talk about, and then how you’re going to end the episode.

Create / gather all this information, and then start recording! Be sure to save your recording when you're done.

3: Editing & Post-Production

The goal: Edit your episodes and get them ready for publishing, and choose a hosting platform for your show.

Editing a Podcast Episode

Editing a podcast episode is definitely a topic that deserves it’s own episode or video, but the goal is to get all the audio files for the episode together, and then cut out anything you don’t want in the episode. Add music, sound effects, whatever else you want.

I definitely encourage creativity with editing, but be aware that many new podcasters I’ve talked to find editing to be the hardest and most time consuming part of podcasting.

If you’re just starting out, you might want to keep it simple. Only edit out really noticeable/terrible mistakes, and try to get the volume levels of the audio tracks roughly the same (this is known as mixing).

Editing and mixing can take years to master or get good at, so be patient with yourself while you learn! Watching YouTube videos of other people editing will help.

Once you’re done editing your episode, export an MP3 audio file. This is what you’ll upload to your podcast hosting platform.

Choose a Podcasting Hosting Platform for Your Show

You don’t actually upload episodes to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or the other podcast apps people use to listen to podcasts. Instead, you’ll sign up for an account on a podcast hosting platform that will provide you with an easy interface for adding information about your show and episode to an RSS feed.

The RSS feed is essentially a text document that is hosted and updated by your podcast hosting platform. It will contain all of the information about your show, as well as links to where your episode audio files are hosted.

You’ll give the URL or link for your show’s RSS feed to Apple, Spotify, and the other podcast apps and directories. That’s how you get your show listed there.

Once those apps/directories have the link to your show’s RSS feed, they’ll get any updates or new episodes you publish in your podcast hosting platform automatically.

Which hosting platform should I use for my podcast?

There’s plenty of options for podcast hosting platforms: Anchor, Simplecast, Buzzsprout, Transistor, Captivate, Fireside, and Megaphone, just to name a few.

The podcast hosting platforms also provide you with a website for your show (important) and analytics so you can see things like how many downloads and plays your episodes get, where your listeners are, and which devices they’re listening on.

Remember: You can always move your show to a different hosting platform any time you want.

4: Launching & Promoting

The goal: Launch your podcast and start promoting it.

Getting Ready to Launch Your Show

At this point, you should have your show title, show description, and artwork, and at least one episode ready to be published (I'd recommend having 2-3 full episodes ready to publish before you officially launch).

Create a Short Teaser Trailer Episode for Your Show

I also recommend writing and recording a teaser trailer episode. This is where you introduce yourself and the show, talk a little bit about it and who it’s for, why you’re making it, etc.

I recommend making this trailer shorter than 2 minutes (but you can make it longer if you want).

Getting Your Show into Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Other Podcast Apps

Once you've added the information about your show into your podcast hosting platform, and added your trailer or first episode, they’ll provide you with the link/URL to your show’s RSS feed.

You’ll submit the URL/link to your show’s RSS feed to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and the other podcast apps.

Some will take a few days to review and approve your show, some will approve and publish it pretty much right away or within a few hours.

There’s a great help article from Simplecast that has links and instructions about how to submit a show’s RSS feed to every major podcast app or directory.

Visit How to Publish Your Podcast on the Popular Podcast Apps.

Publish Your Trailer Episode First, Then Your Full Episodes Later

I recommend publishing your trailer episode first, then submitting your RSS feed to Apple and the other places, then publishing your first few real episodes a week or two later.

This gives you time to make sure your show is everywhere you want it to be before you publish full episodes, and having a trailer out allows you to begin promoting your show and getting people to subscribe to it before you publish the full episodes.

Start Promoting Your Show

At this point, you’ll want to create social media accounts for your show if you don’t already have some you plan to use.

You don’t have to be on every social media platform: Focus on the ones where your target audience are the most active.

Tell your friends, family, social media followers, etc.

If you know of any magazines or blogs or publications that might be interested in featuring your show, reach out to them as well.

Basically, you gotta get the word out and convince people to listen to your show.

For more information about promoting a new podcast, check out:

Buffer: We Didn’t Know How to Promote a Podcast. So Here’s All We Learned
Podcast Marketing: 50 podcasters share the tactics they used to grow their shows
Hack Your Way to 10,000 Podcast Downloads with These 15 Tips
Want to know what worked for a real podcast (Darknet Diaries)? Check out this post.

There's tons of other articles online about promoting and marketing a podcast, so plan to spend a few hours reading tips. Mostly it comes down to creating something people will want to listen to, and then convincing them to give you a chance. Easier said than done!

What's Next?

By now you should know just about everything you need to know to get started, but I have a few more tips to share before you go.

Keep creating and publishing new episodes. Keep improving.
Experiment. Have fun.
There are hundreds of helpful articles, tutorials, videos, books, and online courses about everything related to podcasting and growing an audience. Google search is your friend here!
If there’s something you’d like to learn more about, put your question in a search box and start reading or watching.
Ask questions if you need help or if you get stuck.

Connect with Me

I’m going to keep making episodes about podcasting, and I’m happy to answer questions. Leave them in the comment section on my YouTube videos , or email me at coldwaraaron@gmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter, i'm @aarondowdtx.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your show, and happy podcasting!

Aaron Dowd

Granbury, Texas

December 20, 2020
(Last updated September 28, 2022)

87: How to Stop Procrastinating and Start Podcasting

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 22:18:11 -0000

Why are you procrastinating?

This is an important question, and is worth considering, reflecting on, and writing about.

It could be a few different things.

You've decided that something else is more important.

What are you doing (or what should you be doing) that's more important than your podcast?

Maybe a podcast isn't what you're supposed to be focusing on right now.

That's ok! You can come back to podcasting later.

I'd suggest prioritizing sleep and rest, exercise, time with family and friends, and time addressing any major issues or distractions in your life before you invest time in podcasting. Basically, get your shit together first before spending time and energy on a podcast.

Make sure you are in a good place mentally and physically. It's very hard to create and share something with the world if you're overwhelmed, stressed out, exhausted, or distracted. Not impossible, but difficult.

The main reasons I procrastinated on podcasting:

1. I prioritized the wrong things

2. I was burned out

3. I was scared that what I was making wasn't good enough

Maybe you don't know what you need to do next.

Write a to-do list with action steps. Make it as detailed as possible, but give yourself a 20 minute time limit.

Maybe you do know what you need to do next, but you haven't decided when you're going to do it.

Once you know what the next steps are, you need to decide when you're going to work on them.

I found it helpful to pair actions together until they become a habit. This is commonly called Habit Stacking.

For example, everyday after I wake up, I do yoga for at least 20 minutes. After yoga, I make coffee. As soon as coffee is done, I walk the dogs.

Having those three actions linked together like that has made it extremely easy to do them every day. I've only skipped this morning routine one or two days in the past 4 months (Thanksgiving and the day after) thanks to habit stacking.

Do something like this with your podcast production and make it easier on yourself to make podcasting a habit. For another example, after I've done recording and publishing this episode, I'll be going on a long bike ride. After the bike ride, I'll watch the latest episode of the Mandalorian with a friend.

Habit Stacking. It works.

You decided when you're going to do it, but then did something else that felt more important.

There's two questions I think are the most important questions to consider when it comes to making a podcast.

What do you hope to get out of the podcast?

What do you hope the listeners will get out of it?

If you don't have a clear and concise and compelling answer to both of these questions, it's going to be very easy for you to make something else a priority.

Remember, your brain doesn't want you to do work. You're only going to invest the energy if you know the work is important and that it will result in some kind of reward.

Get clear on why you're making a podcast instead of doing something else.

Maybe you tried, didn't like the results, then gave up.

It's easy to talk about or think about having a podcast. It's safer than actually making one and putting it out into the world.

Making a podcast will cost you time and money and effort. Our brains try to do as little work as possible, and podcasting is work, so your brain will try to keep you from expending the energy.

You also might struggle with the voice in your head that's doubting your ability to succeed.

”What if no one likes it?” the voice asks. ”What if no one listens? What if you're no good? What if you waste your time? What if people make fun of you? What if you make a mistake or say something that's incorrect?”

It's easy to let these fears keep you from making a podcast.

Forget about making it perfect.

Focus on making it, doing the best you can now, and improving as you go.

I promise you that you probably have much higher expectations for your work than anyone else does.

Set realistic expectations. What can you actually accomplish today, or this week?

How much time can you invest in the show on a daily or weekly basis?

If you're working a full time job and have a family to take care of, you'll need to be very focused and honest about how much time and effort you can invest in the show every week.

Maybe you can only devote 2 hours to recording and publishing the show once a week on Saturdays. What can you finish in two hours?

The Goal should be to finish and publish something.

(Or just finish and not publish. That's ok too.)

Recap:

Get clear on why you want to make a podcast. Talk to someone you trust about why you want to podcast.

Ask yourself if a podcast is really what you want or need to be spending time and energy on right now. Make sure you're taking care of yourself so you can create something to share with others.

Make a list of things you need to learn, and things you need to do.

Get clear on when you're going to make a podcast. Block off time on your calendar to work on it. You'll need to make a commitment to show up and do the work.

Get clear on how much time you can devote to making a podcast.

Don't try to make it perfect. Finished, not perfect.

It's good to set big goals, but be honest and realistic about what you can accomplish and finish right now.

Helpful Resources:

So You Want to Start a Podcast? (Slide Deck)

What Does It Cost to Make a Podcast?

Finished, Not Perfect

Habit Stacking

Q&A

Q from Matt G (Food Under Fire podcast):

I've been having a lot of fun with my show. I have dedicated myself to getting better and better with every part of the process. Yet, I still feel like there is a lot to be improved.

For example, the thing that's driving me the craziest right now is volume. It always seems kinda off to my ears? It sounds one way on Logic, but then I upload it, and the dynamics seem off (my voice is too quiet/loud, same with music).

What part of the process would rectify that? Better mixing?

While equipment does play in a role in getting good sound quality, from what you've told me about yours (Shure SM58s mics into a Zoom H6), I think better mixing and mastering should be what you focus on learning.

If you're doing the best you can in the recording stage (good mic technique, setting input gain levels correctly, etc), then the mixing and mastering stage is where you'll fix any issues and polish up the sound.

I'd recommend investing time learning about noise removal, compression, limiting, and using a loudness meter. I have a video introduction to these topics called How to Process Podcast Vocals in Logic Pro X that should help you get started.

Fixing the "music being too loud" issue is easier than you might think. If the music sounds too loud to you, turn it down. (Watch a tutorial video about automation if you're not already familiar with it, and trust your ears.)

Try downloading an MP3 file of a podcast that you think sounds really good, and then start comparing your finished MP3 files against it. It'll take time and experimentation for sure, but you'll get better with practice and effort.

Good luck Matt, and thanks for the question!

News / Recommendations

IAB Measurement Guideline Updates

From Pacific Content: 14 Podcast Predictions for 2021 from Industry Leaders

Connect with me:

podcastingwithaaron.com. Links to social accounts and more there.

Email aaron@thepodcastdude.com or visit if you have questions you'd like me to answer on the show.

86: Relaunching My Show to Help You Learn Podcasting (Introducing Podcasting with Aaron)

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 19:07:17 -0000

Hey friend! Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you're having a good day wherever you are.

If this is your first time hearing or seeing me, welcome! I'm glad you're here! My name is Aaron Dowd and I'm here to help you learn about podcasting and connect you with other great podcasters in the podcasting community.

If it's been awhile since you heard from me, I'm sorry I've been absent for so long, but thanks for giving me another chance!

If you've been following for more than a couple years, you know I used to host a podcast and YouTube channel called The Podcast Dude. I'm renaming and relaunching that show and calling it Podcasting With Aaron.

My Two Goals for This Show

First, to share everything I've learned about podcasting so far.

I've been making podcasts and helping people make podcasts for about 8 years now. I don't know everything, but I'd like to share what I have learned, and hopefully it will be helpful to you. Let's learn together!

Second, I want to introduce you to other podcast producers and people working in the podcasting.

I know that it's hard to do things alone, and finding other people who share your enthusiasm for podcasting can be challenging.

Fortunately there's an amazing community of people who are passionate about podcasting, and I think we should all be friends. I want to help facilitate those friendships and make introductions through this show.

New Episodes Every Saturday

That's right: New episodes every Saturday! I know how important it is to have something to look forward to, and a weekly cadence is what I'm committing to.

The format for the show will be simple, to prevent me from overthinking it and procrastinating.

I'm going to record a video for YouTube first, and export the audio from the video to publish in my podcast RSS feed.

I think you'll enjoy the video version the most, but I understand if you like listening in your podcast app better.

I'll try to make sure the audio-only version is just as good as the video version, and include links to anything I show in the video in the podcast show notes.

I'll have a few different segments that I'll be doing regularly:

Q&A, where I answer your questions
Tips & tricks, where I talk about a specific topic related to podcasting
Interviews, where I talk to podcasters and people making useful things for podcasters
Recommendations, where I talk about things I think you should know about or check out (news, videos, blog posts, gear, etc)
Personal updates, just to give you a peek into my life and what I've been up to

I'll aim for 15 minute episodes, and try to keep them under 30 minutes unless I'm doing an interview (sometimes it's nice to let those go a little longer). I'll bring an outline and notes, but I'll try not to script it too much.

I'll make sure to have the next week's topic ready and share it at the end of every episode.

What I Need From You:

I do have a favor to ask: Please leave a comment in YouTube or a review in Apple Podcasts and tell me about yourself and your show.

I'd like to know how you found me, how long you've been listening or watching, and what your podcast is about, and if you have any questions or things you're currently struggling with related to podcasting.

This helps me get to know you a little better which will help me make this show better, but it will also help other people connect with you as well.

And if you have any feedback, suggestions, or encouragement you'd like to share, I'd love to hear those too.

The website for this show is podcastingwithaaron.com, that's where you can find links to my social media accounts and other resources and stuff related to me and this show.

If you have a question you'd like me to answer on the show, record a voice memo and email it to aaron@thepodcastdude.com.

Dedications

I'd like to dedicate this show to a few people.

To Sofia, for always inspiring me to get better, and to my nephew Silas: I hope this show inspires you to start your own helpful YouTube channel or podcast someday.

And finally, I dedicate this show to you (you reading, watching, or listening). Thank you for joining me and following along. Podcasting is definitely more fun with friends, so I'm thankful you're here.

Recommendations

There's a YouTube channel and a podcast that both inspired me to get back into making videos and podcasts.

The YouTube channel is Yoga with Adriene, and the podcast is Deep Questions with Cal Newport.

I'm not exaggerating when I say they changed my life this year. They're both made by incredible people and absolutely worth your time.

Next Week on Podcasting with Aaron:

Next week's topic will be How to Stop Procrastinating and Make a Podcast. This was a question from Chris B. on Twitter, and a topic I have YEARS of experience with.

If you've been procrastinating on starting a podcast or making new episodes, leave me a comment or send me a message and tell me about it so I can talk about it in next week's episode.

Happy podcasting, and I'll see you next week!

Aaron Dowd
Granbury, Texas
December 5, 2020

85: Juleyka Lantigua-Williams | How to Grow Your Podcast Audience

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 05:05:03 -0000

Juleyka Lantigua-Williams shares her strategy for audience growth and how it's put her shows on the path to reach 1 million downloads by the end of the year.

Here's what I learned in this episode: Audience growth isn't something that magically happens once you start publishing episodes.

If you want to grow your audience and get more listeners and fans, there's three important questions to ask yourself. These questions are important regardless of how long you've been podcasting.

The three questions are:

1. Who is the ideal listener for my show?

2. What needs do they have that I'm trying to address and fulfill with my show?

3. Where is my ideal listener spending their time and attention, and what's my plan for getting their attention?

•••

Juleyka Lantigua-Williams is the founder of Lantigua Williams & Co, an audio production company. She describes her role as building teams that make podcasts and films.

So a little more about Juleyka:

Juleyka is the Founder/CEO of Lantigua Williams & Co., an award-winning and Peabody-nominated digital media studio that builds teams that create beautiful experiences in digital audio and film. She is a journalism veteran with 20 years of experience as a writer, reporter, editor, syndicated columnist, book editor/scout, lecturer, and audio producer. Lantigua Williams & Co. produces original shows like Latina to Latina, 70 Million, and Feeling My Flo, and provides tailored consulting and white-label production services for clients that include Macmillan Podcasts, the Phi Beta Kappa Society, WHYY, KQED, and Civil Beat.

Juleyka says she first fell in love with podcasts after hearing Serial. After devouring that show, she became fascinated with the way story-telling techniques were being used in audio. She got the chance to work on Code Switch at NPR, and fell in love with the process of making podcasts.

I met Juleyka last year when Lantigua Williams & Co started using Simplecast for hosting. After several interesting and insightful conversations about podcasting, I asked her if she would be willing to be a guest on my show to talk more about her approach to audience acquisition.

Couple quick things to mention before we get into the interview:

First, Juleyka is hosting a series of webinars about working in podcasting she's calling Podcasting Seriously. If you're interested in getting into working in the podcast industry, or if you'd like to take your podcasting skills to the next level, I'd encourage you to check it out and sign up. Visit https://www.podcastingseriously.com/ to learn more.

Second, we recorded this interview using Squadcast, which dropped the call multiple times. Kind of a bummer, but that's how it goes sometimes. Next time I'll be sure to record locally as well. Luckily I was able to edit the show in a way that the drops aren't noticeable.

Alright, let's get into my conversation about audience acquisition (and more) with Juleyka Lantigua-Williams.

Tip #1 for Audience Growth: Know as much about your ideal listener as possible without violating their privacy.

Q: Who is the ideal listener for your show?

If you're like me, you might answer that question with something slightly vague, like, ”My ideal listener is someone who is interested in making a great podcast.”

That's a decent start, but let's dig deeper. Let's get specific.

So where do you start? What are the fundamentals?

So many people start podcasting before they've identified their show's number one biggest fan. You've probably heard about creating for an ideal listener before, but Juleyka takes the idea to the next level.

Juleyka looks for factual evidence for what she believes is true about her ideal listener, who even has a name and a face (check out the website).

Things you should know about your ideal listener:

Age
Education level
Career level
Relationship status
Family info
Where she lives
Digital experience habits
Hobbies
Purchasing habits
How many other people like her are there?

Juleyka's ideal listener even has a name: Kenya.

Why this matters: Knowing your ideal listener gives you a target. It will help guide your decisions as you're planning out your content and pitching the show to advertisers.

If you're thinking about starting a show, answer this question:

"Will my ideal listener listen to this show?"

If you know that she will listen, then pursue the idea.

Tip #2 for Audience Growth: Meet the needs of your ideal listener.

Once you've figured out who your ideal listener is, start thinking about what their needs are. What podcasts do they listen to and why? What are their needs? How can you make something that addresses those needs?

These can be difficult questions to answer, but if you know a few people who match the profile of your ideal listener, you should ask them which podcasts they listen to, and why. I think you'll find the answers interesting and thought-provoking.

Tip #3 for Audience Growth: Once you know who your ideal listener is, go where they are.

"Once you know who she is, you need to figure out where she is and go there. Where is she? How can I take the show to her?""

Where is your ideal listener spending their time and attention?

Don't wait for them to discover you. Take the show to them.

Juleyka mentioned looking for consumer data about her ideal listener, which is something I've never really looked into getting before. I didn't get a chance to ask her for more details, but here's a link I found on Google that might be a good place to start: Where Can You Buy Big Data? Here Are The Biggest Consumer Data Brokers

Shows mentioned in this episode:

Follow and Support Juleyka:

Podcasting, Seriously with Juleyka Lantigua-Williams

Whether you’re an independent creative or someone looking to make a career move to podcasting, this series is for you. With so many excellent 101 resources available about HOW TO podcast, it’s time to take a deeper look at skills and ideas that will take you a step further into podcasting as an industry. Let’s talk, seriously.

Get your tickets now!

•••

Connect with me at https://www.aarondowd.com, and get more podcast episodes at podcastingwithaaron.com.

Thanks for listening!

Aaron Dowd
July 23, 2020
Fort Worth, Texas

84: Sean McCabe Returns to Talk About His Podcasting Process, Growing an Audience, Making Money with a Podcast, and More

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 06:00:07 -0000

In this episode, Sean and I discuss his new mobile recording setup, the challenges of the paid membership model for podcasts, Spotify's recent moves in podcasting (Joe Rogan, etc), how to grow an audience for a podcast, the best ways to make money with a podcast, what most podcasters get wrong about podcast promotion on social media and what they should do instead, and so much more.

If you'd like to support this show, please share it with a friend, leave a review in Apple Podcasts or your podcast app of choice, or become a paying member of The Podcast News.

Show Links:

Sean's website: seanwes.com

Sean's Mobile Recording setup:

Rode SmartLav Mic

Rode SC6L Lightning Interface

Ferrite (iOS app)

Brusfri Noise Reducer

More Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.co/thepodcastdude
More Podcast Episodes and Resources: https://podcastingwithaaron.com
Blog: aarondowd.com

83: How (and When) to Find Sponsors for Your Podcast: Talking Sponsors, Podcorn, and More with Mathew Passy on Podcast Me Anything

Sat, 02 May 2020 16:14:40 -0000

Topics:

When is the right time to start looking for sponsors for a podcast?
How does having a niche audience help you with finding sponsors?
3 things you should include in a proposal to a sponsor
Why getting brands excited about sponsoring podcasts needs to be a community effort
Questions to ask yourself before you start looking for sponsors
What Podcorn is, and how it works
And more

If you'd like to support this show, please share it with a friend, leave a review in Apple Podcasts or your podcast app of choice, or become a paying member of The Podcast News.

Links:

•••

If this is your first time hearing this show, welcome! You can learn more about the show here: A Podcast About Podcasting, for Podcasters

You can find more episodes, links to cool stuff, and everything else at thepodcastdude.com.

Thanks for listening, and happy podcasting!

82: Steph Colbourn | Professional Podcast Production Q&A

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 11:00:13 -0000

My guest today is Steph Colbourn, founder of Edit Audio, a podcast consultation and production company.

In this episode, we discuss how she got into podcast editing and production, how she connects with and on-boards new clients, her process for working with them and helping them be successful, what she's learned about launching and marketing shows, how she manages money and scheduling, why she's optimistic about the future of podcasting, and so much more.

About Steph and Edit Audio

Steph is passionate about creating high-quality podcasts, driven to get more womxn and LGBTQ+ people behind and in front of the mic, and working to ensure more voices are heard and to create media more representative of the world we live in.

Her company, Edit Audio, is a team of womxn working to record, produce, and market high-quality podcasts. She started the company in Toronto in 2012 and quickly expanded into the US and UK markets. Their clients include Harpers Baazar, Stack Overflow, Element AI, Cosmopolitan, If These Ovaries Could Talk, Glossier, Postlight, Tinder, and more.

Connect With Steph:

More Cool Stuff to Check Out:

If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts, or share the episode with a friend. Thank you! 💙

80: How to Get a Job Producing Podcasts

Sun, 23 Dec 2018 04:00:00 -0000

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

podjobs.net
Without Fail: Ira Glass: The Man Who Launched a Thousand Podcasts (That Gimlet podcast interview I mentioned, real good)

Most Jobs Don't Have An Official Job Posting

Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. - Anton Ego, Ratatouille

The best jobs are never advertised. - Unknown

The jobs I linked to in that Twitter thread just the ones I found easily on job boards with a quick Google search.

I know there are more podcasting jobs that aren't being shared on job boards because I've landed a few of them myself over the past 5 years, and that was before the big podcasting boom of 2017.

Podcasting is still a relatively new field, and many people, companies, and brands are only now beginning to think about starting a podcast.

They might want to hire someone to produce a podcast, but they may not know how to put together a job posting, or they may not want to. They might not know which skills are required or what kind of person they need to hire in order to end up with a good podcast.

This is a time of opportunity for motivated podcast producers at all levels.

Q: If I want to be a professional podcast producer, what do I need to know and be good at?

I took a look at the job postings again to get a sense of the most commonly listed skills and requirements, and here's what I think are the essential skills for podcast producers.

Essential Skills for Podcast Producers:

Content creation and direction: You should have experience developing shows and episode content, writing scripts and stories, participating in brainstorming sessions, etc
Audio recording and editing: You should know how to record audio that sounds good, how to put a project together and edit it in audio software, how to write narration (if necessary), add music, mix and master, and whatever else the production requires
Working well with others: You should be able to work with—and possibly manage—producers, writers, audio engineers, editors, freelancers, guests, and so on
Ability to work under deadlines: You can get stuff done and shipped on schedule (time management skills)
Proactive problem-solving skills: There's going to be stuff they don't know, stuff you don't know, so you should be able and willing to figure it out
Leadership skills: This means you have opinions and taste and are comfortable with setting goals and identifying how you'll measure success

Q: What if I don't have all those skills yet?

That's ok, I didn't have all those skills when I started producing podcasts either, and I'm still working on getting better at all of them.

Study those podcast producer job postings for insights into what you should study, but remember that you don't need to be a master of everything to produce a great podcast, and the best producers are always learning on the job anyways.

The important thing is to have a firm grasp on the basics and a willingness to work hard, experiment, take feedback and criticism, and keep learning.

But since this is a prescriptive advice podcast, here are a few things I believe you should focus on if you want to increase your chances of landing a job producing podcasts.

How to Increase Your Chance of Landing a Job Producing Podcasts

1. Learn everything you can about recording and working with audio

Study all the various options for capturing audio in studio and live environments: Microphones, audio interfaces, soundboards, etc.

Practice recording with different gear and in different locations. Learn how the gear and the room or environment changes the sound of a recording.

Learn everything you can about how to manipulate and work with audio once it's been recorded. Learn about editing and post-production: EQ, compression, noise removal, limiting, and loudness metering.

Learn how to organize and share your audio files, and how to backup and archive your finished projects.

You can learn the basics in a few hours, but mastering recording and working with audio is a life-long project. That might sound intimidating, but I promise that it's actually a lot of fun (doing the same thing every day sucks).

2. Learn pro audio software like ProTools, Logic Pro X, or Audition

Many people get started with podcasting using the free or easy tools like GarageBand or Audacity, but if you want to be a powerhouse podcast producer, you should acquire and master a professional DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) like ProTools, Logic Pro X, or Audition.

While it's true that you can make a successful podcast with almost any editing program, the professional DAWs have useful (maybe even essential) features that the free or cheap DAWs don't, including non-destructive and multitrack editing and other features for tweaking or enhancing audio once it's been recorded.

Professional production studios and other podcast producers are also likely using the one or more of these pro DAWs, so if you're serious about producing podcasts, try to master at least one of the three DAWS I listed above (Pro Tools, Logic, or Audition).

3. Learn the most popular technology and software tools used by podcasters

In addition to your DAW of choice, you should also learn and be familiar with (if not good at) all the various apps and software used by podcasters and podcast producers.

That includes:

Recording gear & software
Writing apps and other collaboration software for communicating with co-workers, developing episode ideas and scripts, show notes, and so on
Graphic design apps for developing visual assets
Content management systems (websites) and podcast hosting software (like Simplecast)
Social media platforms
and whatever else podcasters are using to make or grow their shows

You don't have to master every single app or software in each of the categories I listed above, but you should be able to learn and use them quickly if needed.

If you tell yourself you can't (or don't want to) learn new software tools, you're right, and you'll probably have a hard time being successful as a podcast producer. Keep an open mind and be willing to learn.

4. Study and learn from other producers (especially the great ones)

Producing great audio is a craft, and there are many great audio producers to learn from.

Keep your eyes open for them. Seek them out. Follow them on social media, subscribe to their shows, read their articles and books, and take their online courses.

Ask them questions when you get the opportunity, but analyze their work either way. It's a great way to learn about how things are done and may give you some ideas about things to improve or how to do things differently (and hopefully better).

5. Don't wait to get hired, start your career as a producer today

Don't wait for someone to hire you: Go out and start your own show, or help your friends start shows and try to figure out how to make them successful. Do the best you can and try to make work you can be proud of.

A good self-initiated portfolio will go a long way towards convincing other people to hire you, and you'll gain more experience (and probably even learn more) by doing instead of just reading or watching tutorials.

Q: What if I don't live in one of the big cities where these jobs are?

Good news! While it can certainly help to live near a large city like New York City or Los Angeles where there are podcast companies or businesses looking to hire podcast producers, you can help produce podcasts from almost anywhere.

The internet has made it possible to connect with people all over the world and the rise of broadband and fast internet means you can collaborate in real time or easily send audio files back and forth over Dropbox or Google Drive. And you can certainly learn everything you need to learn about podcast production as long as you have access to the internet and a library.

If you'd like to land a gig producing podcasts, I'd encourage you to invest time in developing the skills I listed earlier, but also in networking and connecting with other people in the industry or similar industries. For example, I've learned a lot from writers, web designers, programmers, marketers, managers, folks who work in the film and book industries, and many other kinds of professionals.

Again, don't wait to get hired as a producer. Start studying and producing shows today.

Have a question, or just want to say hi? Send an email to aaron@thepodcastdude.com. I love connecting with other podcasters.

Happy podcasting!

RSS Feeds Explained: How to Get Your Podcast Into All the Podcast Apps & Directories

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 16:00:00 -0000

Q: What is an RSS feed?

An RSS feed is a formatted text document that contains all the important information about your show. It's hosted on a server somewhere (usually public) and has a URL so anyone can view or access its contents. It contains info about your show and your episodes: Things like your show’s title, description, episode titles, and links to the audio files for the episodes.

It is possible to write and update an RSS feed yourself, but it’s time consuming and errors or typos can break things, so managing the RSS feed is usually handled by a podcast host.

Q: Why do I need an RSS feed?

The RSS feed is basically your show. Without it, you’ll just have blog posts or audio files, but no way for people to subscribe and get new episodes unless they visit your website (or SoundCloud page or Youtube channel, etc).

Your show’s feed is what podcast apps and directories (like Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and so on) will use to display your show and episodes in their apps.

People can also bypass the podcast directories and subscribe to your feed directly using any compatible app. Since RSS is an established standard, there are many apps that can subscribe to and display info from RSS feeds. In fact, I use a mac app called Reeder to subscribe to the RSS feeds for multiple blogs and websites.

Q: How do I make sure my new episodes get into Apple Podcasts and the other directories?

In order to get your show into Apple Podcasts and the other podcast directories, you’ll need to submit your show’s RSS feed URL to them. This is almost always done via a web portal, like Apple’s PodcastsConnect website or Spotify’s Podcasters.Spotify.com portal.

Once the podcast directory approves your feed (most places will within 48 hours), they will use the info in the feed to display your show in their directory. They’ll also check the feed regularly for changes and new episodes.

Here's how it works: Your show has an RSS feed and you’ve already submitted the feed url to the directories. You publish a new episode in your podcast host, and some new lines that contain info about the episode are added to your show's feed.

Since the directories are checking your show's feed for updates and new episodes, they see that a new episode has been added, and they use that info in the feed to display the episode in their app.

As soon as the directory gets the new episode and adds it to their app, anyone who has subscribed to the show through that directory will get the new episode as well.

Q: What do I do if my new episodes don’t show up in the directories right away or at all?

As long as you included the required info about your episode when you published it, the directories and apps should see the changes and update pretty quickly, although Apple says it can take them up to 24 hours to update their podcast directory.

If you can’t see the new episode in any of the podcast apps or directories, then it’s likely an issue on your end. Check with your podcast host or whoever manages/updates your show’s feed.

If you can see the episode in all the apps/directories except one, then it’s likely an issue with that directory and not anything wrong with your feed. If you’re concerned, reach out to that directory’s support team and ask if they would mind taking a look.

Q: Can I change podcast hosts or RSS feeds without breaking things or losing my show’s subscribers?

You can move hosts anytime, although it’s easier with some hosts than with others. Most hosts will copy an existing RSS feed and audio files over to their service.

After you have the URL for the new feed that was setup for your show, you’ll need to update the podcast directories so they check your new feed for updates and new episodes instead of the old one. This is usually done through the same web portal that you used to submit the show, although some places require you to send an email. Your host should be able to help if you have questions.

You can check out this article for links and instructions for submitting and updating feeds.

Q: What is a 301 redirect?

The 301 redirect directs anyone who visits the old feed URL over to the new feed URL for your show. It’s kind of like setting up a mail forward.

Your podcast host should allow you to add a 301 redirect to your old feed if you’ve moved your show to a new host and gotten a new feed for your show. If your podcast host doesn't make it easy for you to easily redirect your feed to a new feed, your host sucks.

Q: I’ve read or heard about an iTunes new-feed tag that needs to be added to a new feed. What’s that?

The iTunes new-feed tag just lets Apple know that this is a new feed URL for your show. I’m not sure why they ask for this if you also have to log into PodcastsConnect and update the feed URL for your show there, but they do. Your host should handle this for you (Simplecast adds this tag automatically whenever a show is imported).

Recap:

You don’t have to be afraid of RSS feeds. They are just formatted text documents that contain info about your show. You can access or copy them anytime.
If you move your show to a new host and get a new feed, you’ll need to redirect your old feed over to the new feed, and also update the podcast directories so they check the new feed for updates instead of the old one. You won’t lose any subscribers if you follow these steps.

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Have a question, or just want to say hi? Send an email to aaron@thepodcastdude.com. I love connecting with other podcasters.

Happy podcasting!

How to Be a Podcast Editor: Q&A with Sidney Evans

Sun, 11 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0000

Questions Discussed in This Episode:

How do you find your first clients?
Do you need a website and/or tutorials to attract clients?
What are people hiring podcast editors looking for?
Should we be making tutorials and content to attract clients?
Should you invest time in trying to convince people to start podcasts?
Should you only work with shows that are aligned with your goals and values?
How much should you charge for your services?

Ryan Monette | A Day In the Life of an Audio Engineer

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 10:00:00 -0000

My guest this week is professional audio engineer Ryan Monette. Ryan graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Music Production & Engineering. For the last 4.5 years he's been the Post-Production Audio Engineer on staff at Elevation Church, in Charlotte, NC, where he mixes their global TV show, and has many other responsibilities (boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, etc.). You may have heard some of his work, as he sound-designed and mixed the opener video for the Circles conference for the past two years. He even had his own podcast for a short while (TheQueuecast.com). I asked Ryan to come on the show to share his journey towards becoming a professional audio engineer (a job that I've always wanted), and to get him to share some tips for anyone interested in working in audio/video professionally.

Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins:

Think long term and dream big.
If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone.
Take advantage of free online courses to learn more about audio engineering.
Get started with whatever you have.
Your mix may sound completely different in a different environment, so listen with different headphones/speakers in different locations.
Master the basics and keep going back to them.
If you’re mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent.
When mixing, always use a reference track.

Show Notes

Aaron: You graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in music production and engineering. For the last five years, you’ve been the post production audio engineer for Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. You have a lot of jobs there: boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, and you mix their global TV show. Do you mix that live?

Ryan: Not necessarily. We can get into that later. There’s a process for that.

Aaron: Some of the creative people here might have heard of some of your work. You sound designed and mixed the opening videos for the past two years of Circles Conference, which I was at. Have you been there for the past two years?

Ryan: I haven’t been personally, no. I have wanted to go. I love it from afar, and I want to go in person.

Aaron: I wanted you to come on this show because when I first got started, I had dreams of being a professional audio engineer. I thought, “How cool would it be to work in audio and get paid for it? That’d be awesome!”

I fell backwards into it by doing podcast editing as a hobby first, then for money, then I met Sean McCabe and ended up working for him full time. I edit podcasts and help out with a ton of other stuff. I asked you to come on the show to share your advice for anyone who’s interested in working in audio/video professionally, and to talk about how you got there yourself. So tell me a little bit about how you got into audio. When did you first realize that this was something you wanted to do?

Ryan’s Journey to Becoming a Professional Audio Engineer

Ryan: I love listening to your podcast, Aaron, and what I love about it is I feel like you and I have a lot of similarities in our backgrounds. You’re a musician, a drummer, and I’m also a musician. I play several things. My primary instrument is bass, but along with that, I started on piano. I picked up bass, and with the bass I picked up guitar. I took some drum lessons here and there as well.

I sing as well. I dabbled in a little bit of everything. I’m kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. I’m okay at a lot of things, but I’m not superb at one thing. Anyway, right around junior high or high school, I started playing the bass. I started playing in little bands here and there. When it came time for college, I had no clue what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I loved music.

Aaron: Same here!

Ryan: I was living in Las Vegas at the time, so I decided, well, everyone has to have that college experience, and I didn’t want to go to college in the same city, so I decided that I needed that “being away from home” experience. I went to the University of Nevada, Reno. I took your basic, general classes, not knowing what I wanted to do. At this time, for my high school graduation, I had received a graduation present of a Macbook Pro.

With that, of course, you get the wonderful iLife suite, including Garageband. As a musician, a whole new world was opened up to me. When I was in a band in high school, I was the gear head—I loved the PA and putting cables together.

I was drawn to that. Once I had this Macbook Pro with Garageband and I had my bass and my guitar in my dorm, I was like, “I can create music!” I figured out how to work it and record myself. I bought a USB microphone, and that world was opened up. When I was there, I had a friend, and her brother went to this school where all they learned about was music. I was like, “Wait, you can do that? You can go to school for just music?”

That’s how I found out about Berklee School of Music. I applied, and you have to audition as well. I applied and auditioned, and the first time I tried, I actually didn’t get into the music school I wanted to go to.

Aaron: This sparks something in my mind. I feel like I might have read an article about Berklee or looked into it and thought, “No, they’re really strict on who they accept, based on your performance.” That was intimidating to me at the time, because I never felt like I was that good of a drummer.

Ryan: It was intimidating for me, too. Clearly, I wasn’t up to par.

Aaron: Yet you went for it. That’s more than a lot of people would do.

Ryan: Yeah. After I finished my first year at UNR, I moved back to Vegas and went to UNLV, the University of Nevada Las Vegas. I took all music classes, forgetting the general ed stuff you need to get a degree. I took all music classes—music theory, because I had never had actual music theory classes, so I thought I needed that. With that, there were some audio classes that I took as well. I was like, “Hey, I like this audio thing.”

At the University of Nevada Las Vegas, I had my first exposure to a formal audio class, where I learned all the proper techniques. Later on that year, I applied and auditioned again for Berklee. I got accepted, and the next year, I moved to Boston and went to Berklee for about three and a half years. Then I graduated. When I went to Berklee, the only thing that drew me as a major was Music Production and Engineering. I naturally loved the gear side of things. I fell in love with recording. I was like, “This is what I want to do.”

Aaron: You got to spend three and a half years there, studying and learning?

Ryan: It is non-stop, 24/7, music, audio, and to be honest, I miss being in that environment so much.

Aaron: That sounds fantastic. I always love setting aside time to take online classes, read books, and listen to interviews about audio.

Think Long-Term

Aaron: You were drawn to the audio engineering stuff, and then you graduated.

Ryan: I can remember a specific time in my life, and I’m pretty sure it was my last semester at Berklee. They went by semesters instead of years. It was in one of my capstone classes. Our instructor asked us the typical, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” question.

Aaron: I love that question now. I hated it when I was 22.

** Think long term and dream big**

Aaron: Plan out where you want to be, because if you can envision it, then you can figure out how to get there. But you have to start by saying, “I want to do this thing someday.” For me, it was, “I want to do work from a laptop. How do I get there?” Now I’m there. So you were 22 and someone asked you, “Ryan, where do you want to be? Where do you see yourself in five years?”

Ryan: At that moment, I was trying to figure that out, naturally, as you do when you’re approaching the end of college. While I was at Berklee, I loved music. I loved recording music, but my absolute favorite class—they only had one of them, but it was the class I yearned for, that I wanted to take and put in all these extra hours for—was audio for visual media, audio for video.

By far, that was my favorite class. The whole class, we were working toward our final project. You choose a five to seven minute clip from a well known movie, and all the audio is completely stripped. You have to recreate everything. That’s all the dialogue, all the foley, all the ambient background, all the hard effects, and so on. You have to connect with a film scoring student there at Berklee, and they have to provide the score. I absolutely loved every aspect of that project and the process. When it came time to decide what I wanted to do with my life, it was between audio engineering at a recording studio, working at Disney as an Imagineer, or doing audio at a church.

I have always been involved with church, playing on worship teams and whatnot, so I also saw myself doing audio for a church. Long story short, I was really privileged to dip my feet in all of those things after college. After I graduated, I moved back to Las Vegas. Eventually, I found an incredible recording studio, probably one of the top two recording studios in Las Vegas, and I landed an internship.

First Audio Engineering Jobs

Ryan: I say “internship” loosely, because your typical studio internship is all the stereotypical grunt work—taking out the trash, doing the coffee, and whatnot. I showed up, and they were like, “You went to Berklee? Berklee guys are cool. Here, hop in this session and help us out.” It was open to me, thrown at me, and next thing I knew, I was assisting on sessions with huge clients, I won’t name drop.

Aaron: You can drop a couple of names if you want.

Ryan: I had a pretty fun time helping out with a session with the famous engineer Eddie Kramer, who is engineering for Carlos Santana.

Aaron: Dang, man! That’s awesome.

Ryan: That was pretty incredible. But while I was there, I had this gut feeling inside of me saying, “This isn’t it.”

Aaron: It’s fine, but it’s not quite right?

Ryan: I could see myself staying there and working my way up, but it didn’t feel right. A few months after I realized that I didn’t want to stay at the studio, I applied and was offered a job at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

I packed my bags, moved to Orlando, and I was working as a stage technician at the Epcot park. There, they found out that I was an audio guy, so they pushed me toward the live audio side of things. I was mixing shows and bands at Epcot and what was at the time Downtown Disney, now Disney Springs, area. Same thing. Almost as soon as I got there, the same gut feeling came in.

I was like, “This isn’t it. I’m more of a studio engineer. I definitely don’t want to do live stuff.” Although I love Disney, it just wasn’t sitting right. I was only there three months before the next great opportunity came up, which is where I am right now. One of my friends told me about a job opening for this church in Charlotte, North Carolina, Elevation Church. I had actually been following them because of their podcast.

At the time, I was kind of like, “I’ve got a job, whatever.” For some reason, I ended up on their website, looking at the job. I was reading, and I was like, “Wait a minute, they’re looking for someone to do audio for video. That’s what I really want to do!” On a whim, I threw out my resume. Next thing you know, I’ve been here going on five years.

Aaron: Did you mention that you were a podcast listener when you sent in your resume?

Ryan: Yeah.

Aaron: The connections you can make through podcasting is really incredible.

Ryan: It is. And I’ve been working there for 5 years now.

How to Get Into Audio Engineering

Aaron: I want to jump into what you do at your job at Elevation, but let’s pause and do a section on what advice you would tell someone who’s wanting to get started. I wrote a couple of things down here. I think it’s hilarious that you got a Macbook and your first microphone was a USB microphone.

Ryan: Which was the Blue Snowball, by the way.

Aaron: That’s the worst microphone!

Ryan: I had no idea how to use it, either. If I find some of the earliest recordings I did, there are times I’m clipping to the max, square waves.

Aaron: Probably bad mic technique, too. But hey; it got you started!

If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone.

Any USB mics will work for getting started. I like the Blue Yeti, but it’s like $100. The ATR-2100 is fine, too. You just have to get something that can record some audio and start playing with it.

Start playing with Garageband. Start playing with the free programs. Learn how to enable recording on a track, how to set your input device to the microphone, how to set your output device to wherever your headphones are plugged into, whether that’s your mic or your computer. It took me so long to figure that stuff out. I was like, “Why can’t I hear the audio in my headphones? What is going on?”

Ryan: Same here.

Aaron: You have to set input and output, then you have to record enable or do the input monitoring, all that stuff. But start with the USB microphone. Take some basic classes. There are so many great online classes. If you don’t have any money at all, if you’re super broke like I was when I started, watch some free YouTube videos. Read a book.

Ryan: If you go to Coursera.org, they’re a website where you can pay to take online courses and get certifications and whatnot, but they also offer free online courses. They even offer free online courses from Berklee. I’ve seen a music production class there. I’ve taken a free online song writing class.

Check out free online courses, because they can be a pool of incredible knowledge.

I took a photography class on there. Coursera is a great place. They’re great if you want to take free online courses.

Aaron: There are places where you can learn all this stuff. You just have to invest some time. You really just have to start: Don’t wait until you have $500 for an interface and $200 for some professional headphones and microphone. Whether you want to start a podcast, start recording audio for a video, or record and mix a demo for a band, start doing something.

Stop spending all your time thinking about how you can’t do anything because you don’t have certain gear or you’re not in the right place. You’ll learn as you do, especially in audio. You’re going to make a ton of mistakes.

Ryan: That’s how you learn, though! That’s one of the most valuable things I’ve learned in life. You learn from your mistakes.

Aaron: You don’t really learn when everything goes well.

Just Start

Aaron: Any other advice you would give somebody, thinking back on how you got to where you are right now?

Ryan: Honestly, you hit the nail on the head with “just start.” It’s as simple and cliche as Nike, “Just do it.” There is always going to be the next latest craze, the gear, and we’ve all been susceptible to that. We say, “Oh, well, I could do this if I had X.” It starts with the drive and determination, wanting to do it. There’s knowledge out there everywhere. You just have to dig for it.

Chances are, you have at least something you can start with. Record something on your phone.

Aaron: I have a friend who makes some awesome music on his iPhone.

Ryan: Oh, totally. It’s as simple as getting an adapter. You can plug your guitar or whatever into your phone.

Aaron: Kids these days have it so easy!

Ryan: You have Garageband on your phone. I remember when I was figuring this out in high school, and we actually had a four track tape recorder. That was my first start. Get started with whatever you have.

Aaron: What kind of stuff do you do at the church? What’s your day to day life like? Are you there every day, or is it just a couple of days a week?

Ryan: Oh no, I’m definitely there every day. It has been a whirlwind for sure. In the past five years, I have probably played every audio role that there is to be played here. My main thing now is audio for broadcasts, pretty much anything that leaves the church. Our biggest output is the sermon, which goes to a lot of places.

It also goes in the TV episode, which we talked about, which goes locally, nationally, and, I believe, globally as well. That’s a lot of what I’ve done. We also create a lot of films, short films, for our worship experiences, anything you can imagine that’s video and audio related. Audio post production, like we talk about. I’m constantly on video shoots using field recorders, the boom op, anything you can think of. Audio for video, I’ve done it.

The Gear Ryan Uses

Aaron: Let’s talk about your gear a little bit. What kind of stuff are you using most in everyday life? I’ll do a quick recap: I have the Shure Beta 87A Mic as my main podcasting microphone. It’s attached to a Scarlett 18i20 USB Interface (update: I’m now using my Zoom H6 exclusively), which is plugged into a quadcore iMac that’s a couple years old.

Nothing super fancy, but I’m really happy with where I am. I remember wanting all this stuff back in 2011, thinking how awesome it would be to have it. I have a Zoom H6 portable recorder and a couple of SM58 microphones. I’ve been pairing down my gear collection because I’m planning on moving in the spring.

What kind of stuff are you working with? I use Logic Pro X for editing, and then Izotope iZotope RX 5 for cleaning up background noise or fixing clipping. What about you? What’s your day to day favorite gear?

Ryan: We use a lot. There’s a bunch of gear for field recording and then in my office, which is where I’m at right now. I’ll start with my office. Right now, I’m talking into my personal mic, which is a Rode NT1A. It’s very affordable.

The Rode NT1A is a nice beginner mic which works and sounds great, and I use it for a lot of voiceover projects.

Aaron: I like those mics.

Ryan: I’m talking into that right now. We also use the Shure SM7B. We have a nice Neumann that we’ll use for bigger projects. We like to use Universal Audio Interfaces, so I’ve got one of those. They’re great. They’re rock solid. You really can’t beat them.

At our main recording/editing audio work station, we use Pro Tools. That’s very standard, and I’ve been using that for years and years. I use a lot of plugins. I use a lot of the Waves Plugins. I do use RX as well, and that’s the bulk of it. I do a lot of processing, depending on the project.

I have a really huge sound library for if I’m doing narrative pieces that involve sound design, sound effects. I have a great app called Audio Finder, which a lot of electronic musicians use to help them find sounds. I use it to help me find sounds. It’s a nice way to catalogue sounds if you’re a sound designer or anything like that.

You can basically tag all these audio files with meta data, and you can search for sounds by their title. Or, if you type in a word in the search bar, it can pull up things based off the the metadata. If you have notes on something, it can find it. Audio Finder is a great way to find sounds.

I have some other things in here. I have the Artist Mix Controller made by Avid. I use those if I’m automating stuff. I use those a lot, actually, when I’m mixing the sermons. I do a lot of automation for that. If I’m mixing a piece with a music bed or something, I like to automate the music by hand.

It feels more natural, as opposed to clicking and making little dots. That’s the bulk of it here in the office. All of our audio engineers have a nice pair of Focal monitors. I also have another set of monitors I built myself. When I mix TV episodes, I have an output routed to a TV here in my office so I can hear how it translates on TV speakers.

Recording Audio for Video

Ryan: On the front end of things, if we’re doing shoots for videos, we use Sound Devices field recorders. We have three different models: the Sound Devices 788T 8 Channel Recorder, a 702 2 Channel Recorder, and then a 633 6 Channel Recorder. That last one is one of their newer models, which is great.

Sound Devices are steep in price, but they are rock solid.

One of the most trustworthy, well known field recorder brands on the market. That’s what you’ll see on pretty much every big budget shoot in some way. I do a lot of freelance on the side, which gives me the opportunity EPK shoots or BTS shoots for, recently, a show on HBO called Outcast.

Aaron: Outcast? I’ve been seeing that (I watch Westworld).

Ryan: I’m pretty sure it’s the same writers or producers or something. I know it’s the same writer as The Walking Dead. They shoot here in North Carolina, so with a local production company, we’ve done some interviews with some of the cast and crew. It’s been really neat to be on set and see what they’re using. It’s cool to see how similar their world is to what we’re doing day to day, just with more money and more resources.

It’s the same thing. Most of their audio guys have some sort of Sound Devices. A lot of them use the 788 as a backup recording rig, and they’ve got larger multitrack recorders as well, that are also made by Sound Devices. Sound Devices is a great brand. They’re crazy expensive, but when you buy that, you know you’ve basically got it for life.

Aaron: Yeah, I’m looking at the Sound Devices 788T SSD 8 Channel Portable Solid State Audio Recorder. It’s almost $7,000. I love that! So fancy.

Ryan: That SSD does have an internal hard drive. Ours has a hard drive as well, so it’s great, because it has the internal hard drive, but you can also use CF cards. You can record on two different mediums. In case something runs out of space, you have it in two places.

Aaron: This is super professional stuff.

Ryan: Yeah. It is. It’s top of the line.

Aaron: Fantastic. For all the rest of you, just go with the Zoom H4N or the H6.

Ryan: Hey, we do have a Zoom H4N, and we do use that every now and then. Before I came on staff, our first field recorder was the Zoom H4N.

Aaron: If I could start over and go back to before I had any kind of interface at all, I think I would buy myself an H4N or an H6. Not only are they portable field recorders so you can walk around with them—they have little stereo condensor mics on them—but they work as audio interfaces, too. You can plug it into your computer with a USB cable and record straight to your computer if you do any kind of podcasting or stuff like that.

It’s good for the price. Otherwise, the little two channel interfaces are great. They’re about $100 for a good one, but they aren’t portable. You can’t take them to a show or out to a video shoot the way you can an H4N or an H6 or something.

Ryan: Speaking of Zoom, they’ve recently come into the more professional field recording market. About a year ago, they releases the F8, I believe, which is an 8 channel field recorder with 8 mic pres. It’s $999 for something very comparable to a Sound Device. It’s not quite as high-fidelity, but for anyone starting out, you’re really not going to notice the difference.

Mixing On Expensive Headphones or Monitors

Aaron: I was going to ask you this earlier. You mentioned that you had Focal monitors. Did you listen to the episode I did a few episodes back where I talked about mixing on headphones (Episode 69: Do You Need Expensive Headphones to Mix a Podcast?)?

Ryan: Yes, I did.

Aaron: I mix on $10 Panasonics. What do you think about that? You can be totally honest with me. You can tell me that it’s a stupid idea or that it’s okay.

Ryan: I agree to a certain extent. I agree that you should be listening to what you’re making on whatever the majority of people are going to be listening to it on. For a lot of audio engineers mixing music, that’s iPod earbuds, those standard earbuds you get. Something like that. When I mix TV, I have an output routed to a TV in my office, so I can hear it on TV speakers.

I do also believe in mixing on something with some sort of higher fidelity type of monitoring environment, whether that’s nicer speakers or nicer headphones. Naturally, you’re going to hear things differently. The main thing to take away is how things translate.

If you’re listening to something on one source and you make it sound good there, that’s great, but in a different environment, it may sound completely different.

iPhone earbuds may not have the bass that a car stereo has. You want to hear how it translates from one thing to another. That’s why it’s good to at least listen to it on two different sources and not just narrow yourself down to one cruddy thing. That’s good in theory, but again, the key takeaway is translation.

Aaron: Maybe it’s a little bit different for me and I can get away with it because of the consistency of the microphones and the recording environment set we use.

Ryan: Yeah, totally.

Aaron: I think if I was doing more stuff like you are, with videos and clients and all that kind of stuff, I would absolutely be using my higher fidelity headphones.

Ryan: Very true. The bulk of your work is dialogue, podcasts.

Aaron: Yeah, that’s really it. Just dudes talking into a microphone.

Ryan: Yeah. I have done a lot of work here where I’m working in a small studio, but a lot of my mixes have played in auditoriums and arenas.

If you’re working on projects like music or film that have different audio frequencies and spectrums, remember that sound will be perceived differently in different places.

Aaron: How do you even test for that?

Ryan: Here, I at least have a sense of how our auditorium sounds, so I’ve trained my ear to hear in advance and understand how it’s going to translate. For something like when we did a live recording in the biggest arena here in Charlotte, we had a video opener piece. I was on point for mixing that, so basically, I had to work with tech and production to find a time after setup where I can bring my session, copy it onto a laptop, and play it through the PA.

Then I can make any final mix tweaks there in the auditorium or the arena. I perfected it in my studio, and any small tweaks I was able to do in that actual environment. Granted, a lot of the times, we may not have that luxury. There are also great plugins you can buy that simulate different monitoring environments, like Sonarworks.

If you have certain pairs of headphones, you can tell the program, “I have these headphones, now make my mix sound like it’s coming through these headphones or these speakers,” so you can hear how it might translate. In that program, they have a final output like the Beats headphones. You can hear how it might sound on there, super bass heavy.

Aaron: I hear they’re getting better, but I still have never bought any Beats headphones. I probably should (just for testing purposes).

Ryan: There are definitely programs out there to help you see how things translate to different monitors.

On Location Gear

Ryan: We were talking about the gear we use for on location recording. Sound Devices would be our main recorders. For our mics, we use Schoeps. It’s a shotgun microphone, so it’s a narrow polar pattern with good off axis rejection. Schoeps is a great brand. Again, you’ll see this on professional movie sets.

That’s the mic we use. We have some Sennheiser shotguns as well, the ME66, we have a couple of those, which is more their entry shotgun mics. Recently, I rented some of the MKH416.

Aaron: I would like one of those. The Sennheiser 416 is well known as the classic TV shotgun mic, right?

Ryan: Exactly. I rented those out because I wanted to try it out for that reason. The Schoeps is very good and very well known on set as well, but so is the 416. I rented it to try it out. It’s a trusted mic that a lot of people use for these professional things, and it doesn’t really break the bank for what it is.

Aaron: They’re like $1,000, I think.

Ryan: Yeah, and it sounded great.

Aaron: The next mic I get is either going to be that or the Rode NTG 3.

Ryan: I’ve heard a lot of great things about that. I haven’t tried one myself.

Aaron: That’s the shotgun mics we shot my podcasting courses with.

Ryan: Yeah, I know that Sean uses that for all of his videos.

Aaron: I’m excited about getting to go work with those (I’m moving to San Antonio in March or April).

Master the Basics

Aaron: That’s a pretty good run through of your gear. I’m sure you could keep going and discuss a lot more, but I don’t think we need to go into that. It seems like you guys are at a super professional, high quality. You have made big investments in professional gear, which is fantastic. I encourage everyone to strive for that, to aim for that, but like we said earlier, use what you have right now. I don’t have anything close to what you guys have, but I’m still doing my podcast. I’m doing the best I can with what I have.

Ryan: It still sounds great.

Aaron: Thanks! It’s mostly just knowing how to set gain levels and not having a noisy room. It’s crazy how far the basics will get you— everything else is just icing on the cake.

I’ve been watching this video course called Zen and the Art of Work, which I really recommend to everybody. It’s mindfulness training mixed with productivity training, which is such a great combination.

In this course, he says, “So many of the masters continually revisit the basics.” Mastery is staying on a path. It’s not reaching some final goal, it’s more about being with the work and investing in getting better, but also revisiting the basics. He was talking about playing piano. He was like, “A lot of times, I just start by touching the keys, pressing the keys, and then doing basic scales over and over again.”

It’s true. When you get so good at the basics that you don’t have to think about it, that’s when you start to expand and get to that level where people say, “Wow, you’re so good at that. How did you get so good?” You’re like, “That was just doing the basics. It’s not anything fancy.”

It’s so important to master the basics and keep going back to them.

Learning More

Aaron: What’s next for you? How do you invest in yourself and improve? Or are you working so much that you always have more learning opportunities? Do you buy books or courses or follow any websites to learn more about this audio stuff?

Ryan: Honestly? We had a shift at work to where my role has shifted to mainly just broadcasts. That has enabled me to have a little bit more flexibility and free time, so I’ve been doing a lot more freelance work. That’s great, because it energizes me and keeps me engaged. It keeps me from routine. Routine is great.

I love routine, that’s very much my personality, but freelance work keeps things interesting.

For me, it’s all about where and how I can get inspired and constantly feeding that. It’s about feeding my desire for creativity. We’re all creatives. We like to create. We were designed to be creators, really. Everything I try to do is about how I can become a better creator and what I can create next. It’s about finding things that inspire me, really. We touched lightly on a few of the resources that I like, things I’ve learned and places I’ve picked things up.

If you’re interested in audio for post production, there are a couple of great books by Ric Viers. I have two books by him that are really great. The first one is The Sound Effects Bible, and it’s not just sound effects in there. He talks about everything from gear to microphones, basics, setting proper gains, compression, some mixing techniques, etc. He also has The Location Sound Bible.

There are a lot of similarities, but there’s also a lot of talk about gear, shotgun mics, lop mics, recorders, and then he also dives into some of the basics when it comes to mixing, proper gain staging, and so on. Those are a really great pool of knowledge in book form. There are a lot of other books out there, but I have found those two to be really helpful.

Other than that, when it comes to audio for video, it’s a very small, niche field. There isn’t a crazy amount of stuff out there, like there might be for mixing music. For that, you’ve got tons. You’ve got Pensado’s Place, all these people on YouTube putting out channels on mixing, mixing from home, mixing on a budget, etc. There’s plenty of that.

Aaron: Graham Cochrane and Joe Gilder are pretty awesome resources for anyone who wants to start a home studio.

Ryan: YouTube can be a pool of knowledge for anything and everything, too. You have to dig a little bit and do some searching. On the inspiration side, for me, since I love audio for video, Sound Works Collection is a great place. They’ll do mini videos interviewing the sound people that did sound for X movie. Whether it was the last Harry Potter or anything and everything, big budget films, they’ll sit down with the recording people, the sound designers, the mixers…

It’s really cool, because they’ll show footage of them doing stuff on location or the foley artists. It’s cool to see their process. For me, that helps me stay inspired. It gives me ideas to do other things. They have a podcast as well, and that’s great. The videos can be kind of short, maybe 10 minutes or so, but the podcast will go on at length, talking to the audio guys who have made sound for videos possible.

It will also be music composers for movies as well. That’s really great. I found that great not only as inspiration, but to know what and how audio professionals for big budget films get inside their minds, how they’re thinking, and what their process looks like.

It’s neat to see stuff about sound engineers for big movies and realize that we’re not so different.

Dealing With a Broad Loudness Spectrum (Dynamics)

Aaron: I have a nerdy question here. This is about normalizing and compression, I think. Aiya had asked, “I’m so torn about normalizing sound clips. If I’m working on a longer project in segments, would it be better to adjust my peaks manually for the sake of consistency? It’s for a video project.” I’m hearing that there are differences in video volumes. How do you deal with that? Do you do compression? Do you do automation for the different parts? How do you deal with dynamics?

Ryan: It depends on the project. I’ll talk about how I would mix a sermon, because that’s very dynamic. Our pastor will go from whispering, holding his handheld mic close to his stomach, to screaming, holding the microphone, cupping the capsule. Power and respect to him, because it creates a certain atmosphere, which has a powerful effect. That’s what I’m dealing with on a weekly basis.

That dynamic range is tremendous. Keep in mind, this is going to TV eventually. TV has very strict restrictions. It’s not so much on level, but on perceived level. There’s a difference between what you see meter and what you’re hearing. I can talk at length about that, too.

Aaron: Could you give us a super short version? I’m kind of aware of that, but since I just mix in Logic, I’m not sure how to measure it. Is there a way to measure it in Logic? Do you know? Is there a plugin you use?

Ryan: I use a plugin from Waves. It’s a loudness meter, and its just that. It has a lot of presets, so I’ll use the TV standard preset. I’ll use it for ATSE85, and I’ll use it for a dialogue bus. They’ve also got one for a master bus. The standard right there is your average level around -24 dB LUFS, so that’s full scale. If you have a classic meters, your peak would be zero, so that would average metering right around -10. At least for TV, I’ve got a hard limiter at -10 dB, to where nothing can go above that.

The difference between levels on a meter vs. perceived loudness is the differences between what we hear and the actual energy.

In our TV program, we’ll have the sermon, but we’ll also have a talking heads segments, which is dialogue and a music bed. We’ll also go into segments where they’ll go into worship from our live album, which had been mixed and mastered as an album. That thing is slammed. If you look at the wave form, it’s a sausage. If I’m setting all that by the meters alone and they’re all hitting -10, it may look right, but if I look at my loudness meter, that worship segment is going to be off the charts.

There’s so much more content in there. There’s so much going on with all the different frequency ranges as opposed to a dialogue track, which is a narrow field in the frequency spectrum. That’s the gist of it. When it comes to my technique for controlling dynamics, for something like mixing a sermon, if I’m going down my plugin chain, the first thing I naturally have is a high pass filter. I’m rolling off those unnecessary lows that are hogging energy.

The next thing I’ll do is use a compressor, and I’ll set the attack to right in the middle, so not fast or slow, and I’ll have the release time at fast. We don’t want to hear it pumping, letting go. That’s catching my peaks. It’s not doing a crazy amount, but it kind of is. That’s helping do a lot of the bulk compression. Before anything really hits the compressor, I will go through, and as I work my way through the mix, I will clip gain the wave form, so that, say, if he’s whispering somewhere, I might keep that, depending on how I have my compressor set.

Then, if we go up to a part where he’s screaming and my wave form is huge, I will take that down and create those nodes, those dots in the wave form, and drag the actual clip volume down, that gain down. That way, it’s not going into the compressor at this high gain level. It’s hitting the compressor evenly as the rest of it would. That way, it’s not driving the compressor crazy. Then I’ll go through and do some EQ and DSing and whatnot. I might add some more compressors in there, just to grab some of those little things coming through. After that, it’s subtle, just smoothing it out.

Aaron: It is a little bit of both. If she has access to an audio editing program—I don’t know what she’s using for editing. If you can put a compressor on the track, do that. It’s not exactly the same, but I did a YouTube video about how I process podcast vocals, and it’s very similar. For podcast vocals, I start with a Logic noise removal plugin.

Ryan: I actually have my noise suppressor, and I’ll use that later on down in my signal chain. My way of thinking is that if I’ve got all this compression going on, the compression is narrowing that dynamic range, so it’s bringing up that noise floor. I tend to do my noise suppression after the bulk of that compression, because the noise floor is higher and it’s easier to work on a supressor. If that makes sense.

Aaron: I’ve thought a lot about whether you should do the noise removal before or after you add a bunch of gain with a compressor or something, and I can’t think of a good reason that it matters. You can take out the noise before you add a bunch of gain, or you can add a bunch of gain and take out the noise afterwards. Which is better? I don’t know. Anyways, after the noise removal plugin, I put an EQ with a high pass filter, a peak compressor, an RMS or an average level compressor, and then a limiter.

Ryan: Like I mentioned earlier, before I had my long-winded answer, it also depends on what it is you’re mixing—whether it’s music, or a podcast, or something for film.

When it comes to dialogue for film, you want it to sound as natural as possible, but you also want to be able to hear if someone is whispering.

When it comes to that, I’ll still use a compressor, but it will be very, very light. If there’s anything I need to do to meet loudness, that I will automate the volume on my dialogue bus. I’ll bring that up. That way, it sounds a little bit more natural, instead of solely relying on a compressor to do all the work for you.

Aaron: That makes sense. For podcasts, if I notice that there’s a section where someone was talking much quieter, like if a guest backed away and talked like that for four or five minutes and then went back to the normal distance from the microphone, in Logic, I’ll turn that into its own clip. I make a cut on either side of the quiet part, and then, in Logic, you can double click on it and change gain by hitting Control G. Then you can add 3, 4, or 5 dB to it.

That works out pretty well. If it’s every five seconds or I have to do it more than five or six times in an episode, I won’t do the clip gain changes, I’ll just use a compressor.

Look at the overall audio file and see if there are long stretches where you can use automation to change the gain, or change the clip gain.

Common Audio Mistakes Podcasters Make

Ryan: You asked a question that I think would be good to talk about in regards to podcasting. You had asked, “What do you like about podcasts? What common mistakes do you hear people make?” Initially, I read this and thought, “I don’t know,” but I spent some time thinking about it. This is great, because it piggybacks off the loudness thing.

A lot of the mistakes that I hear when it comes to podcasts in regards to audio is the levels and loudness aspect. I’ll listen to some podcasts that sound great, and I’ll put on another podcast where the whole thing is super quiet. Then they start laughing, and it’s really loud. There are some, like mine, where they have a music bed underneath the entire thing, and then sometimes the music bed is so quiet that you hardly know it’s there.

You’re like, “What the heck is that noise in the background?” Sometimes, it’s the opposite. Sometimes, the music bed is way too loud. That’s a few of the things I’ve noticed. A lot of the fixes relate to what we just talked about. It helps to have knowledge of levels and perceived loudness.

If you’re mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent.

One of the biggest things I can recommend for anyone mixing anything, whether it’s music, movies, a podcast, is the importance of having a reference track.

Aaron: Yeah, I don’t talk about that enough.

Ryan: That is huge. Professional audio engineers who mix platinum records still do this. They will pull in a track from a different song that is mixed well and is mixed how they want theirs to sound, and they’ll have it muted in their session. When they want to have a reference to listen to or train their ear, they’ll un-mute it, and they’ll go, “Oh, okay.”

I’m sure you’ve done the same thing as me, where you’ll be so involved in a mix, you’re in it, and you think it sounds great, and then maybe you go away. You go home, sleep, and maybe you come back, and you open it up and you go, “Woah! What was I thinking!” You can get so involved in it that the blinders go up. You get tunnel vision, and you’re not aware to some things.

It’s good to have a reference track or get an outsider’s opinion on a mix.

The main takeaway here is the reference track. That would help with anything, whether it’s the timbre, how you’re EQing, or the loudness. You pull in their track and it’s far louder than yours, and you automatically know that you need to do something about it.

Aaron: That’s a great idea. You can kind of do this before or after. You go through and you edit your whole podcast, get everything set up the way you want, create an extra track, and then find a podcast that sounds really good—This American Life or pretty much anything by NPR—download an episode, drop it into your editing program, and play it, mute it, and see what the difference is. Maybe you need to add some gain with an adaptive limiter or with a compressor, or maybe you can tell that your track sounds way sharper or harsher.

Are there are too many high frequencies or too much bass compared to your reference track? You can adjust those things. I’m so glad you mentioned that. I’ve never thought of that before, and that’s such a good idea.

Ryan: It’s one of those things you don’t think of much, but once you do it, you’re like, “Oh my gosh!” It’s really eye opening and really helpful.

You can find Ryan online at ryanmonette.com, and follow him on Twitter @RyanMonette.

Shawn Blanc | Improving Your Productivity and Creative Output

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 10:00:00 -0000

Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins:

For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think and work.
Work on building your focus muscle.
The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest.
Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time.
Show up every day and do your best creative work.
If you can’t overcome fear, push through it—fear is a sign that you’re doing something that matters.
The way you feel about a product doesn’t change how much it’s worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it.
Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before.
Don’t undervalue your products.
Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing.
Pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal.

Show Notes:

Aaron: We both really loved Cal Newport’s Deep Work book. When did you get interested in the idea of intense focus and structuring your life in a way to make sure you get your best creative work done? When did you find that book or that idea and really start working on that?

Shawn: I think I found the idea years ago. When I was a creative marketing director, like I mentioned, I was doing 80 hours a week. Part of my schedule was that on Fridays, I would come home and work from home. I wouldn’t be on email or answer the phone. I had an assistant, and anyone who needed to get ahold of me needed to go through my assistant. She would screen anything and see if it was urgent or important for the day. If it was, she’d let me know.

I set up this distraction-free work time for myself on Fridays, because as the director for the marketing and all the creative stuff we were doing, it was on me to make sure that our marketing campaign for this big, end of the year, 25,000 person conference was going to happen. It was all on me. I had to drive that. You can’t do that in 10-minute time blocks scattered throughout your day.

For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think, process, come up with ideas, and work on stuff.

That was my first experience of going, “I have to have this. If I don’t, I won’t be able to do my job, and I will always be in reaction mode.” That was my first experience, and that was in 2008 when I came across that idea. It was born out of necessity for me. Obviously, that’s not new to the world, but it was new to me. When I quit my job and started blogging for a living, I came to that same spot of saying, “I need to set aside time every day to write without distractions, intentionally.”

That has evolved as we’ve had kids, schedules have changed, and seasons of life go up and down. I need uninterrupted stretches of time on a regular basis to do my most important work and to focus on the stuff that’s not urgent today but is very important. If I neglect it, those things will become urgent, or the needle is going to start going backwards and I’m going to start losing ground.

Why Deep Focus Matters

Shawn: Focused time has always been important. Then I came across Cal’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. I read that in 2015. That’s a fantastic book. There was this chapter in there on intentional practice, and that resonated with me so much. It’s very similar to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow.

He has a lot of books on very similar topics on finding flow, getting in the flow, whatever. He has one book called Flow and another one called Finding Flow. It’s the idea that not only do you need those times of uninterrupted work, but when you’re in that moment, if you can get into the flow, it’s challenging, it’s hard, etc, but you feel more rewarded. You feel better. You have a higher motivation about the work you’re doing. You feel like you accomplished something.

I don’t know if anyone listening can relate to this. You spend your whole day in reaction mode, bouncing around between your email inbox, your Twitter feed, your Facebook feed, your Instagram feed, back to email, back to Twitter, back to Instagram, back to Facebook, back to email. You’re bouncing around all these inboxes, and then you’re like, “Wow, I just spent four hours. I haven’t done anything.”

Aaron: You read a bunch of short emails, maybe you replied, maybe you sent some tweets, maybe you saw some articles.

It’s so easy to spend all day doing short, quick tasks that don’t really change anything.

Shawn: Exactly. They don’t change anything, and you feel zero satisfaction afterwards. You don’t feel like you got anything done, as opposed to if you took those four hours and, instead, spent it focused on something intentional, something that was challenging. If you set aside time to do deep work, when you come out of that time (even if it’s just one hour or half an hour), if it was distraction free and you’re focused and being intentional, you come out feeling better.

After spending intentional time working on something without any distractions, you feel more motivated and you have more energy. It’s this muscle. You have a focus muscle that you have to work on, as opposed to the distraction muscle.

Why is Creating Focused Time So Hard?

Shawn: The hardest thing for getting into that focused work time, getting into the flow, is called the Activation Energy, just getting started. The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest. Something I like to do is have a set time every day when I am going to have my focused writing time, and before I even get there, the day before, I write down what my single most important thing is that I’m going to be writing about. I have the time on my calendar, and I have the challenge, project, or task that I’m going to be working on.

As Cal Newport would say, what’s the artifact that I’m going to try and get from that focused time? Then I come, sit down, and do the work. I know that the first five minutes will be hard and I probably won’t be into it. I have to power through those first five minutes, and then you get into that flow. Time begins to get lost. Anyone who has been a painter, artist, musician, whatever, you can usually relate. You say, “I was just in the flow. I was in the zone.” That’s where your best work is going to be created.

That’s where you’re going to feel the most satisfaction with your job. That’s where you’re going to increase your skill level as a creative person. You’re going to level up your ability to do stuff. Sean has talked about this so much with his Learn Lettering course: he did 9,000 hours of intentional practice! That’s what he was doing every day. He had this focused time where he was practicing letters. You have to put in the time.

How to Stop Procrastinating and Do Your Best Work

Aaron: Everyone should read Cal Newport’s books, So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work. Both of those books are phenomenal. It’s so important as podcasters to pick a day to outline and record an episode, and write the topic in advance. Say, “I’m going to spend 30 to 45 minutes at this time writing about this thing, and then I’m going to record an episode.”

Otherwise, what ends up happening, and this is true of so many areas of life, is that you will spend a lot of time thinking about how you should do a thing. I’ve been thinking about how I should record a screencast for three weeks now. “Hey, I have to record that ‘introduction to limiting’ screencast for my Logic course,” and I’ve been thinking a lot about it, but I haven’t done it yet. It’s so silly, but that’s how procrastination works. You spend more time thinking about how you should do a thing instead of just doing the thing.

Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time.

That’s such a simple version of an idea presented in Deep Work that is so life changing. I talk about that book all the time because I love it, and I know there are still some people who haven’t read it yet. It is a book that anyone who wants to create stuff for a living professionally needs to go listen to. Shawn, you should do a whole series of videos or interviews where you talk about deep focus for creative people.

Shawn: I do. I did some stuff, like the TheFocusCourse.com/margin page. I interviewed Cal Newport, and we talked about this. I interviewed a few other folks and wrote some articles, and it was on this topic of having margin in your life, the breathing room, so that you can do your best creative work. That’s our mantra over there at The Focus Course: Show up every day and do your best creative work.

I think margin is a huge part of that. The deep work, the focus, it’s a huge part of it. Otherwise, you’re just working on your email inbox all the time. That’s no fun.

Push Through Fear

Aaron: The first question I want to talk about is this one from Mariali. She asked, “How did you overcome the insecurity of giving birth to a new idea you weren’t sure people would respond well to?” I think this was about a book but it could be about anything, really.

Shawn: I didn’t overcome the fear. I put it out there and stuck to the plan. The way that worked with my Delight is in the Details book, was that I had done it as a podcast mini series for my members only. It was a little five part podcast, and I got a lot of positive response from people. I had teased it out, and I got a positive response, so I thought, “I should sell this for maybe like $5 as a sample for the Shawn Blanc membership thing.”

I thought, “I should rewrite it, so it’s a little bit more structured. I’ll rerecord it so it doesn’t have the welcome in it, so it’s a little bit more of its own product.” As I’m doing that, it goes from five episodes to like 12. There were all these extra chapters that I ended up writing. Then I thought, “Gosh, if I’m going to to this, I might as well interview some other people, and then I can charge more for the thing.” Instead of charging $10, I could charge like $20. That would double what I’d make from it.

So I made the book, and when I was getting ready to sell it, that was the hard part. That launch day, I just felt super insecure. I felt bad and sick to my stomach. I texted a few friends of mine. I was like, “This book is coming out in an hour. People are going to hate it.” Everyone was like, “Stick to your plan. Put it out there.” The people I trusted, who’s opinions I cared about, all said, “You’re fine, keep going.” I listened to them, and I did. I kept going and it. I pushed through that fear.

I never overcame the fear—I just pushed through it.

I kept going. You begin to learn that the fear becomes this mile marker for you, a sign post that you’re probably doing something that matters and creating something that matters. Now I’ve learned that when I feel that, “This might not work,” or, “Holy crap, what am I doing? I’m in over my head!” I should probably keep going, because I might be on to something that matters at this point.

Aaron: That’s fantastic advice.

The Market Decides What a Product Is Worth

Aaron: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I talked about this in the Fired Up Mondays podcast this morning, which is that the market decides what’s valuable. People will complain when they see a product that they don’t think is worth as much as the company is charging for it. Let’s say that you look at a Lamborghini, and you’re like, “I don’t know why anyone would ever pay $400,000 for that car. Why would you want that car? You could just buy a 1999 Toyota Camri that has 140,000 miles on it for $4,000.”

“This ’99 Camry works great. It gets me everywhere. Good gas mileage, pretty comfortable. Not the most amazing sound system, but it does have a Bose sound system in it, so it’s fine. Why would anyone spend $400,000 on a Lamborghini?”

The way you feel about a product doesn’t change how much it’s worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it.

There’s somebody out there willing to pay that much money. They have that much money, and it doesn’t matter what you think about that product. Somebody else went out and made that, and they’re going to make money from that while you’re at home complaining about how somebody else is spending $300 for a picture book from Apple. How you feel about the price of a product doesn’t matter.

Shawn: It’s how the people that are buying it feel that matters. To say, “I’m not going to start a Lamborghini company because used Toyota Corollas exist,” that’s silly, but that’s how we feel.

Aaron: Relating to my courses, which I’m getting close to wrapping up, pricing is interesting for me. If I hadn’t met Sean and the people in the seanwes Community, I think I would have charged a fraction of what I’m planning on charging. I probably would have charged closer to $20. I would have put all this time and energy into it and not priced it high enough, because I didn’t realize that there are people out there that sell courses for $1,500 and $10,000.

Don’t Undervalue Your Products

Shawn: I bought a course recently that cost me $2,000.

Aaron: So many people don’t know that. A lot of us still think that $2,000 is a ton of money. For a lot of people, it is. That doesn’t mean that you have to apply such a low price to the product that you’re making, just because you feel like $50 is a lot of money.

Don’t charge too little for your product because you feel like a higher price is a lot of money—that’s an easy trap to fall into.

Shawn: That’s very true. You have to step back. This course I bought, for me, it was a no brainer. I bought the book that was written by the guy, and I went through the book and implemented some of the stuff in there, and it helped me launch my time management class. That did $20,000 its first launch week. I spent something like $18 on this guy’s book, and it helped me make $20,000. So his $2000 course was a no brainer for me.

This master class version of that book, the online course version of it, that was a no brainer for me. There were a ton of videos, all this implementation stuff, coaching, and all this stuff that was involved in it. There were all these things you can do that can increase the value of your stuff. Don’t increase your price just because. Start with your basic price and then double it and double it again. Now you’re probably at a decent starting point.

You’re so prone to under-valuing your own work. You don’t just jack the price up because people say so. You need to look objectively and say, “Alright, am I providing the value?” If someone comes in and takes my Focus Course, for example, we charge $350 for it. It’s not a lot, but it isn’t a little, either. If someone spends $350 and goes through this course, are they going to be able to walk away with at least, ideally, $700 worth of value? I want them to get at least double the value they’re paying for it.

Can I get it to be even more? Can I get them to walk away with $3,500 worth of value, 10X the amount of value that I’m providing? You charge that, and if people take it seriously, they’ll walk away with something that wil literally change the way they spend their time with work, family, health, and finances. This is across the board for their life, and you can’t put a price on that.

Objectively ask yourself if you’re delivering on your promises and providing the value that you say you are.

With your stuff, Aaron, with podcasting, if you can help people get a podcast off the ground, they can turn that into a full time business. That’s worth $50,000 or $100,000. Someone could say, “Thanks to your stuff, I started a business that’s now thriving. I do this as my job.” That’s worth so much money! To charge $20 for it? Don’t undervalue your stuff.

First Steps to Improve Your Focus

Aaron: I want to answer Kyle’s question here in the chat. I’m going to read his question and I’ll let you take a stab at it, Shawn. Kyle asked, “Is there a best first step to improved focus? I can think of so many directions I should go: exercise more, eat better, write down what I’m doing the next day, sleep better, etc. Trying to do all of it at once isn’t sustainable. What should I start with?”

Shawn: This is great, Kyle, excellent question. I feel like there are two best first steps (which obviously doesn’t make sense, you can only really have one first step, but play along). We talked about this in the Focus Course. On the very first day of the Focus Course, there’s this super dorky assignment. You have to set out your clothes for what you’re going to wear tomorrow. Tonight, when you go to bed, pick out tomorrow’s outfit. It’s super dorky. You can do it in two minutes. In the morning, you have to wear the outfit you picked out the night before.

You have to actually follow through with your commitment. You set this thing out, and you say, “I’m going to wear these pants and this shirt,” etc. In the morning, you wake up, and you have to wear it. You’ve made a commitment to yourself the night before. In the morning, you wake up and you follow through on that commitment. It’s a small step towards strengthening your personal integrity, which is your ability to follow through with your commitments to yourself. That’s super powerful.

The other component to setting out your clothes the night before and then putting them on is that it’s your current self helping your future self. You’ve saved your future self five minutes in the morning. The quality of my time in the morning is super valuable. My mind is fresh, it’s the beginning of the day, there are no fires happening yet. That’s my best chance to get my best work done, early in the morning.

Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before.

It’s this idea of helping your future self. Once you get your toe in that water, you begin to see all the other areas of your life where you can begin to help your future self. We were talking during the podcast about this. Kyle says, “Yes, I’ve done this.” That’s awesome. As Aaron and I talked about earlier, when you have that deep work focused time, try to decide ahead of time what that focus is going to be. This is your current self helping your future self.

It’s so powerful. For me, I write down my topic that I’m going to be writing about tomorrow when it’s time for me to write. I have the topic ahead of time, so I know what to write about. Then, when I sit down, I don’t have to think about. I have the singular focus to write about this topic that I’ve already chosen. That can really help with improving focus.

Be ahead of your own curve and help your future self.

Those of you who are registered for the Creative Focus Online Summit will get to hear Josh Kaufman and I talk about this. He talks about the importance of going on a walk in the morning and having 30 minutes where you leave your phone at home. You go outside, you’re moving, you’re getting sunlight, but also, it’s 30 minutes of thinking time where you can be undistracted. You can just think. He calls it “noodling.”

You let your mind “noodle.” He talks about how when you have a productivity system and a focus system that gives you space to think and to be uninterrupted for a little bit, you’re going to be far more productive than if you have a system that doesn’t give you space to think. For him, he says that that is the number one, single most important component of being more productive and focused—actually having carved out time on a regular basis where you can just think.

Be distraction free. That’s why he says to take a walk. You can combine that with movement, being outside, getting sunlight, and things like that. It’s easier than sitting on your couch and staring at the wall for 30 minutes. I don’t say that to put that idea down, but it can be easier to be undistracted when you’re outside walking around and you leave your phone at home. As opposed to, you put your phone next to you on the couch and you hope that it doesn’t buzz.

You can put it in airplane mode, obviously, but it’s still right there. You want to grab it and take it off of airplane mode. So coming back to Kyle’s question: You have so many directions you want to go. Exercising, eating, writing down what you’re doing the next day, sleeping better. Right? People say, “I want to improve my relationship with my spouse. I also want to get better at budgeting my finances. I also want to get better at budgeting my time. I also want to read these books.”

You look at it, and there is so much stuff that you want to do. You can’t do all of it right now, so pick one thing. What’s the one that’s most exciting?

Build One Habit at a Time

Shawn: Kyle, you listed exercise as the first thing on your list, so I would start with that. Not to pitch my course, but I’m going to pitch my course. We go through all the core areas of your life: your job, your relationships, your finances, your “down time,” your physical health, and your inner or spiritual life. These are the six areas of your life. We go through each one of those and spend time on each one, where you list out what’s important to you in this area of your life.

What’s a goal that you want to have or a lifestyle practice that you want to implement, and how can you move the needle forward toward that goal? You come up with six goals and six action plans, one each for the main areas of your life. Spoiler here, at the end of the course, you pick one.

Focus on improving one area of your life for six months and ignore the other ones.

Don’t ignore them in terms of ignoring your wife for two months while you’re focusing on work, but you pick one area to build a habit, a routine, a lifestyle practice, that has you making meaningful progress in that area of life. A lot of people say that it takes 21 days to build a habit. Actually, if you’re a habit building master, you might be able to do it in 21 days, but it takes most people 60 days to build a habit. That’s the average. That’s two months!

I think a lot of people are probably familiar with the Jerry Seinfeld productivity tip with the calendar. You write a joke every day and you put a big X on your calendar, and you don’t want to break the chain. It’s the same with this new habit of yours. Say, “What’s one thing I can do on a daily basis that’s going to help me move toward my goal of exercising more, of being more physically active?” What’s the minimum dose, the smallest thing you can do?

You’re going to go walk for 20 minutes, or whatever it is. Do that every single day for two months. It’s a small start, but now you’ve done it. You’re two months in, and now, instead of it being this thing you are trying to get the motivation for to move forward, you’re doing it. It has become routine for you, which requires far less activation energy, far less mental energy. It has moved into your life. It’s there. It’s something that you’re doing on a daily basis.

Now, you pick the next thing. “Okay, I have the exercise thing.” Keep that and layer the next thing on top of it. You’re doing that for your physical health. What about for your inner life, your spiritual life? What’s something you would want to layer on top of that, something you could do? Now, during that walking time, maybe you’re going to think about something. If you read a Bible or something like that, you could say, “I’m going to have a Bible verse that I think about during my 30 minute walk.”

Maybe you’re trying to improve your relationship with your spouse. Bring them along on your walk. Now, you can incorporate this. Say, “I’m going to do this on a regular basis,” and you do that for two more months. Then you pick the next layer. Maybe it doesn’t build on that 30 minute walk itself. Maybe it’s an entirely different part of the day, but the core is the same.

Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing.

This is why New Year’s resolutions never work. We say, “I’m going to go to the gym for five hours a day every day starting on January 1st, and I’m going to start budgeting, and I’m going to stop eating chocolate, and I’m going to go on date nights every week, and I’m going to read a book a week.” January 1st, go! It’s so much. You’re going to run up and try to push a truck, but you don’t have the energy, the strength, to move and change that much that quickly.

With the truck analogy, if you’re driving a car and you want to try and tow another car, you don’t gun it with all this slack on the tow line. You’re going to rip both of the bumpers off. You start super, super slow. You slowly build up that speed. That’s how you do it without getting in a wreck. You actually make that momentum. Start with just one thing.

The hard part is giving ourselves permission to pick one thing and focus on that for two whole months.

That’s the hardest part, really. It’s not in the doing. It’s in the not despising those small beginnings. That’s the crash course of the Focus Course right there. This is the value. If you stick around for the after show at seanwes, this is what you get.

Aaron: I’ll agree with Shawn and say this: pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal. I know how many goals you have right now. I know, because I have that many goals, too. Pick one thing and write it down. Get a little calendar. Make a big X. Do that every day.

You’ll get other stuff done, too, but you need to think about doing one important thing first thing in the morning right after you wake up. Get that thing done, and then pat yourself on the back, feel good about it, and move on to the next thing.

You can follow Shawn Blanc on Twitter @ShawnBlanc, and be sure to check out his website at www.shawnblanc.net.

Shawn Blanc | Content Strategy and Growing an Audience

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 10:00:00 -0000

Shawn Blanc is a writer, small-business owner, productivity coach, and creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons. Shawn has been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade, and his online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life’s tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He wrote about the importance of creating a customer avatar and developing a content strategy to connect with them and help them achieve their goals. I liked the email so much that I emailed him back and asked him to come on my show to talk about his journey to making a living through writing online and what he’s learned about growing an audience. Shawn also shares my passion for productivity and deep focus; so much so that he’s gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a free 5 day online summit about the power of focused life. In this episode, Shawn shares how he was able to make a full-time living by writing online, and we discuss how you can grow your audience by creating a customer avatar (your ideal listener) and creating content that addresses their needs and desires.

Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins:

Interview your customers to get a real life picture of your audience.
Start selling products as early as possible.
Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there.
Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them.
Be in people’s weekly cycle at a minimum.
Your niche is going to draw your audience but your ancillary interests will keep people interested.
Show up consistently to earn people’s trust and create an anticipation of future value.
Do guest-based podcasts to grow your audience.
Reach people that are far outside of your social circle by connecting with the people you can connect with right now.

Show Notes

Aaron: Shawn Blanc is a writer/small business owner/productivity coach/creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons, and Shawn is a member of our Community. He’s been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade now.

His online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life’s tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He was writing about the importance of creating a customer avatar, that’s knowing who you’re creating for and what you want to help them achieve, what kind of person you want to help them become.

I thought it was really interesting, so I sent him an email right back. I said, “Shawn, do you want to come on the show to talk about this? I think podcasters need to hear about this idea of customer avatars and also content strategy.” Shawn agreed, and he also shares my passion for productivity and focus, so much so that he has gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a five day online summit about the power of a focused life, and that’s going to be starting, I believe, as this episode comes out.

If you’re listening to this in your podcast player, it’s starting today, I think. I’ll give you that link later. In this episode, I want to talk with Shawn about why you as a podcaster need to create a customer avatar, know who you’re creating for, develop a content strategy, and then also the benefits of deep focus, what we call deep work.

A few small changes in your daily habits can lead to big improvements in your productivity and creative output.

Shawn, that’s one of the longer intros I’ve ever done. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here.

Shawn: Thanks, Aaron. I love it. Super excited to be here.

Shawn Blanc

Aaron: I think of you, Shawn, as a writer and as the creator of an online course called The Focus Course, which is great. You’re so much more than that. Do you want to give everyone a quick introduction, how you got here and where you came from? I would also like to hear what your biggest struggles have been over the years of getting to the point where you’re at right now.

Shawn: Absolutely. I’m in Kansas City. Originally, I’m from Denver. I’m a Colorado guy at heart. I’ve been married for going on 12 years, and my wife and I have three boys. It’s insane at our house. We used to call the first two the Twin Tornadoes, but we just had our third eight or nine weeks ago.

Aaron: Congrats!

Shawn: It’s awesome. Love it. I love being a dad. I used to be a drummer. I know that we have a lot of musicians around here. Sean McCabe plays a little bit of music, I think.

Aaron: Yeah, he used to write music, just like he used to do lettering. I still play drums.

Shawn: I used to play drums for a large ministry here in Kansas City, and I ended up transitioning out of that. It’s a long story, but I ended up becoming a marketing and creative director. I ran a team, an in-house design team, with about 17 people—web developers, print designers, web designers, writers, editors, project managers, whatever. We did a bunch of stuff. One of our huge things was that we would host a conference at the end of the year that I was running.

25,000 people would come out for that. I did that for several years, and then my wife and I got pregnant with our first kid. I was like, “I don’t want to do this work as a dad.” Part of it was just super demanding. Anyone who has experienced working in the corporate design scene knows that it’s a very demanding spot.

Everything is urgent all the time. I was doing like 80 hours a week, and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun, but I was like, “There’s no way. I don’t want to do 80 hours a week as a dad.” I had that, plus I had this little blog on the side, where I had been writing about marketing stuff. I felt like, “This would be a good opportunity to quit what I’m doing and take a leap, see if I can take my website full time. Could I blog for a living?” That was the thought.

I was doing about $1,000 a month in advertising and some affiliate stuff. I figured that if I could give it 40 hours a week, I could get the revenue up to a spot where it could pay the bills. I figured that it could grow from there.

Aaron: How old were you at this point?

Shawn: I was just about 30, not quite 30, like 29, when I made that jump. I asked everyone that was reading on the site. I said, “I’m quitting. I’m going to do this thing full time.” I asked people if they would be interested in supporting me to write the site for a living. I was like, “If you like what I’m doing, I’ll write more if you want to give me some money to do it.” I did this little membership drive. I was going to charge $3 a month for membership. I was doing a daily podcast as a perk of membership.

Aaron: You aren’t still doing that, are you?

Shawn: It’s on hiatus at the moment. We’ll see. I’m going to be diving back into the podcast scene starting early 2017. I miss podcasting. It’s fun.

Aaron: You decided to ask people to support you, give you $3 a month, to go full time with your writing?

Shawn: Basically. I figured if I could get 500 people, at $3 a month that’s $1,500, plus the other $1,000 I was doing, and that would be $2,500 a month. That’s not a ton, but I figured that would be enough to cover the bare necessities. I figured that things could grow from there. People signed up, and I hit the 500 person mark by the end of the month before I had even quit.

I started my new job, April 4th 2011, basically fully funded as an independent blogger.

Aaron: I bet that was exciting.

Shawn: It was really exciting. I felt like I got this permission slip from my audience to go for it. As a creative person, sometimes you need that. Sometimes you want to be like, “Do you guys care? I’m here. I’m making this stuff.” A lot of the work we do as creative entrepreneurs is for your audience. I know that we’re going to talk about this in a little bit, the customer avatar profile. It’s for these people that you really want to serve. When you hear back from them and they go, “Hey, we like what you’re doing. Let’s keep the relationship going,” it’s like having a DTR with your audience.

There’s something cool about that kind of permission slip moment. It’s like when you sell your first product, or whatever it is. People are interested. You get your first positive review on iTunes or whatever. Obviously, there’s going to be the junk that comes later, but whatever.

Aaron: Some of the haters that come later?

Shawn: You forget about that stuff and you keep moving on.

Aaron: That’s awesome.

Asking for Money

Aaron: When you think back, do you remember any big struggles or hurdles that you really had to overcome about that period in your life?

Shawn: There were so many. It’s hard to say, “If I could do it differently, I would do it this other way,” because who knows? If I had done things differently, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out the way I thought it would. One of the biggest struggles for me was asking for money. It was a huge challenge related to the membership drive. I was asking folks to support me on a regular basis to write for a living. I was like, “Who am I? What kind of a dork says, ‘Give me money so I can blog for a living.'”

Aaron: Nobody pays for things online anymore. Nobody wants to pay for writing.

Shawn: Exactly. That was a huge challenge. It has continued to be a challenge for years. I have been doing this for almost six years now, full time. When I came out with my first book, it’s called Delight is in the Details, and it was an eBook package thing. I did some interviews.

I charged $29 for my book, and I felt like this huge hypocrite.

It was this feeling of, “This is information. Information should be free on the internet. Why would anyone ever buy this?” I felt like there was no value in this thing that people would pay for. I was like, “I have to do it. I’m going to charge for it.”

Aaron: Sorry to jump in, but at the time, did you really feel like $30 was a lot of money?

Shawn: Oh my gosh. I woke up feeling sick to my stomach the day I was going to launch it. I was like, “I can’t believe how much I’m asking for this.”

Aaron: What did you think was going to happen?

Shawn: I thought that people would buy it because they trusted me, and then they would read it and come and burn my house down because I had ripped them off so bad. I charged so much money for something.

Aaron: It was your first time launching a product, right?

Shawn: It was. It was my first product launch ever. It ended up bringing in like $5,000 in that first 48 hour launch window. It made $5,000 that first couple of days. In hindsight, it was this huge inflection point for me. I think I spent about 100 hours building the thing, made $5,000 from it in the first week, and I thought, “Woah, that was a great return on my time investment! Now I have this product that I can continue to sell.”

Since then, in the last four or five years that I’ve sold it, I want to say that it’s sold $50,000 over the years. That’s awesome. There’s something great about creating a product, and it changed a lot.

Producing and selling a book changed my relationship with my audience.

Now I’m creating products for them to buy.

That initial hurdle was huge. $29 was so much money. I think that was probably the biggest struggle, of being able to properly identify how much value I’m providing people and to price it correctly. That’s just hard. I think that’s why you should start selling stuff as early as possible, because you have to learn. There isn’t a formula for how much value you’re providing and how much you should charge for it.

You can’t just plug your stuff into a worksheet and get a number back. You have to feel out the market, your market, your audience, your skill level. How much polish are you doing? How much depth of information are you providing? Whatever skill, service, or product it is you’re providing, you have to learn how to make money and price your stuff! It’s hard to do it when you’re starting.

The biggest challenging for me at first was becoming comfortable asking for money and learning to accurately price my products.

Aaron: The other thing is that once you launched that book and got familiar with all that stuff, that was a stepping stone to your future products, your future books and courses, and everything else that you’re doing. I’m sure, at that point, you felt like, “Okay. I’ve done this once before already. Now it’s like riding a bike. I just need to get back on and keep peddling, keep going.”

Shawn: Yeah, absolutely. It really was a huge stepping stone. One thing I loved about creating and launching a product was that there was a start and an end date to it. This thing has to ship. I worked on it, and I was done. I put it out there. Boom, now it’s there. I’m done. It’s out in the world. Obviously, you iterate on it. A year later, I added some new interviews. I added some new chapters. I created some videos. I remastered all of the audio for the audio book.

Product Launch Hiccups

Shawn: Super random story related to this. It was the relaunch of Delight is in the Details, a year after it had come out, and I put it out there. People are buying it during that relaunch period. I get an email from someone going, “I was just listening to the audio book, and the last chapter sounds like it’s not edited correctly. Something is weird about the last chapter. You should check it out.”

I recorded the audio book and edited it by myself. I go and I open up the audio book for the last chapter and I’m listening to it, and it is the original take that I did of the book. The way I did the audio book, I’m reading it into my microphone in GarageBand. If I goofed up in the middle of a paragraph, I would just take a pause, say, “Okay, again,” and then I would start talking again. That was my marker. The last chapter of the book was that track, the whole thing.

The audio track should have been 10 or 12 minutes for that chapter, and it was 30 minutes because of all my edits, retakes, and pauses. The whole thing. What’s worse is, it was there from the very beginning. For a year, I had been selling that thing. I was mortified. For a year, I had been selling my book with the last chapter all messed up, and I was mortified.

Aaron: Nobody said anything??

Shawn: They didn’t. Either no one listened to it, or when they listened to it, they just assumed… I don’t even know. I was so mortified. There you go. What worse thing can happen? Earlier, I had been so concerned about selling something that people weren’t going to consider valuable. Here’s this huge, huge mistake. What a goof!

Aaron: I need to remind everyone that this audiobook is called Delight is in the Details.

Shawn: The irony, right? That was one of the selling points of the book, too. I was like, “If you buy this book, it’s a case study in sweating the details itself. You’ll see all the areas where I’ve sweated the details in this product.” Whatever. Oh man. I was mortified.

Aaron: Thankfully, no one came and burned down your house, and it was over a year before anyone even said anything. A lot of us are so curious about people who do such good work, so when a mistake does happen, it’s almost humanizing. It’s like, “Now I can relate to this person, because they’re not 100% on top of everything all the time, either, like I struggle with. I make a lot of mistakes, so it’s kind of nice when you see a really awesome musician on stage mess up a part and then jump back into it. You’re like, “Oh, they are humans, too.” That’s really cool. Nobody burned your house down, thankfully.

Shawn: That’s why it’s so helpful to ship early. You get stuff out the door and you start learning. I love it.

Aaron: I tell people this a lot, too, when it comes to podcasts. If you’re thinking about making a podcast, there are so many things you can tweak, improve, or work on forever, but it’s so much better to say, “What’s the minimum I have to do? I want to try and do a good job, but let’s do this, ship it, and iterate and improve on it every single week.”

If you don’t ship something, you'll just pick at it and tweak it endlessly.

Before you know it, it’s been a year and a half, and you’ve got three or five episodes you recorded 18 months ago that you’re still working on. In the meantime, nothing has happened.

Start Moving

Shawn: As well, we have this picture of what we want something to look like and what we want it to be, but we have zero experience. I like the analogy of those lifesize mazes. Especially around Halloween and Thanksgiving, there are those corn mazes. They’re these giant things. Imagine someone standing at the entrance of this life size maze, staring at the entrance to it, and in their mind, trying to figure out how to get to the end so they can get straight to the end the fastest way possible without making any mistakes along the way.

Impossible! Not going to happen. You have to go in the maze and go left to realize that you should have gone right. Then turn around. You have to go through the thing to make it through. I like the phrase, “Action brings clarity.”

Action brings clarity.

You’re waiting for clarity before taking action, and it’s not going to happen—you have to start moving.

You just have to get going and you adjust course as you go. You start to realize what you should major on and what you shouldn’t.

Aaron: That’s an incredible analogy. I’m totally going to use that in the future now. It’s perfect. You sit there and you imagine yourself being at the end of the maze. That’s where you see a bunch of other people. Your friends have gone through the maze and they’re at the end, so you’re like, “I have to get to the end fast. I can’t make any mistakes. I can’t take a wrong turn, because that’s where all my friends are, and that’s where I want to be.” You do have to go through it. That’s really incredible.

Creating a Customer Avatar

Aaron: Shawn, you sent out an email and you were talking about this. I want you to explain how you think about customer avatars, and then if you did something like that for yourself when you were just starting, or if this is something that evolved over time. Customer avatar and content strategy, go!

Shawn: This is great. When I first started as a writer, I was doing ShawnBlanc.net. My entire job was publishing articles and links on my website. I didn’t have a customer avatar or a customer profile, what I had was an ideal reader. I think, in terms of podcasting, it’s very similar. Who’s your ideal listener? For me, I actually had a person who was my ideal reader, who’s name was Shawn Spurdee.

He was a really good friend of mine. He and I had become friends through the blogging Twitter-sphere back in the day. When I wrote articles or links, I had him in mind. I thought, “Is this something he would find interesting? Is there a story in here that he’s going to want to read? Is this a link to something he would like?” You had that ideal reader. John Gruber wrote about this for his site, Daring Fireball.

He talked about his ideal reader, and he called it “a second version of himself.” He goes, “This person is interested in all the same things I’m interested in, and he cares about what I care about. All the design decisions I make on the site, all the articles I choose to link to, the stories I choose to tell, all of that stuff is with this ideal reader/listener in mind.”

It was instrumental for me to have an “ideal reader” for all of the work I was doing.

You know who you’re trying to target. I’m still the writer for sure, but we’ve switched a lot more of our focus onto direct sales, building a customer base, and selling products to our audience. I still don’t have that ideal reader. Who am I writing this for? Who is this product being created for? It has gone beyond just an individual person that I know. We did a customer profiling thing. I have a guy who works for me full time, and his name is Isaac. We took a couple of big, giant sticky pad things, two feet by three feet, they’re huge, these giant sticky notes.

Aaron: Where do you get those? Can you get those on Amazon?

Shawn: You can get a lawnmower on Amazon, so I’m sure you can get sticky notes. We got ours at Office Max, an Office Depot kind of thing. It’s weird. You drive to this store, and you can walk in, and they sell products on their shelves. You have to pick it up with your hand and drive it home yourself.

Aaron: It seems like a waste of time.

Shawn: For this customer profiling session or whatever, basically, we had these four quadrants. What do they think? What do they feel? What do they want? What do they say? Something like that. You’re trying to get this picture of this person. Who is this person? What are the things that they say? Like, “I love my family. I like to watch Netflix.” Whatever.

Aaron: “I want to learn how to make a podcast.”

Shawn: Exactly. It’s not just business, it’s just life. What are the kind of phrases they might say? If you ask them what they care about, what things would they list? What are their pain points that they’re feeling in life? For us, creating this customer avatar, we named him Brian. We found a random picture of somebody and stuck it up there to begin to humanize the person.

Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there.

We talked about, “Here’s Brian,” and we came up with this stuff. Brian has a job that he kind of likes, but he’s got these other creative ideas that he really wants to pursue. Maybe he wants to take it full time. Maybe not. That’s not really the most important thing for him. The most important thing for him is getting his best creative work out there and being able to do it and feel like he’s making progress on the areas of life that matter to him. He’s also a dad and a husband, and he cares about his family quite a bit.

He cares about his kids. He still wants to be available for them. When he comes home from work, he’s really tired, so the evenings don’t feel like a good time to do his creative work, but he’s not a morning person either, so he doesn’t know when he’s going to get the time. These are some of the scenarios, the stories, that begin to emerge as you begin to write stuff about this person. What are the pain points that they feel?

When they look around, what do they see? What kind of car does Brian drive? Does he like minivans? Does he have a minivan? How many kids does he actually have? You really kind of start to come up with this stuff, and there’s a lot you can do to get to a higher level of doing these customer profiles. You can actually do interviews with your customer base.

Aaron: I do this! I try to meet people and talk to them, especially when it comes to podcasting.

When you interview your customers, you can actually begin to get a real life picture of your real life audience.

Creating an Empathy Map

Shawn: There’s this thing that we did, an empathy map, and you take the empathy map to create your customer profile. We ran this survey to our email list, and we ran a separate one to our customer list. It was, “When it comes to focus, what’s your single greatest challenge?” It was just this open-ended question where people could write stuff down.

Some people say, “Time.” Or, “I can’t focus. I’m distracted.” Then you get some people who go, “I’m trying to build my photography portfolio website on the side because I love photography and I’m trying to grow it. I’m working this other job, and when I come home in the evenings, family is first. I spend time with family, so by the time the kids are in bed, I’ve only got about an hour left in the day. I’m so tired, and I don’t want to spend time trying to work on my photography website, so I don’t know where to get started.”

The person who gives an in depth answer to the challenge like that, vs. someone who just says “time”, they’re really in touch with their pain point. There’s a book called Ask by Ryan Leveque, and you can find it on Amazon. He teases out, “You ask these questions, and you separate the people with the longest answers. You put their answers up at the top.”

You cut the list at 20%. The bottom 80%, forget about those people, and look at the top 20%, these “hyper-responders.” What are their challenges? What are their pain points? Aaron, you could do this. You could say, “When it comes to building a podcast, what is your single greatest challenge?” You’ll probably have someone who says, “Building my list.” Or, “Building my audience.” Or, “Technical stuff.” But then you might have someone who really gives this heartfelt, in-depth answer.

If someone gives you a heartfelt, in-depth answer, they’re hungry for a solution.

That person is going to pay for a solution. That person is going to digest this, and when you give them something, they’re going to check it out. Look for these hyper-responders and cater your response to them. That’s what we did. That’s how we figured out that our biggest pain points for people who go through the Focus Course are one of four primary buckets, so to speak. It’s time management, getting traction on their business or side projects, finding clarity on what’s important to them and what they should be doing about it, and a lot of people also feel overwhelmed by all that’s already happening in life.

Or, they look at the thing that they’re trying to make progress on, and they feel overwhelmed. They don’t even know where to start. Really, all of these things feed off of each other. When one is in a rough spot, the others start to be in a rough spot as well. We go, “Okay, these are the main challenges we’re going to address as part of the Focus Course, in all of our writing. This is it.” The people that fit within these four buckets are the ones who are willing to pay for a solution.

Use Your Audience’s Language

Shawn: Read the actual responses, the answers, and take the language that people are saying and use it in your articles. Answer their actual questions in podcast episodes. You use it in your marketing language. The landing page for your product, or your podcast, or your sign up, or whatever—use the actual language of your hyper-responder customers. Now, not only are you listening to them and you know who that ideal customer is, but you’re also even speaking their language.

A) it’s going to be cool because hopefully you’ll do more sales, but B) you’ll actually get to connect with the people you want to connect with. That’s the whole point. That’s why we’re here.

That’s one of the huge benefits of having these customer profiles. It can help you stay focused on who you’re trying to talk to and what it is you’re trying to talk about, to help them.

Aaron: That’s mindblowing. That’s fantastic. At the core, I kind of know this stuff, but hearing you explain it made it even more clear to me. I love that. I want to take it in this direction.

How to Grow Your Audience & Create Deeper Connections

Aaron: One of the most common questions I get about podcasting is about growing an audience. It’s always, “How do I get more attention? How do I get more listeners? How do I grow an audience?” I love what you said right here.

Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them.

That’s where listeners come from. So many people think that they’ll magically get 100,000 people to listen to their podcast, and they won’t have any idea of who these people are. They’re nameless, faceless avatars on the internet. No! Especially in the beginning, you start small. You develop relationships with people who care passionately about the thing that you’re talking about.

By investing in them, getting to know them, and asking them questions—regardless of whether you’re doing some kind of business thing or not—by just talking to them and getting to know their language, that’s how you’re going to resonate with them and even more people. What methods have you found effective for growing an audience and developing deeper relationships?

Shawn: I think that’s a great question. Everyone wants to know the answer to this. For me, there are three primary keys to growing an audience:

Consistency
Honesty and transparency
Relationships.

1. Consistency

Shawn: Consistency is core. This is a phrase in the seanwes Community, and it’s a phrase I like to use, and that’s this: show up every day. That’s consistency. We’re just people of habit. The internet is a thing of habit, so you have to have that consistency where you’re in people’s regular cycles. Sean McCabe talks about this a lot. You want to be in people’s weekly cycle at a minimum.

Show up on a regular basis. Also, that’s how people know you’re going to be there. There’s something about that consistency. One of the ways you develop an audience where people are tracking with you and paying attention when you’re showing up consistently.

When you show up consistently, not only do you earn people’s trust, but you create an anticipation of future value.

You want to have that. That’s huge. People are like, “I want to know what’s next. I want to follow this story and be here.” Consistency is huge.

2. Honesty & Transparency

Shawn: This comes out in a lot of ways. In some ways, you want to have the transparency like Nathan Barry talks about, to “teach what you know.” Share what you know. Also, there’s a human element, passion and persona, who you are as an individual. Humanizing yourself is so helpful. We don’t want to connect with brands, we want to connect with people. As indie entrepreneurs or indie creative folks, when you are running your own thing, you are a brand but you’re also a person.

You’ve got to keep the person aspect of it, the human aspect of it, you have to keep it there. Allow your mistakes to show through. Allow your passions to show through. For me, at ShawnBlanc.net, I cut my teeth and grew my audience originally by writing about Apple stuff. I wrote tons of product reviews. It was super nerdy, gadgety stuff. I would also write about coffee, camera gear, books I was reading, music, and things like that.

Aaron: Stuff you cared about.

Shawn: Exactly. Other interests that were related to Apple gear because it was my site, and I can write about whatever I want. That humanized the work that I was doing. So many people came to my site because of the Apple stuff but they stayed because of the coffee stuff.

Your focus, your niche, is going to draw your audience, but your ancillary interests will keep people interested.

You’re a real person with real interests who is not just this robot spinning off the same thing all the time.

3. Relationships

Shawn: This is huge. I stink at it, but I’m trying to reply to emails. When people email me, replying back to them. Also, here’s a prime example, having me on your show, Aaron. The practicality of it is that when this show goes live, I’m going to tweet about it. I’m going to link to it. I’m going to point the people that track with me over to your stuff. That’s a way for you to grow your audience, but it’s also a way for me to grow my audience.

Your listeners, a lot of people, don’t know who I am. Now, hopefully, some of them will come check me out and sign up for our stuff. There’s a really cool dynamic here of introducing your group to someone else. Hopefully, that person will also introduce their audience to who you are.

Doing guest-based podcasts is an awesome way to grow your audience.

I did some back in the day, when I was first starting my site. I did interviews, blog interviews. The whole thing was conducted over email, and it was just this back and forth email. I did one with Daniel Jalkut, who used to work at Apple and then started Red Sweater. He has the best blogging app on the planet for Mac, MarsEdit. It’s a super great app. I emailed him and did an interview with him.

I did an interview with John Grubar. I did an interview with Brett Simmons, all these people who are super famous Apple people. I’m going back and forth with these guys and posting their interviews. They link to me on my site, and I get this influx of new readers. Or you find software that’s awesome. I would do super in-depth reviews about this stuff, and then people would link to those reviews. Honoring other people, connecting with other people, and doing stuff that’s worth talking about.

Then the word will spread. That consistency, being transparent and honest about who you are, having that passion and that human dynamic to the work that you do, and then just trying to connect with other people. Do things that people are going to want to talk about. Another example is the summit that we’re doing, the Focus Summit. I’m punching way above my weight class here with some of these folks, and it’s a chance to hopefully get some of their audience to discover the work that we’re doing and visa versa.

I hope that people who sign up for this summit will get introduced to some new people and that they’ll find some incredible resources. It’s just fun. We’re all just folks trying to do our best work, right?

Aaron: Absolutely. I love that. That’s one of the best answers for building an audience that I’ve ever heard.

The Importance of Investing One-on-One Time in Your Listeners

Aaron: The thing that I’m working on, and I just want to share this, is investing more time in my listeners. It’s hard sometimes, because you can spend all the time in the world talking to people on the internet, as I’m sure you know, Shawn. I’m sure people are constantly emailing you, asking for your thoughts, your advice, and your feedback on stuff, and you try to stay really focused. Something I’ve wanted to do is spend a little bit of time every day, like on Twitter, reaching out and telling people that I appreciate what they do.

Or, if somebody emails me, having a conversation. In depth, giving them 15 or 20 minutes of focus time to reply, and even asking them questions. Someone says, “Hey, thanks for doing your show. I really appreciate this thing.” I’ll reply and say, “Thank you so much. How is your podcasting journey going? What are you working on right now? What do you want to get better at?” Some great conversations have come out of that.

I’m trying to invest a little bit more in my listeners. I’m at the point now where I’ve started inviting some of them on the show. “Hey, you sound like you’d be a cool person to talk about podcasting with. Would you like to come on the show?” It just spreads.

It’s the building of community that will eventually attract people to you.

When I started, I had 30 or 40 friends, maybe a couple hundred followers. Every new person that finds my show and gets to know me as a person, who respects the work I do, they might have 200 people that follow them, and they share my show with those people. It just spreads out from there. It becomes this big net.

You can eventually reach people that are far outside of your social circle just by connecting with the people you can connect with right now.

Let them do the work of sharing your stuff with their people, too.

Shawn: Yeah, exactly.

Focus Summit & Products

Aaron: That’s fantastic. We’re getting close to the end of the episode. We need to wrap it up. I told everyone in the beginning that I would get you to talk about this Focus Summit that you’ve got coming up. What’s the deal with this? Tell us a little bit about that.

Shawn: The summit! I’m so excited about this. We have Jocelyn Glei, who just wrote this book called Unsubscribe, which is a fantastic book. It’s about email distractions and stuff like that. We’ve got Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA. Anyone who is trying to do anything related to business, you need to read The Personal MBA. It is a bargain.

Aaron: So much good advice.

Shawn: It’s like a $35 book, and that book is so packed. Excellent, excellent stuff. Sean McCabe is on it, and Sean and I talk about how quantity leads to quality, which ties right into this stuff on showing up every day. The summit is going to be really, really cool. When this podcast drops, the summit is going to be kicking off. Here’s the link: The Creative Focus Summit.

After the summit wraps up, we’re opening up registration for our Focus Course. That has become my flagship product. It changed everything for me, in terms of what I was focusing on. I came up with this course as the next product in a series. I had done Delight is in the Details, and I wanted to write a book about diligence and productivity. I wrote the book, and then, long story short, I realized that it needed to be a course.

I felt like the way that I wanted to get these ideas across wasn’t a book that someone would read, highlight, think was cool, and then puts back on their shelf and returns to life as usual. I want something that’s really going to effect change. I knew that a book would probably go farther, broader, and reach a total number of more people. I would rather fewer people go through the course but have a higher number of them really get real impact.

For me, the book ended up turning into the Focus Course, and we’ve had close to 1,300 people go through it. It’s basically productivity training for creative people and entrepreneurs and leaders. It’s way, way more than that. It’s not tips and tricks. It’s what I call “meaningful productivity.” It actually gets to the core, the heart, and the foundation. What do you really care about? How are you really spending your time?

This is not a “Five Life Hacks That Will Help Me Go Through My Email Inbox Better.” It’s hard questions that will make me challenge my assumptions about my family, my work, my down time, and my rest time. Anyone that thinks that taking a nap will improve productivity, the Focus Course is for you.

Aaron: That’s me!

You have to have a healthy life to do your best work.

Shawn: You can’t sprint this. This is a marathon, so you have to have that breathing room. The Focus Course opens up after the summit is over, and I’m super excited about it. We’re going to have a whole group of people cruising through in January. We’re doing a winter class for it. We’ve got some forums, so everyone can share their progress. It’s going to be a blast. I’m really excited about it. The summit is free, and the Focus Course itself is going to be something we charge for, obviously.

Aaron: You have to charge for things, or else people won’t take it seriously.

Shawn: It’s so true.

Aaron: You have to invest.

Shawn: That’s something else. We didn’t get into that earlier when we were talking about the pricing stuff, but that’s another reason to charge for your work. Someone is actually going to have skin in the game. They’re going to find value for it.

Aaron: They have to ask themselves, “Okay. Do I think this is going to help me enough in my life journey to actually put money towards it?” If they answer that question for themselves and then make the choice to give you that money, they are going to say, “I told myself, I believe, that this is worth my time, so I need to invest my time in it.”

Shawn: Exactly. Very true.

Aaron: Where should people go if they want to follow you, connect with you, or ask you questions?

Shawn: Twitter is a great spot. I’m @shawnblanc on Twitter.

Martine Ellis | Streamlining Your Podcast Workflow

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 10:00:00 -0000

Martine Ellis joins me to share her podcasting journey and how she created a detailed checklist to help streamline her podcast workflow. We discuss how niching down can help you attract a dedicated audience and how to spend less time creating a podcast without sacrificing quality. We also walk through Martine’s 9 step podcast workflow checklist and discuss our favorite podcast tools and tricks.

You can find Martine at https://martineellis.com/. The link to her 9 Step Checklist is currently broken (I'll email her), but you can grab a PDF of my process here.

Do You Need Expensive Headphones to Mix a Podcast?

Mon, 07 Nov 2016 10:00:00 -0000

I’ve been watching an online audio mastering course on Creative Live called DIY Mastering (by Jesse Cannon). In it, he was talking about how he always checks his work on cheap speakers and Apple earbuds, since that’s what most people use to listen to music. It got me thinking about the importance of good headphones, and how much they really matter. Are expensive headphones really necessary for mixing podcasts? Do you really need the best gear to make great work, or are you just procrastinating?

My goal for this episode is to encourage you to do more with what you have and not fall into the trap of believing that better gear is the secret to success.

Key Takeaways:

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that better gear is the secret to success.
You don’t need expensive headphones or speakers that are made for mixing music to make a podcast sound good.
The difference between cheap and expensive headphones is subtle, but some people want and need that subtlety.
Quality gear usually lasts longer than cheap gear.
Terrible sound quality can ruin great content, but great sound quality won’t make terrible content interesting or compelling.
Invest in educating yourself at first rather than investing in better gear.
All the expensive gear in the world doesn’t make a difference if you’re not creating stuff.
Constraints can help you create great things.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that better gear is the secret to success.

I’ve been going through an online course about audio mastering from a mixing and mastering engineer, Jesse Canon. In this course (DIY Mastering) he talks about how he always checks his work on cheap speakers and Apple earbuds.

He said, “It’s because that’s what most people use to listen to music these days.” He mixes the music on expensive speakers and headphones, but then he checks on cheap headphones because he wants to know what it sounds like. This set a lightbulb off in my head, and made me wonder: Do you have to have expensive gear when you’re making podcasts? And are expensive headphones really necessary for mixing podcasts?

Why Do People Recommend Expensive Headphones and Speakers for Mixing and Mastering music?

Mixing and mastering are all about making choices about how to make audio sound. Better headphones and speakers let you hear more detail in your audio so you can make more informed decisions about how to shape those sounds, how to do EQ, compression, reverb, and special effects.

Podcasts are not that complicated. Most of the time, a podcast is just a single person talking. You don’t use a bunch of effects (unless you’re making a show like Radiolab or Deep Vault). There aren’t a bunch of changes in volume and dynamics. It just needs to be consistent and pleasant to listen to. Much of that comes down to recording with a good mic, setting input gain levels correctly, using good mic technique, and not recording in a noisy room or a room with a ton of natural reverb or echo.

What Headphones Are Your Listeners Using?

Most people listening to podcasts are probably either using Apple earbuds, cheap earbuds, less than $100, or listening in a car. I would be very, very surprised if the number of people listening to podcasts on audiophile quality, expensive gear was higher then 5% or 10% of the overall population. I don’t think you need great headphones or speakers that are made for mixing music to make a podcast sound good.

I’m an audio nerd. Before I got into editing podcasts, I was studying recording, mixing, and mastering music. I want great audio gear, but these days, I mix a lot of podcasts on $10 Panasonic earbuds.

Even though I mix a lot of the seanwes podcasts I work on on cheap earbuds from Amazon, we haven't gotten complaints from listeners.

In fact, in most cases, people talk about how great the sound quality is. That’s because Sean invested money in some great mics, like the Shure SM7Bs, and some pre-proccessors, the DBX-286s. He knows how to set input gain levels correctly and he uses pop filters.

The only bad thing I can say about the recordings that Sean makes is that he doesn’t have sound treatment in his room. I can hear a little bit of the room sound, but it’s not enough to bother the majority of his listeners. I don’t think most people even notice it. I notice it because I’m a nerd, and I pay attention to things like that.

Why Do People Want to Buy Expensive Gear?

Everybody is different in their motivation and what they want, but if I can break it down a little bit, I think that beginners want expensive gear because they see their idols using it. They see a pro using it, that pro is doing great work mixing for great bands or doing great podcasts, and they think, “If I get the same gear that he/she has, I’ll be successful like him/her.”

They think the gear is why the pro has had success. So they drool over the gear, over the expensive microphones, the expensive computers, the expensive headphones, the expensive plugins, or whatever the pro is using. They’re forgetting the years that the pro invested in learning everything, making mistakes, going through processes, putting out work, trying, experimenting, failing, and trying again.

Why do the pros buy expensive gear and headphones? People who listen to a lot of audio develop their “ear” over the years, so they can hear subtle differences in the headphones—in the way that music sounds and in the way that podcasts sound. It’s nice to be able to hear everything really clearly. The $300 pair of Sennheiser HD 600 headphones that I have sound better than the $10 earbuds.

Here are the top four reasons I think pros invest in quality headphones:

They sound great
They’re comfortable
They usually last longer than cheap headphones
You get to feel fancy

Do expensive headphones sound way better? Maybe. Will they help you make a podcast that sounds drastically better? Probably not.

The difference between cheap and expensive headphones is subtle, but some people want and need that subtlety.

More expensive headphones are often more confortable. These HD 600s I have are stupid comfortable. I can wear them for 12 hours, they sound great, feel great, and they’re pretty lightweight. They’re a joy to wear.

Also, quality gear usually lasts longer than cheap gear. The cheap $10 headphones that I buy will often break after six or eight months. A good pair of headphones should last you for years, maybe even decades.

If you’re going to spend some money, ask yourself, “Should I buy three pairs of $10 earbuds or a pair of $30 headphones that will last the same time as the three pairs of cheap headphones?” I think that’s a tossup, but reliability and quality are worth paying for.

Finally, you also get to feel fancy when you have expensive headphones. That’s more about your ego, but it does feel good to have great gear.

I like having nice things, and it’s fine for you to want that too. It says something about you, that you’re willing to invest in quality gear for whatever kind of work you do. If it’s audio work, it’s nice to be able to have this gear, and there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of showing off, taking pride in the stuff that you invest in.

What’s More Important: Great Sound or Great Content?

Terrible sound quality can ruin great content, but great sound quality won’t make terrible content interesting or compelling.

Crappy gear can ruin great content, but great gear isn’t going to make average or boring content interesting or compelling. Time spent looking at and lusting over fancy gear you don’t have is time you could have spent making stuff with the gear you do have. It’s a distraction. It’s procrastination.

Time spent looking at fancy gear is time that you’re not spending creating. The thing you’re giving attention to is taking up your headspace, so it blocks out everything else from your life.

Let’s use notebooks as an example. I know a lot of people write and a lot of people draw. What benefit does a $40 notebook have over a $3 notebook? They’re both paper, and you can write on either one of them. Will a $40 notebook help you write better than a $3 notebook?

What about writing apps? Do you have to pay $40 or $50 for Ulysses or $100 for Scrivener, or could you write a book or a blog post in the TextEdit app in your Mac? It might not look exactly how you want, but you could get the job done.

When I started podcasting, the microphone I had was a $150 Shure PG27 USB microphone. I thought I was fancy at the time. I have $250 BETA 87A now, running into a $500 interface… I have so much more now than when I started.

The point is that I got started with something, with what I could afford at the time. It didn’t sound amazing, but it sounded okay. I had to go through the process of learning all the different pieces that make up podcasting.

Eventually I got to a point where I wanted to get better at my craft and I invested in a better microphone. But what really made the difference in my sound quality was learning how to do things like EQ and compression, mixing and mastering.

If you have to choose, invest in educating yourself rather than investing in better gear.

Don’t get distracted by the gear. Don’t procrastinate by spending a bunch of time reading reviews and drooling over expensive gear.

At the end of the day, all the expensive gear in the world doesn’t make a difference if you’re not creating stuff.

If you don’t have an audience now, buying super expensive gear isn’t going to magically bring you a ton of listeners, viewers or readers.

I do believe that there is a minimum threshold of quality you should strive to meet, but it’s in the range of hundreds of dollars, not thousands or tens of thousands. If you’re just getting started or you’re a year or two into it, buying a $10,000 mic is not going to make your podcast better than buying a $250 microphone. You’re not going to know how to use it to the best of of your ability. You may have other problems with your podcasting setup and your workflow that you’re not even aware of yet.

Improve what you can, and don’t spend all your time looking at gear.

Examples of People Who Create Great Work Without Great Gear

I’m sure some of you have heard of Tim Farriss before. I don’t like the way he starts off his episodes with five minutes of ads, but that’s my only complaint. Other than that, he has a lot of great content. It’s not always stuff I’m interested in, but you can’t argue that he’s a very interesting person, and he’s producing very interesting content, especially on self improvement.

That being said, based on his sound quality, it sounds like he’s using a $100 USB microphone.

Most of the time it sounds like he uses a Skype call recording when he interviews people. He doesn’t have the most amazing sound quality on his podcast and he starts every episode with minutes of ads, which is kind of annoying, but it doesn’t matter that much.

Tim Farriss has a huge audience because he’s producing interesting content all the time. He’s focused on making great content and not having the best gear or sound quality, and he’s doing well because of that.

Another example is Robert Rodriguez. I heard him on an episode of Marc Maron’s podcast. He was talking about how he made his very first movie (El Mariachi) with a $7,000 budget. It was a tiny, tiny budget, but the movie blew up and ended up making $2,000,000 in the US. I watched it, and it was obviously low budget—but it was enough to kickstart his career.

He said that because he had so little money, he only shot a take or two for each scene. He did the best he could with the constraints he had, and he didn’t wait until he could afford the best movie gear.

You can create great work with constraints, and oftentimes it even helps.

If I had access to all the most amazing microphones, the best headphones, computers, audio interfaces, and all that stuff, I still couldn’t sit down in a studio with a band and make a record that sounded as good as someone who’s been doing it for 20 years. There’s too much that I don’t know. The gear isn’t what’s holding me back, it’s the knowledge. It’s practice and years of experience.

Remember that most people are listening on affordable headphones or Apple earbuds. You don’t need expensive headphones to make a podcast that sounds good.

It’s ok to get to know the gear and invest in good gear if you want to, but don’t trick yourself into believing that good gear will guarantee you success. You have to put in the time to learn and hone your craft.

Portable Podcasting Setup

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 09:00:00 -0000

I got a question from a Community member about recording audio away from home, so I grabbed my Zoom H4N and a few mics and headed to a local Starbucks to test out the different mics in a real world setting.

If you’d like to invest in an affordable, portable recording setup, this episode will help you get started.

How to Write a Podcast Description That Attracts New Listeners

Mon, 10 Oct 2016 09:00:00 -0000

Your podcast description is one of the first things people see when they come across your podcast online or in a podcast app. This is your chance to catch their attention and sell them on your show. It’s your opportunity to convince them to listen.

The ideal podcast description answers two questions for your potential listener:

Is this show for me?
What am I going to get out of listening to this?

When a potential audience member comes across your podcast and starts reading your description, they’re wondering, “What’s in it for me?” This is your chance to tell them why they should care about your show. Otherwise, they won’t.

Key Takeaways:

Your podcast description is your chance to tell people what’s in it for them.
Refine the goal of your podcast down to a single sentence.
Write your description in a way that brings agreement from your intended audience.
Don’t make your description all about you, make it about your listener.
People will only care about you once you’ve proven you care about them.
Your description is there to let people know you have what they’re looking for.
Write in a simple way that’s tangible and clear for your audience. Try to deliver complex ideas simply.
Your social media bio is a chance to communicate to people what they'll get if they follow you.

I’m joined this week by Cory Miller. Cory is the co-host of the Invisible Details podcast and loves all things design and branding.

Aaron: In this world where there’s millions of pieces of content competing for our attention, your audience is looking to see if your content solves a specific need they have. You have to put thought not just into your podcast description, but into each of your episode descriptions as well.

When a potential listener comes across your podcast for the first time, they’re reading the description and wondering, “What’s in this for me?”

Your podcast description is your chance to tell people what’s in it for them. You have to tell them why they should care about your show, otherwise they’re not going to.

What Should My Show Description Say?

Aaron: When writing a description for your podcast or podcast episode, here are some questions to think about:

What is your goal with this show?
What are you going to teach or share with your listeners?
Are you going to interview people? Are you going to bring people from that community in to share what they’ve learned, or is your show strictly about entertainment?

The last two weeks I interviewed two guys who run a company called Dead Signals and produce two radio drama style podcasts (Related: e064 Creating a Radio Drama Podcast Part 1 (With Writer Marc Sollinger) & e065 Creating a Radio Drama Podcast Part 2 (With Producer/Engineer Dan Powell)).

Their podcasts are very much just entertaining stories. They’re not business related and they’re not trying to change the world with their podcasts, they just want to tell stories in the audio medium and entertain people.

The way I write a description for my podcast is going to be way different from the way they write theirs. They thought about that and asked, “What are people who would be interested in our show looking for?” They’re trying to write a description that would catch the attention of someone looking for an entertaining story.

I love the description for their Archive 81 show: “Three months ago Daniel Powell vanished. These are the tapes he sent to me. If you know anything, please contact me at archive81podcast@gmail.com.”

They don’t even tell you who the guy is, all you need to know is this guy vanished after he sent a friend some tapes.

Try to Describe the Goal of Your Podcast in a Single Sentence

Cory: Write your description in a way that brings agreement from your intended audience. Write it in a way that, while they’re reading the description, they’re thinking, “Oh yeah. Yes! This! Exactly that! Yes! I need to listen to this.” That’s the reaction you’re looking for.

You want to write your description in a way that brings agreement from your intended audience. When they look at that description from Archive 81, people are like, “Whoa. That’s creepy. I feel like I need to listen to this because I’m intrigued.” You’re bringing intrigue and agreement.

Whatever it is you write, you want it to resonate with your intended audience. The second thing is to write it in a way that if they’re sitting with their phone on a bus heading to work and someone looks over and says, “I see you’re listening to a podcast, what’s that all about?” they can respond without looking up the description.

That’s what you’re aiming for: you want something they can quickly tell their friend about without looking at the description. It’s about clarity. It’s not all about you, it’s about what they’re getting. If they said, “I’m listening to this show where this guy wants to help make me a better podcaster,” that’s huge.

Or, “I’m listening to this show where they teach me how to build a better brand.” That’s very simplistic, but you can build off that and you can craft a description where people can pass that on. That’s rooted in telling people what the mission of your company, your brand, or your life is. Being able to distill it in a way that allows people to be able to pass it back and forth is very powerful.

Don’t Make It All About You

Share and talk about the experience you have and why you’re qualified to teach on a certain subject.

I can say, “I’ve been helping people make great podcasts for five years. I’ve worked for 5by5, the founder of Dribbble, Sean McCabe, and the Shop Talk show.” That shows authority and expertise, but if someone asks a listener about my show, they’re not going to say, “Aaron Dowd is this great podcast editor and he’s worked for all these people and he knows all this stuff about audio engineering.”

The person asking about my show doesn’t care about me, they only care about what the show will do for them if they listen to it.

The words I should use instead could be, “If you want to learn how to make a great podcast, this is the show you should be listening to.”

Cory: There’s aspects of that you can include in your description. Instead of saying, “Hey, these are all of my accomplishments,” you can change that to something like, “Get knowledge from a guy who has years of experience in podcast editing.” You’re putting the emphasis back on the listener and what they’ll get from the show.

You can do fill-in-the-blank stuff, like:

“Learn how to (fill in the blank).”
“Get knowledge from 10 years of experience in (fill in the blank).”
“If you’re an X, Y, or Z, you’ll get tangible insights on (fill in the blank).”

These are actionable steps. Your description should resonate with the listener, tell them what the benefit is for them, and give them a glimpse of the person they’re going to become after listening.

If you want, you can slide a little bit of your credentials in there. For instance, Aaron’s podcast description says, “Professional podcast editor and producer shares everything he’s learned about making great podcasts.”

In the moment someone reads “professional podcast editor,” they’re going to think, “This show is going to teach me how to become a professional podcast editor,” or, “I can learn something from this person who has this experience.”

Ultimately, you have to remember that people will only care about you once you’ve proven you care about them.

In regards to a value-exchange like this, you have to prove that you care about this person before they’re going to start caring about you.

If I find a new show, and look at it's podcast description, I don’t know this person, I have no connection with them, I have no background on them, so I’m looking to see if this is worth my time.

Once I listen to it, I can create a connection. That’s exactly how it happened with seanwes. I started listening to the seanwes podcast out of the blue and I didn’t know who Sean and Ben were, but after listening to so many of their shows, I started really connecting with these guys.

That’s why I joined the Community in the beginning, because they were talking about all these conversations people were having and I had total FOMO. I wanted to be in on the inside jokes because I felt connected to the podcast hosts.

The connectedness happens after you’ve proven that you’re here to deliver value. You deliver value first and the connectedness is all about, in a sense, selling yourself, your knowledge, and the benefit to the listener, and then they can continue to connect with you.

Aaron: Make your podcast description about your listener. If you don’t know who you’re creating a podcast for, that’s a problem. If you’re just creating a show because you want it to be out there, you might get a few people listening, but you need to think about who you’re making your show for.

Podcast Description Review

Aaron: One of my listeners (Stan) reached out to me, and I wanted to do a review for him to give him some practical steps to help him write a better podcast description.

I feel like I can’t pick apart his podcast description without looking at my own podcast description first, so let’s pick apart my podcast description, then we'll do Cory’s show (Invisible Details), then Stan’s show.

I feel like I need to rewrite my description anywys, so I’m hoping the things we talk about in this section will be helpful to someone else who has been listening who might want to rewrite theirs.

Breakdown of The Podcast Dude’s Podcast Description

Here’s the (current) description for The Podcast Dude:

“Professional podcast editor and producer Aaron Dowd shares everything he’s learned about making great podcasts. If you’re interested in starting a podcast, growing your audience, and increasing your influence, this is the show for you.

Get answers to all your questions about podcasting: gear, recording, content, editing, interviewing, mixing, mastering, and more. To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you’ll need to produce a high quality show. The Podcast Dude will help you get there. Don’t just make a podcast—make an awesome podcast.”

I don’t know if I like that first sentence. It’s making a claim that I’m a professional podcast editor and producer, but I don’t have any evidence to back that up. I’m not saying, “Professional podcast editor and producer for these people.”

I do have evidence to back that up, and the people that know me know I’ve worked with some fairly well-known podcasters, especially in the design realm, but I’m not backing it up with evidence.

Also it puts me first—the first thing you see is my name, then I say I’m going to share everything I’ve learned.

Another mistake I think I'm making there is talking about myself in the third person. I want to speak to a single person and I’m not speaking to a single person until the second line.

Cutting out the first and the last sentences would be a good place to start, because that puts the focus back on the listener. "What do you want? Do you want to start a podcast? Do you want to grow an audience? This is the show for you."

The next part, “Get answers to all your questions about podcasting: gear, recording, content, editing, interviewing, mixing, mastering, and more,” explains the kind of stuff I talk about. This is what I’m going to teach you.

That’s good, so I’ll leave that as it is.

Finally, I give my mission statement, “To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you’ll need to produce a high quality show. The Podcast Dude will help you get there.”

Cory: I think you should remove the first sentence and the last sentence. I thought the last sentence was a mistake, honestly.

I think you can add your name in the new last sentence, like, “To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you’ll need to produce a high quality show. The Podcast Dude, Aaron Dowd, will help you get there.”

Aaron: I would say, “To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you’ll need to produce a high quality show. My name is Aaron Dowd and I want to help you make an awesome podcast.”

Cory: “Make an awesome podcast,” is the last thing people will read and it’s the last thing that’s going to be on their mind. They’ll read, “If you’re interested in starting a podcast…” and they’ll think, “Yes, I’m interested in starting a podcast.”

Breakdown of the Invisible Details Podcast Description

Cory: Invisible Details’s description says, “A weekly show about building a successful brand through story and authenticity. A brand is so much more than a logo or what is visible on the surface. It’s the heartbeat of a company. A brand is about values and the story you’re telling. Join Cory Miller and Kyle Adams every Saturday for clear and practical advice on how to define your brand from the inside out. Connect with your audience and stand out from the competition.”

I like it, but I think I could rework a little bit. There are a couple of things I’m trying to do with this.

First, I’m setting expectations with “a weekly show.” There’s no confusion about when it comes out, like bi-monthly, or a seasonal thing. It’s a weekly show.

Next, the description talks about building a successful brand. Most of the people I encounter who are starting this journey of building a better brand think branding is a out the visuals, logos, and all the things you see, but a brand is all about perception. It’s all about how people think and feel about you and what they say about you when you’re not in the room.

I could rework that second sentence, but I also want it to be introductory, because the people we’re trying to reach are people who have new and growing brands. They’re just getting that first taste of redefining what brand means, and that’s what that second sentence is for.

Aaron: You have a solid first sentence and a solid last sentence. Let’s say we cut all that stuff out in the middle; it would still be a good description—“A weekly show about building a successful brand through story and authenticity. Connect with your audience and stand out from the competition.” It explains what the show is about and what the listener will get out of it.

Cory: It’s very action-centered. I’m a very simplistic kind of person when it comes to design and writing. I adhere to this idea of, “How much can I remove but still have there be quality? Can we do less, but better?” That’s my whole philosophy. I know people who write out their whole about pages in their description and no one will read that or remember it. You need to create something that is short and memorable.

If someone asks if there’s a podcast about podcasting I’d recommend, I’d say, “If you want to make a podcast, the Podcast Dude is all about helping you make an awesome podcast.” That’s how I would describe it. Those are the ideas and key words you want to plant into people’s heads through the description in a very simple way that’s tangible and memorable.

Aaron: You can’t ask people to remember four paragraphs about you and what you do, because they’re not going to. If you can’t explain the point of your show in one or two sentences, you’re going to have a bad time.

Cory: People already know what they’re looking for. You need to demonstrate that you have what they’re looking for.

People already know what they’re looking for. Your description is there to let them know you have what they’re looking for.

Breakdown of Stan’s Podcast Description

Aaron: I didn’t get Stan’s permission to share the name of his podcast, but I do want to give him some direct feedback. Here’s what’s on his website when you first visit it, “I’m passionate about coaching leaders to help them reach maximum impact wherever they are currently leading.”

“My heart beats faster when someone I spend time with takes a next step towards being more closely aligned with God’s will for their life, enabling them to make an even greater impact. My goal is to provide leadership resources that are practical and can help anyone develop as a leader, including moms, dads, teachers, administrators, managers, volunteers, campus pastors, and lead pastors. Everyone leads someone.”

The description for his podcast is, “This podcast focuses on ministry leaders to reach maximum impact where they currently lead. We also focus on brainstorming and idea creation for leaders.”

Cory, what’s your first reaction where you hear that?

Cory: It sounds like something I would read in an about page, not a home page. On a home page, you need to speak to the pain of the person who’s problem you’re solving and it needs to speak with a benefit.

I see his goals, but I don’t see the benefit for myself. I want to know what I’m going to get out of going to this website.

Condense that down to a single sentence—that’s what people need to see on the home page.

There’s a lot of things there and I’m sure Stan is awesome. In fact, I’d love to talk with him about some of this stuff. The problem is I don’t know Stan yet and all he’s doing is introducing himself. If I’m a leader and I want to have maximum impact wherever I’m currently leading, I want to know that you’re here to benefit me. That’s ultimately what people are trying to figure out when they first go to your site. You can bring in yourself a little bit later.

For the podcast description, I think that’s a good start, but I would love to see more actionable sentences. Like, “Learn how to make a maximum impact in the industry you’re currently leading.”

Aaron: Stan, what do you mean by “maximum impact”? I think that’s important, because those aren’t very specific words. If you want people to make a change, what kind of change are you trying to get people to make? Go a little deeper on what those words mean. Also, what specifically about brainstorming and ideas? What’s missing is a clear description of the problems you’re trying to solve for people.

Cory: The other aspect with that second sentence is, I see, “We focus on brainstorming and idea creation for leaders.” Does that mean you’ll brainstorm for me and give me ideas? Or are you trying to teach me how to brainstorm? Are you trying to give me the tools to have better idea creation? Are you trying to make me into the kind of leader that is able to lead a team, brainstorm, create ideas, have successful meetings, make an impact in our community? Those are the things I want to see and hear about.

You can expand on it without being too wordy with it. If I looked at this and someone asked me what the podcast is about, based on the description I’d say, “If you’re a leader, they want to make you a better leader.”

Another thing you can do is if you’ve had a podcast for a while, you can go look at the reviews and see what people are saying in your reviews. From there, you can rewrite and clarify your description based on what other people are saying. If you’re a new podcast, you may not have that yet, but I would recommend talking with someone. Share everything about what your podcast is about and what your mission is and have them repeat it back to you in a sentence or two. That will give you some good ideas that you can include in your description.

Have clarity in your podcast description. If you don’t have clarity, you have nothing.

Aaron: Talk to a couple of people you trust, or if you have an engaged online community, reach out to them and ask, “What do you think my podcast is about?” and see what people say. If you don’t have a podcast, try it for yourself instead. Ask some of your friends, “How would you describe me to someone else? What do you think I’m about?” You’ll get a lot of insight out of the answers to those questions.

Cory: Stan, I hope this doesn’t discourage you at all. The fact that you’ve shown up and have a grip on your mission and you know how you want to help people, that’s good! That’s more than a lot of people will ever have, but you just need to focus on clarity. Clarify some of the words and clarify who your target audience is based on this list you wrote. This is a great list, but try to condense it in a way that’s repeatable for someone you’ve just shared it with. You have to write for stupid people. Is that a terrible thing to say?

Aaron: It’s not just stupid people. People are in a hurry, in a rush, people don’t want to think.

Cory: Let me rephrase: You have to write in a simple way that’s tangible and clear for people. I often see people use inside slang, jargon, and terms that average people wouldn’t understand. Don’t give me the marketed, straight-from-a-thesaurus words. I don’t care about that. If I’m your intended audience, I need it explained in a simple way.

You can deliver complex ideas simply with clarity. Communicate in a simple but clear way.

Aaron: Candice said, “A well-known author I know said he writes his books at a fifth grade level so that anyone can understand it.”

Cory: I didn’t mean that people are stupid. You just have to write in a clear way that anyone in your intended audience can understand. That’s the most important thing.

How to Write Better Social Media Descriptions

Aaron: Jonathan asked, “Is there a formula or best structure for writing an effective bio for your social media descriptions?”

Cory: First, what is the goal of your social media account? I don’t know that there’s necessarily a formula, but I know that a lot of social media descriptions have a cap, so you can’t write past a certain amount of characters. Write something that’s succinct and will help push you toward your goals. Especially now, try to make something that’s memorable beyond “Father. Coffee lover. Hiker. Mountaineer.” Everyone is doing that, so if you’re doing anything different, you’re in good shape.

Aaron: The formula I use for my Twitter bio is what I do and what I want to do for you, the person reading. My Twitter bio is simply, “Audio engineer/podcast editor for the seanwes network. I want to help you make an awesome podcast.”

Cory: Mine is, “Director of Member Success at seanwes. Podcast host of Invisible Details. Author of Nice-to-Have, currently writing.” It depends on what your goals are. I want my Twitter to be a place where people can get access to me and the content is not in the description, the content is in the timeline.

That’s where I want people’s eyes to look. I don’t want to be clever, I want a bullet point credential. That’s how I’m using it. Figure out what your goal is, what the goal of your social media account is, and what the goal of your description is. Then, condense that in a way that provides you some kind of credibility and people will continue going down the timeline.

No one is going to care on Twitter unless they’ve gotten some kind of value on your timeline, whether it’s entertainment, practical, etc. They’re going to go to your timeline first and then they’ll want to know about you. I use my bio as a tiny about page related to what it is I’m posting.

Aaron: You’ll get more followers if you include what you want to do for other people in your bio.

Cory: Kyle Adams has a great one, “Icon designer intent on communicating in profound ways and helping others do the same.”

Aaron: Jeremy Mura has a good one too, “Designer and illustrator. Teaching others what I know and helping people design a life of greatness.”

When I look at someone’s bio, I’m wondering, “Why should I follow this person?” Your bio is your chance to convince me to follow you. If I’m not already convinced, I don’t know you, and you don’t already have a huge audience advocating for you, and you don’t tell me what you want to do for me, I probably won’t follow you.

Your bio is a chance to convince people they’ll get something out of following you.

Huge thanks to Cory Miller for joining me today. Follow him on Twitter and check out his show, Invisible Details.

Dan Powell | Creating a Radio Drama Podcast (Archive 81, Deep Vault)

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 09:00:00 -0000

Dan Powell is one half of Dead Signals Production, creator of the popular Archive 81 and Deep Vault found sound, radio drama podcasts.

In this episode, we talk about his recording process, how he designs sound, and his editing process. He shares some of the hurdles he overcame while producing podcasts and what advice he’d give to anyone interested in making a modern radio drama.

Key Takeaways:

Don’t buy your gear new—if you buy the best gear used, it’ll last you forever.
The hardest part of any narrative creative medium is the transition between two parts.
Make sure you understand what’s happening in your environment before you choose a space to record in.
What you make should be in conversation with your audience, but don’t make something just because it’ll get a lot of downloads.
Find people who are established in your field, reach out to them, and ask for some direct advice.
Think about how the ambience and background noise where you’re recording can contribute to the story and the feel of your whole piece.

Aaron: Hey Dan, thanks for joining me today. Tell me a little bit about yourself—where you’re from and where you are now. Maybe a little bit about what your path to audio and podcasting has looked like over the course of your life.

Dan: I was born in Rome, Georgia and I was there until I was about 18. It was a medium/small size town in the middle of the woods. I spent a lot of time by myself alone with my thoughts, which is probably what caused me to gravitate to sci-fi, horror, and secular fiction. I began making radio dramas at the age of eight or nine. I used Window 95 Sound Recorder to make these one-man shows.

Sometimes it would be me and sometimes it would be my friends, and we would get in front of a microphone and see what happened. That’s really what introduced me to audio editing and creative sound design. From an early age, I was interested in what would happen if you slowed down, sped up, or changed the pitch of your voice.

I went to Syracuse University for college and majored in English. I loved reading and still really do, but I realized I was spending all my free time in studios recording my friend’s bands (or recording myself), and that working with audio might be a good career path. I’d always been interested in creative writing, but I thought it might be good to develop a more technical skill or trade that I could have on the side while writing.

I ended up really enjoying working with audio and I decided to make that my primary creative and career pursuit. After school I moved to New York City. I interned, I did some odd jobs, I worked at an Apple store, and I eventually got my first job in the sound industry at Soundsnap, a commercial sound effects library. I did that full time for about two years and then transitioned to working there part time while making more time for freelance work, sound engineering, and working on my own podcast on the side. That’s where I’m at now.

Aaron: You met Marc (the other half of Dead Signals) in college?

Dan: Yeah, Marc and I met his senior year and my post-senior year. I stayed after I graduated to do a fellowship in audio engineering and sound design. One of the cool things about Syracuse is they have this program where if you get to the end of your four years and you decide you want to do something different than what you studied, you can apply for a fellowship that will let you stay an extra year. You basically get a free year of credits that you can do what you want with. I did that after I finished studying English so I could build up my portfolio and get some more one-on-one mentoring strictly with audio stuff. That’s where Marc and I met.

Aaron: Then you guys formed Dead Signals Productions.

Dan: We formed Dead Signals this time last year. Marc came and visited me in New York and we were talking about ideas we had. The project we worked on together in college was Marc’s senior thesis project, a radio play he wrote and produced. I was just acting in it, playing the lead. More recently, starting last year, was when we started collaborating and both giving equal input for the project.

Recording Radio Drama Podcasts

Aaron: Let’s talk about Archive 81 and Deep Vault, the recording process and the tools you use to handle the editing. Marc said you guys recorded Archive 81 in a bedroom. Do you remember which mic you used for that?

Dan: It was the Sennheiser MKH 8040. I got this mic because it’s a really good all-purpose sound design mic. It’s good for all-purpose folio recording, like footsteps, fabric movements, and every day objects you want to record. It’s also really good for ambient field recording. We recorded the dialog with this mic and another mic called a Sennheiser MKH30, which is a bi-directional stereo mic. The two of these things together form a really good pair for mid-side stereo recording.

What I was really interested in when I bought these mics was, one, it was the best deal I found on eBay, and two, I was interested in doing more ambient field recording. Living in New York City there’s so many interesting sounds everywhere. There are neighborhoods, parks, and subways. You can turn a corner and be in an entirely different sonic landscape than you were just in.

I wanted something that was good for capturing my environment, but when it came down to produce Archive 81, after doing some tests, we realized that these mics would work just as well for dialog recording. I personally would have liked to use a wider diaphragm AKG microphone, but I still think the mics we used worked well for recording dialog. It’s good gear and it’s what we had available at the time.

Aaron: I know a lot of podcasters who use $60 or $70 USB mics and there’s a big difference in quality between those and the MKH. What do they run used, close to $1,000?

Dan: Close to $1,000. The mic I’m on right now goes for about $1,200 new, but I’m a big Craigslist and eBay deal-hunter. When I was first getting into audio, one of the best pieces of advice I got was when I was talking to someone five years my senior who’s successful and established in the music production scene here in New York. He said:

Don’t buy your gear new. Even if you buy the best gear used, it’ll still last you forever.

He told me, “I’ve made a spreadsheet of every piece of equipment I’ve purchased from when I first started out. Collectively I’ve saved about $30,000.” That really stuck with me, so now I only buy used gear. I got the mic I’m talking on now for about half of what it would cost new.

Aaron: I’m currently on a Shure BETA 87A, which costs $250 new and I think I paid $120 for it used at Guitar Center and it’s an awesome sounding mic for podcasting.

Dan: I like the richness of it. In general, I really like dynamic mics for podcasts. I like the rich low end and the proximity effect you can get. I use the mics I use because I want to have a lot of applications for things like sound design and field recording, but I don’t want to make it seem like you have to buy a $700 or $1,000 microphone. I’ve seen people get fantastic results with an SM58, which I use when I do event recording gigs. You can get one of those used on Craigslist for $50 in most cases. In many cases, it’s probably more ideal if you’re at home instead of a treated acoustic space because dynamic microphones do a better job of isolating the sound source and not picking up your refrigerator, your roommate, or your neighbors yelling at each other.

Aaron: I agree. I love the large diaphragm condensers, but you do need a quiet, treated room to make them sound good and not pick up a bunch of sound. Alright; let’s talk about sound design. Here’s a clip of episode one of Deep Vault, which has some dialog with some reverb on. I wanted to ask you about that, and about the part in the music where the footsteps transition into the beat of the song.

First, let’s talk about the ambience and reverb you used. As I’m listening to it, there’s some kind of ambient sound in that. I’m not sure if it’s reverb in the space you recorded it in or if it’s reverb you added afterward. There’s also an air conditioning kind of “swoosh” background ambience. Can you describe how you achieved those effects?

Dan: None of that reverb is natural. It’s all added in post. I exclusively use impulse response reverb, which is basically the ability to capture the sonic snapshot of a real, indoor space by going in and blasting a sign wave or white noise in it and then recording the echo that comes afterwards, then notching out the original sign wave in post. This gives a ghost emanation of what a space actually sounds like.

There’s two reverbs fading out and in. There’s the outdoor reverb, which I have a light touch on. It’s meant to evoke the sense that the space is outdoors and then there’s the echo-y underground reverb of the vault they’re about to go into. If you listen prior to them entering the vault, you can hear how it evolves from one space to another. I think very visually when I’m working on it. I’ve said this a lot in various interviews, but because I’m working with Marc on the scripts from the beginning, I don’t really think of this as post production.

I’m always thinking about space and sonics as I’m reading the first draft of a show.

I usually visually map out or make a flow chart of what the space looks like and how things need to transition from one stage to another. That helps me focus better. In the background, we have a desert ambient sound. It’s a field recording of a desert that’s near an urban area. You have some wind and outdoor air atmosphere, called the air tone, which is the outdoor equivalent of a room tone. If you search Soundsnap for air tone, you’ll find a bunch of ambient recordings of outdoor air spaces that don’t have crowds, people, or traffic.

It’s more a general wash like you hear in that clip. There’s the air tone and then there’s the vault sounds—the ambient sounds of the space they’re going into, which is a field recording by a field recordist named Stephan March. I think it’s some recordings of some abandoned bomb shelters on the Danish coast. It’s some industrial room tones with some distant waves, but they have an underground low-fi industrial roominess to them. Those things blend together to create the atmosphere of the vault.

Aaron: I’m embarrassed to say it now, but I was thinking these were effects you could achieve with something like the reverbs that come with ProTools or Logic Pro X. What program do you use to do all this stuff with?

Dan: I use ProTools for editing, mixing, and basic sound effect placement. For what’s referred to as composite sound effects design—designing a sound effect that needs a lot more depth to it than what you can pull from a library as is—I use Logic. I do that for two reasons. One, I think it’s good to have separation between sound effect editing and show editing. I like to be in two different programs when I’m creating the sound of a robot or a door and when I’m editing the show. Having the different software environment helps to streamline that.

The other reason is, though I do think ProTools is great, I think it’s very flawed for making things creatively from scratch. I would never write a song or demo a song in ProTools because I don’t think the user experience is tailored toward composition, whether that’s composing a song or compositing a sound effect from scratch.

It’s great for editing and taking material that’s aesthetically already done—like you recording a guitar through an amp—but if you’re trying to dial in the tone of a guitar, I prefer to use Logic, something a little more built for making music from scratch. For this scene, I used pretty much all ProTools because I wasn’t designing anything beyond simply layering things together and the reverb that goes along with that. I wrote the music in Logic.

Dan’s Favorite Editing Programs and Plugins

Aaron: Are there any stock plugins you use inside of Logic or do you have any favorites?

Dan: I use Logic’s modular synth plugin, the ES2, a lot because I know it really well. It has a very particular sound but I’ve been using it for many years, and I can dial in the sound I want pretty quickly with it. I probably should learn some more synth plugins so I don’t get set in my ways.

Aaron: What about reverb or special effects? I know there’s like 50 stock plugins inside Logic.

Dan: Space Designer Plugin for Logic Pro X is incredible. It’s a great impulse response reverb plugin. I use Waves IR1 for the reverb in this scene, but it could have as easily been achieved with the stock Logic Space Designer plugin, probably easier even, because they have a larger native sample library. Any sound designer you talk to will say that Space Designer is the best free stock plugin of anything. That’s a big one. There aren’t a lot of other stock Logic plugins I use for sound design in terms of compositing. Although I do really like the basic Chorus and Phaser modulation stuff for voice processing for robot voices.

Aaron: You wrote the music for the show. Is the music going to be available somewhere else later?

Dan: Marc and I would really like to release an album of the music from our shows. It’s something we want to do and there’s a few reasons we haven’t done it yet. One reason is time. I’m very skittish about making sure everything is mixed properly. I wouldn’t want to release the music stand alone unless I was absolutely sure it was put together well. The other reason is that I write most of the music for our shows, but we do have some songs that are done with side collaborators and I would want to make sure it’s done legally and copywrite-wise we were in the clear. I want to sign some kind of licensing or formal distribution agreement to make sure everyone is happy money-wise. The song from episode one was me ripping off Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I’m a big fan of their scoring work.

Music & Sound Effect Creation for Podcasts

Aaron: Let’s talk about how you achieved that effect for the song in the sample clip I played earlier. I’m guessing you had the sound of the footsteps on a ladder. Is that something you recorded yourself or is that something you got out of the sound library?

Dan: I used several different libraries for that. There’s a mixture of some simulated ladder movement in there, like arms reaching and hands grabbing the rungs of the ladder. There’s also some pure metal footsteps in there. When I was originally putting that together, there were six or seven tracks, three of which were cloth movements and body motions and three of which were footsteps.

Some were more foregrounded, like when one character named Jeremy is counting his steps. His footsteps are louder because he’s drawing attention to the fact that he’s counting them. The others are more off to the side to evoke the sense of space and depth, because presumably, they’re going down a circular enclosure to a vault. That was a real pain to put together.

Aaron: I can’t believe you recorded clothes rustling to make this realistic.

Dan: I can’t speak to film, tv, or video, but part of what makes the footsteps convincing in audio dramas is the footsteps being good, but also having cloth movement and fabric rustling.

Aaron: With headphones and soundscapes, you have left and right channels, obviously. What do you do when you’re trying to make something seem like it’s coming from above or below. Is there any way to achieve that affect?

Dan: In episode two of Deep Vault, where two characters crash through the floor of the room their in, they’re down there for a bit, and then you hear them crawling up through the crash hole to the other characters that are above them. I think it worked pretty well. I think the sequence of the narrative and that you hear them crash through the floor first and the space change around them helps to establish that.

It’s just a matter of having more reverb and/or more delay on the voices that are further away than the voices that are close to you. I’m still figuring out what my philosophy on panning things is for the Deep Vault. It’s an ensemble cast with four actors talking at once, I have them panned around the clock—some are hard left, some are hard right, and some are close to the center.

Usually if characters are interrogating or trying to get information from another character or recording, I’ll try to have whatever recording or character they’re talking to in the center to give the sense that they’re gathered around this new source of information they’re trying to learn. As far as making things sound far away or from above or below, it’s a matter of adding more reverb to the things that are farther away and hoping the sense of space translates.

Aaron: I think it does most of the time, but it’s something I’m curious about. I’m thinking about the future with virtual reality and how they’re going to handle the different angles of sound. Have you had a chance to try VR yet?

Dan: No, but I have some friends who told me I need to do it and I really want to. I have some friends who say Google Cardboard alone is incredible. I’m curious what that technology is like, but also what it’s going to mean for sound. I’m curious what sound for VR is going to be like and how it’s going to differ from the old guard, but also how it’s going to use some of the same techniques to make a realistic experience.

Aaron: I used the equivalent to Google Cardboard, not even one of the great ones, and it blew my mind. It’s going to be a game-changer. Maybe we’ll both have future careers in sound design for VR applications.

Dan: I’m just trying to stay ahead with what’s new for sound design because I’m afraid of being replaced by robots. It’s something I think about regularly. Am I doing something that will still be done by a human in 20 years? I feel ok about it most of the time, but you never know.

Aaron: I like to think that you’ll still have a job because you’re being creative and you’re doing things that take a human. I guess we’ll see.

Let’s talk about then music a little more. You did this transition where you have this music playing over the sound of the footsteps, and the footsteps blend into the beat of the music. Did you write the beat first? Were you listening to the pattern of the footsteps or did you go back and match those things up later?

Dan: They were matched up later, but my choice of percussion samples definitely made them more easily blendable. With the exception of the kick drum, which is more of a classic, electronic bass-pulse kick drum, everything else is found percussion—everyday objects being tapped on. Things like chairs, bags, or plastic silverware. I like working with low-fi sound percussion samples. I think the fact the percussion track in the song isn’t a real snare drum recorded in a studio helps serve as the connective tissue between the footsteps and their percussiveness and the song’s percussion, and it’s driving the melody forward.

The hardest part of any narrative creative medium is the transition between two parts.

It glues two things together that work well on their own. Sonically, that could be a good example of choosing the right percussion sample in the context of this being a score rather than a stand alone song. Perhaps if this was just a song released on an EP and it wasn’t meant to score anything, it would sound better with a non-found percussion or some other type of sound.

Sound Proofing vs. Sound Treatment for Podcasts

Aaron: Let’s jump into some mistakes or hard times you came across when you started doing Archive 81 and the Deep Vault. What are some of the things you struggled with?

Dan: I do have one thing about recording in a bedroom. The bedroom we recorded in sounded really good as far as bedrooms go, but we had only ever tested the sound in the room at night when everyone else in the house was really quiet.

When it came to production time, we were recording during the three most blizzardy weeks in January when every person was holed up in their apartment in New York City. Above my friend’s bedroom is a family with five teenagers, so we had to pause all the time because there were so many footsteps, running water, and cooking sounds. We didn’t plan for all of that.

I realized that, even though acoustically the room sounded very good, there was no isolation from what’s above and outside. That was definitely an error I made in trying to plan the space. The next time, we paid for a real studio, because as cool as it is to record in a good-sounding bedroom for free, it’s worth that money to not have to stop every take for outside noise.

When you’re pausing takes like that for noise coming from upstairs or outside, you’re losing the groove you have with the actors. The actors might move around if you have to wait for 10 minutes between a scene and you might have to reset levels, which makes it harder to set levels in post and mix. That was a real learning experience.

Make sure you understand what’s happening in your environment before you choose a space to record in.

Aaron: That applies to regular podcasting too. Someone asked me the other day, “How do I soundproof my room?”

They’re actually asking two different questions: “How do I make the sound of my room less noisy?” and, “How do I keep outside noise from coming in?” First, you have to stop noise from computers, air conditioners, refrigerators, and the sound of your voice from bouncing off the walls and being recorded by your mic. Then you have to soundproof the room so that the external sounds aren’t picked up by your mic. For me, I have three windows directly in front of me and it’s an old house, so the windows aren’t soundproof at all. If someone was running a lawn mower outside of my window, everyone would hear it.

Soundproofing is making sure noises from outside don’t come in. Sound treatment is making sure there aren’t noises inside your room causing problems in your audio.

Know Your Limits

Aaron: Any other mistakes or things that stood out throughout this process?

Dan: There are so many. The question is what’s a useful mistake to talk about, and what’s one I perpetually torture myself about at night? I’ll talk about casting. With Archive 81, we didn’t have a system for how we went about casting it. We put the character notices out on Craigslist one at a time and auditioned and chose people piecemeal. It worked out for the most part, but there were some characters where we were in a real bind because we didn’t have enough people in time, so we had to choose the best option. I would have liked to have more options.

I pretty much did all the casting for the first season and I didn’t go about it systematically, so for the Deep Vault, I wanted to make sure I did it more systematically. I spent a whole weekend auditioning people and planned in advance the characters they were auditioning for and allot time slots throughout the day so I could do it all at once. That was good and it was organized, but I packed too many people in one weekend, so by Sunday afternoon it was too much.

I’m pretty introverted by nature and I think I chose my line of work in the technical side of audio production because a lot of times, it’s just you and the machine. You do need other skills and to be able to talk to people professionally, but you also spend a lot of time alone, which I’m fine with. I definitely love socialising, like on this interview, but I’ll be glad to go back to my little audio hole.

That Sunday after three eight-hour days of auditioning and reading lines in character for these people, I was totally depleted. I think I’ve learned I need to be more systematic about it, but that I also need to spread it out over a few weekends in advance as opposed to trying to do it all in one weekend.

Aaron: I’m a productivity nerd when it comes to planning out my days and making sure I have stuff to do. There’s a lot I want to accomplish, but when you first get into that, you tend to overestimate what you can accomplish. You think you can do meaningful work for 12 or 14 hours and you don’t realize that you can take on too much and say yes to too many things.

Half way through, you’ve given it all you have for six hours and you’re worn out and you feel guilty because you didn’t do all the things you said you were going to do. It’s good to plan and try that stuff so that you know next time not to plan 12 hours of work for both Saturday and Sunday. Maybe you can do that, but you don’t know until you try. Start by planning and make notes about how it goes and you’ll have a better understanding about yourself and your stamina for the next time.

Dan: That speaks to the more general philosophy that doing it is the only way you’ll know what your own patterns are, what works for you, and what doesn’t work for you. Be open to some trial and error for your own personal workflow. It’s easy to look up to certain human accomplishments and think, “This great musician practiced for 12 hours a day, so I must have to do that to be the Rachmaninoff of podcasting,” but at the same time, there are successful and accomplished people who have more human and normal working hour regimens. Trent Reznor is one of those people and it’s obvious from his output that he’s someone who never stops working. That works for him, but some people need more time to unwind and not get burnt out on things.

Dan’s Advice for Aspiring Podcasters

Aaron: What kind of advice or tips would you give to someone who’s interested in doing something like Archive 81 or Deep Vault—a found sound or radio drama podcast? I’ve noticed in the last year or two they’re skyrocketing in terms of popularity. I think there’s a lot of people who might be turning the idea over in their mind. What would you say to those people?

Dan: The first thing is the writing and acting has to be really good. Have people you can trust give you feedback and critique who you can run things by. If the source material and story doesn’t work, then everything that follows isn’t going to work either. If you’ve never done a podcast before, be prepared for many ours of sedentary work. Doing this kind of work takes a lot time and it’s a lot of time you have to spend alone in front of a computer.

I lost count of the number of times this summer my friends said, “Hey, we’re going to the beach. Want to come?” or other things I wanted to do and I had to blow them off because I was editing or doing revisions. Be prepared for that and make sure you’re ok with that.

If you need a lot of time outside of the house and you really need a social life, maybe this particular kind of podcasting isn’t right for you. Interviewing is a very different thing. I don’t like to be preachy about exercise, but I do think it’s good to exercise if you’re doing sedentary creative work because it makes the mind work better and for me, it puts me more at ease.

Aaron: I’m with you on that, so two out of two podcasters recommend exercise and good sleep.

Dan: Go out there and do it. Work hard and tell the story you want to tell. Don’t make anything because you think it’ll sell or bring an audience. Marc and I made Archive 81 because we thought it was a cool idea.

What you make should be in conversation with your audience, but don’t make something just because you think it’ll get a lot of downloads.

I still feel like I’m learning a lot and trying to figure all this stuff out. Keep an open mind and stay open to learning new things as you go along. I still study sound design with a mentor because there’s always new levels I can push myself towards and I don’t want to get too comfortable.

Sound Design Resources

Aaron: Are there any books, websites, or online courses for someone who’s a total beginner, or someone like me who is relatively familiar with recording, mixing, and producing music and podcasts but hasn’t really gotten into sound design?

Dan: Transom.org is a great resource. Although it is geared towards beginners in radio and podcasting, I still find articles on there I can learn from. I think it has a good intro overview to things like sound design. I can’t name anything specific, but for a few years now, when I want to learn more about a subject, I find someone I like and relate to who’s established in that field and I reach out to them asking for some one-on-one mentoring lessons. That’s something I think is worth paying for. Most people will take $50 for a few hours to talk about it.

No matter what artistic discipline you’re in, it’s helpful to find people who are established in your field, reach out to them, and ask for some direct advice.

That’s what’s been the most helpful for me. If there’s a sound designer, composer, or radio producer you admire, reach out and see if that’s an option. I don’t think Ira Glass is capable of doing private lessons with as busy as he is, but I’m sure there are other people who are really good at what they do who are capable.

Aaron: There’s people at all different levels on this journey. We’re talking about audio specifically, but it’s true for anything. There are famous people you’ve heard of and then there’s people in the middle who have more experience than you but maybe aren’t quite so famous yet. Surrounding yourself with people who share your passion and interests on your skill level is great, but try reaching out and offering to pay for some consulting.

Chances are they like talking about that stuff, but it is good to pay people for their time. That makes sure they’re invested and they’re not feeling like you’re taking advantage of their time. Audio engineers have to make money to buy gear!

Field Recording Gear and Tips for Podcasters

Aaron: Diana asks, “What’s your setup for mobile recording?” She’s about to start a podcast and will be doing some traveling. I know there are times where you take microphones out into the real world to do field recordings. What’s your setup? Is it the same mics and a portable recording device?

Dan: A Sennheiser MD421 or a Shure SM58 will work great because most dynamic microphones are good at sound isolation.

Another good option to consider would be the Sennheiser ME66 Shotgun Mic, which is a great short shotgun microphone. That’s good for both ambient sound and interview recordings in a live setting. It’s in the $200 to $300 range and you can find it on eBay, Craigslist, Guitar Center, or Reverb.com for much cheaper.

Aaron: What device do you record into?

Dan: The Zoom H5 or H6 is a fantastic piece of recording equipment. You can find that new for $300 or used for way less. It’s a solid improvement over the H4N in many ways. There’s less handling noise, it’s less noisy, and the majority of people looking into podcasting would do great with one of those.

Aaron: I think this is a situation a lot of people will get in. When you’re out and about and recording, you have to think about the noise in the room and the ambient noise, and if there’s a possibility of a lot of noise where you are. Coffee shops and crowded restaurants aren’t going to be great for getting clean audio. You'll also want to set input gain levels correctly, so you can be sure the levels coming into the microphone doesn’t hit zero and clip. You want to keep the highest peaks coming in around -12 DB. What’s your thought on that? What do you aim for?

Dan: I aim for -12 to -6 at absolute highest for both studio and in the field. I always stuck by that as universal truth of audio, but when I was doing some sound design training this summer with the person I was mentoring under, for sound effects recording, he was advising me to capture things at as high of a signal level as possible without clipping. Being able to focus and isolate the sound source that way really is much more beneficial when you’re trying to make a sound effect at non-dialog level.

Aaron: Did you have limiters on in that situation?

Dan: I usually keep the limiters on, but I try not to hit them. I record on my rooftop a lot. Sometimes I get up at 6am and record the morning rush as it starts to unfold and I usually need the limiters to catch a truck horn or a plane that flies overhead. If you’re in a noisy environment, that’s another good case for using a dynamic microphone because it does isolate the sound source pretty well.

When I was in school, I did a student radio project for a radio podcast production class where I was riding the campus buses and I was on one of those buses on a Friday night when it was filled with drunk kids going from one frat house to another. You can imagine how quiet that was. I was using a dynamic mic and it worked pretty well when I was cutting the interviews together. It had that loud, crazy ambience in the background, but if I held it pretty close to the speaker, I could still isolate them in a way that worked for the final product.

Think about how the ambience and background noise where you’re recording can contribute to the story and the feel of your whole piece.

Dan: With all the woes that came with recording Archive 81 in a bedroom with loud upstairs neighbors, I do think the fact that it felt like an apartment helped the actors get the vibe. I’m not sure how much of that translated sonically, because it’s hard for me to be objective about it at this point, but I do think that background worked for that piece. In theory, I would like to do more location recording for audio dramas.

If something takes place on a busy street corner, I’d like to get out there with a more formal production sound rig and record it, but Marc and I work at a pretty intense pace and it’s not always easy to coordinate that. Many times it makes the most sense to do it in the studio and create the atmosphere after the fact, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.

Aaron: Do what your gut says and plan for it. Last week, Marc said one of the hardest thing for him is the time constraints. I definitely feel that too. My podcast isn’t anything complicated but it still takes a few hours to produce. When you have a full-time job, other projects, and people you want to hang out with, you really have to focus on what you want to say yes to and what you have to say no to.

_Huge thanks to Dan and Marc for taking time out of their busy schedules to talk with me. If you’ve enjoyed these interviews, head over to their Patreon page and support these guys.

Creating a Radio Drama Podcast Part 1 (With Writer Marc Sollinger)

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 09:00:00 -0000

My guest this week is Marc Sollinger. Marc is one half of Dead Signals, a podcast production company that produces the modern radio drama podcasts Archive 81 and Deep Vault.

In this episode, we’re going to take a deep dive into what it takes to plan, write, and produce a modern radio drama.

This is part one of a two part series: Next week I’ll be interviewing Dan Powell, who handles a lot of the editing, sound design, and music for Dead Signals.

Key Takeaways:

The most important part of the writing process is collaboration.
Audio storytelling is a powerful medium.
Work with people you trust and ask them for their feedback.
The hardest part of creating a modern radio drama is making time for all the work required.
If you’re into podcasting, create stories that can only be told through sound.

Aaron: Marc Sollinger: Thanks for joining me. Tell me what you do at Dead Signals. My understanding from our brief conversation previously is that you work more on the writing side of things?

Marc: Both Dan and I write and contribute to the creative process equally, so both of our roles are really creative. We’re both the “idea person.”

Aaron: You do a lot of the writing and he does a lot of the editing, but you both contribute equally to the writing process, yeah?

Marc: Yeah, and we’re both audio professionals. He’s an engineer and works at a sound effects library, I work in public radio for Innovation Hub. We both work with sound for our day jobs. It’s really fun.

The Most Important Part of the Writing Process: Collaboration

Aaron: I brought you on because you and Dan recently launched a modern radio drama podcast called The Deep Vault. I like the description you guys wrote: “The Deep Vault is a serialized, seven-episode audio drama set in in the almost-post-apocalyptic United States.

“The story follows a group of longtime friends as they journey from the uninhabitable surface world into a mysterious underground bunker in search of safety, shelter, and answers to their past. Robotic servants, tooth-filled monsters, and terrible computers collide within the claustrophobic, steel-reinforced walls of The Deep Vault, a modern day homage to the golden age of sci-fi radio drama.”

I want to hear about your background and how you got into audio and radio. Before we get into that, I have to say that the Audible ad read at the end of the first episode of The Deep Vault is one of the most genius things I’ve ever heard. Good job on that, whoever had that idea.

Marc: Listen to the second episode, because it gets crazier. With podcasts that are more host-driven and not fiction, it’s usually the hosts talking about how much they love Blue Apron or Squarespace. For us, it felt a little weird to break the world and say, “Hey, it’s Marc Sollinger and Daniel Powell, and we’d love you to try out Audible or Blue Apron,” so we came up with the idea of a robot that’s not a character in the show. It’s just a random robot that’s gradually gaining sentience and is really pissed off at his masters. It’s fun and hopefully people will enjoy listening to it. The main thing is we wanted it to be fun.

Aaron: Mission accomplished. So when did you get started with audio?

Marc: I fell in love with audio in high school when I was driving around in my car and I heard a This American Life episode. It was one of those proverbial driveway moments, where I stayed in my car for 30 minutes because the story was so good.

(Audio storytelling is a powerful medium.)

I feel in love with it and I adore the power of audio documentary and public radio. That’s my day job now, but I started listening to older radio dramas like Orson Welles’ The Mercury Theatre on the Air. That’s really good; start with War of the Worlds.

If you’re looking for other great audio drama podcasts, AV Club has a good list of creepy radio dramas from the 40s, 50s, and 60s you can check out.

Aaron: So you were listening to those and you thought, “I have to figure out how to do this for myself?”

Marc: Yeah, I noticed when podcasts were getting big in 2007 that there weren’t a lot of audio dramas. There were a couple and there were a lot of audio books released as podcasts, but I didn’t feel like there were a lot of podcast audio dramas that were at the same level as stuff from the 40s and 50s.

For my college thesis, I made a 10-episode audio drama that I released as a podcast. This was before Dan and I started collaborating, but he was featured as the main actor, playing a nebbish anthropologist who crash lands on an alien world and has to discover a bunch of secret stuff.

It’s called Transmission and it’s still something I’m proud of, but I didn’t do any promotion. I fell into the trap of thinking, “This is really good, obviously it’ll get big,” which is not a good mindset to be in. It’s a Patreon reward for our Patreon page now.

Aaron: So you dove in and made a 10-episode podcast series. What kind of experience did you have with audio at that point?

Marc: I interned for a summer at Chicago Public Radio’s Youth Vocalo, and I studied radio, television, and film in college. I did some work for Nick van der Kolk of Love + Radio. I interned for my local NPR station and I learned a lot about sound from the incomparable Douglass Quinn of Syracuse University. I fell in love with audio by listening to This American Life and old radio serials, but I became someone who could do audio through learning from Douglass Quinn. That shows the importance of having a really good mentor.

Aaron: When does Dan come into the picture?

Marc: We met in college (Douglas Quinn was his mentor too). Quinn kind of forced our heads together and it turns out we really liked each other. After college, we went our separate ways; I worked for the PBS News Hour and then I moved to Boston to work for Innovation Hub and Dan went to Brooklyn to work for a sound effects library.

He came to Boston to visit and we talked about projects we had been thinking about. Then I went to New York to visit him and he was talking about wanting to do an audio drama, something where he would be listening alone to a bunch of weird, freaky tapes. It was a really good idea so I said we should do it together. We brainstormed and came up with an outline. I wrote it, he edited it, but it was a very collaborative process. There’s a bunch of really dumb ideas that would have gone into it if he hadn’t told me to take them out.

Work with people you trust and ask them for their feedback.

Aaron: You’ve got to have someone you can trust to curate and edit what you come up with.

Marc: It’s a matter of trust. If I really like something and Dan isn’t sure about it, even if I don’t understand why he doesn’t like it, I trust him enough to know that there’s something wrong, something that needs to be fixed.

Archive 81: Writing, Editing, & Casting

Aaron: This podcast you’re talking about–where Dan listens to freaky tapes–is called Archive 81. The description for this show is, “Three months ago Daniel Powell vanished. These are the tapes he sent me.” How long did it take you to get all these episodes written, recorded, and edited? What was the preparation process like for Archive 81?

Marc: For the writing process, I can write about two episodes a week.

Aaron: Part-time on nights and weekends?

Marc: Yeah, and I’ve been a hermit. It’s a lot of work. After the episodes are written, we have a two or three week period where we heavily revise it. We script everything out and we usually do a table read over Google voice and we pause and re-write when anything sounds weird.

Aaron: Once you’ve got the script for the episode in a good place and you feel good about it, what happens after that? Studio time?

Marc: We recorded all 10 episodes at the same time. I’m glad we did that instead of writing an episode and then recording it, writing an episode, and then recording it. That saved us a lot of time and money.

For Archive 81, we got our cast together and then one of our friends let us record in her bedroom. For The Deep Vault, we went to an actual studio. With Archive 81, since it’s tape-based, it’s a lot of two people talking to each other, so the bedroom worked fine for that. With The Deep Vault, it’s more action, adventure-y and there were going to be five people in a room at the same time. You need an actual studio if you have five people in there at the same time.

Aaron: So you recorded all 10 episodes of Archive 81 in a bedroom. Were all the voice actors friends of yours?

Marc: A mix—some friends, some Craigslist, some family. We pay all our actors, which is something we think is really important. We didn’t pay them as much as we would have liked to but we did pay them.

Aaron: I noticed that the guy that plays Dan’s boss has the same last name as Dan. Is that his father or one of his brothers?

Marc: His father. It has a bunch of creepier overtones when you realize it’s Dan’s actual dad, who turns out to be a really really good actor.

The Hardest Part of Creating a Modern Radio Drama: Making Time

Aaron: Were there any struggles or hurdles you overcame that stick out to you during producing or recording either one of those shows?

Marc: The biggest one is how busy Dan and I are. We’re both working full-time jobs or more than full-time jobs. We started Archive 81—writing it, promotion for it, and releasing it—and then as soon as we began to release the episodes, we started to develop The Deep Vault, so there would be no pause between shows.

Episode 10 of Archive 81 was released at the same time as the teaser for Deep Vault, then episode one of Deep Vault went out the next week. It’s just a lot of work, managing time and pulling through it. We’re working on Archive 81 season two now while Dan is still finishing edits for the Deep Vault. We’re doing promotion, starting an LLC, working with advertisers, and responding to fans on Twitter. It’s just a lot for two people to do.

For the most part, we’re been really lucky and blessed to work with wonderful actors, and Dan is a wonderful partner. The studio we worked in for the Deep Vault was really great. It comes down to time management and knowing when to say yes to stuff and when to say no to stuff.

Aaron: Is one of your goals to take Dead Signals and make it a full-time job?

Marc: Maybe. I really enjoy my full-time job, but if the audience was there…The trouble is that it’s very difficult to do it unless you’re Welcome to Night Veil or you have the backing of Panoply or Giblet. It’s something we’ve discussed, but right now we’re not at a point where we could do that.

What Would You Do If You Had a Million Dollars in the Bank?

Aaron: I was talking to my friend Sean the other day, and discuessed a question: “If we had a million dollars in the bank, what would we do?”

Let’s say you and Dan had a million dollars in the bank. Would you want to spend most of your time on podcasting, or do you think you’d be happy keeping your day job and working on podcasts on nights and weekends?

Marc: If money was no object, I think most people would say, “Let’s go to Belize and surf!” For me, it’s all about weird creative projects. If we had a million dollars, we’d probably work on creating more interesting things. We’d be able to rent out more time at studios. We’d be able to do a weekly thing instead of a bi-weekly thing (I hate bi-weekly).

Aaron: Weekly is great, but with all the work you guys have to do for each episode, I understand why you do bi-weekly. I have a hard time keeping up with my podcast and it’s not anywhere close to the kind of work that your shows are.

Marc: Maybe if we were doing it full-time we could do it weekly. If I had a million dollars it would be nice to work with other writers and sound designers to do more weird stuff.

What’s Next for Dead Signals Productions?

Aaron: I had a related question, which was, “What are your plans for the future?” but it sounds like you’re just going to keep pushing forward. You’re working on season two of Archive 81. Are there plans for a season two of Deep Vault?

Marc: It depends on how it’s received. Deep Vault definitely has an ending. It leaves open the possibility for a season two, but we’re very happy with leaving it as a mini series. If everyone is crying out for a season two and gives us a million dollars, we’ll make season two. We also have other projects in the pipeline that we’re thinking about doing after season two of Archive 81.

We’re probably going to do something new before we do a season three of Archive 81, if we do a season three. We really like doing new things.

One of the reasons why we didn’t just plan for four seasons of Archive 81, or even do things in the same universe, we want to broaden the possibilities of audio drama and do interesting new things. We want to make stories that can only be told through sound.

Q&A:

Michal Wdowiak asks: “When recording the actors separately (even remotely) for a dialogue scene, how do you manage to keep the flow of the scene so it sounds like a real conversation? Do you ever record dialog scenes separately (remotely)?”

Marc: No, we don’t. If it’s supposed to be a conversation, they’ve got to be in the same room. That’s one of our big priorities for our actors, they have to be in New York.

You can splice stuff in, but I really don’t think you get the same performance when two people are not talking to each other. The actor’s performances feed off each other and having them in the same room is really important.

Virginia Houser asked: “How much effort and planning do you put into creating your own sound effects for your stories, if at all? Is it worth the time to create or add sound effects? If the go-to is using pre-recorded effects from online, what resources do you use to find those sound bites?”

Marc: We do a mix between creating our own sound effects and using effects from sound libraries. Dan is a manager at an online sound effects library called Soundsnap, which is helpful. He can get whatever he needs there, but we do prefer making our own sound effects so we can get the exact sound we want.

Before we wrap up, I want to say that it’s a really interesting time for audio drama and podcasts. I think we’re on the cusp of something. Welcome to Night Veil, The Black Tapes, Lime town, The Message, and The Truth were all the first mainstream audio dramas to be released as podcasts, and it’s a really good time to start one yourself. If you want to start an audio drama, don’t just do it because you want to start a TV show and you don’t want to spend a lot of money. If you’re really passionate about it, get started now; companies are starting to invest money in these podcasts. It’s a lot of work, though, so be prepared to put some time into it if you want to succeed.

You can head over to their Patreon page to learn more about Marc and Dan and their podcasts.

Stay tuned, next week I’ll be talking audio production and sound design with Marc’s podcasting partner, Dan Powell.

Dealing With Haters

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 09:00:00 -0000

If you podcast long enough, you're going to get criticism or negativity. You can't create work and share it with the world without experiencing it.

I say you haven't really made it until you've got haters. If people feel strongly enough about what you're doing to love it, then someone is going to feel strongly enough to hate it, or at least severely dislike it.

I'm still pretty unknown, and I know that because I've only ever received negative feedback once (ok, a couple times now). I could say that I just brushed it off, but it did affect me. Instead of letting it get me down, I sat with it. I thought about it. I analyzed why it made me feel the way it did, and I asked myself why.

I want to share what I've learned about feedback and criticism to help you learn how to process it when it comes to you (and it will), but also to help you give feedback more effectively and waste less time engaging with people or on feedback that doesn't really matter.

Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins:

Being negative or hurtful is not an effective way to give criticism.
When you receive criticism, stop for a second and see if there’s any truth to it.
Don’t argue with strangers on the internet.
People who are open to changing their mind will listen instead of arguing.
Great criticism is rare—seek it out from people you trust.
If you continue to blame your negativity on other people all the time, you’re missing an opportunity to feel happiness and gratitude.

I want to start this episode off by sharing a blog post about criticism that Seth Godin published the other day, called The Paradox of the Flawless Record.

He said, “If your work has never been criticized, it’s unlikely you have any work. Creating work is the point, though, which means that in order to do something that matters, you’re going to be criticized.

*If your goal is to be universally liked and respected and understood, then, it must mean your goal is to not do something that matters. Which requires hiding. Hiding, of course, isn’t the point. Hence the paradox. You don’t want to be criticized and you do want to matter. *

The solution: Create work that gets criticized. AND, have the discernment to tell the difference between useful criticism (rare and precious) and the stuff worth ignoring (everything else).”

What Is the Intention of the Person Criticizing Me?

When someone gives you feedback or criticism, ask yourself: what is their intention?

Hearing negative feedback sucks. It sucks to hear, “This thing you made isn’t very good and here’s why.”

That’s hard and it hurts our egos. We like to think that everything we do is great. But stop for a second and see if there’s any truth to the criticism. Regardless of how negative the person is being, see if there’s any useful information you can pull from it and apply to make your thing better. Your goal should always be to make your thing (blog post, podcast, writing, or video) better.

When I Provide Criticism, What is My Intention?

Think about the last time you reached out to someone to talk about their work. Be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that sharing how much you hate something will somehow make your life better.

A wise man once said, ”The shit you hate don't make you special.”

So there’s someone creating work you don’t like: What does telling that person they suck do besides make them doubt their abilities or make them feel bad?

Why is it necessary for you to tell someone that you don’t like what they do?

I want to make it clear that I’m talking about creative work here, like design, podcasting, making video, making music, and so on. I’m not talking about the many injustices happening in the world.

If someone is hurting someone else, then I do think it is fair to tell them that’s not acceptable. But if you’re just telling someone else that you don’t like their art, why are you wasting your time on that? What are you trying to accomplish?

If your goal really is to help someone make something better, being negative or hurtful is not an effective way to do that.

Great criticism is rare. Seek it out from people you trust.

Seek out constructive criticism from people you know and trust.

Go to a friend or mentor you trust and say, “I made this thing. I want to know what you think about it. Please be honest about how you think I could improve it, if you think I could improve it. I appreciate your time.”

But keep in mind that you’re asking them for a favor, you’re asking them for time, so sometimes they may say no or just you a brief or unhelpful answer.

Five questions to ask yourself when someone gives you negative feedback:

Is this person trying to help or just trying to hurt?
Is there anything useful I can learn from this feedback?
If this feedback upsets me, why does it upset me?
Have I accepted that not everyone will agree with me or love my work?
Do I give feedback in a similar manner?

Don’t Argue With Strangers on the Internet

It never ends well. It’s one thing to have discussion with a friend who you know and respect. Things can get heated and that’s fine. But when you argue with strangers, especially online, neither of you have any reason to be kind or respecting. It’s really more about proving who is right. It’s a complete and total waste of time because neither person is looking for more information. Yelling at people you disagree with doesn’t get you anywhere.

People who are open to changing their mind will listen instead of arguing.

I want to encourage you to be kind to other people. If you’re the kind of person who speaks unkindly to or about other people, I want you to ask why. What is it about their work that bothers you so much? Why do you feel the need to express that feeling to them?

If you blame your negative feelings on other people, you’re missing an opportunity to feel happiness and gratitude. Expressing those feelings will amplify them in your mind. You’re giving someone else permission to make you feel a certain way. Some people just like to complain. They like to find things they don’t like or disagree with and just spend a bunch of time explaining why.

I like to find awesome things in the world. I like to find things that are beautiful and make me happy. I like to focus on those things and give my time to those things, because I believe the emotions we choose to feel and choose to express publicly will be amplified through that expression. You only have so much time. Do you really want to spend it telling other people they aren’t good at something? Do you really care about those people?

Why not spend your time helping the people you do care about? Why not help them with what they’re struggling with and teach them what you know in a kind and encouraging way instead of discouraging them?

Focus on encouraging the people you care about. Let go of jealousy and anger and speak positivity to the people who are creating work that you love. You’ll be much happier if you do.

How to Invite Guests to Your Podcast

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 12:00:00 -0000

It's been said that in basketball, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. The same is true for getting guests on your podcast or being a guest on other podcasts: If you don't ask, it's not going to happen.

So getting over your fear of rejection is step one, but today I want to talk about things that you can do to increase your chances of getting a yes from the guests you want, and how you can ask to be on someone else's podcast without feeling awkward.

Key Takeaways:

Most people who want to be contacted will make it pretty easy for you to contact them.
It’s important to have a good reason when asking for someone’s time.
People make time for the things they care about, so make sure that you are offering something they want.
Don’t be afraid to ask. You’ll never get a yes if you don’t ask.
Always be looking out for people who share your passion. Those are the people you should be podcasting with.

Finding Guests: First, Keep Your Audience In Mind

When it comes to finding guests for your show, your first goal should be to provide something interesting to your audience.

Put yourself in their shoes: What topics are they interested in hearing about? What kind of people would they enjoy hearing from?

Try to find people who would be a good match for your audience.

Who’s Out There Already Trying to Build an Audience?

If you don’t already have someone in mind (if you’re looking for interesting new people to talk to), try to find people who are already trying to grow an audience online.

These people will be actively putting out content and engaging on social media. They’d probably be happy for an opportunity to talk about what they’re passionate about.

Step 1: ASK

The next step is to reach out. There are many different ways to do this, but a safe bet is to choose the place that they seem most active.

If they’re a hardcore Twitter user, reach out there. If they’re into Snapchat, hit them up there. Lots of people have a contact page on their website, often with an email address.

Most people who want to be contacted will make it pretty easy for you to contact them.

If you can’t find contact info for someone, it might be because they aren’t interested in being contacted by strange people asking them to come on a podcast.

Ask Yourself: Why Do I Want to Talk to This Person?

Before you reach out to these people, you need to write down why you are interested in talking to this person.

Did they publish a really great book or article lately?
Have them been consistently sharing great ideas online?
Is it someone you know in person who has a lot of great things to say, but they’ve never had a platform to say them on?
Do they work on products that you love?

It’s important to have a good reason when asking for someone’s time.

Email Template for Reaching Out to Guests

Start by proving you’re a real human who is familiar with their work. You don’t have to know everything about them, but you should at least have listened to a few of their podcasts or read a few of their blog posts.

Tell them which thing they did that you like and why. Don’t say “all the great shows”. Be specific.

Tell them what you’d like to talk to them about on your podcast. It’s ok to ask them if there’s anything they’d like to talk about as well, but you should lead by explaining why you want them specifically on your show.

Briefly give them any other important information, like the length of your podcast and what they’ll need to show up with. Don’t make them guess; tell them how much of their time you want and if they’ll need to record a local audio file (always a good idea).

Suggest a calendar date but make sure they know you’re flexible to meet their schedule (hopefully you are). If you have a scheduling app like Calendly, include a link.

Don’t assume they are going to say yes. That is wrong. Don’t ever assume people will say yes.

Thank them for their time and let them know that you’re looking forward to hearing back from them.

Overcoming Objections:

I do believe that when people say “No”, you should respect that, but I want to talk about some of the common objections you might hear and how you can overcome or at least understand them.

Objection #1. “I’m too busy” or “I don’t have time.”

Are they really busy? Have they committed to a large project at work? Are they writing a book? Do they have a family to take care of?

The real problem may be that your offer wasn’t attractive enough to them.

You should have something to offer that they are interested in, whether that’s exposure to your audience, a chance to promote a book or recent project, or even just an opportunity to nerd out about a topic they love for awhile.

Don’t make it all about you and what you want. If you’re a small fry (as so many of us podcasters are), and you’re reaching out to someone who already has hundreds of thousands of followers, there’s probably not a good reason for them to come on your show.

People make time for the things they care about, so make sure that you are offering something they want.

Objection #2. “I don’t know how to podcast” or “I’m not good at talking.”

Some people may have never been on a podcast before. If that’s the case, you need to be willing to take the time to explain the whole process to them and make sure they know that you will take responsibility to make sure that everything goes smoothly.

Respect Their No

If someone says no, don’t get angry, don’t try to talk them into it, just thank them and move on.

Charli Prangley said in the chat before the show: “I’ve had a few requests from people to be on their show or be interviewed for their blog that I’ve turned down because they hadn’t actually launched them yet and I wanted to see what the quality of their output was like, and the care and attention they give to it before I gave up my time to answer their questions. Does that seem fair to you?”

Sure, that’s reasonable. If you’ve never launched a podcast before and you don’t have an audience, and you’re reaching out to people who do, they may look at your email and wonder if you’re just going to waste their time. They may wonder if you’re even going to publish the episode or if you do, how good it will be.

Remember, it’s ok to say no to people who are asking for your time if there’s nothing in it for you.

But don’t be afraid to ask. You’ll never get a yes if you don’t ask.

Being a Guest on Another Podcast

Again, don’t be afraid to ask. Other podcasts need to have guests on too. If you have something valuable to share, then say so.

If it’s a show that doesn’t normally have guests, it’s ok to ask, but don’t get your hopes up.

Remember that “I’m a huge fan, so I’d like to ask you questions for an hour” is probably not something their audience will find interesting, unless it’s the kind of show that welcomes Q&A like that.

Find Your Podcasting Community

Are there other podcasts out there similar to yours? Who are the people that are making them? What are they talking about? These are the people who you should be talking to.

Always be looking out for people who share your passion. Those are the people you should be podcasting with.

Recap:

Know why you want to talk to someone, why you want them to be on your show
Explain your “why” clearly to them, and give them any other details they might need
Respect their decision if they clearly say no
Don’t be afraid to ask, don’t psyche yourself out
Look for the people who are already putting themselves out there and trying to grow an audience

Q&A:

Charli asked: If you’re starting an interview podcast, how do you get your first guests?

Start with your friends and immediate network, work outwards from there. If you want people with larger followings who don’t know you to come on your show, you need to have some kind of track record that shows you know how to produce quality content. So start publishing podcast episodes, start writing blog posts or videos, start defining your niche.

I don’t want to discourage you from trying to get people who are more famous, but I would encourage you to reach out to the people who are more on your level or slightly above it, if you’re just getting started.

Getting to 20,000 Subscribers with Charli Prangley

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 12:00:00 -0000

Charli Prangley is a designer by day and a content creator by... well, pretty much the rest of the time. In addition to her day job, she produces two high-quality Youtube videos and a podcast every week, and also runs an online apparel shop. I was so impressed with the consistency and quality of her output that I knew I had to get her on the show to share how she creates so much while still working a full-time job.

If you've ever struggled with creating consistently or trying to get everything 100% perfect before shipping, you need to listen to this episode.

Key Takeaways:

You don’t have to have the best camera or microphone to get started. Use what you have or what you can afford, and upgrade later.
If you want someone to invest time in what you’re creating, show them a little bit of your personality but make sure you share content they’d be interested in.
Sometimes you do have to “beat people over the head” to get them to check out a link. You might have to post a link multiple times in a week before someone actually sees it and clicks on it.
Look for communities and people to collaborate and work with. It’s a great way to share and grow audiences.
If you want to be successful in video or podcasting, make creating content a habit and not just something you do when you have “free time”.
Don’t try to fine-tune your content to perfection; give yourself a deadline and ship it.

Aaron: It seems like you’re constantly putting out content. I always see you tweeting about editing vlogs or your latest podcast episode. You post two videos to your YouTube channel every week in addition to your weekly podcast, Design Life. How do you manage to create so much while still working a full time job?

Charli: When you create a lot of content online (like I do), everything in your life becomes an opportunity to create content and tell a story. If I go to an event, I think about what I’m going to learn that I can share with other people. This provides a constant stream of ideas that I can share in my videos or podcast episodes.

Aaron: So you put a lot of content out consistently, and you’re seeing results; you’re almost to 25,000 subscribers on Youtube. Can you take us back to the beginning and share how and why you got started?

Charli: I started my Youtube channel back in 2013 because I wanted to see into the lives of other designers, but I wasn’t finding the kind of content I was looking for. There were a lot of tutorials, but I wanted to get to know the people behind those tutorials.

I decided to start my own YouTube channel so I could create lifestyle content from the perspective of a designer. Other designers discovered my channel because they were looking for the same thing. Having that unique point of view from the start really helped my channel grow.

Aaron: So you made the show you wanted to watch, and it turned out that there are a lot of other people who wanted that show as well?

Charli: Exactly. I try to think about what I would have found valuable in my early days of getting started as a designer, and then I create that content. It’s really rewarding when I hear from young designers who tell me how my content is helping them.

Charli’s Gear Setup

Aaron: What kind of gear were you using when you started back in 2013?

Charli: When I first started, I was using a Nikon D5000. It’s a DLSR but it can only record video for 5 minutes at a time and only in 720p. It didn’t have a flip-out screen or auto-focus in video mode, so there were a lot of challenges to overcome to get my video content made, but I stuck with it. It was about a year before I could afford an upgrade.

Aaron: I started a video show recently, and I’ve been using my iPhone and a Shure MV88 mic, and I’ve already got better gear than you had (because I’ve got the front-facing screen to see myself). With smart phone cameras being as good as they are now, anyone can shoot video. What did you end up upgrading to?

Charli: I got a Canon 70d which I really like. It’s a great all around camera for the price.

You don’t have to have the best camera or microphone to get started. Use what you have or what you can afford, and upgrade later.

Charli’s Tips for Growing an Audience

Aaron: When you started producing video, did you have any kind of online following?

Charli: Not really. I think I had around 1,000 followers on Twitter because I was pretty active in my design and tech scene in Wellington, NZ, so I suppose that’s where my first views came from.

Aaron: Did you have a strategy for growing your audience?

Charli: I knew a little bit about search engine optimization (because I was doing it at my job), so I thought about how I could apply that to my videos, but it was mostly trial-and-error. I paid attention to what worked, what thumbnails people preferred and what content they were interested in. But something I’ve done from the start was to make sure my videos were tagged well so that they come up in search. Today, about half of my views come from people searching YouTube. Don’t underestimate the value of SEO.

Aaron: SEO is important. The way I like to explain it is just think about what people would search Google or Youtube for, and then use those words in your podcast or video title, or in headlines on your blog post. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that’s a great place to start.

How to Get People to Pay Attention to Your Content

Jordan Newhouse asks: I produce new content every week. How do I get people to realize the content is there and get them to check it out?

Charli: Start by looping in all of your social media to the content you’re creating. You don’t want to be talking about yourself non-stop online, that’s not the way to have an interesting account.

If you want someone to invest time in what you’re creating, show them a little bit of your personality but make sure you share content they’d be interested in.

You have to share your content more than once. You can’t send out a tweet and expect everyone to notice. Some people might not be paying attention or they might be half-asleep; you have to share it anywhere and everywhere you can, in different ways. Try different titles to see what works.

I create so much content so often that by the time I’m finished with a video, I’m already thinking about the next one, but I should be thinking about how to best promote the video I just made.

Aaron: I used to feel weird about sharing links to my content more than once. I used to think people would be annoyed if they saw me post multiple links to content. I finally realized that most people just aren’t paying that close of attention to their social media streams.

Sometimes you do have to “beat people over the head” to get them to check out a link. You might have to post a link multiple times in a week before someone actually sees it and clicks on it.

How to Promote Your Content

Charli: One of the best ways to promote your content is in response to questions you see your audience asking. If one of your followers is discussing a topic you covered on your podcast, send them a link to that episode if you think they’d find it valuable.

Aaron: I love doing that. Some of the podcasters I follow have their own hashtags, so I’ll use Twitter search to find people who are asking podcasting questions and send them links to my episodes where I answered their questions. If someone wants to learn, you would be doing them a disservice by not sending them a link to your content if it answers their question or would help them in some way.

Participate in Your Community

Aaron: I talk a lot about the importance of participating in your community, inviting guests on your podcast and collaborating with other people. You participate in an active Youtube community, right?

Charli: That’s something I love about Youtube, there’s a very active community there. Everyone’s very collaborative, it’s easy to create video with other people and combine your audiences.

Look for communities and people to collaborate and work with. It’s a great way to share and grow audiences.

Create Content in Multiple Mediums and Build a Creation Habit

Aaron: You started a podcast recently. Did you find it easier since you’ve been creating video for a couple years?

Charli: There was definitely a learning curve, just like getting started with video. There were all these new things to learn like what kind of microphone to buy, how to record and edit, and how to get your show into iTunes. It seems like it should be easy, just hit record and make a podcast, but it’s really not that simple.

Aaron: One of my friends wants to start a podcast, but he wants to get everything perfect right away. That’s just not how it works; you have to be willing to jump in and create something, give yourself a deadline, and ship it. Otherwise you’re going to be talking forever about how you want to do something but you’ll never actually finish anything. You have to be ok with not being awesome at something for awhile. You’ll get better over time.

Charli: That’s really the key to producing content consistently; get used to not being perfect and learn as you go. You could wait until you know everything and get everything absolutely perfect, but then you wasted time you could have been building the habit of producing content.

If you want to be successful in video or podcasting, make creating content a habit and not just something you do when you have “free time”.

Charli: People ask me, “You’ve put out a video every Saturday for two and a half years, how do you do it?” I don’t even think about it anymore; it’s non-negotiable. A video will go up every Saturday because it’s just a habit.

Aaron: Do you find yourself getting faster and more efficient as time goes on?

Charli: Definitely, but you don’t want to settle in a rut. Your audience will get bored if they see the same thing every week. When things are getting too easy, that’s when I try to learn something new to add to my process.

Tips for Getting Started with Your First Videos

Aaron: We got another question from Jordan. She asked, “I’m about to make my very first video ever (it’s going to be part of my product launch). What are some things I should keep in mind?”

Charli: Think beforehand about what the content of the video is going to be so that you can get all the right shots for it. You might even want to make a storyboard.

You might end up needing to reshoot a few scenes because that’s just how it goes. You might get to the editing part and realize that you need another shot or you need to re-record something. That’s ok, it’s just part of the process.

Aaron: Do you create storyboards for your videos?

Charli: Not all the time, but sometimes, usually if I’m doing a fashion video that requires a bunch of different angles, I’ll just draw some rough sketches on a notebook to help me make sure I get all the shots.

Aaron: I saw my friend Alex Cespedes (sorry I butchered your name in the show, dude) post a really interesting picture on Instagram showing how he outlines his podcast episodes on paper. I think that’s a great way to plan a show or podcast episode.

Charli: People plan in different ways. I create a rough script or outline for my video in the notes app on my phone and that’s enough to get my mind thinking about what I’m going to say and how I need to say it.

How to Create Consistently

Aaron: What are your biggest struggles with creating consistently, and how do you overcome those?

Charli: Time is always going to be a struggle. Even if you want to put something out every week, not every week is the same. In my life, I’ve got my day job, but that’s also things to do in the evenings and I travel a lot, so I have to make sure I make enough time to create a video I’m proud of. It’s always a struggle, but that’s where building the habit comes in. Planning definitely helps with the time constraint as well; I break the process down into little steps so I can get things done whenever I have time.

Don’t try to fine-tune your content to perfection; give yourself a deadline and ship it.

Aaron: One of my struggles is that there are always more projects that I want to do. I shoot myself in the foot by taking on too many things and not giving any one thing the focus it needs to be as successful as it can be. I try to do six things in a week and because I’m trying to work on all of them, I don’t make much progress on any of them.

Charli: You have to pick which thing is most important to you and make sure that one gets done. Then you can worry about the other things.

Collaboration Can Help You Produce Consistently

Aaron: You’ve got a co-host for your podcast. Does that help you get the show done every week? You do a lot of videos by yourself, so you’d probably be ok on your own, right?

Charli: I don’t think I would, no. I would not have a podcast if it wasn’t for my co-host Femke. Since I do two videos every week, we split up the duties so that she does the editing and I do the show notes and our newsletter. But she does a lot more work than I do, which is really helpful.

Aaron: It is really helpful to have someone hold you accountable and help you do the work that it takes to put a show out every week. Podcasting is a lot of work and there’s nothing better than having a co-host who is really invested and willing to help with the work and keep you on track with producing.

Q&A:

Adina asked: How do I avoid looking awkward or sounding boring on camera?

Charli: That’s a question that everyone asks and something that everyone goes through.. The answer is just practice. You’re going to make a lot of awkward videos before you start to feel comfortable.

I don’t know if I can pinpoint the exact moment where I started feeling comfortable talking to the camera, but it happened. After I made enough videos, it stopped being a weird thing. Vlogging really helped for me, just picking up the camera and talking to it as I went through my day. It felt more casual and less stressful then sitting down in front of lights to film.

Aaron: It’s the self-imposed pressure, right? We want to be as good as someone else we’ve seen. We see all these people making videos and podcasts and they always seem so fluid and cool and they’ve always got funny things to say. They’ve got 600,000 views and 300,000 likes and we think that’s the level of quality we have to achieve, but it doesn’t happen overnight. You won’t get there in the first couple tries.

Also, being a better speaker and communicator is something you can teach yourself. Unless you slow down and think critically about the way you talk and how you can improve, you won’t improve. You can improve the way you talk. You can change the way that you talk and it will start to become the natural way that you talk with practice and time.

Charli: When you first started podcasting, did you find listening to your own voice awkward?

Aaron: Definitely.

Charli: When I started making video, it was hard for me to watch and listen to myself, but now, I feel like I sound exactly like I do in my head. I don’t know what changed, but it’s not awkward anymore.

Aaron: Part of it is just getting comfortable hearing yourself on recordings. You just get used to it after awhile. But I listen back to old episodes I’ve done and there are things I don’t like about the way I sound, so I think about what I could have done differently to sound better. I try to learn from my mistakes and improve, and I have, slowly over time and with practice.

Charli: When I listen back to my first 6 months of video, I don’t sound like me; I sound like someone trying to make a video. Now I feel like I just sound like me, like I sound when I’m having a normal conversation.

Aaron: We got a followup question: What about filming in public? I feel painfully embarrassed when I shoot video in public.

I absolutely know what that feels like. I feel super weird about holding a phone or camera out and shooting a video in public. I don’t even like people seeing me taking pictures of other people or myself in public. But I’m going to let Charli talk about this since she’s gotten comfortable with recording video in public.

Charli: I still feel awkward sometimes, like if I’m going to be sitting on a train with people on the way to work, I won’t pull out my camera and talking to it. But if I’m walking down the street, I’m probably never going to see any of those people again. If I know I need to get a shot to explain something in my vlog later, then I just have to get over feeling weird and get the shot that I need. And it comes back to practice.

Aaron: And really, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Someone makes fun of you or looks at you like you’re an idiot?

Charli: Exactly, and don’t think of it as you’re talking to your phone or camera, you’re talking to the person on the other side who is watching you later. You’re not really talking to yourself, even if it looks like you are.

Aaron: Now I’m thinking about how funny it would be to make a show where you just walk around in public all day, talking to yourself and catching people looking horrified or disgusted in the background.

Charli: Even if you do feel self-conscious, do it anyway and at least you’ll have all the shots you need.

You can find Charli online at CharliMarie.com. Her Youtube channel is Charli Marie TV, and you can find her on Twitter and Instagram as well. She is also the co-host of Design Life, a fantastic podcast about design and side projects for motivated creators.

Where to Find the Best Music For Your Podcast

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 12:00:00 -0000

Talking music today! Where are the best places to find music for podcasts? Can you use copyrighted materials in your podcast if you keep the clip under 30 seconds? And is podcast music even necessary?

Key Takeaways:

Don’t use copyrighted music in your podcast unless you have permission from whoever holds the copyrights.
Finding music on a free music site doesn’t mean it’s automatically legal to use in your podcast. The best way to be sure is to buy music from a reputable seller like AudioJungle.net.

The first thing you should know is that you should not use copyrighted music in any part of your podcast unless you have permission from the rights holder. Period. It’s not ok.

Now that that’s been said, here’s my list of the best places to get music for your podcast:

AudioJungle.net (this is my favorite place to get affordable music for podcasts)
YouTube Audio Library (the best place I’ve found for free music)
Creative Commons tag on Bandcamp
FreeMusicArchive.org

Note: some of the songs on the free music sites will require you to give attribution (a link to the original author) somewhere on your website or in your show notes. Make sure you double check the requirements before using free music in your podcast and always give a link back if the usage license requires it.

Can I Use Copyrighted Music in My Podcast?

Don’t use other people’s copyrighted music in your podcast unless you have permission to use it.

The only exception is if you are discussing or critiquing that piece of music. If that’s something you plan on doing regularly, you need to read up on Fair Use and get familiar with what you can and can’t do with copyrighted music or other materials.

Also, I’m not a lawyer or even an expert on fair use, so please don’t sue me for any reason at all. I’m not rich, anyways, so you wouldn’t get much.

Don’t use copyrighted music in your podcast unless you have permission from whoever holds the copyrights.

You might hear other people using copyrighted materials in their podcast, but that doesn’t make it ok. Just because they haven’t got caught or sued yet doesn’t mean they never will.

Tips for Using Music in Your Podcast

Keep your intro music short. Don’t make the music in your intro long, especially if your show starts with music. Keep it less than 10 seconds.

If you have a talking introduction before you play the music (like I do), then your music can go a little longer, but try to limit it to around 30 seconds. Even if you think your music is really great, most people are there to listen to you talk, not to listen to music. They have Spotify and Apple Music for that.

You don’t have to use music in your podcast at all. Some of the podcasts I regularly listen to don’t have music, and it’s fine. Also, not using music in your podcast can cut down on post production time.

I read an article from Paul Jarvis last week where he explains how he plans, records, edits, and publishes episodes in under an hour. (Note: I said Justin Jackson in the podcast. Sorry, Paul.) Not having music reduces the amount of time he has to spend in post-production, and I think that’s great for him.

Be careful with free music. Finding music on a free music site doesn’t mean it’s automatically legal to use in your podcast. The best way to be sure is to buy music from a reputable seller like AudioJungle.net.

Automating Music Volume

If you want to include music in your podcast and you’re not paying for a professional radio-style intro (I’m not a fan of those, honestly), you’ll need to learn how to automate volume changes.

In Garageband and Logic, you can automate volume changes in your tracks by hitting “A” and clicking to add points on the horizontal line that you’ll see overlaid on each track. This allows you to drop the volume of a music track when you start talking, or fade the music out at the end of your podcast.

Check out Youtube for automation tutorials for your software.

Additionally…

One of the listeners shared a story about how he used copyrighted music in his early Youtube videos and eventually had to take them down. He lost out on a lot of views because of that bad decision, so again, don’t use copyrighted materials in your stuff. He now uses a subscription service called Epidemic Sound that provides a big library of royalty free songs to creators. Prices start a $15/month, so check that out.

Listener Mikael wrote in to remind me that Logic Pro X comes with a ton of loops and synths, so you can totally put together a song with those. I think that’s a great idea, but I would be careful not to use the full songs that come with Logic or Garageband, as those are overused in videos and podcasts.

How Do I Grow an Audience for My Podcast?

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 12:00:00 -0000

I got this topic from a question that I read in Gary Vaynerchuk’s recent book, #AskGaryVee. The question was this: “What’s the best way to grow a following or community from nothing?”

For some people, an audience means ad revenue. For some people, it means enough people to buy your product or work to support you. Some people just want the attention because they feel empty inside and need to feel like people love them. Hey, I get it, I’m not judging. I love feeling loved.

So how do you grow a following from nothing? That’s what I'm exploring in this week's episode.

Key Takeaways

If you want to grow a following, put out quality content every day and engage around it. – Gary Vaynerchuk
If you want to be known for something, spend more time talking about it publicly and less time talking about other things.
If you’re not solving a clear problem with your podcast, then it’s going to be difficult to get people to pay attention.
Talking with people online can be time consuming, but that’s how you build an audience in the beginning; one person at a time.
Two great ways to build an audience for your podcast; invite people to come on your show, and be a guest on other related podcasts.
Putting out average content on an average schedule will get you average results. – Ed Williams

I’m going to share with you what Gary Vaynerchuck said first, because I think it’s a simple answer that is absolutely the truth.

“If you want to grow a following, put out quality content every day and engage around it.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

It sounds simple, but it’s not actually that easy. Let's break it down a little further. The outline looks like this:

1. Create content

Have an idea or something valuable to share
Communicate that idea with some tool medium (writing, podcasting, video, public speaking)
Learn the tool or medium, get better at it, create more content

2. Engage Around That Content

Ask for comments or feedback
Respond to comments or feedback
Make more content in response to that feedback

3. Build Your Community

Define your audience
Invite people to come on your show
Be a guest on other people’s shows
Introduce your audience members to each other and foster connections

Let’s dive in and explore each of these steps.

1. Creating Content

Jeremiah asked: How do you make sure that you’re targeting the right audience?

Know What You Want to Be Known For, and Be All About That Thing

It’s easier for people to understand you when you’re all about one thing.

If you’re all about virtual reality and that’s all you talk about, write about, and publish podcast episodes about, when someone in your audience has a friend who wants to learn about VR, they’re gonna send them to you.

If you want to be known for something, spend more time talking about it publicly and less time talking about other things.

Gary Vee said you should be putting out valuable content every day and engaging around it. And while he’s right, daily output is very hard. If you can’t put out something every day, then at least try to share something valuable related to your topic everyday. Curate the valuable content you come across.

Be Patient – Growing an Audience Takes Years

In the beginning, you’re going to struggle with knowing what content to put out and how to use the tools available to put it out there.

It’s easy to say “I’m going to put out a video or a podcast every day”, but things get a little harder once you actually pick up a camera and or sit down to record.

You have to think about things like, “Should I write a script? Where do I shoot the video? What about intros and outros, what about microphones, what about hosting?”

There are so many things to learn when it comes to any kind of content creation, so be patient and don’t give up when you hit a roadblock. Buy books. Watch webinars and youtube tutorials. Buy online courses. Learn the tools and get comfortable with using them to create stuff.

Stop Focusing on Numbers and Start Focusing on Quality

Instead of asking “How do get more people to check out my show?”, you should be asking, “How do I make a show that more people will be interested in checking out?”

Can you see the difference there? It’s subtle, but it exists. Worrying about numbers will not get you more listeners, but figuring out ways to make your podcast better will.

If you’re just starting out, the idea of working on something for hours and then publishing it to an audience of no one is scary. I get it, I was there not too long ago.

You have to overcome the part of you that wants to quit because you think that not enough people are paying attention to the thing you’re making. If you don’t push through the beginning phase, you’ll never get to the part where the stuff you're making is good enough to get and hold people's attention.

Focus On Delivering Value Everywhere

If you really want to grow an audience for your podcast, you need to be all about it everywhere. It needs to be featured on your website, on your Twitter profile, you need to talk about it constantly. Otherwise people aren’t going to notice, cause there’s a lot of stuff going on in their lives.

People will find your show if it solves a problem they’re having, or if one of their friends loves it and thinks it’s great enough to share.

If you’re not solving a clear problem with your podcast, then it’s going to be difficult to get people to pay attention.

If you’re making a show purely for entertainment, you’re competing with a lot of other podcasts. It’s not impossible to get people to pay attention, but it’s hard. There are a lot of options for people who want to be entertained.

Be Proud of Your Show, Get Excited About It

If you don’t love your show enough to talk about it and be excited about it, then most people aren’t going to pay attention.

Create something that you can get excited about and other people will see that and get excited about it too.

2. Engage Around Your Content

Engaging around your content is pretty straightforward. Ask for comments or feedback and respond to any comments or feedback that you get.

It’s strange to me that some people don’t ask their audience for feedback at the end of the show. Just say, “Let me know what you think; email or find me on Twitter.” It only takes a couple of seconds but it shows your audience that you’re willing to talk with them.

Talking with people online can be time consuming, but that’s how you build an audience in the beginning; one person at a time.

After you hear from people in your audience, go make more content based on what you learned from those interactions.

Jeremiah asked: I’ve been asking my audience questions but I’m not getting replies. What should I do?

Sean responded: Reasons you’re not getting replies when you ask for them:

No one hears you asking.
You haven’t offered a compelling lead magnet or positioned it in a way that is seen as valuable to your target audience.
You haven’t established yourself as an authority.
People need to see you as an expert before they ask you questions.
You’re not asking the right way.
You’re either asking too many things, asking ambiguously, or asking in a way that is not clear and is making people think too much.
You’re asking the wrong people.

3. Building Community

Building a community starts with defining your audience. People want to be part of tribes, groups of people who share a similar interest.

Jordan Newhouse asked: Where do you go to build your audience? Social media? Guest posts on other blogs? Or is it true that “if you build it, they will come”?

Building an audience involves a little bit of everything. Talk about what you care about on social media, make sure you link to your website in your various online profiles. Anywhere there’s an about page, tell people what you’re all about (bonus points if you do it in a way that describes what they’re going to get out of following you or listening to your podcast).

And yes, writing blog posts for other people’s blogs or being a guest on other podcasts is a great way to build an audience.

Collaborate With Your "Competition"

One of the best ways to get new audience members is to collaborate with the people who are already speaking to the audience you want to speak to.

If you’re a designer who is passionate about sports design (Hi Adam), find the people who are writing blog posts and doing podcasts and making videos about sports design and invite them to be on your show. Send them an email and ask if you can join them on your show.

Two great ways to build an audience for your podcas are:

Invite people to come on your show
Be a guest on other related podcasts

You should also be introducing your audience members to each other. Use your network to make introductions and foster connections.

Be Willing to Share Your Story, Your Goals, and Your Dreams

Part of growing a follow involves sharing yourself. You’re going to have to be comfortable with talking to people, sharing your opinions and thoughts surrounding the topic you’re talking about.

In the beginning, it’s especially important to invest in your early fans. These are the people who are going to help you spread the word about your show and the people who are going to give you honest, helpful feedback (if you let them). Invest in them. Give them access to you.

As your audience grows, it might become difficult to create and maintain connections with new audience members. You can’t really be good friends with 150 people, but you can always respond to people and say thanks and be grateful for their attention.

Recap:

If you want to grow an audience, put out valuable content everyday and engage with people.
Know who you’re creating for and what they want and need. Make stuff for those people.
Don’t be afraid to ask your audience members to share your show with a friend.
Make yourself available as much as you can. Be polite and respond if people ask you questions.
Be patient. Remember that the people you look up to (the people with the huge audiences) have been working on growing their audience for years, if not decades (and maybe multiple decades). The best time to get started is now.

Q&A:

Daniela Anne asked: If you had to pick between quality and consistency in terms of growing an audience from scratch, which would you say is the most important?

You really should aim for both, but if I had to pick one, I’d say consistency. You need to show up and create often. If you commit and show up, you’ll probably get better over time. Most people don’t get worse at something over time if they’re paying any attention at all to improving. I know it’s hard, but try not to compare yourself to anyone but your past self. Try to be better than you were last week.

Matthew Kocanda asked: I’ve been building my business for over five years. I have a few friends that always support what I do, but now that I’m trying to branch out and really try to make this commission/design business lucrative, how do you FIND the audience? I feel like I’m starting from scratch on something that’s been 5 years in the making.

The question you have to ask yourself is, “Am I solving a problem people have, or am I creating something that’s a nice to have?”

If you’re creating something that’s just a nice-to-have, it’s a lot harder to make money than if you’re solving a problem. People are willing to pay money to make their problems go away, but we have endless free options for nice-to-have’s and entertainment.

Something I heard on a podcast the other week made a ton of sense: If you want to make real money, solve “my house is burning down” problems.

And I know some of you are thinking, “I just want to make my art and enjoy what I’m doing, I’m not doing it to make money.”

Well, then we aren’t talking about business, we’re talking about art. There’s no guarantee that you’ll make any money with art you make just for yourself. It’s possible, but not promised. It’s easier to make money in business when you solve a problem or create something valuable for someone else in exchange for money.

Ayah Abdul asked: What is the single most important call to action I can give my listeners at the end of an episode?

I can’t tell you what the most important call to action is, you’ll have to decide that for yourself. Spend a little time thinking about it.

Remember that the more call to actions you give someone, the less likely they are to do any of them, so try to keep it to one or two. Give some kind of call to action, don’t just leave people hanging when they finish an episode. Give them something to do or somewhere to go.

Jeremiah Tutwiler asked: Do you have to create content daily? I know that this is the “Holy Grail”, but can you build an audience if you are consistently creating content on say a weekly basis?

You can definitely grow an audience if you create content on a weekly basis, but I think you should supplement it with other things, like writing blog posts and engaging in your community and posting things your audience will find interesting or valuable to Twitter and other social networks.

How to Sound Natural When Reading a Podcast Script

Mon, 30 May 2016 12:00:00 -0000

It seems like some people can get on a podcast or video and sound so effortless and natural. How is this possible? What's the secret?

I got a question from a listener asking how they could improve their speaking voice when reading from a script. Since most of my episodes are scripted, I decided to share everything I've learned about improving my speaking voice and how I read from a script without sounding monotone or boring.

Key Takeaways:

If you want to get better at something, do it everyday, even if it’s just 10-30 minutes.
Telling yourself you’ll never be good at something only keeps you from getting better at it. Instead, try saying, “I’m not good at this yet, but I’m going to put in the time and get better at it.”
Get comfortable with talking out loud and listening back to your recordings. It’s how you get better.
I believe that success comes with skill, so don’t worry if you don’t have a great voice yet. Work on improving and you’ll grow a bigger audience as you improve.
Remember that not everyone is going to like the way you talk. You gotta learn to be ok with that.

The first (and I’d say most important) piece of advice I have for you if you want to improve your ability to read out loud is:

Practice Reading Out Loud Every Day

Jay Britton said this in episode 48, and it’s the best advice I’ve heard: Reading a script out loud is a skill. If you want to get better, practice.

Like all skills, you aren’t born with a natural ability. As you do it more often, you’ll get more comfortable with it, you’ll get better at it, and people will start to notice. They’ll tell you you’re good at it which will increase your confidence and make you want to do it even more.

If you want to get better at something, do it everyday, even if it’s just 10-30 minutes.

Learn to Read Ahead

Another great piece of advice Jay Britton gave was learn to read ahead while you’re reading something out loud.

Reading ahead will feel unnatural at first, but after you do it for awhile it will get easier and you’ll start making less mistakes. You’ll make fewer mistakes because you’ll know which words are coming, and you’ll be less likely to mess up the intonation of a sentence.

Don’t Worry About the Type of Voice You Have, Worry About How Well You Can Use It

We can’t all sound like Ben Toalson or Barry White. Instead of being sad that you don’t have a deep sexy voice, focus instead on being a confident and dynamic speaker. Learn how to use your voice to the best of its abilities.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re speaking:

Use emotion in your voice. Don’t talk like a robot.
Project your voice. Not too loud, but clear and full.
If you mess up, stop, relax, and say the word or sentence over correctly. Don’t freak out or apologize.
Don’t rush. It’s ok to talk a little slower than average if you speak intentionally.
Speak clearly, make sure you say every word correctly (enunciate).

Stop Telling Yourself “I Can’t”

We all have things we’re good at, right? We all have things we’re comfortable with. If you’re telling yourself that you’ll never be good at reading or talking out loud, I need you to stop doing that. You can get better. It just takes practice.

Telling yourself you’ll never be good at something only keeps you from getting better at it. Instead, try saying, “I’m not good at this yet, but I’m going to put in the time and get better at it.”

Work on Your Podcast Voice

You aren’t stuck with the voice that you have. You aren’t stuck with the way that you speak right now. You can practice speaking in a way that people will find interesting.

I think of podcast voice as kind of like Will Farrell’s character’s voice in Anchorman. You want to speak in your voice, just a little slower (if you’re a fast talker), and a little clearer.

Mimic the People With Voices You Like For Practice, But Try to Find Your Own Unique Voice

When you’re just starting out, it’s ok to imitate people who have voices that you love listening to. Don’t steal their lines, but pay close attention to the way they speak. How fast do they talk? How do they emphasize certain words? What do you like about the way they speak?

You Might Have to Suck for Awhile.

You can either practice and get better in public, or in your bedroom.

It’s ok to make test recordings that will never be published (I’m doing this with video right now, actually). Play around with your voice and see what sounds good to you.

Experiment. Turn on your microphone and just talk for awhile. Read a book out loud.

Get comfortable with talking out loud and listening back to your recordings. It’s how you'll get better.

Listen Back to the Recordings You Make

his will be painful when you’re just starting out. It’s weird, I know, but you need to get familiar with the way you sound in recordings and learn what you need to change. If you don’t know what mistakes you’re making, you won’t know how to fix them.

Try Standing While You Read

I have a standing desk, and I love it. Standing while you talk will make you a better speaker. Look into power poses as well. Apparently there are certain stances that make you feel more confident. Weird, but science backs it up.

Do Breathing Exercises to Calm Down Before You Read

I used to freak out before live shows, and it showed in my recordings. I started doing breathing exercises before shows to calm my nerves, and I started sounding less stressed. I started feeling more confident. Even just two minutes of slow breathing helped calm me down. Try it.

Read Your Script Through Ahead of Time. Rewrite Anything That You Struggle With.

If you’re doing a podcast, you should take a few minutes and practice reading out loud your script. If you’re writing the script, read it out loud while you write it.

It’s ok to get an outline and a rough draft down before you do that, but reading what you write out loud will help you identify the parts that will give you trouble. Rewrite those parts in a way that sounds natural when you speak them out loud.

Remember That in the Beginning, Not That Many People Are Paying Attention

If you don’t already have a huge audience, there probably aren’t going to be that many people critiquing the way you talk.

I believe that success comes with skill, so don’t worry if you don’t have a great voice yet. Work on improving it and you’ll grow a bigger audience as you improve.

Embrace Your Natural Voice

We all have a certain style of talking. Play to your strengths, but learn how to overcome your weaknesses.

I’m thinking about a couple characters from the Silicon Valley show. There’s a variety of different characters on this show, and they all have different styles of speaking. Some of them are not confident speakers, some are introverts that prefer to use very few words. Some talk to much without having anything of true value to say.

I was imagining what it’d be like if a few of these characters made podcasts. I’m thinking about Gilfoyle, particularly. His intensity and dry humor are his strengths, but he would need to work on being more dynamic with his delivery.

If you’re not very dynamic either, you should work on injecting more emotion, adding some melody to your speaking voice, and changing up the rhythm of your voice, but embrace your strength too.

Remember that not everyone is going to like the way you talk. You gotta learn to be ok with that.

The whole world isn’t your audience. There are going to be some people who like the way you talk, and some that don’t. If someone gives you feedback about the way you talk, accept it and see if there’s any truth to it. Take the feedback and improve where you can.

Be comfortable with who you are. We all have unique voices, and that’s a good thing. It’d be boring if everything talked the same way and said the same things. Embrace your voice instead of being ashamed of it.

Recap:

You might suck at talking for awhile in the beginning. The way to not suck is to practice everyday, forever.
Practice reading out loud every single day. Every single day.
Don’t worry about the way your voice sounds now, focus on making your voice sound better. You define better. Imagine the way you want to sound in your mind, and work on getting there.
Read your script out loud before it’s time to record. Identify any problem spots and fix them if you can, practice them if you can’t.
Listen back to your recordings to identify problems that you need to fix.
You’ll have to suck for awhile before you get good. You can either do this in private or in public, but it is kind of fun to have a public record of how far you’ve come.

Q&A:

Jordan asked: Script vs outline: Do you write out what you’re going to say word-for-word, do you write down a simple outline with points you want to cover, or something in between? How does this affect how natural you sound?

I usually write out a pretty detailed outline for my episodes. I’ll write a main point or takeaway as a headline, then write a couple paragraphs for each headline. I do go off script sometimes, and that’s something I’ve gotten better at through time and practice.

In the beginning, the more you write, the better you’ll sound. Reading from a script and sounding a little robotic is still better than fumbling around for ten minutes, trying to find the right words and not making a point (or making your point poorly). It just comes back to practice.

Rob Williams asked: How do you find the right way to say things when you go off script?

Sean responded: “The best tip is to know your message. Think about the times you’re passionate about something and you’re talking to a friend about it. You don’t need a script. It sounds natural. It sounds fluid. That’s what you want to emulate.”

That is so true. The things that you really care about, the things you’re passionate about, those are the things you know best and that you can talk about comfortably for hours.

You want to really know your message before you start talking. I’ve discovered that writing about something multiple times really engrains the words, sentences, phrases, and information into my brain. (This is why writing is so helpful and important for podcasters.)

If there were only two things I want you to takeaway from this episode, they would be:

Write about the things you’re going to be talking about
Practice, practice, practice

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com
Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/

How to Get Started as a Voice-over Artist with Special Guest Jay Britton

Mon, 16 May 2016 12:00:00 -0000

Ever wondered how to make a living with just your voice? Interested in becoming a professional voice-over artist?

This week I'm joined by professional voice-over artist Jay Britton, who has done work for companies like HBO (Game of Thrones!), Marvel, Amazon, and more. He built his voice-over career from scratch in his late 20's, and in this episode, Jay shares everything you need to know if you want to be a professional voice-over artist too.

We talked about how he got started, what gear he recommends for beginners, how to find work if you're just starting out, how to get your first agent, tips for improving your speaking voice, and so much more.

Key Takeaways:

You don’t need the fanciest mic or a ton of knowledge to sound good. Just make sure you aren’t clipping and do some basic treatment to your audio.
Not every mic is right for your voice. You’ll need to try some different mics out to see what pairs with your voice the best.
If you want to make a living from voice-over work, you have to think about yourself as a business.
If you’re just getting started as a voice-over artist, a voice coach is one of the best investments you can make.
You can make a living in voice-over without an agent. You don’t need an agent to be successful.
It doesn’t matter how you start, it just matters that you start.
You’re born with the voice you are born with, that’s it. You can’t change that. All you can do is learn how to use your own voice to its best abilities.
You’re not going to get many scripts that you can read in advance, so the ability to read ahead while performing a script is essential.

How Did You Start Your Career as a Voice-over Artist?

Aaron: How did you get started doing voice-over work? Were you born with a golden voice, did you know from an early age that you were going to be a voice actor?

Jay: Golden voice? Not exactly. I don’t really have a special Barry White kind of voice. I did know from an early age that I wanted to do something with my voice. I blame the Animaniacs and all those kinds of shows for the inspiration. I just wanted to do voices; I was that guy in school who did the funny voices.

Like so many people, I decided to do something sensible after college. I left college and went straight into an IT job for 10 years or so. But I got to a point in my life where IT work was just too boring; I knew I couldn’t do it for the rest of my life. I asked myself what I wanted to do, and knew that it was voice-over. So I slowly started to take some steps towards getting started. Those first steps are always the scariest.

The first thing I did was look for a voice coach. I booked a workshop in London and got some coaching and recorded some demos. Then (slowly) I started to try to find voice-over work.

There was a long journey from then to what I have now; I definitely had a false start, kind of kept it on the sidelines for awhile. I kind of dabbled, I didn’t commit to getting my voice-over business off the ground.

After about 3 years of dabbling, I had a really bad day at my job (still IT) and I was talking to my wife afterwards about how much I hated it. She said, “Why don’t you do the voice-over thing properly?”

So that’s when I started taking it seriously. I went over to the states and got some more coaching, got some real recordings done, got some new kit (that’s gear), and really worked hard to make it my full-time business.

So it started off slowly, but when I made my mind up that it was possible and starting applying myself, that’s when it all started coming together.

Aaron: So how old were you when you started dabbling? And how long did it take you to go full-time?

Jay: I’d just got married… so 27? I’m 31 now, so I got started around four years ago. And I kept my job until recently. My hours at the job decreased as my voice-over work increased, and eventually I ditched the day job altogether.

But in the beginning I’d work the day job Monday-Friday, 9am to 5pm, and as I got more bookings for voice-over work my schedule got a little crazy.

So the transition was hard but it was worth it.

What Kind of Gear Do You Need to Get Started as a Voice-over Artist?

Aaron: What kind of gear did you have when you were starting out?

Jay: I had (and this is terrible)… a $30 USB microphone. It had a built-in pop shield. For my booth (my entire sound treatment), I had two pieces of foam stood up in a “V” behind the microphone, and a blanket over my head. Not terribly professional, but it got me started.

Aaron: Did you actually do some paying gigs with that setup?

Jay: Oh yeah, I booked a lot of work on that mic. I booked and recorded a Marvel gig on that kit. I was supposed to do the voice of Jarvis for some Avengers promo stuff.

That’s when I started feeling a little bit of imposter syndrome. It was just me in my little pop-up booth in my house in England with my $30 USB microphone. But they had no idea; I was just a voice on a microphone and I did the job, and that was that.

Who Handles the Post-Production for a Voice-over Artist?

Aaron: How much did you know about things like setting input gain levels and EQ and compression and all that post production stuff? Was that handled by you or did your clients do it?

Jay: At that point I knew very little about it. I was flying by the seat of my pants. Most clients at that stage didn’t require much, just a bit of cleanup and normalizing.

I knew that I didn’t want to go over the red line on the meters; if you’re chopping the top off, dial it down. But that was about it, I really didn’t know much about recording and post-production when I was getting started.

Aaron: I think a lot of people will be relieved to hear that. I talk about sound quality and post-production a lot because I hate to see podcasts ruined by poor audio quality, but that’s something you have to learn through trial and error. You can’t let it keep you from getting started.

Jay: Absolutely. I’m a big believer in simplicity. I’m talking to you on a USB microphone right now because my home studio is currently being put back together.

You don’t need the fanciest mic or a ton of knowledge to sound good. Just make sure you aren’t clipping and do some basic treatment to your audio.

Jay’s Favorite Gear for Voice-over Work

Aaron: So which USB mic are you using currently? And what other gear do you have in your home studio?

Jay: I’m recording this episode with a Rode NT USB mic ($170), which is really nice. It’s not a very “hot” mic, so it’s good if you’re in a noisy environment. It’s kind of my backup/travel mic.

In my main studio I use a Sennheiser 416 shotgun mic ($999). It’s a beautiful mic.

I also have the “voice-over standard”, the Neumann TLM 103 ($1299).

I record everything through a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 interface ($180) (with a 2i2 as a backup).

Not every mic is right for your voice. You’ll need to try some different mics out to see what pairs with your voice the best.

Jay’s Tips for How to Get Started Doing Professional Voice-Over Work

Aaron: What advice would you give to someone interested in making a living doing voice-over work?

Jay: The first thing I’d recommend is forgetting about the creative side of it when you’re first getting into it.

You are starting a business. You have to get your head around that. You’re going to be pretty isolated as a voice-over artist; most of your work is going to be done from home.

You have to approach it like you’re starting a business. You have to think about things like your vocal training, where you’re going to invest your money, how you’re going to brand and market your voice, what your competition is like, what the market wants at the moment…

You have to think about things like that. If you think about those things you’ll have a massive advantage over someone who just buys a mic and records some stuff.

If you want to make a living from voice-over work, you have to think about yourself as a business.

I’m a huge believer in voice coaching as well. I’ve had four different coaches since I got started. Each genre has particular requirements, and a voice-over coach can help you understand those things and also the industry as a whole.

If you’re just getting started as a voice-over artist, a voice coach is one of the best investments you can make.

How to Find Voice-over Work if You’re Just Getting Started

Jay: After you get a simple home studio setup, you can start looking for work. And there’s really only three ways you can get work:

First, through an agent.

Second, through “pay to play” websites, where you pay to become a member and you get access to auditions.

And third, through direct marketing; reaching out directly to production companies. You phone them up and say, “Hey, I’m a voice-over actor, do you guys needs voices? Here’s my demo reel.”

Start building relationships, and if you have a plan and you hit all three of those, you’ll start booking work.

Aaron: Can you share how you got started? Which did you do first, and what worked best for you?

Jay: I had some pretty awful reels (demos) when I first started, but I signed up for a pay to play website called Voice 123 and I got a couple of gigs there. That was where I dabbled for awhile; I stayed on that site and picked up a bit of work here and there.

When I decided I was going to do it properly, I put about $15,000 on a credit card to train with a commercial coach, an animation coach, and a promotion coach, and I flew out to Los Angeles to get some proper reels done. Once I had those, I hit all the pay to play websites again and started doing direct marketing. I started doing research on Twitter and Google, finding the production companies and phoning them up, giving them my reels and my website and stuff like that.

I also started networking, meeting other voice-over actors, meeting game producers, going to events and getting my name out there. Once I had a decent offering, that’s when I went to the agents and said, “Here I am, this is what I’ve got. Represent me, dammit!”

Aaron: Sounds like a fantastic strategy. And hey, it worked.

Do I Need an Agent to Find Work as a Voice-over Actor?

Jay: There’s a common misconception that you get your work through an agent, and these days that’s just not the case. Thanks to the internet, anyone can find your website and hire you. Agents will always have their place because many of them look after the niche and “big” jobs, things like Coca-Cola advertisements and huge triple-A games. But so much work is now on the pay to play websites and through production companies.

You can make a living in voice-over without an agent. You don’t need an agent to be successful.

I love my agents, but they don’t make up the majority of my income. You don’t need to worry about getting an agent when you’re just getting started. In fact, agents won’t take you on until you’ve got a lot of stuff to offer them.

Voice-over Gear for People on a Budget

Aaron: I know earlier you mentioned that you got started on a 30 dollar USB microphone. Do you have any gear recommendations for new voice actors who don’t want to spend a ton of money to get started?

Jay: That was 6 years ago and USB mics are way better these days. There’s a starter kit that I recommend from Focusrite. It comes with a microphone, a Scarlett 2i4 interface, and some headphones. Basically everything you need to get started for around 200 dollars (you will need to buy a pop filter and a mic stand, though).

A basic setup like that is all you need, and then just sit in a closet with some pillows and a duvet over your head. I’m a big fan of simplicity. Just get started. You can always buy a better microphone later once you’ve made some money.

It doesn’t matter how you start, it just matters that you start.

You can always buy a better microphone, you can always build a voice-over booth. But the sure-fire way to make sure nothing ever happens is to never start in the first place. It doesn’t matter how you start, just start.

Note: If you’re interested in learning more about affordable gear for voice-over or podcasting, check out https://kit.com/thepodcastdude/podcasting-gear.

Jay’s Tips for How to Be a Better Speaker

Aaron: Are people born with great voices, or is that something you can teach yourself? What are your tips for improving your voice and the way you talk?

Jay: Some people are both with a voice that makes a nice sound. Is that relevant, does that directly relate to their potential success as a voice actor? No. Not in the slightest.

Like I said earlier, I don’t have an amazing voice. I have a standard voice that sounds like everyone else’s, and so do most of my colleagues. You’ve got guys like Don LaFontaine who have a deep and boomy voice (the “In a world…” movie trailer voice), but you wouldn’t book him to do a corporate voice-over gig. His voice just wouldn’t sound right.

You’re born with the voice you are born with, that’s it. You can’t change that. All you can do is learn how to use your own voice to it’s best abilities.

I’m proud of the fact that I’m able to do a broad range of characters with my voice. I can go high, I can go a little low, I can do accents and I can make my voice sound funny. But I’m never going to book a movie trailer; I don’t have the right voice for it. That’s ok.

Part of working in voice-over is understanding that you might book work in genres that you don’t necessarily want to work in.

You might want to do movie trailers but if you don’t have the right voice for it, you won’t get the gig. This is why you need coaching. You need to understand things like, if you’re reading a promo script for a TV show, you need to know how to make the read less funny, or how to change the inflection. So much is based on melody. Knowing how to play with your voice is so much more important then the voice you were born with.

One of my coaches said, “As far as booking a job goes, 95% of it is how well you understand the copy and how well you perform the copy, and the last 5% is genetics.”

Rather than worry about how your natural voice sounds, worry about what you do have control over, which is how you use the voice that you have.

How to Get Better at Reading Scripts Out Loud

Jay: Want to get better at reading scripts? Read out loud every day. It’s not good enough just to read, you need to read out loud everyday.

One skill that is absolutely critical is being able to read ahead of what you’re currently saying out loud when you’re reading a script. You’ll make less mistakes because you’ll know what words are coming, and you’ll very rarely mess up the intonation of a sentence.

You’re not going to get many scripts that you can read in advance, so the ability to read ahead while performing a script is essential.

Reading ahead will feel unnatural at first, but after you do it for awhile it will get easier and you’ll start making less mistakes.

This is especially important for video games because you’ll often get thrown into recording sessions without a chance to read the script or even get a full idea of what your character is like.

It’s an immensely helpful skill because no one in this business has any time. If you can nail something on the first take, then you’ll do great.

Another tip is go and do some improv and learn how to ad-lib. It’ll speed up the auditory part of your brain, you’ll learn how to come up with words and get them out quickly. That’s a great skill to have. Increase that “brain-to-mouth” speed.

Q&A:

Tobi asks: What are your thoughts about working with unions?

Jay: It really depends. If you’re just starting out, there’s no reason to join the union, and more and more work is going non-union in the US. So if you’re in the states and you’re trying to do voice-over work, don’t join the union until you’re forced to join the union. You can actually book your first union job without being a part of the union, and it’s $5000 to join after that, so at the start of your career, it’s not really necessary.

Richard asks: What are some of the best methods to get in front of casting agents? What elements are they looking for in a vocal reel? Is sending in a vocal reel the best way to get hired for voice over gigs/start a relationship with casting agents?

Jay: There’s two sides to this. There’s casting agents (or as we call them here in the UK, casting directors), and then there are agents. An agent will represent you and present you to a casting director (who will then consider you for a job).

If you want to get yourself an agent, the best way to do that is by referral. So make sure you have a great sound reel (demos) and do lots of networking with other voice actors, especially the ones who work with agency you’d like to work with. Don’t be weird, but develop relationships with other voice actors and agent. If you’re good, they’ll notice.

Thousands of people want to be voice actors and work with these agents, so you’ve got to find a way to stand above the crowd. Doing great work and getting referred by another successful voice actor is one of the best ways to get an agent.

In terms of working with casting directors, generally they are “behind the scenes” people. They’re not the most receptive to being bombarded by voice actors. The best way to get to know them is to organically get a job for them and just start a relationship with them.

Another way to meet casting agents is on Twitter. Social media in general is a great tool for growing relationships, just don’t be salesy about it. If they tweet a funny picture of their cat, don’t reply with “I’m a voice actor, please hire me!”

Ultimately, people work with people. Don’t smash your voice reel in their face; take the time to build a relationship. That’s the way I play it.

Aaron: Relationships are so important if you want to be successful as a freelancer. When I was getting started as a podcast editor, most of my best clients came from referals. I always made sure I was friendly and I did a good job and if I saw an opportunity to provide some value, I’d do that. Eventually people grew to trust me, and if they knew someone who needed my services, they’d send them to me. So I got a ton of work that way, and I think that works in almost any industry.

Jay: Exactly. I’ve done voice-over work for 22 games in the past 2-3 years, and something like 80% of those jobs came through networking.

Another tip is give it time. It’s natural to want everything to happen yesterday, but it takes time to develop those relationships. I’m going to be working on a big game project pretty soon, and I only got the gig after talking with the casting director for over eight months. That’s a long time to pursue a lead, but things don’t happen overnight. You’ve got to be prepared to play the long game.

Eric asks: Do clients expect you to do post-processing on your recordings, or is that something they typically handle? Is it important for you to know how to master your own recordings?

Jay: It’s usually a 50/50 split. If I book something through my agent, I’m usually going to a studio where they have professional audio engineers to handle everything. If you record something at home, the client will most likely expect you to handle the mastering.

If you’re booking work through the pay to play websites or through direct marketing, they’re probably going to expect you to do the post-production. Quite a few of my clients also want me to match the audio to the video as well.

In general, most clients just want the audio to be clean and pretty level in terms of dynamics. So you do need to be comfortable with editing audio and doing basic treatment (equalizing, compression, normalizing).

Find Jay Britton Online:

You can find Jay’s website at VoiceOfJayBritton.com, and follow him on Twitter @voicejaybritton.

If you’d like to make a living as a voice actor, I highly suggest hiring Jay for coaching. It’s an investment that will pay off 10x in the long run.

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com
Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/

How to Create a Great Podcast Intro

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 12:00:00 -0000

The introduction to your podcast (the first 30-60 seconds) is a critical part of the success of your show. If you don’t introduce yourself, new listeners will feel lost. If your intro is too long, people will get annoyed and switch to listen to something else.

Listeners want to know what they’re going to get out of an episode. If you don't tell them that right away, they're going to start wondering if there's a better way to spend their time, and maybe go find a different podcast to listen to. I don't want you to lose listeners, so today I'm talking about how to make a great podcast intro.

Key Takeaways:

Listeners want to know what they’re going to get out of an episode, so tell them within the 30-60 seconds (if not sooner).
Assume that you’re going to get new listeners every week. Try to craft a short intro that will tell them everything they need to know about you and your show.
Your intro should include who you are and why you’re doing your podcast. Try to keep it as short as possible but make sure it communicates those things.
A professional voiceover can make your show seem more legit, but it runs the risk of being repetitious and boring to your regular listeners after awhile.
It’s your job as a podcast host to tell your listener why they should care about listening to your podcast. Don’t assume they care; make them care.
Make sure that you’re doing shows about things you really care about, make sure that your heart is in it.

Here’s what I’m going to cover today:

Why you need to introduce yourself at the beginning of every episode
Why you shouldn’t assume that everyone knows your story
How to give your listener enough information without going too far and boring them
The pros and cons of professional voiceovers
How to apply this advice to your website homepage (and get more engagement from your visitors)

Introduce Yourself Every Episode

You need to introduce yourself at the beginning of every episode and tell your audience what you’re going to talk about in the episode.

Charli Prangley said: On our podcast (Design Life), we include a snippet of a takeaway at the start before the intro music so that people can figure out immediately if this is an episode they’re interested in. Then we introduce the topic and say why we’re talking about it. We also do a quick ‘check in’ about how our week has been and what we’ve achieved with our projects (which gives our listeners context as to what we’re working on and how we spend our time outside of the podcast).

Charli is doing it right. You should introduce yourself at the beginning of every show. Tell the audience your name (or names if you have co-hosts), and tell them what you hope to do for them in the episode, or what you’re going to talk about. This is important because everyone who hits play on a podcast is wondering (whether they realize or not) what they’re going to get out of it. If you answer this question for them right away, then your listener is less likely to switch to a different show.

Listeners want to know what they’re going to get out of an episode, so tell them within the first 60 seconds.

Don’t Assume Everyone Knows Your Story

After you’ve been podcasting for awhile, it’s tempting to just jump into a topic right away. But you need to think about the new listeners who are checking out your episode for the first time. What info do they need? How can you deliver that most efficiently?

At the very least, a new listener needs to know your name and why you’re doing your podcast. You don’t want to have a 5 minute introduction every single episode, but you need to communicate that basic information for the newcomers.

Assume that you’re going to get new listeners every week. Try to craft a short intro that will tell them everything they need to know about you and your show.

For your regular listeners, maybe include a new, random or funny fact about yourself in your intro every week. I’d like to start doing this myself.

Your intro should include who you are and why you’re doing your podcast. Try to keep it as short as possible but make sure it communicates those things.

Professional Intros VS DIY Intros

It’s entirely up to you to decide what kind of show you want to make and what kind of feel you want it to have.

I prefer to do the introduction myself. It feels more personal that way, plus I can change things up every week if I feel like it.

Karma Senge asks: Should you copy and paste your intro and have the same exact one in every episode or should you do your intro new every time?

It is a good idea to have a template for your intro, but I think a static intro starts to feel boring to regular listeners after a few episodes.

A professional voiceover can make your show seem more legit, but it runs the risk of being repetitious and boring to your normal listeners after awhile.

Should I include a funny part of the podcast at the beginning?

Cory McCabe asked: Do you put in the intro the best part of the podcast? Or just a good section of it?

As editor for the seanwes network, one of my tasks is to pick out a short section of the podcast to use as an intro. This section plays before the intro music for the various shows.

During the show, I listen for short sections that are either valuable insights or funny (sometimes even both). My goal is to either give the listener a valuable takeaway from the episode or make them laugh.

So yes, I do think you should find a funny or interesting clip for the intro, if it makes sense to do so for your show.

Bonus Tip: Make your website home page about your visitor

This advice applies to your website’s landing page as well (if you make a podcast or if you’re a freelancer).

If the first thing a person sees when visiting your website “me, me, me, me, here’s what I do”, that’s not great. Instead, tell your visitor what you are going to do for them. Make the first thing they see about them, not about you.

Start with your why. Don’t tell your audience what you do, tell them WHY you do it. Check out Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why. If you make a podcast, or blog, or vlog, or run a small business, you should check this book out.

Q&A:

Garrett Mickley said:

Tip for what NOT to do: I listened to a podcast that I was disappointed with episode one so I waited 20 episodes to listen again and was disappointed in episode 20.

The episode 1 issue was that it sounded like it was recorded in a park in downtown Manhattan. Way too much background noise. But the 20th episode had excellent audio quality.

The problem was he spent the first 10 minutes talking about himself and the podcast and not even what that episode was about. Then he started plugging his courses and I was like, “dude, what is this episode even about? You haven’t provided any value yet!” Then he just word for word read a blog post he had written about a year ago that I had already read (a year ago) and it was nice to hear it again but I wish he wouldn’t have just read it off to us.

The ONLY reason I didn’t turn it off in the first 5 minutes of him talking about himself was because I was washing dishes and my hands were wet. Otherwise I would have stopped listening pretty quickly.

Audio quality is important, and it takes time to develop that, but if you aren’t telling listeners up front what kind of value you’re going to provide in the episode and you just start rambling, they’re going to tune out. I’ve stopped listening to many shows because the hosts stopped respecting my time.

It’s your job as a podcast host to tell your listener why they should care about listening to your podcast. Don’t assume they care; make them care.

Scott Hofford asked: Are there certain things that you shouldn’t say that makes you lose listeners?

If you podcast long enough, eventually someone is going to disagree with something you say. That’s fine. The bigger mistake is either not saying anything because you’re worried that you might offend someone else, or not feeling confident in what you do say.

If you don’t believe that you have something good to offer to your listener, they’re going to pick up on that, because no one follows someone who doesn’t believe in what they’re doing.

Make sure that you’re doing shows about things you really care about, make sure that your heart is in it.

Taylor West asked: When using a prerecorded interview in your podcast, is it more effective to add an intro that you record later (possibly even days later after the interview) introducing the interviewee and explaining the episode? Or do you give an intro at the beginning of the actual interview, right before you start the discussion?

I’m gonna say both. A lot of people do interviews without a real plan for what they’re going to talk about, and that can work out fine, especially if you’re good at interviewing. But thinking about it from my perspective as a podcast listeners: I like to know up front what the interview is going to be about, even if it’s just a broad overview of the topics covered. I like shows where the host plans out those things in advance and tells me at the beginning of the show what the topics are.

It is a good idea to record the interview and then go back and record an intro where you share some of the most valuable takeaways from the episode.

It’s like providing a table of contents for your podcast episode. Even though it’s in audio form, you can still say, “Here’s a list of all the subjects we’re going to talk about.”

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com
Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/

Pros and Cons of Video Podcasting with Caleb Wojcik

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 12:00:00 -0000

My guest this week is Caleb Wojcik, the DIY Video Guy. If you're anything like me, you've been interested in making video for awhile now, but you probably also worry that you'll look or sound dumb on camera. I get it. In this episode, I talk with Caleb about how he makes video podcasts for iTunes, but we also talk about what keeps people from getting started with producing videos, and share some practical tips to help you overcome your fear of being on camera. Enjoy!

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com
Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/
Caleb's site: https://www.calebwojcik.com/

A Guide to LinkedIn Publishing for Podcasters by Glenn Leibowitz

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 13:00:00 -0000

How many of you have ever published anything on LinkedIn? If you're anything like me, you probably thought that LinkedIn is for the older generation or the corporate stooges who want to work 9-5 jobs in office buildings.

Glenn Leibowitz is back to explain why LinkedIn is such a powerful blogging platform for creative professionals (and not just somewhere to host a digital resume). Even if you're not interested in LinkedIn, you're still going to learn a ton about writing and publishing in this episode (I sure did).

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com
Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/
Glenn's website: http://www.writewithimpact.com/

How to Turn a Podcast Interview Into a Story with Glenn Leibowitz

Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:00:00 -0000

Glenn Leibowitz returns for part two of our three-part series about writing. This week, he shares how he turns podcast interviews into stories, why it's led to huge audience growth for both his podcast and his blog, and how you can use the power of story to reach a whole new audience.

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com
Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/
Glenn's website: http://www.writewithimpact.com/

Glenn Leibowitz’s Top 5 Writing Tips for Podcasters

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 13:00:00 -0000

Want to be a better podcaster? Something I’ve seen over and over again is that the best podcasters spend a lot of time writing.

Want to learn how to be a better writer? My guest this week – Glenn Leibowitz – wants to help you get there.

Glenn has been writing and editing for the past 17 years, mostly for his company, but two years ago he started his own blog and also started to blog weekly on LinkedIn. He writes about professional development, technology, social media, and writing.

In April 2015, he launched his weekly podcast – Write With Impact – where he interviews authors of nonfiction and fiction and tries to pick apart their secrets and have them share what they’ve learned over the years as writers.

In December 2015, LinkedIn named him one of 90 “top voices” on LinkedIn (out of the 1 million people who blog there). He ranked #2 in the marketing and social media category.

I asked Glenn to join me for a three-part podcast series to share what he’s learning about writing and growing an audience, the benefits of storytelling, how to turn a podcast interview into a story, how to get started with publishing on LinkedIn, and more.

In this episode, Glenn shares his top tips for becoming a better writer, we discuss why outlines are critical for success, why you should edit after you’re done writing, how to write great titles, and so much more.

Key Takeaways:

Writing an outline is like creating a map for yourself. It will help you get to where you want to go.
Sharing a story brings the topic down to earth for your reader and allows them to relate to whatever you’re writing.
Don’t try to make all your writing perfect right away. Allow yourself to separate the writing process and the editing process.
If you’re not perfectly consistent with your output, that’s okay, just keep trying and never give up.
Publish something every single week, regardless of how you feel. You'll improve through doing.
Your title needs to summarize your podcast or blog post well, and in a way that gets your audience’s attention.

Glenn: There’s so much to learn when it comes to writing, but all the writers I’ve ever talked with gave this advice: if you want to get better, you just gotta write more. With that in mind, here are my top tips for becoming a better writer.

Tip #1. Write to an Audience of One

Glenn: Know who you’re talking to. Visualize your reader if you can, and if you can’t, that’s fine, but try to write as if you’re writing to just one person.

Pretend you’re writing an email to a friend or relative. That’s a good way to break through any inhibitions you might be feeling when you try to put words down on the page for the first time.

Aaron: This is great advice for podcasters as well. When you’re podcasting, talk like you’re talking to a single person; this makes your listener feel a more personal connection with you.

Tip #2. Write Like You Talk

Glenn: When writing, pretend like you’re talking. Treat your writing as a form of transcription of your thoughts and of that voice running through your head. Just write whatever comes to mind. I wrote a blog post on LinkedIn about this recently — How to Find Your Writing Voice: Listen to the Voice on the Page.

That one resonated with a lot of people because they could relate to that. It’s how I write, and apparently it’s how a lot of people write. As one of my guests on my podcast said, “If you can speak, you can write.”

Don’t get caught up with the style, the vocabulary, just focus on getting what’s on your mind down on the page.

Aaron: I agree, but I have a question. Sometimes when I’m writing, I’ll think something funny and put it down, but then I look at it and wonder if other people will get it or think it’s funny. Do you ever struggle with that?

Glenn: That happens to me all the time. I write a lot of stuff that never sees the light of day, but you should edit after you’ve finished writing. Don’t worry about editing while you write. I try not to delete anything during the initial writing. I like collecting words even if they don’t end up going in the final version that I publish.

Tip #3. Pick a Very Focused Topic

Glenn: Whatever you’re writing – show notes for a podcast, a blog post, the chapter of your first ebook on Amazon – you need to have a focused topic. Your entire blog post should support or relate to that topic in some way. Think about the main point of your podcast or blog post, and let everything flow from there.

Tip #4. Jot Down a Quick Outline

Glenn: Jot down a few sentences or a very skeletal outline of what you want to write about. Put the bones down on the page before you start adding the meat. The first sentence or two should be what the entire blog post or chapter is about. Then list out the 4, 5, or 8 supporting points before you start working on the individual paragraphs. These points will be the blueprint, the directions that will help you get to where you want to go.

Aaron: I love using mind maps to write outlines. It’s been a game changer for me.

Writing an outline is like creating a map for yourself. It will help you get to where you want to go.

Tip #5. Tell a Story

Glenn: Storytelling seems to be all the rage these days and for very good reason; we all love stories. So many of the writers I’ve spoken to on my podcast have told me how they believe story is wired into our DNA, and I think that’s true.

We all want to see how a hero overcomes a tough challenge and what happens next, how they grow from that and learn from that. That all sounds like the elements of fiction, and that’s how novelists write. But I believe, and my podcast guests agree, that the same elements of storytelling apply to writing nonfiction like blog posts, nonfiction books, essays, and I would argue, even show notes for a podcast.

I start most of my blog posts off with a personal story of when I was a kid or teen or twenty-something or even something that happened recently. I relate the topic to something that happened to me personally, a challenge I faced, and then I describe how I dealt with it, and what I learned.

My latest post on LinkedIn was about self-driving cars, and I started that one off with a story of how my mom put my brother and me in a defensive driving course even before we could drive, just so she could scare the heck out of us and make us better drivers.

I then followed that story up with the news of Google’s self-driving car, which got the green light from the National Transportation Safety Administration.

Sharing a story brings the topic down to earth for your reader and allows them to relate to whatever you’re writing.

Aaron: I love hearing those personal stories. I find it hard to connect with people who don’t ever share any personal stories.

Tip #6. Edit, Edit, Edit

Glenn: This is where your logical, analytical brain kicks in. You need to take a microscopic look at each sentence and word on the page, review your punctuation, and read through your writing over and over again in your mind (or out loud) to see if it all fits together logically. You want to make sure you are delivering your message clearly, which is critically important, and also that it’s grammatically correct.

If you’re not good with grammar or punctuation or word usage, or if you’re not a native writer of English, ask a friend or family member to take a look at it, or hire a freelance editor on one of those freelancing websites. But edit edit edit until it’s something you feel comfortable publishing (and ideally, something you feel proud of).

Aaron: Something I’ve started doing lately is allowing myself to write a first draft without trying to make it perfect. I used to try to make everything perfect the first time, which really slowed me down.

Now, I write an outline, then write a first draft as fast as I can, then go back to do the editing afterwards. I’m much happier now that I’ve stopped trying to edit while I write. I have to thank the guys who wrote Write. Publish. Repeat. for sharing that tip about writing your first draft as fast as you can.

Don’t try to make all your writing perfect right away. Allow yourself to separate the writing process and the editing process.

Tip #7. Be Consistent

Glenn: One thing I see a lot of bloggers do is write a post here, write one there, maybe 5-10 posts, or maybe they go for 6-12 months and then give up.

If you’re not perfectly consistent with your output, that’s okay, just keep trying and never give up.

Take Sean McCabe’s advice; you have to show up and create content every day for at least two years before you’ll see substantial results. If you do see results before that two year point, consider it a bonus. But you’ve got to look at writing as a long-term play, and not something you just do whenever you feel like it. Don’t quit just because you feel bored or if you aren’t seeing results yet.

Publish something every single week, regardless of how you feel.

Aaron: “Show up every day” applies to podcasting too. I’ve seen amazing results in the past 10 months because I showed up every day and released an episode every week. I’ve become a better writer and a better podcaster, all because I keep trying. I keep showing up and I give it the best I can every single time, and I get a little better every week and my audience keeps growing.

Recap:

Aaron: Those were some great tips, so I want to do a quick recap:

Write to an audience of one
Write like you talk
Pick a focused topic
Write outlines
Tell a story
Edit, edit, edit
Be consistent

Connect with Glenn Leibowitz

Aaron: Glenn, you’ll be back next week, but in the meantime, where can people go to find you online?

Glenn: You can head over to WriteWithImpact.com and sign up for my weekly newsletter so you can get my latest podcast episodes and blog posts, as well as recommendations for books and resources for writers.

I’m also on LinkedIn and encourage you to connect directly with me there. You can find me on Twitter at @glennleibowitz.

Q&A

Levi Allen asked: What are the top books/blogs you’d recommend for growing as a writer?

Glenn: I have two books that I recommend to everyone; On Writing Well by William Zinsser, and On Writing by Stephen King.

For websites/blogs, I’d recommend checking out Joanna Penn, Jeff Goins, Monica Leonelle, and Chris Fox. You can also check out my website and podcast to find even more great resources.

Aaron: I’m currently reading a fantastic book called Write. Publish. Repeat. and I think anyone interested in writing should pick that up. I’m also a fan on both On Writing and On Writing Well, although I’m only about 60% of the way through On Writing Well.

Scotty Russell asked: How do you balance injecting value and sharing your own life experiences? Making your audience the hero yet establishing credibility.

Glenn: I keep that in mind every time I sit down to write a blog post. I don’t want to write what I call “navel-gazers”, that is, posts where I just talk about myself. I try to avoid that, but I do try to include myself or my experiences in the story if it’s relevant. I try to always orient the message of the post towards the reader. I’m always trying to think about what would be valuable for the reader.

Aaron: Always start with wanting to give your audience something valuable. But I’m wondering; do you ever struggle with qualifying what you’re saying with, “This is just my experience, it might not work for you”? I find myself doing that a lot.

Glenn: Yeah, of course. That’s something I struggle with all the time. It’s why I have so many unfinished blog posts in my drafts folder. But I try to push through and publish anyways. Even if the blog post doesn’t help everyone, as long as it helps a few people than I’m doing good work.

Joseph asked: How do you come up with good titles without making them sounding like click-bait?

Glenn: You definitely don’t want to use click-bait. Click-bait means that your title promises something that your article doesn’t deliver, and you never want to do that. Just be honest and clear with the headline. I often write out a list of possible headlines, and sometimes I’ll ask my kids which one they think is best. That usually works out well.

Your title needs to summarize your podcast or blog post well, and in a way that gets your audience’s attention.

Aaron: I think a lot of people – especially if they’re new to publishing online – worry about writing titles that sound click-baity, or about doing list articles with titles like 7 Things Every Podcaster Should Know.

Glenn: I can tell you this; the LinkedIn editors don’t like list articles anymore. List articles are fun, but they’re all over the place; too many people are doing them.

What I say is it’s better to be clear than clever. Sometimes I try to write a clever headline, but before I hit publish I ask myself, “What am I trying to say with this post? Does my headline reflect that?” I try to be truthful and give my reader a clear idea of what they’re going to get. Don’t lie, don’t mislead or promise something you can’t deliver.

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com
Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/
Glenn's website: http://www.writewithimpact.com/

The Best Gear for Podcasting

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 13:00:00 -0000

2021 update: Here's an updated, complete list of the gear I recommend for podcasting: https://kit.co/thepodcastdude/best-gear-for-podcasting

My second episode was a guide to gear for podcasting, but I’ve learned a lot in the past months, so I wanted to make an updated guide. I said back then that if you couldn’t afford good gear, you should wait and save up money. I was wrong about that. I still believe that great gear will give you better sound quality which will help your show be more successful, but I don’t believe you should wait to get started. There’s so much you need to learn when you’re first starting out: Great gear isn’t going to magically make the process easier. It’s best to get started with what you have, or buy what you can afford and then upgrade later.

So let’s talk about podcasting on a budget. I’m going to cover gear for those of you who have little-to-no money to spend, and also share what I think is the best podcasting gear so that you’ll know what to get in the future when you have money to upgrade.

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.co/thepodcastdude/best-gear-for-podcasting
Podcast: https://podcastingwithaaron.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN4Ey9-HGAbmYvG3t3X5dow
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com

How to Make a Podcast: My Podcasting Process From A to Z

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 13:00:00 -0000

Have you ever wondered what it takes to make a podcast? What the steps are? This week, I’m going to walk you through my process, step by step. I'm going to give you a better understanding of what it takes to make a podcast, take some of the mystery and scariness out of podcasting, and give you actionable steps to follow to make your own podcast.

Couple quick updates to this episode: I now use MP3 chapters instead of writing time stamps for each paragraph. My show is also now hosted on Simplecast, so my workflow has gotten a lot faster/easier.

Want the cheat sheet? Here's an updated PDF of my podcast production workflow.

Key Takeaways:

Post-production seems to be the most difficult and time consuming part of podcasting. Fortunately, it’s also the easiest to outsource. Consider hiring an editor or assistant to take care of it for you.
If you don’t have much free time to invest in your podcast, keep it simple. Share something valuable in 3-10 minutes.
Mind mapping is a great creative exercise that helps me capture all the things I want to talk about related to my topic.
Create presets and templates for your tracks and use them every week.
Be ruthless about editing both before and after recording.
Creating an email newsletter for every episode can be time consuming, but it’s important if you want to build an list of people that you can sell to later down the road.
Don’t be afraid to share your older episodes on social media. Grab a takeaway from the episode and post it with a link to the episode.

In this episode I’m going to walk you through my entire podcasting process, but I want to start with a question from a listener.

Emily Carlton asks: How long did your entire process take when you first started, and how long does it take now? In what areas have you become more efficient to save time?

When I first started, each episode was taking me around 5-10 hours (sometimes more). It feels like it takes less time now, but not by much.

The time it takes to produce a podcast depends on the format and how much work you want to put into it to make it awesome. If you’re ok with your episode being a little on the short side, if you don’t want to super detailed or lengthy episode notes, then you could probably record and publish an episode in an hour or two.

A few things that saved me a lot of time: Learning how to edit quickly in Logic Pro X, how to save plugin settings as defaults, and how to create channel strip and project templates.

The Three Parts of Podcasting: Preperation, Recording, and Post-Production

My podcasting process can be broken down into three parts; Preparation, Recording, and Post Production.

Preparation includes things like researching what people are interested in learning about, coming up with topics, researching those topics, and writing an outline for the episode.

Recording is making sure your audio gear is setup, connected and ready to go, then hitting record and doing the show (and live streaming if that’s a thing you do).

Post-production is editing the audio file (or files, if you have guests or co-hosts), bouncing it out to an MP3 file, tagging the file, writing show notes, uploading those things to the website for publishing, creating the email newsetter, then promoting the episode on social media.

What’s the Most Time Consuming Part of Podcasting?

Robert Guzzo asks: Can you estimate the percentage of time & effort you devote to each: preparation, recording, post-production & publishing? I’m asking more for an estimate on which parts of the process take the most time–does prep take up the majority of the overall effort for an effort, or is post-production the biggest slice of the pie?

You can either do the bulk of the work up front or later in post-production. For example, when I’m doing solo shows, I write out almost the entire show before I record it. Then I don’t have as much work on the editing or the show note writing section.

If I’m doing an interview, I have an basic outline but I don’t know what’s going to be said, so I write the show notes afterwards. It’s very time consuming but that’s just how it goes.

As I told Robert in the chat before the show, it depends on when you want to do the work. If you do more work up front, the post-production work of writing show notes will require less time.

Pre-Production

There are three main parts to pre-production:

Choosing a topic for the episode
Mindmapping (brainstorming)
Writing the outline

1. Choosing a Topic

Choosing a topic involves a lot of research. When searching for topics for my show, I’m asking myself:

What questions have people been asking?
What do I wish I knew when I started?
What haven’t I taught about yet?
What are the basics?
What are common mistakes that people make?

Daniela asks: How much writing do you do in preparation for a podcast episode?

I like to write out between 800 and 3000 words for my episodes. That takes me between 20 and 45 minutes to read out loud. You don’t have to do long episodes, though. Short shows can be just as valuable, and many people even prefer short podcasts. Longer shows take more time and effort, so plan accordingly.

If you don’t have much free time to invest in your podcast, keep it simple. Share something valuable in 3-10 minutes.

2. Mind Mapping

Alex Kelerman asked: What goes into writing an outline for your podcast? Do you just use bullets for the main ideas and develop things live, or do you go in depth?

I like to create the structure of my outline in a mindmapping app called Mindnode ($29). I start off with the main topic in the middle and add any sub-topics (the main points I want to discuss). Then I go one level deeper and write out my basic talking points (bullet items). You can view an example of what that looks like here.

Mind mapping is a great creative exercise that helps me capture all the things I want to talk about related to my topic.

I talked more about this process in episode 17: Using Great Outlines to Keep Your Listener’s Attention.

While I’m mind mapping, I’m also doing research online to see what other people have written about the topic, just to make sure I don’t miss or forget anything. It often sparks new ideas or uncovers gold nuggets that I can then bring into the show.

3. Writing the Outline

Once I’m happy with my mind map outline, I export the text into a writing app called Typed. I like Typed, but there are many great writing apps including IA Writer, Ulysses, NVAlt, and Sublime Text. Since I do all my writing in Markdown, I like these apps because they play nice with Markdown, but you could write in any text editor.

So I export the text from Mindnode and put it into a new text document in Typed, then I start writing. I start with the intro; how I’m going to introduce the episode to my audience. Then I move on to filling in details related to my main points. I dedicate an hour or two (sometimes more) every week to writing, but I often spread it out into 3-4 different writing sessions.

Show Time (Recording)

I stream live every Monday, so I review my show notes about an hour before showtime. I’ll often jump in the seanwes chatroom to see if anyone has any questions that I can answer in the show.

You can do this yourself: Jump on Twitter or Slack and ask your audience if they have any thoughts or questions related to your topic. This can spark some great conversations and give you more things to talk about during your show; it also gives your audience a sense of participation.

After reviewing the show notes, I start preparing for recording. I turn off any streaming services (Dropbox, Backblaze, Google Drive) that might be hogging bandwidth. I make sure all my gear is ready to go, then do a test recording to make sure everything is working as it should be. I turn notifications off and silence my iPhone, then I hit record (very important) and start the show.

After I’m done recording, I hit stop and save the file (very important).

Post Production

There are five sections to my post-production workflow:

Editing and mixing
Writing show notes
Bouncing, tagging and uploading the MP3
Creating the featured image for the show notes page
Admin work (creating the post in WordPress, uploading the show notes, creating and sending the Mailchimp email newsletter)

Post production seems to be the most difficult and time consuming part of podcasting. Fortunately, it’s also the easiest to outsource. Consider hiring an editor or assistant to take care of it for you.

Want to get your post-production work done faster? Check out epsiode 15: 7 Tips to Make Podcast Post Production Easier. Want to hire a podcast editor? Check out episode 8: 10 Things to Know Before Hiring a Podcast Editor.

1. Editing

I open up my Logic project and I apply presets that I’ve made for the tracks. In most cases, I already have plugins setup and configured for vocal tracks. These presets are called Channel Strip Settings.

Create presets and templates for your tracks and use them every week.

I adjust EQ and compression if needed, add the intro and outro music, then edit the show. Editing includes removing umms and other filler words and cleaning up any long pauses or mistakes. I used to do an editing pass before starting to write the show notes, but lately I’ve been editing while writing show notes. I found that it saves me a little bit of time.

Be ruthless about editing both before and after recording.

2. Writing Show Notes

I open the text document that I used for my outline, and start working to turn my outline into something that looks more like a blog post. I add TimeJump links to the beginning of each paragraph so that people can go to the time in the audio player that corresponds with that section of the show notes.

Update: I no longer add TimeJump links, but I’m still using Markdown. I wrote more about my new process for creating show notes here.

As I’m listening and writing show notes, if I notice any additional things in the recording that need to be edited, I’ll take care of it.

3. Bouncing the File

After editing and show notes are done, I bounce (export) the audio to an MP3 file. I export the audio file in stereo at 128kbps.

I tag the MP3 file with the proper metadata using an app called Tagr. Tagr costs $10 but it’s faster than using iTunes to add the neccessary information to your MP3. I’ve also got a cool text shortcut that uses Keyboard Maestro to automatically fill in the information, but I’ll have to do a screencast on that later.

Afer tagging, the MP3 file is ready for uploading to my hosting service (Simplecast).

4. Creating the Featured Image

I create a featured image for the episode using Sketch (you could use also use Photoshop or Pixelmator. My featured images are 1600x800px, just a simple colored background with a little texture, and the type is our brand font, Le Monde Courier. I export the image as a JPG, then use an app called ImageOptim to reduce the size of the file (so it loads faster).

Update: I no longer create custom features images for episodes. I probably should though.

5. Upload and Schedule the Episode in Simplecast

Update: When I first recorded the episode, my show was hosted on a WordPress site. It is now hosted on Simplecast, so I'll share instructions for that here instead.

Publishing a new episode in Simplecast is easy: I simply enter the title, upload the MP3 file, add the episode summary and episode notes, then save and schedule the draft. You can see the step here if you'd like.

I usually proof-read the post and fix any formatting, spelling, or grammatical errors before publishing or scheduling an episode.

6. Mailchimp Email Newsletter

Update: I'm not sending email newsletters currently either.

I use Mailchimp to send emails for every episode to my email list. If you haven’t started an email newsletter for your podcast yet, I recommend it.

For my email newsletters, I upload the featured image, copy the description from the beginning of my show notes, then add the takeaways and highlights. I close each newsletter with a personal note about the episode.

Creating an email newsletter for every episode can be time consuming, but it’s important if you want to build an email list of people that you can sell to later down the road.

7. Wrapping Up

After I finish the email newsletter, I’m almost done. This is when I start celebrating because I know I’m getting close to the finish line!

I double check everything, look over my process list to make sure I didn’t forget to do anything. I schedule the blog post and email newsletter, and then I’m done!

After the episode goes live, I post a link on Twitter. I try to give the audience a taste of what I’m going to talk about in the episode, and I also include the featured image.

Quick tip: Don’t be afraid to share your older content on Twitter. Grab a takeaway from the episode and post it with a link to the episode.

Q&A

Robert Guzzo and Aneeqah Naeem asked: Do you have any tips for streamlining the podcasting process to make it more efficent?

I was thinking about this, and I can’t remember ever eliminating any steps from my process. If anything, I’ve added more steps.

There are a few apps I use that save me time. Text Expander is great, it allows you to type a couple keys and then some replacement text gets dropped in. So for example, instead of having to write out http://thepodcastdude.com, I can just hit ‘tpd, and Text Expander will turn that into the URL. If you aren’t using Text Expander yet, you should be.

Another great time saver has been using templates in Logic. I have templates for projects, templates for channel strips, and I’ve even customized the default settings for my commonly used plugins. I talked more about time saving tips in episode 15, so go check that out if you haven’t yet.

I’ve found that the more you do something, the easier it gets. The first dozen podcast episodes are hard because the process is new. Once you become familiar with it, you don’t have to think about it and it becomes muscle memory.

If you are pressed for time, make your show shorter. I was listening to an audiobook last week called Pitch Anything. In this book, author Oren Klaff describes how most people’s attention span only lasts around 20 minutes before needing to be “reset”. There’s no reason why you couldn’t make a show shorter than 20 minutes. Like I always say, just make it valuable.

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com
Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/

Room Echo and Background Noise: Sound Proofing and Absorption for Podcasters

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0000

Key Takeaways:

Eliminate background noises before you hit record. Turn off fans, AC, or heaters, and set your phone to airplane mode.
Listeners notice sound quality. Background noise and room echo is distracting and degrades the listening experience.
If you have a noisy room or a room with a lot of echo and you can’t treat it, record with a dynamic mic instead of a condenser and grab blankets or couch cushions and make a blanket tent or pillow fort.
Some materials (sound panels) are more sound absorbent than others. Look up Noise Reduction Coefficients (NRC) numbers before buying materials to help absorb sound
It’s possible to improve sound quality a little bit with post production, but it’s better to fix the problems before recording.

How Do I Get Rid of the Hollow Sound or Room Echo In My Podcast Recording?

I’ve noticed that a lot of people struggle with room echo and background noises, so I wanted to do this episode to help you start taking steps towards inproving the quality of your recordings.

Sound Proofing and Sound Treatment

Sound Proofing is the process of sealing your room so that outside noises don’t get recorded by your microphone. This is normally done by installing special sound-absorbing fiberglass or mineral wool in the walls, floor or ceilings.

You may not have much control over how sound proof your room is, but there are some things you can do to control the sounds being created in your space.

Eliminate as much excess noise as you can:

If you have loud AC or heating, turn it off while you record.
Turn off notifications on your computer and phone.
Set your phone to airplane mode.
If you have pets, put them in a kennel or in a room far away from where you’re recording.
Put up a sign to let people know you’re recording.
Throw a thick blanket by the bottom of the door, or cover your windows to help reduce noise coming in.

Remember: Eliminate background noises before you hit record. Turn off fans, AC, or heaters, and set your phone to airplane mode.

Sound Treatment is reducing the echos and sound reflections in a room by adding things like sound-absorbing foam panels, bass traps, and sound diffusors.

The Different Kinds of Echo

Standing waves happen in rectangular rooms when a sound wave bounces off one wall, then back and forth between the two walls until the energy dissipates. This is most common in low-end frequencies, but can happen in high frequencies as well. Too much energy in the low-mid range (200-500hz) can cause a track to sound muddy or boomy.

Remember: Listeners notice sound quality. Background noise and room echo is distracting and degrades the listening experience.

Flutter echo is a ringing sound caused by sound bouncing off of parallel walls. You’ll hear this in the high-end of the frequency range.

Choosing the Right Room to Record In

We don’t always have a choice about the room we record in. When I started recording the seanwes podcast back in late 2013, I was recording in my “office” (which is just my dining room with a standing desk).

It was a small room with only a little furniture in it, so there was quite a bit of flutter echo in my recordings. I tried to compensate for this by bringing in some big couch cushions. I ended up moving to a spare bedroom and building some sound absorbing panels to help with the reflections. (They did help.)

The ideal room will be a room with quite a bit of soft stuff in it. Furniture like chairs, couches and bookshelves can all help absorb and diffuse sound waves.

“Pretty much every room has its own sound, when you walk in the room, there is an enormous amount of factors that control what that room sounds like. The size of the room, the materials that make up the floor, the walls, any furniture in the room, all these things affect the sound of that particular room.” – Joe Gilder, Home Studio Corner

The Kind of Mic You Use Matters

I've found that most dynamic microphones are less sensitive to background noise and reflections than condenser microphones.

Condenser microphones are more sensitive, more detailed, but they pick up EVERYTHING. So if you have a perfectly treated room with good acoustics, a condenser mic will give you great sound. If you are in a room that hasn’t been treated and soundproofed, you’ll run into problems.

If you have a noisy room or a room with a lot of echo and you can’t treat it, record with a dynamic mic instead of a condenser. Here's the gear I recommend if you're interested.

When I first started recording podcasts, I was using a Shure PG42. It’s a decent condenser USB mic, but I was recording in my dining room, so there was a lot of echo. If I had known then what I know now, I would have sold the PG42 and switched to a dynamic mic.

Mic Technique for Podcasters

Mic technique is another big part of how much room sound you’ll hear in your recordings. The further away from the mic you are, the more room sound you’ll hear. You should try to stay between 3 and 6 inches away from your mic while recording.

How to Treat Room Echo

I learned something new while doing research for this episode. It’s something called NRC: Noise Reduction Coefficient.

The NRC is a single-number (0 to 1) index determined in a lab test and used for rating how absorptive a material is.

So a 0 is not sound absorbant at all (a surface that is complete reflective when it comes to sound waves), and 1 means the surgace absorbs all sound (no sound reflection at all).

Here are the noise reduction coefficients numbers for some common materials:

Brick, unpainted .00 – .05
Carpet, indoor-outdoor .15 – .20
Cork, wall tiles (1″ thick) .30 – .70
Drapery, light weight (10oz.) .05 – .15
Fiberglass, 3-1/2″ batt .90 – .95
Fiberglass, 1″ Semi-rigid .50 – .75
Marble .00
Plywood .10 – .15
Moving Blankets 0.3 – 0.5

Some materials are more sound absorbant than others. Look up Noise Reduction Coefficients (NRC) numbers before buying materials to help absorb sound.

Sound Treatment Solutions for Podcasters

If you’re interested in buying sound treatment materials, here’s what you need to know.

1. Egg Crate Foam. Almost worthless for low end frequencies, but decent for absorbing frequencies in the mid and high mid ranges. Pretty ugly, so I’d suggest buying acoustic foam instead.

2. Portable Sound Shields. The idea here is to have a shield wrap around the back of your microphone to stop your voice from reflecting off the wall in front of you and bouncing around. These work well (from what I hear) and start at around $50.

3. Furniture. Bookshelves, desks and couches/chairs can all help with sound absorbtion/diffusion, depending on the material they’re made out of.

4. Blankets. Most blankets are only going to absorb the high end frequencies, and only if they’re thick. A good thick duvet will be your best bet.

5. Carpet. Having carpet in your room will help a little. Thicker is better, but don’t expect too much.

6. Bass Traps. Bass traps are usually wood frames with a lot of sound-absorbing mineral wool or fiberglass, usually at least 3 inches thick for absorbing extra low end frequencies. Very commonly places in the corners of a room.

7. Sound Diffusors. Sound diffusers are designed to scatter or disperse sound by using irregular hard surfaces to break up and scatter the sound waves. So imagine a table top covered with pieces of two by fours cut to various heights, that’s what most sound diffusion panels look like. You can buy these online or build them yourself.

8. Acoustic Foam. Most acoustic foam doesn’t do anything to stop low frequencies, but it will absorb the higher frequencies. If you hear a lot of flutter echo in your room, you can invest money in some acoustic foam panels to help treat it.

DIY Sound Absorption and Diffusion Products for Podcasters

You can build a lot of these absorption and diffusion products yourself. Check out:

Build your own acoustic foam shield
Build your own sound absorption panels (I used this site to build 6 of my own)
Build your own bass traps

Fixing Room Echo and Noise in Post Production

You can use EQ to remove or reduce certain frequencies, 400hz for example. Listen to your recording and try to identify the frequcies where the room echo is most noticable, and then cut a couple db. Be careful not to remove too much; that will make your voice sound unnatural.

There are various de-reverb and noise removal plugins available for audio editing apps like Logic Pro X and GarageBand, and Audacity has a noise removal feature built-in.

My favorite method so far for cleaning up room echo has been an EQ plugin to remove some of the low-mid range (between 300 and 1200 hz).

My favorite for removing background noise is a tie between Logic Pro X's legacy Speach Enhancer plugin (it has a nice denoise feature), or Izotope's RX plugins, which are often on sale for $29 (there's a plugin included in that pack called Dialog Denoiser that also works great for removing background and line noise).

One other great option is the Auphonic website, which will clean and enhance up to 2 hours of audio per month (you'll pay for more time after that). The only downside is that it'll take a little longer because you'll have to upload the audio to a website for processing instead doing it on your computer.

It’s possible to improve sound quality a little bit with post production, but it’s better to fix the problems before recording.

Finally, if you’re having problems with buzzing or other electronic noise in your recordings that you can't identify the source for, you may have a problem with your power supply.

Buy a Furman power conditioner ($60), plug your computer and audio gear into that, and see if that solves the issue. If it doesn’t, you may have faulty recording equipment or cables.

Q&A:

Kelsey asked: Can you discuss room noise related to living near an airport and frequent thunderstorms?

Sound proofing is going to be your best bet here, but it’s going to be challenging because you’ll have to do some major construction to sound proof a room. Some people build a “floating room”, which is a room frame inside a room to make it more sound proof. You can read more about that here.

Other than that, I would suggest learning more using post-production to fix or remove background noises. There are lots of software solutions for cleaning up audio files (see the several I listed above).

Terence Tang asked: Without A/C or fans on, it gets hot in the room. For podcasting, it’s fine because you can’t see the person sweating, but what about with video? I don’t want to be drenched in sweat on camera. Any suggestions?

First; are you sure your viewers don’t want to see your drenched in sweat?

Seriously though, you can buy a quiet fan to help push some air, or just run the AC at full blast until right before you hit record. If you’re recording with a shotgun mic, place the fan directly behind the mic to reduce the amount of fan noise the mic will hear.

For podcasters wondering the same thing: The supercardioid microphone I'm currently (Shure Beta 87A) using doesn't pick up fan noise, but you should always make a test recording to hear how your recording sounds. If you can leave a quiet fan running without having it be terribly noticable, go for it.

Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.simplecast.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude
Successful Podcasting: http://successfulpodcasting.com
Simplecast Blog: http://blog.simplecast.com/

How to Outline a Podcast Episode

Mon, 07 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0000

Today I’m sharing my process for writing outlines. If you've never written an outline for your podcast before, I'm going to teach you how today.

What does a podcast outline do for you? It helps you stay focused. It helps you make sure you cover all the topics you want to cover, or ask or answer the right questions. It helps you keep the episode on track.

Listeners want to know what they’re going to get from a show. You may have recorded an epic episode with tons of great advice and takeaways, but if you don’t tell the listeners in advance what they can expect, they won't know what's coming. People will tune out if they don’t know to expect or what the point of the episode is.

In this episode, you'll learn how to outline your episodes and explain the content of your episode at the start of your episode so you can keep people listening (and subscribing) to your show.

Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins

The purpose of outlining is to keep you focused on the big picture things before you dive into the small details.
Start your outline with your big idea. This will be the main topic of the episode.
In your intro, tell your listeners what they can expect. Explain to them why this topic matters and why they should care.
You don’t have to do any real writing inside of a mind map outline. It’s just for laying out the main sections and big ideas of the episode.
Invest some time every week doing additional research on your topic.
Find out what other people are saying about your topic.
Find and address any counter-arguments.

Why Outline?

If you’ve never done outlines before for your podcast, I recommend trying it.

If you don’t have an outline, you won’t have structure. Your show won’t feel like it has direction. You might forget important things.

If you’re doing an interview, you might miss important questions or forget to talk about certain things.

While doing an interview, it’s ok to go with the flow and the conversation, but your listeners will appreciate if you prepare topics to talk about with your guest.

The purpose of outlining is to keep you focused on the big picture things before you dive into the small details.

If you try to write out an episode from start to finish, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details of one section and lose sight of the big picture.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to what these folks have to say about outlining:

Scotty: I’ve been doing mind mapping to begin my process of outlining. I select the main takeaways that I can focus on and then prepare the outline. Sometimes my mind goes off the outline but that’s alright. Mind maps have been huge to stop me from staring at the cursor blinking wondering where to start.

Garrett: Outlining definitely benefits me. It helps me get my thoughts organized in advance so I can just start typing away and get the rough draft finished. I do think it’s important to not stick strictly to the outline. Sometimes you’re writing and you realize the order should be different, or you need to add something, or remove something, and that’s okay. The outline isn’t the definitive.

Let's start by walking through the sections of a typical episode outline, and then dive into more detail about each piece.

Please feel free to adapt this outline to meet your needs. This is how I outline and I hope it will give you a nice starting point but it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.

How to Start a Podcast Episode Outline

Scotty asked: Do you have your headline set before you plan your attack? Or do you start to write your outline then form an engaging headline from there?

Now, Scotty said headline, but I think he means title. I always start with the Main Topic or the Big Idea.

This can also be the title of your episode, but you don’t have to have the title before you start writing the outline. You can change the title later if you want.

Start your outline with your big idea. This will be the main topic of the episode.

After you have your main topic, what is your hook? What perspective or opinions do you have that are unique or interesting about this topic? What are your listeners going to take away from the show?

After you have your topic and hook, start writing your intro. Think about how you’re going to introduce this topic or idea to your audience.

After you have your main topic and intro, start thinking about the main points related to that topic that you want to make. These will be your headers. These are the main sub-topics or ideas that will make up the meat of your episode. You should also address counter arguments after you’ve made your main points, but I’ll talk more about that in a bit.

Finally, you’ll need to do a recap of what you talked about in the show, just to summarize everything. Then you’ll do your outro.

Let’s get into the details of each piece of your outline. First, the intro.

Your Intro Should Introduce You, Your Show, and the Topic of the Episode

If you’re just starting your podcast, it’s important to tell the listener a little bit about yourself. Tell the audience who you are, what you do for work. Tell them how old you are and if you have a family. Tell them what you do for fun in your free time. Talk about your hobbies. Talk about your goals for the future.

You don’t have to go over all your personal details in every episode, but remember that new listeners join all the time. It’s not a bad idea to do a quick introduction at the beginning of every episode just for the brand new folks.

Talk about why you’re doing your podcast. Tell your audience what your show is about. It’s ok to elaborate in your first episode, but try to describe the goal of your podcast in a single sentence in future episodes.

Tell your listeners who your show is for. What kind of people do you want listening to your podcast? Is there anyone you don’t want in your audience?

For example, my podcast is for people who care about making great podcasts. People who are interested in learning about audio and writing and technology and everything that goes along with podcasting. If you aren’t passionate about podcasting, this show isn’t for you. I’m not trying to reach everyone with my podcast, I only want the people that care intensely about podcasting.

In your intro, tell your listeners what they can expect. Explain to them why this topic matters and why they should care.

Talk about what problem you’re going to solve for them, or how the information can help them. Tell them what they are going to learn about or takeaway from the episode.

After you’ve introduced yourself and told your listener what you’re going to talk about, then it’s time to get into the meat of the show; the main points.

Key Points

So you have your main topic. What do you want to talk about or share with your audience about this topic? Do you have any stories that you can share? Do you have any great blogs posts you can mention and discuss?

This is where starting outlines in mind maps has been a game changer for me. For those of you wondering, I use MindNode for mind-mapping. It’s a great app.

Before I start doing any real writing, I add all the key points in a circle around the main idea in the mind map. Sometime I’ll have an idea for a sub-topic inside of a sub-topic, so I’ll throw that in real quick, but I’m not doing any real writing yet. I’m just trying to brainstorm all the big points that I want to hit.

You don’t have to do any real writing inside of a mind map outline. It’s just for laying out the main sections and big ideas of the episode.

After I have all my main points on the mind map, I start thinking about which order they should go in:

Would it be better to start with this subtopic?
Is there a chronological order that I should go in?
What should go first?
What should go in the middle?
What should go last?

It’s really easy to drag the little topic bubbles around and rearrange them in my mind map, which is another reason I like using mind maps for outlining instead of text documents.

Spend Time Researching Your Topic and Key Points

You should do some research before you get on the mic. What are other people saying about the thing you're talking about? Bring a couple examples to share. Read related blogs posts. Watch videos.

Even if you think you know a lot about a topic, there are probably still things you can learn from other people.

Invest some time every week doing additional research on your topic.

After you have all your sub-topics and sub-sub-topics laid out, dive in and start expanding those. This is the point where I export my mind map as a text document and import the text into my writing application, which is Typed (at the moment).

Talk About the Counter Points

After you finish writing about your main sub-topics, think about counter-points or opposing arguments. This is something I learned about in writing class in college.

You can strengthen your own argument by anticipating opposing arguments and addressing them before someone else gets a chance to bring them up.

It doesn’t always apply, but it’s still a good habit to develop.

In fact, I’ll do it right now. I’m thinking about counter arguments to my argument of “Outlining is a good idea.” What argument could someone make that counters mine?

You could argue that outlining in too much detail and reading from that outline can suck the life out of your delivery. Sean McCabe and I discussed this in episode five of my podcast.

My counter argument to that would be: Yes, writing and then reading an entire blog post can sound stale and lifeless, but only if you don’t write like you talk or if you aren’t good at reading what you’ve written in a way that is dynamic and interesting.

Also, I don’t think that most formats need that detailed of an outline. When I start doing interviews, I’m not going to write out my thoughts about every sub-topic. I want it to be a conversation, not me reading out a paragraph and then letting my guest respond. That’d be pretty terrible.

Do some research and see what other people are saying about your topic. Find and address any counter-arguments.

Try to find people who disagree with your opinion about your topic. What are they saying? What arguments are they making? Are any of their arguments valid? If not, why? Address them in your show. Try to put yourself in someone else’s head. Why do they think that way about that topic or idea?

Recap Your Episode

After you touch on your main points, go back through and collect the most important thoughts and points for your recap section. Think of this as the Too Long, Didn’t Read section of your outline. Make a quick summery of the best ideas of your outline. This is your last chance to give your listeners some takeaways that will stick with them.

What to Put In Your Episode Outro

There are a few things you need to do in your outro.

1. Thank your listeners. They just invested time listening to you. Make sure you tell them that you are grateful.

2. Ask for a review on Apple Podcasts. Make it easy for people to leave a review of your show, give them a link. The best time to ask for a review is right after you’ve provided a bunch of value to your listener. Many of your listeners will want to help you out. Remind the listeners that Apple Podcasts reviews can help your show get new listeners which will build the community. Good for you, but also good for them.

3. Read an Apple Podcasts review or other feedback you get. This creates a personal connection and shows the other listeners that you pay attention to your audience.

4. Tell people where they can find you online. Don’t assume that people know where to find you. Share your website, Twitter, Instagram, Linked In, Facebook, anywhere that you want your audience to find and interact with you online.

5. Ask for feedback. Ask for your listener’s thoughts and opinions. Ask them for permission to share those things on future episodes of the show. It might even become a topic for a future episode.

6. If you know next week’s topic, tease it. TV shows do this all the time. It’s a great way to get people excited for your next episode. It gives them something to look forward to. Of course, this only works if you have topics planned in advance.

Episode Recap:

Listeners want to know what to expect before they listen to your show. An outline can help you discover what the important takeaways are. Then you can share those takeaways in the title, show description, and intro.

Don’t start filling in the details before you’ve written your intro, main points and sub-points, and outro.

For your intro, tell your audience who you are and what you’re going to share in the episode.

For your main points, thank about and share the most important things you can think of that are related to your topic. Do some research and see what other people are saying about the topics. Try to find and address any counter-arguments.

For your recap, collect the most important thoughts and points. Summarize the best ideas of your outline. The recap is your last chance to give your listeners some takeaways that will stick with them.

For your outro, thank your listeners for listening to your show. Ask them for questions and feedback. Ask for a review in Apple Podcasts. Read an Apple Podcasts review. Tell them where they can find you online. Tease the topic for your next episode if you know it.

Q&A

Christopher asks: How do you approach outlines for material that works best with visual aides? Like screencasts instead of podcasting.

I think it works the same way. There are some topics that I’m not going to do podcasts about. Things like mixing and mastering are very hard to teach without visual aids.

I haven’t tried outlining for my screencasts yet, but I’m going to start because the ideas are the same. It’s still important to introduce the topic, talk about the takeaways and main points, and then do a recap and an outro.

Even if I’m not writing a super long and detailed outline, it’d still be helpful for me to plan a screencast using the process I described in this episode.

---

I had a thought yesterday that I posted to Twitter:

Pro tip for growing an audience: Focus on what you can do for them, not what they can do for you.

I was thinking about this because it’s really easy as a podcaster (or writer, musician, etc) to focus on what we’re getting out of the work we’re putting out into the world. We think a lot about how what we’re doing is going to benefit us.

I’ve started thinking about it differently. Instead of focusing on what I’m going to get out of something, I want to focus on what I can give to my audience.

It frustrates me when I see podcasters whose main motivation for growing an audience is so they can sell ads. If your focus is on getting to 15,000 downloads per episode so that you can get sponsors, it’s probably not going to happen.

Focus instead on delivering something valuable to the audience you do have, and answer questions for people who aren’t listening to your show yet. That’s how you grow an audience.

/end rant

More Cool Stuff to Check Out:

Recommended Gear: https://kit.com/thepodcastdude
Podcast: https://thepodcastdude.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepodcastdude
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thepodcastdude

If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts, or share the episode with a friend. Thank you! 💙

If you like this show, you might also like my new show, The Podcast News.

A Podcast About Podcasting, for Podcasters

Sun, 01 Mar 2015 14:00:00 -0000

Welcome! My name is Aaron Dowd. This is a show about how to make a great podcast.

If you're interested in learning how to start a podcast, grow an audience, or improve at all the various skills that are a part of being a podcaster, this show is for you.

In this trailer episode, I'm going to share my backstory, and talk about why I decided to start this podcast, who this show is for, and what topics I’ll be covering in future episodes.

2020 update: I've decided to change the title of this show from The Podcast Dude to Podcasting with Aaron. The main goal is the same, but I felt it was time to move on from The Podcast Dude title.

Little bit about me:

I'm a podcast producer and editor from Fort Worth, Texas. I started helping people make podcasts back in 2013. I was a full-time editor, producer, and consultant for a small podcast network and a bunch of independent shows for several years before joining Simplecast in late 2017 to be their customer success lead.

My job for the past 6 years has basically been to answer questions and help people make great podcasts.

I started this podcast in 2015 to share everything I'd learned about podcasting. After producing 75 episodes, I took a break to finish a couple of online courses about podcasting called Successful Podcasting, Logic Pro X for Podcasters, and GarageBand for Podcasters.

Topics I'll Be Covering in This Show

As I'm recording this trailer episode in September of 2019, I've already published episodes about a wide range of topics related to podcasting, including:

How to Start a Podcast
The Best Affordable Gear for Podcasting
How to Grow Your Audience
How to Outline a Podcast Episode
How to Record Audio That Sounds Good
How to Write Great Show Notes
How To Sound Natural When Reading a Script
How to Streamline Your Podcast Production Workflow
How to Get a Job Producing Podcasts
and more

Most of these episodes were recorded between 2015 and 2017, when I was working as a podcast editor and producer for Sean McCabe (you'll hear me mention seanwes in the show, that's him).

I hope you find my podcasting journey helpful and inspiring (remember, you don't have get everything perfect the first time).

My Story (How I Ended Up a Professional Podcast Editor and Producer)

My story really starts with music. My mom is a classically trainer singer who also plays guitar and piano, she taught me (and my siblings) how to sing and gave us piano lessons when we were very young, and I started learning how to play drums when I was 12. Pretty soon after that I decided I wanted to be a professional drummer, but I wasn’t sure how to make that happen or if I could even make any money with it.

As I got into my late teens and into my college years, I didn't really have a plan for how to achieve my dreams, so I ended up just kinda drifting for awhile, working lame jobs and wasting a lot of time and money.

I woke up one day when I was 21 and realized I hated the life I had, so I decided I'd make a big change, set some goals, and start pursuing my dreams. I wanted to be in a band and tour, but I knew that most musicians don’t make much money, and I didn't have much money, so I wasn't sure what to do.

I had started working in an automotive parts factory around that time, but the work sucked and didn't pay much, and I didn’t want to be broke my whole life. I got the idea in my head that I could find a job I could do on a laptop so that I could make money while traveling with a band.

Hey Google, How Do I Make Money From a Laptop?

So in my early twenties, I googled "how to make money from a laptop". I found some articles about how it was possible to start a web design business and work from anywhere, so I started trying to learn how to be a web and graphic designer. I discovered podcasts around this same time too, and started listening to shows like Radiolab and This American Life, but also independent shows about business and marketing and web design and audio engineering, all kinds of interesting shows. This was all between about 2009 and 2012.

How I Got Into Podcasts and Podcast Production and Editing

Podcasts played a huge role in my self-education because I could listen to shows while working, driving, or doing chores. I was learning valuable things constantly and being introduced to ideas and potential opportunities I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.

Around this same time, I also started studying audio engineering. Being a musician, I was interested in recording, mixing and mastering because I wanted to make demos for my bands.

I started a podcast with some friends I met on a now defunct social network called App.net (the show was called Social Converse). I knew the most about working with audio, so I volunteered to be the editor, and that’s where I learned how to record audio, get audio from all the co-hosts, edit it together, and get it published in an RSS feed and out into the podcast apps/directories.

Around that same time, I noticed that a lot of my favorite independent podcasts didn't have terribly great audio quality. There was a show I really liked called the Shoptalk Show. Back then, they were recording their Skype conversations and using the raw audio from that for their podcast. This was a pretty common practice back in 2012, and is actually still pretty common.

There would occasionally be problems with the Skype audio, and I really liked the show and thought I could help, so I sent them an email and said, “I'm a big fan, and I’d like to help you by taking over the editing for the show. If you can get everyone on the call to record a track on their computer and send the files to me afterwards, I’ll put them all together, so some editing and mixing, and make it sound good.”

They agreed and even offered to pay me a little bit of money for each episode (which was super exciting for me). So that was really the start of my career as a podcast editor and producer.

Around the same time I started working with the Shoptalk Show guys, I saw a job posting on Authentic Jobs from Dan Benjamin (founder of the 5by5 network) who was looking for an audio engineer for his podcast network. That planted a seed in my mind: Maybe podcast editing could be a full-time, remote job for me. (I didn't get the job then, but I did end up editing shows for 5by5 for awhile in 2014.)

I had also joined a band around that same time, so I was traveling around, playing shows, working weird hours and filling all my free time either listening to podcasts or editing them.

The guys from the Shoptalk Show kept referring people interested in starting podcasts to me, so I had a few more weekly clients and I was answering a lot of questions about podcasting and helping people start shows.

I really enjoyed helping people make podcasts and answering questions, but I got tired of writing responses to the same questions over and over, so I put up a page on my personal website offering podcast editing services and also wrote a few blog posts to answer some of the most frequently asked questions. After a few months, my site showed up in the #1 on Google if you searched for “Podcast Editor”. That brought more questions, but also more clients.

I started getting more and more podcast editing clients, and eventually I had enough to quit the day job I'd landed a few months before as a junior front-end web developer.

All this happened between about 2010 and early 2014. Around that time, I met a hand lettering artist from San Antonio who wanted to start a podcast network and online community for artists and entrepreneurs. I ended up helping him start a show and a small podcast network, and that was around the time I started this show too.

A few years later, I joined my favorite podcast hosting company, Simplecast, to help them with customer support, education, and more.

Anyways, that's a not-so-quick introduction to me. Thanks for listening!

You can check out podcastingwithaaron.com/episodes to see a full list of the available episodes for this show.

If you have a question that I haven't answered in one of those episodes (or if you just want to say hi and introduce yourself), you can reach me via email at aaron@thepodcastdude.com, leave a voicemail at 8173818219, or drop a comment on my YouTube channel.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the show, and happy podcasting.

Aaron Dowd
September 2, 2019