0:14

This is sir Gene and joining me today

0:16

is a dude named Scott. Scout

0:19

tell the folks a little bit about yourself.

0:21

Well, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on Gene.

0:24

So I'm a 58

0:26

year old guy and

0:28

when I was 50 I

0:31

got this epiphany of

0:33

is this all that's left I've,

0:36

I've, I've always been, what

0:38

I call a ham and egger. I've always gone

0:40

to work. I, I raised my kids,

0:42

I bought a house, I put money back.

0:44

I did everything that

0:47

a boomer is supposed to do.

0:49

And then when I turned 50, I was

0:51

like, I need more in my life.

0:53

So I actually was

0:56

really into podcasts. I listened to

0:58

mark Maron's podcast and I listened

1:00

to some NPR podcast

1:03

and I thought, What

1:05

would a local podcast look like? And

1:08

so I searched out local

1:10

podcasts and a lot of the major cities

1:12

had 'em. And I was in South

1:14

Bend, Indiana at the time, and

1:17

my city didn't have it. And

1:20

South Bend is like right across

1:22

the border from Michigan, so they

1:24

call that area missa. And

1:27

I wanted to talk to folks in

1:30

Indiana and Michigan and my area.

1:32

And so I started what was

1:34

called the Missa People Podcast.

1:37

And I would go

1:39

to them, they would come to me. I built

1:41

a little studio, my house and all that.

1:44

And I really got into

1:46

just talking to people who own businesses,

1:49

talking to people in politics,

1:51

talking to artists, musicians,

1:53

just anybody who I thought

1:55

had some value that could be

1:57

highlighted on the show. And

1:59

I did that for. I think,

2:02

I think I did that for about three years,

2:05

and I started that about seven years ago.

2:08

During that time, I

2:11

was still looking for more. I was, I was

2:13

having fun with the podcast, it wasn't a hit,

2:15

it wasn't something that's gonna climb

2:17

the Apple charts or anything like that, but people

2:20

listened to it. I got good feedback

2:22

and I got to meet a lot of really great

2:24

people. I made friends through it, which was really

2:27

the thing I needed to do. I needed to reach out and

2:30

get my friend list bigger. And

2:33

that did happen. I still keep in contact

2:35

with a lot of the folks I talked to, but

2:37

I was still looking for more. And

2:40

when I was 52, I

2:42

started doing standup comedy and

2:45

know, It's interesting, I, I've heard a number

2:47

of folks deciding to do that

2:49

later in life.

2:52

yeah, it's

2:52

cuz I'm getting Yeah, it seems

2:54

like it because maybe it's just cuz I'm getting

2:56

older and my friends are all getting older. But it sure

2:58

seems like people that

3:01

didn't really talk about any

3:03

interest in doing standup all of a sudden taking

3:06

standup classes or, getting a lot

3:08

more interested in going out there and doing it. Which

3:10

I, I find interesting cuz to me it always seemed

3:12

like standup's a young man's game.

3:15

Yeah. And, and it really is

3:17

because, coming up in South

3:19

Benmore it was at the time, it

3:21

was pretty much 20

3:24

somethings, a couple 30 somethings,

3:26

and then me

3:27

Mm-hmm.

3:29

And there was one older dude that came

3:31

from, and I think he was a few years older

3:33

than me, that came from a little bit east

3:35

and would come to some of the open mics I went to.

3:37

But other than that, I was pretty much

3:40

the grandpa of the, of

3:42

the comedy community there. And

3:45

the, the, the way I got started was

3:47

actually pretty funny because they I,

3:50

I had, I'm in the IT field

3:52

myself as a consultant and

3:55

I had been with the same

3:56

So, so is everybody else that listens.

3:58

Yeah, I know Alright.

4:00

it sure seems like that's the biggest demographic.

4:03

You know what it, people do listen to

4:05

podcasts and they listen to a wide variety.

4:09

We're geeks and we're geeks

4:11

in a lot of different areas,

4:13

Yeah.

4:14

But yeah, I I had worked at the same place

4:16

for 17 years and I've always been a

4:19

dry, sarcastic

4:21

dude and I would kinda

4:23

liven

4:23

Wait, wait. A dry sarcastic IT

4:26

guy? No.

4:28

but an IT guy that can actually communicate.

4:30

So that's, sometimes you don't get that

4:32

with it

4:33

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

4:35

but I, so I'd been there for,

4:38

I, I think at the time it was 15 years I worked

4:40

there, a total of 18 and they

4:42

they did a company party every

4:44

year, and it was a holiday

4:46

party, but it was, they always

4:48

had it in like January after

4:51

the holidays. And I never

4:53

went, I, I never had a desire

4:55

to go to that

4:57

particular party because I saw

4:59

the people I worked with enough and

5:02

it just wasn't, wasn't something I needed

5:04

to do. So the guy who was

5:07

doing the, the

5:09

entertainment, they had gotten a

5:11

magician like three years in a row. So

5:14

he comes to me and he says, I want you to do standup

5:16

for the company party.

5:18

And my answer was a very quick, no,

5:21

I'm not a standup. And I

5:23

forgot about it. Then he came

5:25

to me again and said, I really want

5:28

you to do it. And I said, no,

5:30

again. He came to me again, and

5:32

finally I went home and told my

5:34

wife, I said, man, Michael's

5:36

just bugging the crap out of me to do

5:39

a standup for the company party.

5:41

And she said, well, you want to do it, so just do it. So

5:44

I did it and I really enjoyed

5:46

it. And really my standup was

5:49

pretty much just roasting my coworkers

5:51

and, and that's easy

5:53

to do, especially when you've been working with him for years

5:56

and it went over well. Everything,

5:58

everything was fine. I was not,

6:00

I would not consider myself a standup

6:02

comedian, at that point, but

6:05

I got the itch and started. There's only

6:07

in South Bend there was only like one or two

6:09

open mics that you could go to on

6:11

a weekly basis. And I found them and

6:14

started going to him and

6:16

really made a lot of really

6:18

great connections with young people pretty

6:21

quickly and didn't

6:24

get really good at standup for a long time.

6:26

But I went to the Mikes made friends,

6:29

kept working on my act and

6:31

just. Did

6:33

it as a hobby more than anything

6:36

and just kept going at it. And

6:38

then finally I got good enough at

6:40

it that people were asking me to be on shows,

6:42

on showcases and things like that. And

6:45

then long story short, a friend of mine

6:47

had a really nice rock, rock

6:49

and roll bar. He had like the best sound

6:51

system I've ever seen, and

6:54

he had Thursday nights open. So I

6:56

asked if I could do shows on Thursday nights,

6:58

and I did either a showcase

7:01

or I'd bring a headliner in from Chicago

7:04

or a local headliner and

7:06

put on a show. And that

7:09

went over pretty good. During that time

7:11

I was trying to get better

7:13

at standup

7:15

Mm-hmm.

7:16

of course, listening to all the podcasts

7:19

I listened to, I looked for standup

7:21

podcasts and I found

7:23

some that were pretty good and.

7:27

I found some that were pretty bad. As, as

7:29

there's a ton of bad podcasts out there, but

7:32

I f I found some podcasts that

7:35

were okay, but none

7:37

of them had exactly what I wanted.

7:39

And I'm, I'm a guy that doesn't get

7:42

into small talk or inside

7:44

jokes or just

7:46

three guys sitting around

7:48

shooting, shooting bull, that kind of stuff.

7:51

It, it, it doesn't really appeal to me.

7:53

If you're talking about a specific subject

7:55

and you deep dive into it, that's

7:57

what gets me. And so, because

8:00

there wasn't anything out there, and I had been

8:02

doing the Missa People podcast, I

8:04

said, okay, let's, let's start a podcast

8:07

that I would wanna listen to. And

8:10

I am, I, I'm kind of a, a

8:13

real knee jerk type guy, so,

8:15

And a lot of people who start podcasts are

8:17

like that. They say, okay, let's start a podcast.

8:19

And tomorrow they start their,

8:22

they do their first episode. I

8:24

this I wanted, I wanted it to be good.

8:26

I wanted it to be special. I wanted to make

8:28

sure it was fulfilling

8:31

everything that I wanted it to do.

8:33

So I really spent about a year

8:36

researching and putting together what I wanted my

8:38

podcast to be before I even.

8:41

Oh, wow.

8:41

and putting that kind of work

8:44

into it. I, I, I lined

8:46

up the guests I wanted to have when

8:48

I went on to launch it. I had my

8:50

artwork ready, I had a mission statement.

8:54

My mission statement's very simple. The

8:56

podcast is called Behind the Bits, and the mission

8:58

statement is Serious Comedy Talk

9:00

really easy. But it took me a long

9:02

time to get to that. And in

9:05

getting to it, I

9:07

really felt like I had something

9:09

good to, to bring out. I wasn't,

9:12

I didn't have any expectations other

9:14

than, ho hopefully learning

9:16

about comedy myself, recording it and

9:18

having other people learn at the same time.

9:21

So I launched it. I don't know. And,

9:23

and I, I know that you're

9:25

not I, I know that you're not a 20

9:28

year old, but I don't know if you're in my

9:30

age range, but I don't know if you remember

9:32

Tom Dreesen.

9:34

No, I don't.

9:35

Okay, so he was he, he came

9:37

up at, at the comedy store

9:40

in the seventies with folks like, Letterman

9:42

and Leno and all those folks, and

9:45

was really, really good. He, he

9:47

came from Harvey, Illinois, suburb

9:49

of Chicago and was

9:52

really a very popular comedian.

9:54

You'd see him on Mike Douglas, Diana

9:57

Shore, John. He did Johnny Carson like

9:59

30 times. He did a Letterman

10:01

like 35 or 40 times, but was

10:04

really good. And he was one of those guys

10:06

that. You would think should have had

10:08

a sitcom because he,

10:11

he, he he was a good looking guy. He, he

10:13

really had great stage presence

10:15

and all that, but he got hooked up with

10:17

Frank Sinatra through

10:19

Sammy Davis, Jr. In

10:21

the, I, I think it was towards the

10:23

end, or like middle

10:25

of Sinatra's career in the eighties,

10:28

and actually worked as Sinatra's out

10:30

opener for about 14 years.

10:33

And during that time, he got all

10:35

kinds of great offers for sitcoms.

10:38

He did a talk show for a short period of time.

10:40

Just all kinds of great stuff happened

10:42

to him. But he really liked working for

10:44

Sinatra. He d he didn't

10:46

wanna be that sitcom

10:48

guy, and so he just kept doing

10:50

that. And that was pretty much what he did.

10:52

And, and he's still a

10:54

standup. He's 83

10:56

now, 84. And

10:59

he still does standup and he does

11:01

a show where he goes around and talks about

11:03

his years with Frank Sinatra. So

11:05

this guy's kind of my comedy hero

11:07

and I got him as my first guest.

11:10

Okay.

11:11

And it was really, it was really

11:13

one of those things that started

11:15

everything off on the right foot for me. I

11:17

know that not everybody knows who Tom

11:19

Dreesen is because he chose not

11:22

to get in the limelight. Like his hi,

11:24

his, one of his best friends is David Letterman,

11:26

so he decided not to be that. But he's

11:29

one of the best comedy writers

11:31

in the world. Can, can work a hundred

11:34

percent clean. Is, he's, he,

11:36

he's like an all-American. Comedian

11:39

and I just, I just loved what he did,

11:41

and he came on the show

11:43

and I wanted to make

11:46

sure that I was talking to

11:48

comedians from all walks

11:50

of life at all points in their career.

11:53

So I talked to some of the old folks

11:55

from the comedy store. I talked to

11:57

new comedians that were just starting

12:00

to get like feature gigs

12:02

or headlining gigs and everything

12:05

rolled in and did really, really

12:07

well that first year. Now, my listeners

12:10

were

12:10

many episodes did you end up doing?

12:11

In the first year, I, I did every week.

12:14

So I d and I, there was a couple extra,

12:16

I did like a Covid episode that

12:18

I threw in there. So probably 53,

12:21

54 episode.

12:22

Okay, well that's pretty good. They say the magic

12:25

number for podcasts is about 50,

12:27

is if, if you can

12:29

get past 50, you're probably

12:31

gonna keep doing it for quite a while, because

12:34

statistically, like 90% of podcasts

12:36

never make it to 50.

12:38

Yeah, it's and really

12:40

82% don't make it past

12:43

seven

12:44

I believe that. Yeah. There, there is a

12:46

lot of the, the, nice try sort

12:48

of podcasts out there.

12:50

yeah, yeah. And, and I

12:52

think it's mostly lack

12:54

of planning and, and folks

12:56

really don't know, first of all

12:59

what it takes. I mean, you do three podcasts

13:01

and you know what it takes to put the work

13:04

behind it. So you're gonna talk to me

13:06

for a while, and the work you have to put

13:08

behind it is a lot more than the work

13:10

that you're putting in now.

13:12

Yeah, well, I, I try to automate as much as possible

13:15

and and make it as painless as possible

13:17

after the, the fact. But yeah, I am, I'm

13:20

definitely one of those guys to the

13:22

chagrin of some of my friends that doesn't

13:24

think the podcast is ready until there's

13:26

post-production. A lot of people like

13:28

to just hit the record button and

13:30

then be done. There's

13:33

very few people. There are some, but there's very

13:35

few people that can do that and,

13:37

and have it sound great. But typically

13:39

there are people that came over from radio

13:42

and doing live from the get-go. And so

13:44

they have a different sense of, what it,

13:46

what it means to get everything

13:48

just perfect when it's live. The

13:50

vast majority of people doing podcasts can't

13:53

do that, but yet they

13:55

never learn the post.

13:57

Exactly levels

13:59

and getting, getting

14:02

rid of dead air and all that kind

14:04

of stuff. Did, did I read,

14:06

did I read Gene that you used script?

14:08

I do.

14:09

So I, when I found script,

14:11

it was like, like

14:14

that eureka moment,

14:15

Mm-hmm.

14:17

I mean, I, I absolutely love the fact

14:19

that you can pop it in there, get the transcript,

14:22

delete from the transcript,

14:24

transcript, just like a Word document

14:26

and do, do studio

14:29

sound for my guest who had

14:31

a crappy microphone. And it's

14:33

just really fantastic what you can do with it.

14:36

Yeah. It's a, it's a really good product. It's

14:38

not cheap because you're, you're basically

14:41

paying a monthly fee that comes close

14:43

to what I pay for Adobe. But

14:46

it is for the time being

14:48

anyway, somewhat unique. Now, Adobe

14:51

does have a beta of their

14:53

podcast product that is very, very similar.

14:56

It does the Texas speech. You can edit

14:58

the audio using the text portion

15:00

of it and it's going to allow you

15:02

to do live streaming as well. So

15:04

once that goes into full production,

15:07

it's part of the full Adobe package. I think

15:10

the script's gonna have a hard time holding

15:12

on to the number of subscribers they do

15:14

because it's, it's gonna be essentially

15:17

a freebie. If you're already subscribed to Adobe,

15:19

you're gonna get that product as a

15:21

free add-on. But for

15:23

right now it's not quite there.

15:25

The beta does the basic functionality,

15:28

but Descript still has a lot more features.

15:30

And I, I've got a link to script in,

15:32

in all of my uh, Descriptions the

15:35

podcast, the info section of the

15:37

podcast so people can click

15:39

on it, go check it out. But I've

15:41

done podcasts. I think my first

15:43

one I did in 2006

15:47

or seven. And I've,

15:49

so I've done a bunch of 'em over the years

15:52

and I don't think I

15:54

could do three podcasts.

15:57

I actually do a much stuff on YouTube as well, but

15:59

I don't think I could do three podcasts right now

16:01

if it wasn't for products like the script,

16:04

because in the old days

16:06

I still did post, but I did it manually

16:08

by listening to the podcast slowly

16:12

and then removing words at a

16:14

time, removing dead space, doing everything

16:16

in addition that needs

16:19

to get done to clean it. But

16:22

that process would typically be

16:24

two to three times longer than the recording

16:26

portion. With the script,

16:28

I find it's closer to one-to-one, and

16:31

if it's the same person, like it's a podcast

16:33

with the same co-host, then I,

16:36

I might be done in half an hour. It might go

16:38

really fast.

16:40

yeah. I've, I, my experience

16:42

has been exactly the same. It was, it was

16:44

two to three hours for every hour of recording,

16:47

just going through, manually backing

16:50

up. And, and it was, it

16:52

was awful. And with the

16:54

script, it's, it, it

16:56

depends on how bad the person

16:58

sounded on the other end. Cuz sometimes you need

17:01

to run it through a few different things

17:03

and check the equalizer,

17:05

do different equalizer settings to get them

17:07

to sound even somewhat

17:10

good. But the fact that you can

17:12

just go through, remove filler words and

17:14

do all, all the stuff that I was

17:16

doing manually, just really,

17:18

and it's got some great video features

17:21

too, cuz I've done some promo videos and

17:23

you can do the same thing. And the nice thing

17:25

is, is I never get it right the first time.

17:29

I can just keep rolling and just take

17:31

out what I don't want.

17:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think my,

17:34

my only real complaint about script

17:37

is that they,

17:39

they give you a certain amount of time

17:42

for the transcription, and

17:45

I've had multiple instances where

17:48

I've loaded something in, it

17:50

starts transcribing, and then like 10

17:52

minutes later I realize I,

17:54

it's the wrong thing, or I had the wrong voice

17:56

or something,

17:57

Yeah.

17:58

and then it's like, oh, well you're ready. Use a

18:00

half your transcription time for this month. I'm like, God,

18:02

damnit.

18:04

Yep.

18:04

it, there are situations

18:06

like that where I've, I've ended up using

18:08

up a good chunk of transcription time

18:11

for the month by redoing

18:13

a project rather than having

18:15

new projects. And the other thing

18:17

about it is I have noticed when you do,

18:20

when you do tracks, like I typically

18:22

record my track and then the other person

18:24

on separate tracks, and then that

18:26

way you've got isolation for

18:29

for cleanup. But, but

18:31

doing that descript doubles

18:34

the amount of time that it sucks up from your pool

18:36

of time for transcription because they,

18:39

they basically use that

18:41

time up. And I, I can't remember how many hours,

18:43

it's like, I think I have 40 hours a month or

18:45

something that I get, but I typically use

18:47

it all up. But it's

18:50

when you have two tracks, even though

18:52

only one is speaking at a time, An

18:55

hour long recording is two hours

18:57

that it pulls out of your, your total

18:59

pool of time for transcription because

19:01

it processes each of your tracks individually.

19:05

Whereas if you just, do more of

19:07

an amateurish job, you dump it all in one track,

19:09

you stick it into script, then

19:11

it'll do, its best to analyze who's

19:13

speaking based on the way the voice sounds,

19:15

and then does a very good job, but

19:17

it's actually doing a more complicated job cuz

19:19

it has to recognize stuff, but it's only

19:21

charging you for the one hour.

19:23

right?

19:24

And I've, I've sent them emails about them. Like, guys,

19:26

this model is just like, it discourages

19:29

good audio

19:30

Yeah. Well,

19:32

and and the other problem is, is

19:34

I, I don't know if you experienced this, but the

19:36

last few months has just been buggy

19:38

as hell,

19:40

Yeah. They want two new version, which is

19:42

I don't, I never asked for it. I was fine with

19:44

the way the old version worked.

19:46

Yeah. The old, the old storyboard. But

19:49

they did they put a fix out, I think it was

19:51

this week, and I know

19:53

I've, I've edited down

19:56

I think three episodes since

19:59

that, and I haven't had any of the problems

20:01

I had previously. So I

20:03

think the bug fixes have helped.

20:06

Yeah. And they do put 'em out on probably

20:09

multiple times a month. There. Seems like there's an update

20:11

all the time for it. So they are doing

20:13

good work there. But I think they also

20:15

realize that they've got a limited amount of time

20:17

before Adobe is fully out in release.

20:21

And one that happens. It's gonna

20:23

be really hard for like, they're gonna have to either

20:25

cut prices big time or give you

20:27

a lot more features.

20:29

Yeah. Yeah. And

20:31

I'm I'm on the annual plan, so

20:34

I hope, I, I hope

20:36

that they keep, keep up and be at,

20:38

at least as good as they are until

20:40

Adobe gets their finished project

20:43

product out.

20:44

Yeah, well, I think they will be, but it's,

20:46

it's gonna be a question of can they retain

20:49

enough subscribers to

20:51

pay for the infrastructure of their company once

20:53

that happens,

20:54

Right?

20:55

I'm probably gonna move, I mean, I, I already pay for Adobe.

20:58

That's why do I need another 60 bucks

21:00

a month on top of

21:00

Right. No doubt.

21:03

So, but yeah, it's a good product. I

21:05

mean, I think it was, when it came out, it was absolutely

21:08

revolutionary. But, and even still, there's really

21:10

nothing that does all of what it

21:12

does all in one package.

21:13

Right, right.

21:16

So

21:16

Yeah. Yeah. The

21:17

what other tools are you using?

21:19

I, I'm sorry.

21:20

What other tools are you using?

21:22

So really, I dump, I dump

21:24

a lot of stuff into Audacity

21:27

for a first time run through

21:30

and, and that, that's

21:32

fine. If I feel like

21:35

I'll, I'll do, I'll do the cheat thing.

21:37

If I feel like the person on the other end

21:40

had pretty good sound and I had pretty

21:42

good sound, I'll just combine the tracks and

21:44

I will dump them into the

21:46

script as one track so that

21:48

do it that way. Got

21:49

eating up the time Yeah.

21:50

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing is if they,

21:53

if they didn't have that limited

21:56

amount of time, and I understand why they do it, but

21:58

also I feel like,

22:00

well, at least you should double the

22:02

amount of hours for the standard

22:05

pack. Cuz I, I buy the, the bigger size

22:07

package because of the hours and

22:09

if they like gave you 40 hours

22:12

for the standard package that

22:14

would be, I think I'd

22:16

be a lot more inclined to, to stand

22:18

them or, recommend them a lot more. And.

22:22

I don't know a lot. It's true with a lot of these podcast

22:25

things like, I don't know we

22:27

could talk to you about what, who you like in hosting.

22:29

And I've tried a lot of 'em, and I, I know a lot of

22:31

the, or at least I've interviewed, let's put it that

22:33

way, a lot of the CEOs of the

22:35

hosting companies but the,

22:39

the, they all seem to have,

22:42

I shouldn't say all, most of them have

22:45

a limit on the number of hours

22:47

of podcasts that you put out.

22:49

Mm-hmm.

22:49

And I just think

22:52

that's, that's stupid. Like

22:54

it, the cost is so marginal

22:56

for them on whether you upload

22:59

10 hours a week, or sorry a month,

23:01

10 hours a month, 20 hours a month,

23:04

or 50 hours a month. Like there's virtually

23:06

no difference. To the hosting

23:08

company in terms of their cost

23:10

for that bandwidth. It's, it, it's

23:12

negligible, but yet that's

23:14

how Muslims seem to be. Yeah,

23:17

that's how they, Muslim seem to be pricing this

23:19

stuff. I would think a bigger cost is just

23:21

like holding on to all your

23:23

past episodes indefinitely. Like

23:25

that would be the bigger cost, not the amount

23:28

of hours that you do per month. Because

23:30

the, there, there are certainly people that

23:32

just do like an hour a week and then

23:35

four hours a month is plenty of time

23:37

for them. But they're already limiting

23:39

you by the podcast. So you're,

23:42

you have, they're basically charging per

23:44

RSS feed,

23:45

Mm-hmm.

23:46

but then they're also saying, well, but also

23:48

don't add more than 20 hours worth per

23:51

month on your Rs, or whatever the number is for

23:53

the

23:53

Yeah.

23:54

companies out there. So again, there, I feel

23:56

like, like that model

23:59

isn't really optimal because it.

24:01

It's, it puts a limit to

24:04

where there's not much cost difference

24:06

for the company.

24:07

Right.

24:08

Who do you use? Who do you typically work with? For

24:10

hosting?

24:11

so like you, I've been

24:13

through quite a few hosts.

24:15

I started with Libson,

24:17

Mm-hmm.

24:18

I did Pod Bean, I

24:20

did Buzz Sprout, I

24:23

did Spreaker, and

24:25

I have landed on Red Circle.

24:28

Never heard of 'em.

24:29

Yeah, they are, they're a

24:31

small company. They, I

24:33

mean, their market share is super

24:35

small, but it's got

24:37

a couple features that I like. First

24:40

off, they don't limit how much audio

24:42

you put up

24:43

Okay. All right. Good.

24:45

and second, you pay one price

24:47

for as many podcasts as you wanna

24:49

Really? Wow.

24:50

Yeah,

24:52

Okay.

24:52

whi, which is nice because I've got behind

24:55

the bits. I just started your pod

24:57

guy and I also host

25:00

the podcast that I produce for

25:02

my workplace. So I got three podcast,

25:04

one price.

25:06

Okay. And then how do they compare? As far as features?

25:09

Features are pretty good. They do

25:11

have programmatic ads that you

25:13

can make a little money with, and I think you

25:15

just need 500 downloads per episode,

25:18

Mm-hmm.

25:19

As an average. They've got that.

25:21

They do bring in sponsors for

25:23

larger pre-roll, mid-roll ads.

25:26

I've been with them for a year and I think I've done

25:28

three of those. And it's usually a

25:31

30 day engagement, four,

25:33

four episodes, and they

25:35

pay, anywhere from. I,

25:38

I think my best was like seven 50

25:41

and my worst was like two 50.

25:43

Mm-hmm.

25:44

they've got that their their stats

25:46

are pretty much like everybody else's

25:49

Mm-hmm.

25:50

basic, basic demographics, where

25:52

they listen from. You know what, what Podcast

25:54

player. They use, male or female,

25:57

all, all that kind of stuff. Their, their

25:59

dynamic ad insertion

26:02

is really one of my favorites.

26:05

And the reason I like it

26:07

is, say I bring a sponsor on

26:09

by myself and I,

26:11

I've done that quite a few

26:13

times and I wanna run

26:15

it for a month. One of the things I can say

26:18

is not only are you gonna

26:20

get the four episodes that

26:22

you bought, but it's also gonna

26:24

run on all my previous episodes

26:26

because that dynamic insertion is there

26:29

and I can just say, boom, run it

26:31

on all 151 episodes.

26:33

And that's, that's a good selling point and

26:36

it's super easy to

26:37

Mm-hmm.

26:38

It's

26:39

and then when you're done with the month, then you'd

26:41

take it out and

26:43

Yeah. And then when, when it's all done, I

26:45

replace it with the next one,

26:47

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Got it. Okay.

26:49

And then, so the red circle, is that like a reference

26:51

to the record button?

26:53

I think it is. Yeah.

26:55

I was trying to figure that out. It's like, where are they getting that?

26:57

Yeah. I've never, they did have

26:59

a weird outage. It

27:01

was about two or three months ago where

27:04

I think it was almost, it was

27:07

probably eight hours or so or so where I

27:09

couldn't even log in. And I, I've

27:12

experienced outages with other hosts before,

27:14

but that is the only outage I've ever had

27:16

with them.

27:17

hmm. Okay. So

27:20

we'll definitely, I'll have to check 'em out. See how

27:22

they compare. I've been really happy with buzz

27:24

Sprouts for several years now.

27:27

Mm-hmm.

27:27

They've, they make the process

27:30

very. As, as

27:32

quick and simple as possible. For me,

27:34

especially with multiple podcasts, it's really

27:36

easy just to switch between them. But I

27:39

am paying like 25 or 24,

27:41

whatever it is, bucks per podcast in there.

27:43

Yeah, and I

27:46

think I paid 35 for three.

27:48

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah,

27:51

that's uh, definitely a pretty good deal. Interesting.

27:54

And then have you, have you added

27:56

Podcasting 2.0 features?

28:00

So you've mentioned that, and

28:02

I don't even know what podcasting 2.0

28:04

is.

28:04

Yeah. Yeah, we gotta fix that. Well,

28:07

so podcasting 2.0 and

28:09

if you, if you go to, it might

28:11

be podcasting 2.0 as well, but if you go

28:13

to podcast Index,

28:15

Uhhuh

28:15

Dot com, I believe, let

28:17

me just type it in here myself, so I'm, I'm

28:20

telling you the correct one. Then that will

28:22

give you, oh, it's not podcasting,

28:24

it's pod, is it maybe.org.

28:27

Podcast index.org.

28:30

Let's try that. Yep. It is.org. It

28:32

is a, it's a nonprofit, so that makes

28:34

sense,

28:35

I know I checked it out because you mentioned

28:37

it when we were talking and I checked it

28:39

out and my podcast is there, so

28:42

Mm-hmm. Yeah, they, they

28:44

typically will they will add

28:46

automatically podcasts after

28:48

a while from the other, like if you submit

28:51

it to Apple or Google or somebody but you can

28:53

also directly submit it to them, but

28:55

they als You can also find out more about

28:57

Podcasting 2.0. So podcasting

28:59

2.0 is actually was developed

29:02

by the guy that created

29:04

podcasting in the first place. Adam. And,

29:08

and obviously there's plenty of other people involved.

29:10

I don't wanna neglect anybody else, but he's

29:12

kind of the, the main headline

29:14

guy. And I dunno if

29:16

you know that history of podcasting

29:19

either, but essentially Adam Curry

29:21

and Dave Weiner were the two guys

29:23

responsible for creating the standard

29:26

initially for podcasting. And

29:28

then Adam effectively

29:31

gave it to Steve Jobs

29:33

or Steve Jobs asked if it could be

29:35

a part of the Apple

29:38

software when the iPod

29:41

came out. Not the iPhone, but the or

29:43

maybe it was the iPhone. I don't know. I get

29:45

this story wrong. Adam's obviously the

29:47

guy to tell a full story on this, but.

29:51

Essentially the index that

29:53

Adam put together was taken over

29:55

by Apple, and it's been in

29:58

Apple hands since Dent, but

30:00

probably about three years ago. He

30:03

got a little frustrated the fact that there's

30:05

been zero innovation from Apple,

30:07

like there, essentially just have a much

30:09

bigger version of the thing that he

30:11

had given to them and

30:14

have not done anything to include

30:16

new features et cetera.

30:18

And it, and so

30:20

he started this podcasting 2.0

30:22

project, which is the

30:26

expansion of the podcasting

30:28

RSS to include new

30:30

new fields in there to make

30:32

podcasting more modern. And

30:35

there's a whole bunch of new stuff that's in there.

30:38

And again, I wanna leave it to the people that are actually

30:40

working at it to do its justice,

30:43

but it includes things like

30:45

you can have. A monetization

30:47

of podcasts directly from the listeners

30:50

if you have a podcasting 2.0

30:53

compatible app, which now I

30:55

think there's about 20 of them that

30:58

are podcasting 2.0 certified

31:00

in the app store and

31:02

so not the official Google one, not the

31:05

official Apple one, but a whole bunch on each of those platforms.

31:09

And they utilize

31:11

Bitcoin or actually Satoshi's,

31:14

which are I think one 10000000th

31:16

of a Bitcoin. It's basically a small denomination.

31:19

And so it's, it's a, it's a reasonable

31:22

denomination to be able to do small transactions

31:24

then, cuz you're not gonna send somebody, one

31:27

1000000th of a Bitcoin like

31:29

that. That seems like a weird

31:31

denomination. So Satoshi's

31:34

is the standard and it's, it's a one-to-one

31:36

mapping with Bitcoin, it's not a different

31:38

currency, it's actually the same. It's

31:40

the same Bitcoin currency. It's just

31:42

using a different

31:44

server for it. And, and also

31:47

it's done in real time. Whereas Bitcoin,

31:49

I dunno if you do Bitcoin stuff at all, but

31:52

it takes a little bit of time, like

31:54

anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour

31:57

for your transaction to actually go through

31:59

the blockchain. So it,

32:02

Bitcoin is not good for

32:04

fast transactions. But

32:07

with these apps, for example, you can

32:09

load in, let's say 10,000

32:11

Toshi, which is, I

32:13

don't, I don't know at this point what that equates to.

32:16

Probably like 15 bucks or something,

32:18

Mm-hmm.

32:19

maybe less. could be less.

32:22

And And then you can just specify

32:24

that for every minute of listening to

32:27

this podcast, for example I wanna

32:29

send them a hundred, a hundred soshi

32:31

per minute,

32:33

Ah,

32:33

which would be, I don't know, 3 cents or something, whatever.

32:36

Maybe more than that. Again, don't ignore

32:38

the math guys, cuz the cost of satoshis

32:40

changes constantly. Depending. When you're hearing this,

32:43

you may be either laughing because it's too low

32:45

or laughing because it's too high, but

32:47

either way you're like, you're totally off.

32:49

Yes, I know I'm off. But the bottom line

32:51

is it's a way to enable

32:54

listeners directly to pay

32:57

for the podcast directly

33:00

to the creator and

33:02

bypass the need for advertising or anything

33:04

like that.

33:05

Hmm.

33:05

And Adam's podcast,

33:07

which is one of the longest running podcasts ever, I think

33:09

in the 14th year or something like that has

33:12

been. Using

33:15

what he described as a value

33:17

for value model, which is, it's

33:20

always free and it's always ad

33:22

free. But the

33:24

idea is that if you like

33:26

it, send the donation in.

33:29

Mm-hmm.

33:30

And he has managed to

33:32

grow that as a concept just using

33:34

PayPal initially and then adding

33:37

more different ways to do it. And I

33:39

think a lot of people are really appreciating not having

33:42

advertising. And so a lot more people

33:44

are willing to contribute financially

33:46

directly. If you have a podcast, it doesn't

33:48

include advertising. And so with podcasting

33:51

2.0, you're now able to do that

33:53

without having to take the time

33:55

to go to PayPal, put in their

33:58

email and decide how much you wanna

34:00

send, all that stuff. That takes time and

34:02

effort simply by saying,

34:04

yes. Whenever I listen. And

34:06

only for the minutes that I listen, there

34:09

will be a donation sent automatically in

34:11

Bitcoin. So it's a, it's

34:14

a cool concept, and that's just one of the new features.

34:16

There's a whole bunch of other features that are

34:18

part of the standard as well. But like

34:21

transcriptions built in transcriptions,

34:23

multiple images so that you can, if

34:25

you have multiple chapters in

34:27

your podcast,

34:28

I haven't chaptered, I, I haven't done chaptering

34:31

yet.

34:32

so yeah, if you do that not only can you add

34:34

chapters, but you can also you, like,

34:37

all my podcasts include the full transcription

34:39

right. In the podcast as well. So

34:41

a lot of stuff like that. And this script

34:43

will spit out the the transcript automatically,

34:46

of course. But it's, it's something

34:48

that I think a lot of. Podcasters

34:52

by more technical people. People that are interested

34:54

in the technology of podcasting have

34:56

already moved to, cuz it's been around for a few years.

34:59

But of course the big guys are always gonna be the slowest

35:01

to make any,

35:03

Right.

35:04

or move to anything that augments the standard

35:06

and it's fully backwards compatible with the old

35:08

standards. So, if you're, if you're

35:10

creating a podcast episode in something

35:13

more traditional, then it's

35:15

all of these podcast 2.0 apps will

35:18

be more than happy to just give you the subset

35:20

of the features that have always existed.

35:22

Okay.

35:23

But I would definitely encourage you to check that out,

35:25

get a little more info, cuz it does add a

35:27

lot a lot more features to

35:30

what people are used to, which is

35:32

what originally Adam, gave to Apple

35:34

back over a decade ago, back when jobs was still

35:36

alive.

35:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

35:38

I did. I took a look at, I

35:40

took a look at the site and one,

35:43

one of the amazing things that. Popped

35:46

up to me was, like 440,000

35:49

new podcasts launched in the,

35:51

what, like the last six months or something?

35:55

Yep.

35:55

Yeah.

35:57

Yeah, there's, it indexes three, 3.8

35:59

million of them total podcast rate now, I

36:01

believe.

36:01

yeah, it's, it's mind boggling.

36:04

Mm-hmm. yeah, it's it's almost half a million

36:06

in the last 90 days. 365,000

36:09

in the last 30 days. But, but

36:11

again, you're what you mentioned

36:14

earlier, which is that

36:16

the vast majority don't get past 10,

36:18

and of the ones that get past 10, most

36:20

of those don't get to 50. So

36:23

it, there, there are a lot of orphan

36:25

podcasts, that's for sure.

36:27

Yeah. And one thing

36:30

I would like to see is

36:32

Mm-hmm.

36:33

if your podcast doesn't work and

36:36

you've. Seven episodes

36:38

up there, please just delete

36:40

it.

36:41

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

36:43

So, I mean, I,

36:46

I don't know how you feel, but I

36:48

feel like, I make an analogy

36:50

to if, if I tell my friends

36:53

I have a podcast, it's almost like

36:55

telling 'em I'm vegan

36:57

Mm-hmm.

36:58

It's like, oh shit, I gotta listen to

37:00

that now. Or it's

37:03

it because podcasts have

37:06

a bad name because there's so many bad ones

37:08

out there.

37:08

Mm-hmm. There, there

37:10

are a lot of 'em. And, but

37:13

that's, I mean, it's the same thing with books, right?

37:15

It's, it's Right now, especially

37:18

when you can self-publish books, when you

37:20

don't require a publisher, there's no editor

37:22

going through your stuff and saying,

37:24

yeah, this is worth us as a

37:26

publishing company to invest money.

37:28

Mm-hmm.

37:29

the good side of self-publishing

37:31

is the authors keep way more money

37:33

cuz they used to get, pennies and the dollar

37:35

for their work.

37:36

Yeah,

37:37

side of it is that there's nobody really

37:39

filtering for quality either.

37:42

right. There are some terrible, terrible

37:44

books out there.

37:45

yeah. Yeah. And not, both in content,

37:48

but also in presentation. There's some

37:50

books that have great info that really just require

37:52

a professional editor to go through and

37:54

redo them.

37:55

right?

37:56

And that's something that we gotta put up with.

37:58

And I, I think that you

38:00

really have to rely on, on,

38:02

and I'm mostly talking about Amazon here, but rely

38:04

on the ratings. Of

38:07

the people that have bought the book to determine

38:09

whether or not you wanna spend the money on it, because

38:12

the cover might look great cuz that's usually

38:14

paid somebody, most people pay somebody else to

38:16

create the cover. I've never done that. I've created

38:18

my own covers for my books because I think that's

38:20

a waste of money to pay somebody for that. But, but

38:23

also, I've not tried to do anything super

38:25

fancy either. But but yeah,

38:27

it, it's, I think it's a similar thing with podcasts.

38:30

Like, you're if, if the podcast has

38:32

no reviews, it's like,

38:34

well, you're on your own. This may suck,

38:36

or it may be good, you never know. It's

38:39

got some reviews that, that gives you a little better ideas.

38:41

Lisas if you're gonna enjoy it or not.

38:43

Yeah. Yeah. The, the only

38:46

I, I get like, I do the Amazon

38:48

unlimited. What whatever you

38:50

can get the free books for, and I will

38:52

try out a book. And all I've

38:54

really have lost

38:57

is my time if it's not good.

39:00

Yeah. Well, the time's, the one thing

39:02

you can't replace, so

39:03

Yeah.

39:05

Yeah. That's, that's not a

39:07

I'd rather lose money than time.

39:09

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I,

39:11

I agree with that and I'll, I'll

39:13

give it a chapter or two before I decide.

39:15

I'm gonna delete it off my Kindle

39:17

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for

39:19

sure. Yeah, so while I of jumped

39:21

into the whole podcasting 2.0 stuff

39:25

I guess, you, you, I stopped you when you were

39:27

going through your, your

39:29

history or background, and we

39:31

got, I think to the point where you were doing

39:34

Podcasting for, or podcasts

39:36

both for your region

39:38

and the comedy one, and

39:40

what else were you doing?

39:42

Yeah. So the behind

39:44

the bits is, is my comedy

39:46

podcast, and it's been going for three

39:48

years now, and I never,

39:50

I never had big expectations

39:53

of it, like taking off. And

39:55

it turned out. Second

39:58

year, it did take off. I won

40:00

an award best Interview style

40:02

podcast award from one

40:04

of the places, and it was a vote award,

40:07

although I was nominated by them. I

40:09

can't remember the name of the place,

40:11

but I was nominated by them and

40:14

I, I rallied for votes

40:16

like crazy, and I ended up winning that.

40:18

And then that gave me a big bump

40:21

because they put it on their Twitter

40:23

feed and all that kind of stuff. I got

40:25

some pretty good guests and things kept

40:27

rolling. Especially during the pandemic.

40:30

It things rolled really well. I

40:32

got some great guests, people had time,

40:34

they were listening. And my listenership

40:36

grew to a point where,

40:38

I could, I could bring on sponsors, I

40:40

could I, I could run programmatic

40:43

ads and make a decent living at

40:45

it and not a decent living, but pocket

40:47

money. And it really, I

40:50

got a little bit of clout. I had publicists

40:53

coming to me saying, Hey, will you have

40:55

my comic on? And stuff like that. And

40:58

I really got into, okay,

41:00

what makes a podcast

41:02

good? And, my success

41:05

was really just because I kept at

41:07

it and, and listen.

41:09

Listened to my listeners when they

41:11

gave suggestions and things like that. And

41:14

so I really got passionate

41:16

about pod podcasting

41:19

and I started one for the place I

41:21

worked at in Indiana. And then I

41:23

worked for a company out of Birmingham here and

41:25

I started one for them. And I thought,

41:28

I, I, I was talking to other podcasts

41:30

cuz, cuz you know how we get around and talk

41:32

and they kept saying,

41:35

one of the things I like to do is

41:37

help other people start podcasts. And

41:39

I thought, well, Let me get into that

41:41

game. And so I started a

41:43

podcast in January called Your

41:46

Pod Guy, and I've got a

41:48

website called your pod guy.com,

41:50

where I will consult with you and get your

41:52

podcast started for you. And

41:55

the only thing is, is most people focus

41:57

on what I consider the

41:59

ticky tac stuff, like your microphone,

42:02

your the software you use. I mean, we both

42:04

love the script, but you know, it's

42:06

really not the most important part of your podcast.

42:08

It is what is your podcast

42:10

about? What do you wanna accomplish with

42:13

it and what's your mission? So I,

42:16

I started your podcast to help people

42:18

get through what I think is the

42:20

important part before they even start

42:22

podcast.

42:23

Mm-hmm. So,

42:26

other than the software and hardware,

42:28

what kind of things are you asking

42:31

'em, or, or, helping them decide?

42:34

Yeah, so the first thing I ask

42:36

them is, what do you wanna accomplish with your podcast?

42:39

Mm-hmm.

42:40

And I'll tell you, I work with mostly

42:42

people who have a business that

42:44

they want to promote. So, a really

42:47

good, I work, I'm working with

42:49

a real estate agent, and a really good thing

42:51

for a real estate agent to do, to

42:55

cement that trusted advisor status

42:57

is do a podcast. And it doesn't even

42:59

have to be a weekly podcast. Everybody

43:02

thinks they have to do it weekly. A month

43:04

or monthly or twice a month

43:06

is totally fine. But if

43:08

a realtor has.

43:10

The knowledge that, okay, this

43:13

is, this is what is gonna help

43:15

you sell your house. If you remodel

43:17

your bathroom and you spend $8,000,

43:21

your return is gonna be X. Or

43:23

if you paint, your return

43:25

is gonna be X. Putting podcasts

43:28

out about that and then sell. And buyers, buyers

43:31

wanna know how to buy, buy

43:33

a house and first time

43:35

buyers. I tell you what, I owned my house.

43:38

I had my house for 30 years in South Bend,

43:40

so I hadn't bought a house for a long time. I didn't

43:42

even know what markets were like. And

43:44

guess what? I'm in Huntsville, Alabama now,

43:46

and it's nuts,

43:48

Mm-hmm.

43:49

I wish I listened to a couple podcasts about

43:51

it. So a, a realtor

43:53

that puts a podcast out. It's a great marketing

43:56

thing as long as it's informational

43:58

and it's not just a commercial.

44:01

So, are you still doing the, the

44:04

Indiana podcast after you moved?

44:06

no, that's gone

44:07

Okay. I was gonna say, that'd be weird.

44:09

Yeah, I I actually gave that up

44:11

I think in the first year I did

44:13

behind the beds, cuz I just couldn't do both.

44:15

Mm-hmm. Got it. That

44:17

makes sense. So you're, you're basically working

44:20

with businesses that wanna utilize podcasting

44:22

as part of their marketing efforts.

44:24

Yeah.

44:25

Got it. And now do you work with their marketing

44:27

people or who do you typically work with?

44:29

so it depends, if it's a single

44:31

real estate agent, I'm working directly

44:33

with them

44:34

Sure, sure.

44:35

and once we get the framework

44:38

done, that's when I say, okay, let's

44:40

start looking at what you know,

44:42

what's the basic equipment you need

44:44

and how can we get

44:46

this to where you can do a

44:48

podcast for dummies and

44:51

do this yourself. Or

44:53

who do you want to farm out the editing to?

44:55

Who do you wanna farm out your social media

44:58

advertising too? Help them

45:01

find the right people to get

45:03

everything moving. And then let

45:06

'em go. One of the things that I see

45:08

out there in podcast land is

45:11

there's all these gurus that want you to pay

45:14

'em so much money a month in order to

45:16

get their podcast in the top, top

45:19

10 apple or whatever. My thing

45:21

is, is I want to, I want to give you

45:23

the most information and give you

45:25

the, the best start

45:27

you can to your podcast, and then

45:30

get outta your life and let you do your podcast

45:32

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you're really you

45:34

hit 'em before they start, or.

45:36

yeah, it's, that's really the best thing,

45:39

and I will work with a podcast, say

45:41

they are thinking about a rebrand,

45:43

say things aren't, say they've gone for a year

45:45

and they've plateaued as far as

45:48

listeners, and they wanna know what to do next.

45:50

I will, I will consult in that

45:52

type of manner as well.

45:54

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And

45:56

then what's, I guess, what are you

45:59

seeing as the, the

46:01

size of listenership that these companies

46:03

are trying to get to? Obviously the more, the better,

46:05

but you know, there, is

46:07

there a point that, which it's not worthwhile

46:10

for them to do the podcast? Or is there a point

46:12

at which like their investment in doing the

46:14

podcast actually is sufficiently

46:16

large to pay back? What are you finding with

46:18

those?

46:19

So when you think about it, so

46:21

let's take my company for instance. My company

46:24

does a anywhere

46:27

from 15 to

46:29

20 minute episode twice

46:31

a month.

46:32

Mm. Mm-hmm.

46:34

it's very, very short

46:36

on one topic. Say, say we're talking about

46:39

cybersecurity and the different

46:41

things that. Available

46:43

to you that weren't, besides

46:46

antivirus that can help you keep

46:48

your network secure. So we'll do a

46:50

episode, an informational episode

46:52

that is really targeted towards

46:55

like, sea level people that

46:57

can say, they can take away

47:00

a couple good nuggets and take

47:02

that back to their IT person

47:05

or contact

47:07

us to help 'em out. And

47:09

as far as the time that's invested

47:12

in it and the money that's invested in it, first

47:14

off, it's zero because

47:16

it's hosted for, it's hosted on my

47:19

account for free

47:20

Mm-hmm.

47:21

and second, as far as the time

47:23

I spend about probably

47:28

an hour. For

47:30

every episode. And then I give it to

47:32

our marketing person and she probably

47:34

spends another hour putting posts together,

47:36

social media posts, cutting out snippets

47:39

and, and things like that for LinkedIn.

47:42

And so really it's two

47:44

hours an episode and

47:46

we get maybe, I

47:49

th I think our best was maybe

47:51

a hundred. However, it's

47:53

the right people. It's our own clients.

47:56

It's our clients sharing it with their

47:58

peers. And we've already

48:00

seen things come of it. And

48:02

the other thing is, is our employees

48:04

are listening to it. So they

48:07

are understanding what our initiatives are

48:09

and how we're talking to our clients. So

48:11

you've got a level one tech. He

48:13

understands that we are saying

48:16

that. Spam filter for Office

48:19

365 is probably not

48:21

as good as you want for your email.

48:24

Yeah.

48:25

So it's, it's really, it's,

48:28

I think quality is

48:30

a lot more important than quantity when

48:32

you're doing a business related podcast.

48:35

Mm-hmm. that makes sense.

48:37

And what, like what type of clients

48:40

have you been working with in terms of size of business?

48:42

Now you mentioned some real estate agents. What,

48:44

what other types of clients seem to be

48:46

in the right niche for you?

48:48

right. So, I'm just starting,

48:50

so I'm, I, I've got three of

48:52

'em going. I, I'm work, I'm

48:54

working pro bono for a

48:57

guy in Boise, Idaho who

48:59

is starting a comedy podcast,

49:02

Oh, okay. That makes sense.

49:04

I've got a local real estate agent here in Huntsville.

49:07

And I've got a guy in South

49:09

Bend, Indiana who developed

49:12

an application for people who

49:14

sell like Amazon, F

49:16

B a, eBay, Etsy

49:18

all, all, all the different, all

49:21

the different ways to sell

49:23

your stuff or sell from

49:25

a warehouse. And he basically

49:27

takes all that and puts it together

49:30

so you know where your inventory is, you

49:32

know where your sales are coming from, and

49:35

it's basically an API that you

49:37

can plug into just about anything. And

49:39

I'm working with him to get his podcast

49:42

going. That talks not only about

49:44

what he does, but all

49:46

the stuff that's adjacent, all the things

49:49

that Amazon FBA sellers go

49:51

through.

49:51

Sure. Yeah. That

49:54

I, I probably wouldn't mind listening to that myself.

49:56

I've got products on Amazon.

49:58

And there's not, there's not a ton of those

50:00

out there.

50:02

Mm-hmm.

50:02

That's, that's one of the markets that's not

50:05

overly saturated. I, I,

50:07

I like this podcast 2.0

50:09

site, but I use listen notes when I'm

50:11

looking for podcasts that are

50:13

in a certain area, and

50:16

it's got a real good keyword search function.

50:19

And I use that. And I know when

50:21

I search that there wasn't a whole lot

50:23

in that area,

50:25

Yeah. Well, I mean, podcasting index is

50:27

really. like the site

50:29

is only just to tell you a little bit about the company.

50:31

Yes, you can get some stats and data out of there,

50:34

but for the most part, the focus for them

50:36

is on working with developers

50:38

to create the new standard.

50:40

right?

50:41

So it's really as much as anything a proof

50:43

of the concept in live.

50:45

And it's also, I mean, one of

50:48

the motivating forces here too,

50:50

initially for them was to have a

50:52

site that isn't big tech.

50:55

Mm-hmm.

50:56

because it, it happened on the heels

50:59

of all the de platforming

51:01

that big tech started doing to where, apple

51:03

dropped Alex Jones podcasts

51:06

and a bunch of other people's podcasts and, and

51:08

literally the same day Google Drop

51:10

'em and everybody else. And you

51:12

have people that literally had millions

51:15

of listeners all of a

51:17

sudden being homeless

51:18

Yeah,

51:19

and obviously people have

51:21

their own political opinions on this matter, but

51:23

it doesn't matter to me anyway,

51:26

on whether they were far lefty or far righty

51:28

or, or centrist. The

51:30

idea that the

51:33

people controlling the indexes

51:36

can make arbitrary decisions

51:38

on who they don't want

51:41

to be in the index. That's very dangerous

51:43

in my mind because that type of

51:45

power should not be within

51:47

one company. And of course now we've had the Twitter hearings

51:50

on in in, in Congress showing

51:53

that not only was it Twitter making

51:55

decisions, but it was actually f b

51:57

i bringing decisions to Twitter

51:59

that they would like to see happen.

52:01

Yeah.

52:02

And all of that stuff is just like, whoa.

52:04

This is not what was envisioned

52:06

originally for any of this stuff.

52:09

Like when Google started doing indexing

52:11

of websites, we didn't think

52:13

that. Eventually, the only

52:16

results we see are companies that pay Google,

52:18

Yeah.

52:19

and that's what we are seeing right now. Everybody

52:21

on the front page and usually the first

52:24

few pages, they all,

52:26

one way or another give

52:28

money to Google. Whether it's directly through

52:30

placement on the search results or through,

52:32

it's through AdWords or whatever else. You're

52:34

seeing paid results. You're not seeing the

52:36

actual index. And that's

52:39

why I've, I don't use Google for Index either.

52:41

I, I haven't for a while there, there

52:43

are more neutral sources out

52:45

there. And so with Podcast

52:47

Index, being a, a nonprofit

52:49

off in its own little world, it,

52:52

it really means that you

52:54

can't de platform a podcast.

52:57

Right. And

52:58

to find, but you can't de platform.

53:01

yeah. And I think that's important. There's, I,

53:03

the, the whole

53:06

freedom of speech thing is

53:08

really getting, like

53:10

you said, it's, it's dangerous right now.

53:13

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's,

53:15

it's people that are your age.

53:17

My age. Like, we took a lot of this stuff for

53:19

granted. Like this wasn't a question.

53:21

The, the idea that, Ford Motor Company

53:24

can say, only certain people can drive

53:26

Ford cars.

53:27

Yeah.

53:27

Are you kidding? That was not a thought anybody

53:30

had. It's like, wait, didn't that all

53:32

disappear in the sixties when we got integrated

53:34

schools? And now all of a sudden

53:37

there's a resurgence of that. Not,

53:39

not necessarily based on skill and color, but definitely

53:42

based on ideologies.

53:44

Yeah

53:44

so it, it is I think it's important to support

53:47

companies and, and organizations

53:49

that really promote true freedom of speech

53:52

and podcasting relies on freedom of speech.

53:54

exactly.

53:55

There is no podcasting in the book. 1984.

53:58

Yeah. It's funny on

54:01

behind the bits, I, I

54:03

made a rule for myself that

54:05

I'm gonna have guests on that

54:08

don't share my ideology as

54:10

far as politics or religion

54:12

or anything like that. I was gonna

54:14

bring, cuz I'm a lefty and I was

54:16

gonna bring on people who are funny and

54:19

people who have done something

54:22

that I think adds value. So I've had

54:24

some pretty. Pretty

54:27

heavy conservative guests on,

54:30

and Tom Dreesen is one of 'em. And

54:32

I get these notes from my

54:35

liberal friends are like, why

54:37

do you, why'd you have that guy on?

54:39

Mm-hmm.

54:40

And I'm like, because he adds value.

54:43

This isn't a politics podcast.

54:45

It's about standup comedy.

54:47

Yeah.

54:48

And I've even, so I've, I've had

54:50

people wanna cen censor me and I've, I've

54:53

had people say, I'm not gonna listen to your show anymore

54:55

cuz you had this dude on.

54:57

I know. It's crazy.

54:58

Yeah.

54:58

and, and I don't know if you had to listen to any

55:01

of my previous episodes, but I actually just had

55:03

a a 20 year old Gen

55:05

Z kid on, well, I call him a kid.

55:07

Because I wanted to,

55:10

in as much as I can make fun of all those people

55:12

his age, I, I wanted to have the, that

55:15

perspective directly from the horse's mouth

55:17

Mm-hmm.

55:18

by anybody else and see,

55:21

what are they thinking?

55:23

And is this, is this

55:25

something that is similar

55:28

to what I remember at that age?

55:30

Or is this like completely

55:32

crazy wacky shit that that

55:34

I've never went through or any

55:36

of my friends? And then

55:38

I also had somebody that was like 10 years

55:40

older, somebody that was in his late twenties

55:42

after that. And now I've got you,

55:45

you're, you're 58 you said, and

55:47

self-identified lefty. So that'll be fun for

55:49

a lot of my listeners. I think I definitely

55:51

skew right? I'm, I'm very

55:53

much a libertarian, so I was, for

55:56

a good chunk of my life, I was the

55:58

seen as a lefty by the conservatives.

56:01

Now I think we're best friends,

56:03

so it's things have shifted

56:05

in our lifetimes, that's for sure.

56:07

It has, and it's funny you talk

56:09

to the. You

56:12

talked to a, a Gen Zer

56:14

Mm-hmm.

56:15

their point of reference for their

56:17

opinions is so much different than ours.

56:19

Oh yeah.

56:21

We didn't have a thousand

56:23

people telling us

56:26

this is wrong when, when

56:30

they have no basis of saying it's wrong

56:32

on social media when we were kids.

56:36

Yeah, absolutely. And I remember

56:39

even in college, like

56:41

having some professors that were clearly

56:44

ideologically socialist. There's no

56:46

two ways about it. But even

56:49

then, it like you, well,

56:53

at least I remember being smart

56:55

enough to know that, okay, well I

56:57

should expect that cuz this is the last

56:59

bastion of socialism was universities.

57:02

Well, it, it seems like, good luck finding

57:04

somebody who isn't a socialist in in

57:07

academia right

57:08

Yeah.

57:08

it's 100% taken over

57:11

and, and to the point where

57:13

when, when you and I were in, in college, like

57:16

somebody being called a socialist or communist

57:18

was an insult. It's not

57:20

anymore to these kids. Like they think, well,

57:23

yeah, those are the good ideas. This is where

57:25

we need to bring the United States to in

57:27

order to save it.

57:28

Mm-hmm.

57:30

So it's, it's a very different mentality

57:32

and it's not the sort of old, union

57:35

socialism. It's very

57:37

much a Chinese style socialism

57:39

that they're into.

57:41

Yeah. And that's scary.

57:42

Yeah, it's I would've not predicted this, that's

57:45

for sure. I mean, I'm usually pretty good at making

57:47

predictions. I find myself being right

57:49

more often than not. But the

57:51

direction that the youth right now

57:53

is going, I would not have predicted. I

57:56

just would've figured they all be, just brain

57:58

numb zombies looking at their phones, which

58:00

is what I make fun of 'em for. But politically,

58:02

I, I think they're quite different

58:04

than what I would've expected for sure. So

58:06

do you, you, I'm not a, like,

58:09

I'm not a big comedy guy. I've certainly

58:11

gone to a few comedy shows, improv

58:13

things over the years, but it's

58:16

not really an area I follow. So,

58:18

other than the big guys, like, obviously

58:21

Joe Rogan, who will have comedians

58:23

on occasionally not as often as he used to these

58:25

days. And Mark Maron and

58:27

like, who else do you really like

58:29

out there for comedy

58:30

It's, yeah. Most

58:34

of the comedy podcasts I

58:36

like are more independent,

58:39

like mine.

58:40

Mm-hmm.

58:41

There's, there's one that's brand

58:43

new of a couple guys

58:45

from Indiana who have both been

58:47

doing comedy. I think

58:49

one's like 10 years in, and

58:51

the other one's like 13. And it's

58:54

called Matt and Dwight. Just my, and

58:56

I've, I've interviewed both of 'em on my show,

58:58

but they talk about

59:00

like comedy 1 0 1 stuff,

59:04

and, and the,

59:06

the title doesn't. Tell

59:09

you what you're gonna get. So the, they

59:11

made a mistake there, but that's

59:13

okay. But they, I,

59:16

and I wanna say, I wanna say their

59:18

Listenerships, probably they're friends

59:20

right now, but it's one, it's one of

59:22

the best podcasts for

59:24

any new comedian

59:26

that wants to understand what

59:29

it's all about, what, how to put

59:31

a set together, how to get paid,

59:33

all that kind of stuff. And

59:35

What's the name of the podcast

59:36

got, I'm sorry,

59:37

What's the name of the show

59:38

it's Matt and Dwight just might,

59:40

and Matt is with one

59:42

just might, that is a horrible name.

59:44

Yeah, it's

59:46

Ugh. They need to hire

59:48

you.

59:50

Yes. Yeah. They definitely

59:52

need a rebrand, but I think,

59:54

I think they're doing it just for fun. But the

59:56

content, and for me, the

59:58

most important thing on a podcast is content.

1:00:01

Mm-hmm.

1:00:02

And it's absolutely

1:00:04

fantastic. And there's another guy, and he's

1:00:06

been doing it for years and he does

1:00:08

a show called The Art of Bombing Podcast

1:00:11

and the what he does,

1:00:14

his podcast center out centers

1:00:16

around a comedian coming

1:00:18

in and talking about their

1:00:20

worst bomb and how they

1:00:22

recovered from it.

1:00:24

Yeah, that sounds pretty interesting. That's a good name.

1:00:26

That actually ties into the

1:00:28

topic and having people talk about

1:00:30

their worst experience is always entertaining,

1:00:32

for sure.

1:00:33

yeah, he does, he does a great job

1:00:36

with it.

1:00:37

Mm-hmm. No, that's, that's cool.

1:00:39

And then are you still doing standup

1:00:42

locally where you're at now, or are you just

1:00:45

busy with the podcasting stuff?

1:00:46

So I've, I've gotten

1:00:49

away from it and I'm just starting

1:00:52

to get back into it. The,

1:00:54

the move, the move was hard. I mean, when

1:00:56

you've been in the same place all your life

1:00:58

and you move 600

1:01:01

miles south to Huntsville, Alabama, it's,

1:01:03

it, it, it was a shock to the system So,

1:01:07

and I'm just starting to get to

1:01:09

know the, the folks around here

1:01:11

and the thing with comedy, it's

1:01:14

definitely not like riding a bike. So

1:01:16

if you, if you stop for

1:01:18

a period of time, you've gotta make up

1:01:20

that time again,

1:01:21

Mm-hmm.

1:01:22

And at my age, I, I, I, I'm

1:01:24

making decisions on where I wanna spend my

1:01:26

time. And I've

1:01:29

decided after, last year I did

1:01:31

so little. I did like one page

1:01:33

show and a few open mics. And

1:01:36

this year I've decided, okay, I'm gonna

1:01:38

put a little bit more effort towards it and

1:01:41

maybe try to get myself on some showcases

1:01:43

and stuff like that. But I'm also

1:01:46

redoing my material, getting,

1:01:48

getting my chops back by doing

1:01:50

open mics and stuff like that. So this

1:01:53

year I will do more than last year,

1:01:55

but probably not as much as

1:01:57

the years before when I was in South Bend.

1:02:00

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So how do you like Huntsville?

1:02:03

I love it. The re we came, so

1:02:05

I, we've got two kids. My daughter

1:02:07

is 32

1:02:11

and she lives in the DC area. And

1:02:14

my son. Got

1:02:16

a job for NASA outta college

1:02:19

and came to Huntsville

1:02:21

and

1:02:22

say it's a big airspace industry there.

1:02:24

yeah, and the funny thing

1:02:26

is, is he studied meteorology

1:02:29

and was planning on Washington working

1:02:31

for the National Weather Service and

1:02:34

he did some presentation in Chicago

1:02:36

and a NASA guy was there and he

1:02:38

said, I, I think you'd be a good fit. And

1:02:41

they actually brought him down

1:02:43

and paid for his master's degree

1:02:45

and gave him like an internship,

1:02:48

a paid internship. And now he's like

1:02:51

in management or something. But

1:02:54

we wanted to be close to one of our kids and

1:02:56

we were in DC enough times

1:02:58

to know that we didn't wanna live there. So

1:03:01

Huntsville, it was.

1:03:02

Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:05

That makes sense. It's And I think in

1:03:07

a lot of ways Alabama gets a bad

1:03:09

rep. It's, it's a beautiful country out there.

1:03:11

The weather's good. The it,

1:03:13

it's just not well known for anything

1:03:15

particularly other than, poor education,

1:03:19

So, but it doesn't mean

1:03:21

that that affects

1:03:23

the the city life and everything else.

1:03:25

That's very different out there.

1:03:27

And Huntsville's, I think about

1:03:30

50% bigger than South Bend.

1:03:32

So it's, it's a bigger city, but

1:03:34

it still has a small city feel. And,

1:03:38

the mountains are, hiking in the mountains

1:03:40

is great. Their mountains aren't big,

1:03:42

but they're, they've got great trails.

1:03:44

than we, we have here in Texas, that's for

1:03:46

Yeah. a little flat.

1:03:48

Yeah.

1:03:49

Yeah. Our, our mountains a hundred feet tall,

1:03:52

so,

1:03:52

Yeah. But yeah, I really,

1:03:54

I've really enjoyed it here. The one

1:03:56

thing I do miss is we were by Lake

1:03:58

Michigan and going and

1:04:01

walking the beach and the trails at

1:04:03

Lake Michigan was really, really fun.

1:04:05

Yeah.

1:04:06

But yeah, it's, it's nice. I don't miss

1:04:08

the lake effect snow. I'll tell you that

1:04:10

Yeah. But now you're not too far from the coast.

1:04:13

I mean, you're not right on the coast for sure.

1:04:15

But how, how long of a drive is it to

1:04:17

go down the coast?

1:04:18

it is right around

1:04:20

two hours.

1:04:21

Yeah, that's reasonable. That's a weekend trip for

1:04:23

sure.

1:04:24

yeah, yeah. We've done it. We did it. So we

1:04:26

were by ourselves last Christmas and

1:04:28

just, we went and spent a few nights on

1:04:31

the beach there.

1:04:32

Yeah. Yeah. Which is nice. And

1:04:34

I, I, in Austin where I'm at

1:04:36

it's about a three hour drive down to the Gulf,

1:04:39

so it's a little bit further. It's you certainly have

1:04:41

to, you can't just do it in one day cuz then

1:04:43

you're gonna be driving for six hours.

1:04:44

Yeah.

1:04:45

But it's still close enough for,

1:04:47

a weekend or an overnight, pretty much anytime.

1:04:50

And it's, it's nice to have

1:04:52

the ability to get down, to

1:04:54

open the water like that.

1:04:56

Yes. Yeah, it definitely is.

1:04:58

Cool. All right. Well, so

1:05:00

I guess let's get your contact

1:05:02

info, all that good stuff. Obviously you said

1:05:04

you're looking for, or working

1:05:07

with companies already, and I'm sure looking for more

1:05:10

that want to get some help

1:05:12

in putting together their, their podcast. Are you

1:05:14

also looking for any kind of comedy stuff?

1:05:16

What, what kind of, what are you looking to

1:05:19

spend time doing?

1:05:20

As far as podcasts go,

1:05:23

if you. Have an idea

1:05:25

for a podcast, or you think you want a podcast,

1:05:28

just contact me. I'm not gonna charge you anything

1:05:30

to talk to you about it. I, I do like

1:05:32

a free initial consultation, I call

1:05:34

it, but I'll, I, I

1:05:37

love meeting people and just talking to

1:05:39

'em. So whatever your podcast is about,

1:05:41

if you want to get steered in the right direction,

1:05:43

I've got a checklist that I, that I made

1:05:45

up about what your podcast is about,

1:05:48

and then all the ticky tac stuff, like microphones

1:05:50

and hosting and all that kind of stuff.

1:05:52

So I will definitely help you absolutely

1:05:55

free. And then if you think it's

1:05:57

a good fit and you want me to take you down

1:05:59

the road, then you know, I

1:06:01

will definitely bring you on as a client.

1:06:03

But,

1:06:04

Which by the way is, is nice cuz

1:06:06

a lot of times I'll get approached with a whole

1:06:08

bunch of questions people have. I'm happy to give 'em

1:06:11

a copy of my list

1:06:13

of what I use. It

1:06:15

doesn't mean it's gonna be the best fit for them. because

1:06:18

I've been doing this for over a decade. But also

1:06:20

I, I'm not really gonna spend any more

1:06:22

time than I have to, to reply

1:06:25

to 'em because I'm doing other

1:06:27

stuff. I'm not doing any kind of podcasting,

1:06:29

consulting or anything like that. So

1:06:31

it's more of a favor if you reach

1:06:33

out to me and ask some questions. It's

1:06:35

hard enough trying to get people that I co-host

1:06:37

with to get all the right gear. I

1:06:39

don't want to, I don't wanna be doing that

1:06:41

for just the average person. So it's interesting

1:06:43

that that's a niche or a little business

1:06:46

that you're that you're also doing on the side, which

1:06:48

is great.

1:06:49

Yeah. And I, I think it's, I think

1:06:51

it's gonna be fun. Once again, I don't have

1:06:53

huge expectations for it. If

1:06:55

I, if it takes off, that's great.

1:06:58

If it doesn't, I'm always here. I,

1:07:01

I bought the url. It's your podd

1:07:03

guy.com. So,

1:07:04

Mm-hmm.

1:07:05

Yeah. So,

1:07:06

Yeah. That's, that's an easy one to.

1:07:08

decent url, so I, I think that's fine.

1:07:11

I'm, I'm probably gonna spend about

1:07:13

80% of my time with local folks

1:07:16

because I can, sit there with them and

1:07:18

be in person and, and

1:07:20

take 'em through it that way. But I, I will

1:07:22

be glad to take on folks from

1:07:24

anywhere in the country or in the world

1:07:26

for that matter.

1:07:27

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:07:29

And so if they wanna email,

1:07:31

is it just Scott at your pod

1:07:33

guy or what's the email?

1:07:35

Yeah. It's Scott at your podd guy dot.

1:07:37

Yeah, that makes sense.

1:07:39

So that's cool. Now, one thing we

1:07:41

didn't cover them before I forget here too,

1:07:43

is so I record, since we're talking about

1:07:45

sort of the, how the sausage is made

1:07:48

stuff I typically will record audio

1:07:50

only podcasts on Zencaster. Some

1:07:52

people like clean feed. I used to use Clean Feed,

1:07:54

but I find that Zencaster is a

1:07:57

little slicker because it actually

1:07:59

saves the audio from both sides.

1:08:02

rather than just providing a conduit for

1:08:04

the audio. What have you been using or what have

1:08:06

you found other people using for

1:08:08

podcasting?

1:08:10

So Zencaster is a big one. Riverside

1:08:12

FM

1:08:13

Mm-hmm.

1:08:14

is a big one. I personally,

1:08:16

because I do

1:08:18

a livestream video

1:08:21

for my behind the Bits interviews,

1:08:23

I use Restream io.

1:08:25

Yep.

1:08:26

I'm. Rethinking

1:08:28

that a little bit

1:08:29

Mm-hmm.

1:08:30

because there is

1:08:33

a good percentage of time that

1:08:35

there are audio issues

1:08:37

from my remote guest.

1:08:39

Mm. Did you, do you walk 'em through to making

1:08:41

sure that in their settings for Restream,

1:08:44

they turn on high quality audio.

1:08:46

Yeah. And, and still,

1:08:48

if, if there's any bandwidth

1:08:50

glitches or they,

1:08:53

they don't have a mic and they're using AirPods

1:08:55

and stuff like that, it just doesn't, I

1:08:58

I feel like Restream exasperates

1:09:01

the issue that's already there.

1:09:04

that's probably true. Although I do like that Restream

1:09:06

can, you can dump right into script.

1:09:08

Yes. Yeah. So

1:09:11

I, I hope that they,

1:09:13

they do multi-track, which is great. The

1:09:16

only thing is, is I, I've got a road

1:09:18

caster Pro, so. I

1:09:20

record my audio on there

1:09:23

and it sounds better than the

1:09:25

tracks I download from Restream

1:09:27

anyway, but

1:09:29

yeah, and it's

1:09:31

just, I, I'm,

1:09:33

I haven't made a decision yet because I

1:09:35

pay annual on that too.

1:09:37

Yeah.

1:09:38

I, I do annual

1:09:39

not cheap. That's like 40 bucks a month,

1:09:41

if I remember right.

1:09:42

So I think every

1:09:44

Black Friday they do a half off

1:09:47

Mm.

1:09:48

and it's good for

1:09:50

both monthly and annual.

1:09:53

And the nice thing is, is once you're

1:09:55

in it, you're in it for life. So when you re-up,

1:09:58

it doesn't go, it doesn't revert back to the

1:10:00

price.

1:10:00

So interesting. Yeah, cuz I,

1:10:03

I've got the the cheap package on

1:10:05

there just cause I've been playing around with it. But one

1:10:07

of my YouTube channels we,

1:10:09

we have the pro package from them that we use,

1:10:11

but, that's paid for by the channel,

1:10:13

but for myself, I've just got the little cheap

1:10:15

one. But that's interesting. I'll keep an eye out for

1:10:17

the next time we have a

1:10:19

Black Friday. Come along and

1:10:22

see if I can get in on that deal.

1:10:23

Yeah. And they've been consistent with it. Cuz I

1:10:26

was with Streamy Yard before and

1:10:28

Streamy Yard is about

1:10:30

the same price normally.

1:10:32

Yeah. A little fewer features I think.

1:10:34

Right. And they never

1:10:37

do like a half off thing like Restream

1:10:40

So they did have 30% off.

1:10:42

Let me think how far back this would've been.

1:10:44

I wanna say Memorial

1:10:46

Day of last year. I think we got a 30% off deal

1:10:48

on them

1:10:49

Mm-hmm.

1:10:50

right around there. So they do Rama occasionally,

1:10:52

but lately it has been the full price.

1:10:56

And there's a lot of other players coming up. I see.

1:10:58

I see. Other similar types.

1:11:02

Platforms coming

1:11:02

Well, Adobe's another one. They, they've got

1:11:05

a competitor to Restream that's coming up

1:11:07

as well.

1:11:08

Excellent. Yeah, I, I, I love

1:11:10

the competition because that's gonna push

1:11:12

features. A and

1:11:15

it's also gonna bring the price,

1:11:17

the cost down. Yeah.

1:11:18

Yeah. Yeah. Cuz again, 40, 40

1:11:20

bucks a month or 39, whatever the hell it is

1:11:23

you're still looking at 500

1:11:25

bucks a year. So this is, these

1:11:27

are not insignificant costs

1:11:29

for having that level,

1:11:31

but obviously with three Stream or

1:11:33

Streamy yard, you're getting video, you're

1:11:36

getting video editing live

1:11:38

editing at least, and you're getting

1:11:40

multiple concurrent endpoints.

1:11:43

So you're, you're going to like,

1:11:45

I think when we do our, our show, it goes

1:11:47

to not just YouTube, but also

1:11:49

Twitch, Facebook and a handful

1:11:51

of others that I don't remember. So

1:11:55

you do get more features

1:11:57

out of it. Obviously way more than just audio.

1:12:00

But this is also why I like to do, if I do a

1:12:02

pure audio recording, I usually do it on

1:12:04

Zencaster

1:12:05

Yeah. Yeah. And I think,

1:12:08

you know the, the

1:12:10

Zencaster recordings, cuz I've been

1:12:12

on a number of podcasts that

1:12:14

use Zencaster and definitely

1:12:18

between that and Riverside fm it's

1:12:20

just

1:12:21

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:12:23

Yeah. And then Zencaster,

1:12:26

during Covid started doing,

1:12:29

like, their free plan got vastly

1:12:31

expanded.

1:12:32

Yeah, I remember that.

1:12:34

And so, and it's still expanded,

1:12:36

so I don't, I

1:12:38

mean, I guess there's enough people like paying

1:12:41

them money for the, the video features

1:12:44

cuz basically video's the, the

1:12:46

main feature you gotta pay for.

1:12:48

Mm-hmm.

1:12:48

but like today's recording,

1:12:51

I've done two and a half, three

1:12:53

hour recordings on their

1:12:55

free plan on Zencaster.

1:12:56

Mm-hmm.

1:12:57

And it's like, holy shit, this is great. Cuz it's

1:12:59

the same high quality. It's

1:13:02

a, there's no cap. Like

1:13:04

if you have free plans in most of their platforms,

1:13:06

like, oh, you get 30 minutes. All right. Well thanks

1:13:08

for nothing. But these guys literally

1:13:11

allow anybody that wants to do

1:13:13

remote interviews with podcasts

1:13:16

to, to do it for free and

1:13:19

in a nice ui with

1:13:21

the ability to have each party

1:13:24

be providing their remote audio directly

1:13:27

to Zencaster, they take care of the

1:13:29

mix minus they take care of all the issues that

1:13:31

we as audio guys usually had

1:13:33

to do with hardware or software

1:13:36

on our end. Like they just take

1:13:38

care of all that stuff. And all you gotta do is just download the

1:13:40

files when you're done. In fact, you don't, I don't even do

1:13:42

that because I've got it set up to automatically

1:13:44

upload the files to my Dropbox. So

1:13:46

the files are literally on my computer within

1:13:48

about 15 minutes after the end of a recording.

1:13:51

yeah, yeah. That's nice.

1:13:53

It's, it's really slick. And again, I

1:13:55

like, I don't pay for it. It's free.

1:13:57

Yeah.

1:13:59

Can't beat it.

1:14:00

I'll never forget the first time I tried

1:14:03

to figure out mixed minus.

1:14:05

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's for a lot of people, it's

1:14:07

and I've got like, I

1:14:09

use the MOTU mixer and

1:14:12

the, I don't, again, you probably

1:14:14

don't know the backstory on this unless you were

1:14:17

deep in the podcasting back

1:14:19

about five years ago. But Adam and I

1:14:21

did a Kickstarter for

1:14:23

a, a new design of a

1:14:25

podcasting mixer hardware

1:14:29

for the computer where, you know, the

1:14:31

guy who literally invented the podcasting

1:14:33

took his requirements

1:14:35

Mm.

1:14:36

doing a podcast. And then I was the

1:14:38

c e o of the company. And then we

1:14:40

worked with a designer and engineer

1:14:43

and the guy that did PCBs. And

1:14:45

anyway, we built a few prototypes of

1:14:47

this device and it was, It

1:14:50

had a lot of features that

1:14:52

the, up to that point, existing

1:14:54

devices, mixers didn't have, because really

1:14:56

mixers were being made for musicians,

1:14:59

not for podcasters. So it was always some

1:15:01

adaption going on. And

1:15:04

we did the Kickstarter and as

1:15:06

the the, the money dude, I,

1:15:08

I had some very rigid requirements

1:15:11

on how well we had to do

1:15:13

in the Kickstarter before

1:15:15

we committed to the production of any kind

1:15:17

of units. And while we kicked

1:15:20

off very strong in the Kickstarter,

1:15:23

it fizzled out. And I think we had a,

1:15:25

like around 200,000

1:15:27

pledged or so. And that

1:15:29

was nowhere near, and we'd need to have at

1:15:31

least half a million, ideally a million

1:15:34

pledged in order to be able to

1:15:36

order the mass production of these

1:15:38

things. And so, product basically

1:15:40

didn't, didn't materialize because

1:15:42

we didn't have sufficient enough numbers in the Kickstarter.

1:15:45

But lo and behold, about a year,

1:15:47

maybe 18 months later road came

1:15:49

out with their product, which

1:15:52

was the same shape, very similar

1:15:55

in functionality. Had a screen

1:15:57

just like ours. I mean, it was just like, oh,

1:16:00

how nice. They took our spec made it a

1:16:02

little bit bigger cuz we had four channels.

1:16:04

They, they went to, I think it's

1:16:06

six channels, right?

1:16:07

Yeah. Well they've got four channels natively

1:16:10

and you can add Yeah.

1:16:11

yeah, yeah. And so it's like they

1:16:13

expanded on what we had, but it's like, wow,

1:16:16

18 months would be about right,

1:16:17

Yeah.

1:16:18

So I, I'm positive

1:16:21

at the very least, there was somebody that was paying

1:16:23

attention to our Kickstarter from Road and

1:16:26

then they said, well, there's interest, but there wasn't enough

1:16:28

from to make it. Maybe we should.

1:16:30

Yeah.

1:16:31

And it's a lot easier for a company that has other

1:16:33

products, obviously, than a brand new startup

1:16:35

Oh yeah,

1:16:36

off the ground.

1:16:37

yeah

1:16:38

but I've been a MOTU user for like

1:16:40

35 years, so I'm still

1:16:42

a big believer in those guys. There's

1:16:44

nothing else that touches 'em. It's pro audio

1:16:46

quality products for stage

1:16:48

and recording musicians. But complex

1:16:51

is all held to configure.

1:16:53

yeah.

1:16:53

So like mine is set up with

1:16:55

eight different mixed minus channels, so I

1:16:57

can have a whole bunch of different sources that

1:17:00

that can all be on and intermingled with each

1:17:02

other. Without anybody

1:17:05

getting any kind of feedback. But

1:17:07

again, it's like, it's, even

1:17:09

knowing the products for many years,

1:17:11

I still sometimes go, wait, wait a minute. How, what

1:17:14

the hell? This isn't working. What am I trying to do here?

1:17:16

Yeah.

1:17:17

So definitely get some of that. And

1:17:19

have

1:17:19

heard about the issues with the

1:17:22

Roader Pro two?

1:17:23

Yeah. Haven't really paid attention. I know

1:17:26

there people were saying, wait for the

1:17:28

updated firmware. What, what kind of stuff

1:17:30

were you saying?

1:17:31

the, the pro the, there's

1:17:33

firmware issues, but the hardware

1:17:35

is no good.

1:17:37

Really?

1:17:37

Yeah. It's I, I've, I've

1:17:40

seen people return three

1:17:43

of them because keypads didn't

1:17:45

work. The, the sound pads didn't

1:17:47

work. If you hit the sound pad,

1:17:49

your audio would completely

1:17:52

go off

1:17:53

Hmm.

1:17:55

Like, like short circuits,

1:17:57

just just, I

1:17:59

don't know what they put into this or

1:18:01

controller shoes?

1:18:02

Well, yeah. What r and d they did, but it

1:18:05

was definitely not ready for prime time

1:18:08

Wow. Yeah. That's not good.

1:18:10

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of folks have just

1:18:12

given up and they went back to their

1:18:14

pro one

1:18:15

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:18:18

That's too bad. I mean, again, that's another segment

1:18:20

where the more competition, the better it is for everybody.

1:18:22

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

1:18:24

Gets get more of that. And I know that

1:18:26

there are, there's now more of a market

1:18:28

for that because it's, it's very similar

1:18:30

needs from both podcasters and YouTubers

1:18:33

or, streamers.

1:18:34

Yeah.

1:18:35

So you, you want to have, More

1:18:38

than two channels, but not necessarily

1:18:40

10. You wanna have a bunch of buttons

1:18:42

that you can assign. There's, there's,

1:18:45

there are more things that these products

1:18:48

can do. And I, I think there's

1:18:50

another one that was a task, a TX

1:18:52

or task camera, somebody, somebody's got a, a

1:18:55

product that starts with a tea. I think that

1:18:58

is competing with the road one very directly,

1:19:01

but the more of 'em come out, the better, as far as I'm

1:19:03

concerned.

1:19:04

Yeah. Yeah,

1:19:05

you use before you got the road?

1:19:07

yeah, I know the, on the

1:19:10

road one that I have, they

1:19:13

pretty much said they're not gonna do any more updates,

1:19:15

Mm-hmm.

1:19:16

which is fine because it works. But

1:19:19

when I first got it, they kept putting

1:19:21

feature updates out and I know

1:19:23

a couple of them, I rolled it

1:19:25

back until they fixed it

1:19:27

because it was more trouble than

1:19:29

it was worth, but now

1:19:33

it's nothing. And they're putting everything into the two,

1:19:35

but the two is a piece of crap. So

1:19:37

Mm-hmm. Well, hopefully they

1:19:40

get the quality control issues in their control.

1:19:42

Yeah.

1:19:42

Cuz I'm sure they'll do that

1:19:45

eventually if they haven't already, cuz they

1:19:47

don't have a choice.

1:19:49

And I do know the features they put into

1:19:51

it were really more towards streaming

1:19:53

than podcasting

1:19:54

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:19:57

And, and I think we're gonna have

1:19:59

more companies that have been focused on streaming,

1:20:01

like stream deck El Gado. Like those

1:20:03

guys are going to add more

1:20:05

that is also good for podcasters

1:20:08

as they expand their product offerings.

1:20:10

Like I have out there new stream deck

1:20:13

plus I think it is, it's the one with the knobs

1:20:15

Mm-hmm.

1:20:16

and that comes

1:20:19

with a built-in mixer. Which

1:20:22

is great for streaming, but could just

1:20:24

as easily work for podcasting as well. That

1:20:26

essentially creates a multiple

1:20:29

inputs and outputs that all

1:20:31

mix down to a single channel, and you can

1:20:33

do mix minus very easily on it. So

1:20:35

there, there's more and more stuff that's coming

1:20:37

out that kind of targets

1:20:40

this studio,

1:20:43

but not for music kind of environment,

1:20:45

Hmm. I've, I've never used the El

1:20:47

Gado line, but I've heard it's really good.

1:20:50

Yeah, I would call it mid-tier. So it's,

1:20:52

it's, you could think of it as like

1:20:54

expensive home

1:20:57

gear or it,

1:20:59

it's close

1:21:01

to, but not quite at the level of professional

1:21:03

quality stuff. But it's also about a third of the price

1:21:06

of the pro.

1:21:07

right.

1:21:08

If you wanna look at, getting switchers

1:21:10

for video, you're looking at thousands

1:21:12

of dollars with the El Gado

1:21:14

products, you're looking at the hundreds of dollars

1:21:16

Mm-hmm.

1:21:17

So it's, it's significantly

1:21:20

cheaper than like Black Magic or

1:21:22

other alternatives out there that

1:21:25

would be in the thousands of dollars that are more

1:21:27

meant for pro studios.

1:21:29

Right?

1:21:29

But it's also not super cheap. Like their lights, I

1:21:31

think are 169

1:21:34

bucks. And, you can go to

1:21:36

Amazon and get lights of the same brightness

1:21:39

for 29 bucks.

1:21:40

Yeah.

1:21:41

So you're always gonna pay a little premium going

1:21:43

with Delgado. But on the

1:21:45

other hand, it's high quality. It's usually

1:21:47

Mel Metal rather than plastic

1:21:50

housing. And

1:21:52

it all works together. So the, the

1:21:54

different products are meant to be used

1:21:57

together and talked to each other.

1:21:59

Yeah, for sure.

1:22:00

good stuff. All right. Well, anything else

1:22:02

you wanna bring up we didn't talk about? Because I,

1:22:04

I feel like we've reminisced

1:22:07

about a lot of stuff and some things we've had in common.

1:22:10

And I think it's good to get your perspective.

1:22:12

You've also managed to fulfill the niche of

1:22:14

me interviewing somebody now that

1:22:16

is a older Gen Xer as well.

1:22:19

So I'm going down my line of different age

1:22:21

groups I'm talking to,

1:22:23

So technically I'm a boomer

1:22:25

how are you a boomer? Because I, I What year were

1:22:28

you born?

1:22:28

64. So the,

1:22:30

Oh, you're barely a boomer.

1:22:31

yeah, the cutoff 6 64.

1:22:33

So I I'm not really accepted

1:22:36

by boomers or Geners.

1:22:39

that's right. Go away

1:22:40

That's right.

1:22:42

Yeah, cuz I, I guess, people born in 65

1:22:45

are definitely gen Xers.

1:22:46

Yeah. Yeah. And, and it really depends

1:22:48

on what chart you Google. Some

1:22:51

of 'em. Some of 'em have boomers stopping

1:22:53

like in 59.

1:22:55

Oh, really?

1:22:56

Yeah.

1:22:57

Yeah. That's probably technically more accurate,

1:23:00

but I think, I guess what I've

1:23:02

been more familiar with is like 65

1:23:04

being that cutoff. That's 1965

1:23:07

to all you kids out

1:23:08

yeah.

1:23:09

that's last century shit,

1:23:11

That's right.

1:23:12

Uhhuh, It's kinda like, I, I like

1:23:15

seeing these old videos of,

1:23:17

like documentaries

1:23:19

that are colorized and audios restored

1:23:21

from the 1930s and stuff. And

1:23:24

and they're interviewing people that were born in the 1860s.

1:23:27

It's fun to watch and just see the

1:23:29

perspective that people

1:23:31

from a hundred years ago had were well over

1:23:34

a hundred at some point, but But

1:23:36

yeah, it's there's, there's a whole generation

1:23:39

that ha that was born after 2001

1:23:42

Yep.

1:23:43

and, and they're gonna be running

1:23:45

things before too long.

1:23:46

Mm-hmm.

1:23:48

So. Scary thought,

1:23:49

Yeah, it is

1:23:51

for sure. Well Scott, I appreciate you

1:23:53

being on, this was definitely fun to

1:23:55

talk a little bit about the inside

1:23:57

baseball or how the sausage is made

1:23:59

stuff. And I, I think you've got a, a

1:24:02

very interesting background here with,

1:24:04

well, I mean, not so interesting on the IT side

1:24:06

cuz everybody's doing that, but more interesting

1:24:09

on the comedy stuff. And it's cool

1:24:11

that you've got this business concept to actually

1:24:13

help people get podcasting

1:24:15

done right, rather than

1:24:18

just struggling through it on their own.

1:24:20

Right, right. Yeah. Thanks

1:24:22

for having me on. I really really appreciate

1:24:25

it. And I'm gonna check out this podcasting

1:24:28

2.0 thing.

1:24:28

I think you need to dig into it and,

1:24:30

and kinda make sure that you're, you're following

1:24:33

those two point ohand for any of anybody

1:24:35

you work with because it's really just

1:24:37

not only a matter of time until it becomes a standard,

1:24:39

but also getting a leg up.

1:24:41

Like, I know my podcasts uh, the

1:24:44

one before this one that I did was

1:24:46

one of the first ones that had the full

1:24:48

transcripts in it and people were like, how'd you do

1:24:50

this? This is magic. It's like, well,

1:24:52

as long as you are using one of the apps

1:24:54

that supports it, which now is virtually

1:24:57

all apps, it used to be a handful

1:24:59

of maybe five, five or six apps then

1:25:03

you just, people are surprised

1:25:05

at things that they didn't realize

1:25:08

a podcast could do and

1:25:10

having fully searchable texts

1:25:12

where you can just type in a topic. And

1:25:14

this is great for like political podcasts cuz you

1:25:17

know, you're covering multiple issues. You,

1:25:19

you punch in, well, I wanna only know

1:25:21

about what name your election

1:25:23

that you want, like Arizona or something. Then

1:25:26

you go directly to that spot so you don't have

1:25:28

to listen to the rest of the show.

1:25:30

You could go to the part that you're actually interested

1:25:32

in. And then the multiple images

1:25:35

for enclosures is really cool too because

1:25:37

then you, you can have, like,

1:25:40

what I used to do is the things that I'm

1:25:42

describing in the podcast, I

1:25:44

would actually have the image of in

1:25:47

the podcast player. So you, it

1:25:49

wasn't quite videos

1:25:52

that would be very big download

1:25:54

sides if, if the videos were enclosed. But

1:25:57

just being able to see the reference image

1:25:59

of what, what the person's talking about is.

1:26:02

Yeah. Yeah. I, I really like that idea.

1:26:04

I'm definitely gonna dig into that.

1:26:06

Yeah. Well, cool. I

1:26:08

I wish you luck and stay in

1:26:11

touch.

1:26:11

Yeah. Thanks a lot, Gene.

1:26:13

Take care, Scott.