Hello friends! I need to republish an episode for work stuff, so I thought I'd share this one from 2021 again and say hello! Also I'd love to hear any questions you have about podcasts or podcasting, please visit this Google Form I set up and fill it out if you'd like to share your question(s)! Hope you've been well! Aaron Dowd, Fort Worth Texas November 16, 2023 --- My goal for this episode is to give you a big picture roadmap for how to start a podcast. You give me 30 minutes of your time, I'll tell you everything I know about starting a podcast. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive guide that covers everything you’ll need to know (that would take awhile longer and I'd like to keep this pretty short), but my hope is that it gives you enough information to help you start making progress on starting your own podcast. If you’re listening to this in a podcast app, I’d recommend pausing it and switching over to my YouTube video. I’ll be showing some screenshots and other visual aids that I think you’ll find helpful. Here's the link: https://youtu.be/4zfglqqHHtA Connect: Website: https://www.aarondowd.com/ Threads: https://threads.com/aarondowdtx Send me your podcasting questions: https://forms.gle/mGtoq9dQZjBrJNKt9 Aaron Dowd Granbury, Texas December 20, 2020 (Last updated November 16, 2023)

94: How to Get Good Sound for Your Podcast, Part 6: Talk Through Audio Gear with Your Guests and Co-Hosts Before You Start Recording Good sound quality isn't the only thing you need to be successful in podcasting, but bad audio quality will cost you listeners. It only takes a few minutes to talk to your guest or co-hosts about their recording setup, but it can help you identify and prevent potential audio issues. The good news is that you don't have to spend a lot of money or have an expensive studio to record quality audio. You just need to know a few things about recording audio, and follow the tips and the recording checklist I'm sharing in this episode. This is part 6 of a 7 part series about how to make sure your podcast sounds good. You can listen to the other episodes at podcastingwithaaron.com, or watch the video on Youtube here. Today's podcasting tips: 1. Talk to your guests and/or co-hosts about their audio recording setup before you start recording It only takes a few minutes to talk to your guest or co-hosts about their recording setup, but it can help you identify potential audio issues and prevent them. I'd recommend doing this a week or at least a couple days before the recording. For example, maybe your guest didn't know that they need to wear headphones or use some kind of microphone. 2. Be prepared to provide gear recommendations Not everyone knows what kind of gear they need to sound good on a podcast, so keep a list of affordable recommendations handy! I have my podcast gear recommendations listed on the kit.co website, so I can share it with anyone who asks. (Pretty much anything is better than a built-in computer microphone.) 3. Podcasting with a co-host? Make sure you're on the same page about gear and audio quality If you're starting a podcast with a co-host, talk to them about investing in a good recording setup. If you're recording from different locations, you'll both need a microphone and headphones. If you're recording in the same room, buy an audio interface and a couple of microphones as well as headphones. It's always a good idea to record a couple practice episodes to make sure you can dial in your settings and record audio that sounds good. You want your first episode to sound good! 4. Podcast Recording Checklist for Guests or Co-Hosts Wear headphones or earbuds while recording. Double check that the correct audio input device is selected in your recording software. If possible, find a quiet room to record in. Turn off fans, AC units, heaters,or anything else that creates noise in your room. Disable system notifications and/or set your phone to silent (Airplane Mode works best). Put any pets in a place where they won't make noise or disturb you while you're recording. Quit or pause Dropbox, Google Drive, Backblaze, or any other file syncing or bandwidth-heavy tasks before the call. Recap: Talk to your guest or co-host about their recording setup in advance. Give them recommendations: Record in a quiet room, use a microphone, wear headphones, set cell phone to airplane mode. If you're starting a podcast with a co-host, ask them to invest in a microphone and record a couple practice episodes to make sure you can record audio that sounds good. Follow the podcast recording checklist and sharing it with your guests and co-hosts. Talk to your guests and co-hosts about audio quality! You don't have to make a huge deal about it, but it does make a difference in the success of your show. That's all for this week's episode. Next week will be the final topic in this series, I'll be talking about learning the basics of audio editing, mixing and mastering. Thanks for listening If you have any feedback or questions, visit my website at podcastingwithaaron.com. I've got links to the social media accounts and my email address there. I'm back on Twitter and Instagram as aarondowdtx, so you can follow me there and ask questions if you'd like. Connect with me here: website: podcastingwithaaron.com twitter instagram linkedin music: kolton moore & the clever few music: the band laredo Ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify are always appreciated as well. Till next time, happy podcasting. Aaron Dowd September 28, 2022

If you only need to record your own voice, or maybe a couple people in the same room, you won't have a hard time ending up with a podcast that sounds good. However, if you want to record interviews or episodes with guests or co-hosts that are in different locations, getting good sound becomes harder. You won't have any control over which microphones the other people are using, if they use good mic technique, if they know how to set input gain levels correctly, what kind of room or location they're recording in, and so on. It's always a good idea to have a conversation about someone's recording setup before you sit down for an interview or start a new podcast with a friend who lives in a different place, and that's something I'll be talking more about in the next episode. But the the software you use to record the interview or conversation is going to play a big role in whether or not you end up with audio that sounds good. You have three options for recording audio for a podcast: 1. Talk with your guests or co-hosts using a chat app like Zoom or Skype, and have everyone record audio locally on their computer or phone, then put the audio files together afterwards for editing. This is easy enough for shows with the same co-hosts every time, but not always an option if you're doing interviews with new people every week. Your guests might not be willing or able to record an audio file to a computer or phone. 2. Use the recording functionality from a chat app like Zoom or Anchor, where you end up with a single audio file that has everyone's voice in it. This is easy, but often causes issues with sound quality (more on that in a moment). This was very common in years past because there weren't any good apps that made it easy to talk to and record multiple people at the same time and get an individual audio track for each person. 3. Use an app specifically made for podcast recording, like Squadcast or Zencastr. This is the best option for most people in my opinion, as these apps allow you to talk to multiple people and will also record an audio file for each person on the call that you can put together and work on in your audio editing software later. The pros and cons of recording everyone to a single track Pros: It can be simpler, easier Less friction or work for your guest(s) Editing is less complicated (this isn't always a good thing, though) Cons: Less control over editing and mixing You can't adjust the volume levels for each speaker without doing lots of editing to move them to their own tracks The pros and cons of recording a track for every person Pros: Far more control and flexability You can edit out more You can adjust any person's gain level (how loud they are) You can do unique audio processing on each track if you need to Cons: It's a little more time consuming and complicated to edit three audio tracks at the same time instead of one If you do want to do processing for each voice, you'll need to know about EQ, compression, noise removal, and limiting (although I'd recommend learning about those things anyways if you're going to be editing your podcast) Good software costs money ($20/month for Squadcast, plus whatever software you use for multi-track audio editing, Logic Pro or Audition) So which should you choose? I believe Squadcast is currently the best and easiest way to record conversations remotely. It's not free, but it's worth the cost. If you disagree or if you have a different solution you like (there are many remote chat and recording options, like Zencastr, Cleanfeed, Zoom Pro, and so on), leave a comment on the YouTube video and let the other listeners know, or send me an email, aaron@thepodcastdude.com. Thanks for watching or listening, be sure to subscribe if you'd like to get future episodes as I publish them. If you're finding this show useful, please tell a friend about it or leave me a rating and review in Apple Podcasts. You can find more at podcastingwithaaron.com. Next time I'll be talking about what you should discuss with your guests and co-hosts before you start recording. Till then, be well and happy podcasting. Aaron

Last episode I talked about mic technique and how to set gain levels. This week I'm going to talk about how the room you're recording in might affect the quality of your sound. The most important thing is to pay attention to how you sound in your room. The room you're recording in is probably only going to cause problems if there are a lot of hard surfaces that reflect your voice back enough to make it hard to understand what you're saying. If you hear an echo in your recording that bothers you, figure out how to address it. Example: When I started recording podcasts back in 2013, I was recording in my “office”, which was just a small dining room with a standing desk in it. It was a small room with almost no furniture in it, so there was a fair amount of echo in my recordings. I tried to compensate for this by bringing in some big couch cushions. That helped a little, but I ended up moving my desk and recording set up to my bedroom and building some sound absorbing panels to help reduce the echo more. The ideal room for recording will be a room with quite a bit of soft stuff in it. Furniture like chairs, couches and bookshelves can all help absorb and break apart sound waves so you don't hear as much echo. This is why bedrooms can actually be ideal rooms for recordings. You've got a bed and a closet, and probably a carpet; all things that can help absorb sound. Important Things to Remember: The room you're recording in is only a problem if there are a lot of hard surfaces that reflect your voice back enough to make it hard to understand what you're saying. The most important thing is to pay attention to how you sound. If you hear an echo that bothers you, figure out how to address it. The solution to this is to add more soft surfaces or things to absorb some of that sound: Blankets, pillows, couch cushions, clothes from your closet, foam sound absorbing panels, carpets, etc. Just a reminder: Eliminate potential distracting background noises before you hit record. Turn off fans, AC, or heaters, and set your phone to airplane mode, put your pets in a different room, etc. It’s possible to improve sound quality a little bit with post production, but it's pretty hard to remove echo from a recording in a way that sounds natural. It’s better to fix the problems before you start recording. Finally, don't stress too much about your room. If you follow the tips I shared last week about mic technique and setting gain levels correctly for your recording, you probably sound good. Recommend Reading: How podcasts powered through the pandemic—and what comes next - Chartable Room Echo and Background Noise: Sound Proofing and Absorption for Podcasters Thanks for watching or listening to this week's episode. If you have questions, please leave a comment on my YouTube channel or send me an email, aaron@thepodcastdude.com If you like this episode, please give it a thumbs-up on YouTube or leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and be sure to subscribe to get future episodes for free and as soon as they come out. You can find more episodes and other cool stuff at podcastingwithaaron.com. Next week I'll be talking about why you should record an audio track for each person that's going to be on your podcast, and some easy ways to do that. Till then, have a great week, and happy podcasting. Aaron

Last week I talked about how to connect your microphone and headphones and make sure you're ready to start recording. This week I'm going to walk you through the basics of microphone technique and how to set the input gain levels (or recording levels) so you can sound good anytime you want to record some audio. Just a heads up: If you're listening to this episode in a podcast app, I'd recommend switching over to the YouTube video, as I believe it's easier to understand mic technique and input gain levels if you can see what I'm doing and talking about. Watch the video version of this episode here: https://youtu.be/hn09tFzJ0PQ 1. Mic Technique Gotta be close to the mic (but not too close). Make sure the right side of the mic is pointed at you. You don't have to speak directly at or into the mic. Try putting off to the side a bit (still keep it pointed at your mouth). For most mics, the closer you are, the more bass the mic will record. (This is called the proximity effect, if you want to do some research on it.) So if you have a naturally loud, low, bassy voice, you might want to keep the mic a little further away. In most cases, keeping your mouth 3-6 inches away from the mic should probably work great for you. This is also something you'll want to play around with. Make some practice recordings to hear how you sound at different distances from the mic. 2. Setting Input Gain Levels Most USB microphones and audio interfaces have input gain knobs or sliders that allow you to control the strength of the signal your microphone is picking up. The goal is to get a recording that is loud enough but not too loud. The best way to do this is to position the mic close to you and start talking like you'll be talking on your podcast. Then watch the input gain meters in your recording software and adjust the gain knob or slider on your mic or interface until the peaks of the signal are getting up to about 75% of the way to the top of your meter (or the red zone in most software gain meters). (If the gain meter in your software is vertical, that's the top, if it's horizontal, like in GarageBand, that's the right side.) Here's another way to think about it: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being way too quiet, and 10 being too loud, you want your signal to average around 6 or 8. So not always hitting that top limit of 10, but probably somewhere about 5. If you find your recording is a little too quiet after you're done recording, you do have the option to add more gain to increase the level of your audio track later. Important Things to Remember You don't have to speak directly into the mic. You can talk past it. As long as it's close enough to your mouth, you'll still sound good. Make test recordings to see how you sound! Try recording just to play around with mic technique and input gain levels. This will help you get comfortable with how your gear works, and how your voice sounds at different distances from the mic and at different gain levels. Recommend Reading: Gain Staging Like a Pro from Sweetwater Podcasts and Capital from Justin Jackson Thanks for watching or listening to this weeks episode. If you have questions, please leave a comment on my YouTube channel or send me an email, aaron@thepodcastdude.com If you like this episode, please give it a thumbs-up on YouTube or leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and be sure to subscribe to get future episodes for free and as soon as they come out. You can find more episodes and other cool stuff at podcastingwithaaron.com or aarondowd.com. Next week I'll be talking about how the room you're recording in can affect how you sound, and I'll share a few tips about how to fix a few common issues related to that. Till then, have a great week, and happy podcasting. Aaron

Watch the video version of this episode here. Welcome back to another episode of Podcasting with Aaron. I hope you're having a good week so far. I know I certainly have. This past week has been one of the better weeks in recent memory. Possibly the best week since 2016, actually. Last week I talked about the importance of getting good sound for your podcast. I talked about why good sound matters, what it means when something sounds good, and why you should get yourself that nice podcast microphone you've been looking at. This week I want to talk about something that might seem basic to you if you've been podcasting for a while. I want to talk about connecting your microphone and headphones, and making sure you have your microphone (or audio interface if you're using one) set as the input source for whatever recording software you're using. I remember the first time I bought a microphone and a little audio interface. I probably spent close to an hour trying to figure out how to record an audio file because I didn't know that I was supposed to set the audio interface as the input source for the recording software I was using, and then also that I needed to select the channel my mic was plugged into (channel 1) as the audio source for the audio track in the program. You'd be surprised at how many podcasts are recorded where someone forgets to set their good microphone as the input source, and ends up with a recording that was made with the built-in microphone on their desktop computer. Which makes them sound far away and thin and not good. And the goal here is to sound good. The Essentials: Connecting Your Microphone and Headphones Step 1: Is everything plugged in and turned on? USB Microphones If you're using a USB microphone: Is it plugged into your computer? Yes? Good. Now, which program are you going to use for recording? You need to make sure your microphone is set as the audio input source for that program. Usually you select your audio input source in the settings, or the preferences area of the software. If you're having a hard time finding how to set your mic as the input source for your recording software, do a quick search on Google or YouTube. Next: Does your USB microphone have a headphone port on it? (A place to plug in your headphones.) If so, plug your headphones into that. This is a good idea because it will allow you to hear what you sound like in real time. You'll hear people refer to this as "monitoring yourself". You'll also need to choose the audio output source for whatever recording software you're using. Essentially, where should the audio from your computer go?  If you're interviewing someone, and your headphones are plugged into your USB mic, you don't want the audio from your computer going to your computer speakers. You want it to go to your USB microphone. Quick recap: Make sure your recording software is using the right mic before you start recording, and also that your software or computer is sending audio to the right place. It's pretty easy once you've gone through this a couple times, but I've seen many podcasters struggle with this set up when they're first getting starting, and also it's important to get in the habit of double-checking your input and output settings before you start interviewing someone or recording an episode. XLR Microphones + Audio Interface If you bought an XLR microphone and an audio interface (like I'm using here), the set up process is going to be similar, but there's a few additional things to keep in mind. Step 1: Plug your microphone or microphones into your audio interface using an XLR microphone cable. Next, plug the audio interface into your computer. Your interface should have come with a right cable for your computer, but it's possible you might need an adapter. Like if the cable for your audio interface is a USB-C cable, and your computer only has USB-A ports and no USB-C ports, then you'll need to buy a USB-C to USB-A adapter. Make sense? Google has answers for you if you're not sure what kind of adapter you need. Quick note here: If you're using a Windows computer, I've heard that sometimes you have to update the driver for an audio interface before your computer will "see" and be able to use the interface. A driver is just a little bit of software that tells your computer how to work with a piece of hardware like an audio interface. So if you open up your recording software and you don't see the option to select your audio interface as the input or output source for audio, you might need to download and install an updated driver for your interface. Ok, so now you've got your mic or mics plugged into your audio interface, and the interface plugged into your computer. Now: I'd recommend plugging your headphones into the headphone port on your interface. Also, you might need an adapter for your headphones, as a lot of audio interfaces have big 1/4" headphone ports, and normal headphone jacks are smaller, 1/8" or 3.5 mm. Let's recap one more time. You've got your mic and your headphones connected to your audio interface, your audio interface connected to your computer. Great. Now open up your recording software, and set the audio interface as the input and output source for your audio. You will also want to set the audio interface as the output source for your computer's audio. Make sense? The recording software should send audio to your interface where your headphones are plugged in, and your computer should send audio to your interface too. With any luck, you'll hear everything you should be hearing through your headphones, and no sound will be coming out of your computer speakers. One other important thing to know here. If you're recording multiple tracks with multiple microphones: If you have multiple microphones plugged into your audio interface and you want to record each microphone to it's own track in your recording program (as you should), you'll need to set the audio interface as the input source for the software, but also choose which channel (microphone, essentially) should be the audio source for each track. So let's say you have two microphones plugged into your audio interface, channel 1, channel 2. Make sure you have two tracks created in your recording software, and select channel 1 as the audio source for track 1, channel 2 as the audio source for track 2. Got it? I hope that all makes sense, and I hope this walk-through helps you understand how these different pieces of audio hardware and recording software work together. If you have questions: Please leave a comment on my YouTube channel. If you like this episode, please give it a thumbs-up on YouTube or leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and be sure to subscribe to get future episodes for free and as soon as they come out. You can find more episodes and other cool stuff at podcastingwithaaron.com or aarondowd.com. Thanks for watching or listening, and I'll be back next week with more podcasting tips and tricks. I'm going to be talking about setting input gain levels and good microphone technique. Till then, have a great week, and happy podcasting. Aaron

I've been obsessed with things that sound good for as long as I could remember. I've always loved music and the effect it has on my body and brain, so I got interested in the process of creating and capturing sound when I was young. The first podcasts I started listening to back in 2008/2009 were professionally produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by folks who had been working in radio for a long time. So they sounded really good. Then I started listening to some shows produced by normal folks, what you'd call independent podcasters. I liked the content just as much, but I noticed that the sound quality was usually a lot lower, and sometimes so bad it made me stop listening to the show. So I started wondering, can you make a podcast that sounds good even if you don't have a lot of money to spend? Is it possible? I figured out that there were a few key things that made a big difference. So I'm going to make a series of episodes where I share what I've learned about audio recording and sound quality, and how to make a podcast that sounds good. Q: Does it really matter how good you sound? Yes! The quality of an audio recording affects how trustworthy and credible listeners think you are. As a podcast host, you want people to be able to hear you clearly and understand you. If they have a hard time hearing and understanding you, they're not going to stick around for very long. The same goes for any co-hosts or guests you have on your show as well. There's a research article by Eryn Newman and Norbert Shwartz from the University of Southern California published in 2018 that demonstrates the importance of good sound quality. The articles references a study in which two groups of people were shown a video of a scientific talk and asked to rate the credibility and trustworthiness of the presenters. The first group got a version of the video with high quality audio. The second group got a version of the video with low quality audio. When the video was difficult to hear, viewers thought the talk was worse, the speaker less intelligent and less likeable and the research less important. “As soon as we reduced the audio quality, all of a sudden, the scientists and their research lost credibility.” - Eryn Newman The quality of audio influences whether you believe what you hear - news.usc.edu It's important to learn how to record and publish audio that sounds good. Q: When you say something sounds good, what does that mean? I use to talk a lot about sounding good, but I never really broke it down in a way that was easy to understand. I know because I got a 2 star review in Apple Podcasts last year from Red84604. Red wrote: I can appreciate that the podcast dude is a musician. So am I. But his obsession with audio quality made me look for another podcast to reach me how to podcast. Even if I came to this podcast exclusively for advice about audio, it wouldn’t be useful for that because, from the very beginning, his advice assumes that the listener already knows a whole lot about the subject (more than I know and I actually was a professional musician for a while). I couldn’t follow it. And he went on for episode after episode. I want to produce a podcast with great audio. But even after listening to several episodes I am still not sure how to do that because his advice was so technical. And his snobbery on the topic was off-putting. Sorry. That's fair criticism. So really, you can thank Red for this whole 7 part series I'm about to make and share with you. When I say a podcast sounds good, it means each voice that you hear in the episode is clear and easy to understand, and not difficult to listen to because of distracting background noise or other factors that make it hard to hear and understand someone who is speaking. Let's break that down even further. Clear and easy to understand means: * You've got a microphone that works well for recording a human voice, and you're relatively close to that microphone when you're speaking. * Your voice doesn't sound muffled, or far away, or distorted in any way. * The volume level of your recording is loud enough, but not too loud. * That volume level doesn't change dramatically during the recording. It's consistent, or gets louder when you get speak louder, and quieter when you speak quieter. * Your audio recording is free of distracting background noise (hums, buzzes, pops, beeps, echos, reverb that makes it hard to understand you, etc). * The volume level of your voice is roughly the same as the other voices in the recording (if there are other voices). There's other things that can enhance the quality and impact of an episode, like sound design, music, pacing, and so on, but I want to stay focused on the basics for now. Q: So how do you get this good sound quality? I believe there are 7 important things to know and keep in mind when recording audio if you want your show to sound good. I'll be covering each one in detail over the coming episodes, but this week, I want to talk about why you should invest in a nice microphone. Step 1. Invest in a nice microphone Your microphone is the single most important part of sounding good. It's a solid investment if you plan to start a podcast, or if you have the kind of job (or want the kind of job) where you'll be talking to people a lot from your home. The good news is you don't need an expensive mic to sound good. Even a $60 USB microphone like the ATR 2100 or Samsung Q2U will work just fine. What doesn't usually work fine is trying to share a single microphone between multiple people, or using bluetooth headsets, or using the built-in microphone on your laptop or desktop computer. (These microphones will technically work, but I've heard plenty of recordings made with bluetooth headsets and built-in computer mics that didn't sound very good, so I don't recommend using them.) I've got a full list of the gear I recommend at https://kit.co/PodcastingwithAaron, so let's take a look. A few key things to keep in mind: * If you'll mostly just be recording by yourself or talking to other people over the internet, a single USB mic will work fine. * If you plan to record multiple people in the same room, you'll need multiple mics (get XLR mics ) and a way to record them all to the same device or computer (via an audio interface) at the same time. Don't try to share a single mic. * I didn't mention it in the episode, but I don't like listening to phone calls (cell phone or land line), so I don't recommend trying to record them. But there are tutorials online if you're really set on it. * Lav mics: Great if you want to do video presentations and don't want to have to stand in one place like I do here. But if you're mostly going to be talking to other people or staying in place, a regular mic like the ones I recommended will probably be a better option. Recap: * Sound quality, sounding good, matters. It affects how much people will believe and trust you. * A good microphone is a solid investment, especially now, and especially if you plan to spend a lot of time talking to people over the internet. * As a podcast host, you want people to be able to hear you clearly and understand you. If they have a hard time hearing and understanding you, they're not going to stick around for very long. The same goes for any co-hosts or guests you have on your show as well. In the next episode, I'll be talking about the importance of learning how to set input gain levels and always checking your audio settings before you start recordings. As always, thanks for watching and/or listening! Reviews in Apple Podcasts are always appreciated, and you can find more at podcastingwithaaron.com or aarondowd.com. Till next time, be well and happy podcasting. Aaron  

My goal for this episode is to give you a big picture roadmap for how to start a podcast. You give me 30 minutes of your time, I'll tell you everything I know about starting a podcast. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive guide that covers everything you’ll need to know (that would take awhile longer and I'd like to keep this pretty short), but my hope is that it gives you enough information to help you start making progress on starting your own podcast. If you’re listening to this in a podcast app, I’d recommend pausing it and switching over to my YouTube video. I’ll be showing some screenshots and other visual aids that I think you’ll find helpful. Here's the link: https://youtu.be/4zfglqqHHtA I also plan to publish a more detailed version of this episode as an affordable downloadable PDF and video and checklist, so I’ll include a link to that in the episode notes as well whenever it’s ready. A Few Pieces of Advice Before We Get Started: Anyone Can Start a Podcast Anyone can start a podcast! Yes, even you! To do it well does cost some money and a fair amount of time and effort, but it’s not extremely expensive, and you don't need anyone's permission to do it. The hardest part (from what I've seen) is growing an audience and getting people to listen to your podcast and share it with other people. Try to make a show that other people will find valuable and interesting A common mistake I see a lot of people make is starting a show where they just talk about whatever random subject they feel like talking about. It can be fun to do that for awhile, but it’ll be hard to convince strangers to listen to you unless you're already known for something. Everyone has an opinion, and most strangers probably aren't going to be interested in hearing yours. To stand out, you’ll need to figure out how to provide something valuable, useful, or interesting to them. Aim to make your show entertaining, educational, or inspirational. If you can make it be all three, even better. If you don’t feel like you have anything important or interesting to say, it’s ok to put off podcasting for awhile. Focus instead of becoming an interesting, experienced person who can talk about a topic or tell stories in a way that makes people notice and pay attention. Don't give up when the going gets tough. You’re going to encounter road blocks and get stuck sometimes. There are answers to every question out there on the internet in blog posts, YouTube videos, books, podcasts, etc. Be patient and learn to enjoy the process of learning. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t accomplish a task right away. Podcasting is a marathon, not a sprint. Success comes to those who stick with it for a long time, so don’t give up if you don’t achieve all your goals right away. Stay focused, keep working, keep iterating and getting better. If you have questions, please feel free to send them to me, or you can find more information out there on the internet if you search. The Ultimate Goal: End up with an awesome podcast you love My goal with this episode and show is to help you end up with a podcast you’re proud of and that other people love, listen to, and share with their friends. One of the best ways to do this is to learn from other people who have already created podcasts that people love. This is why I recommend checking out the top shows in Apple Podcasts and Spotify for inspiration. Pay close attention to their podcast cover artwork and their show descriptions. Look for shows that are similar to the show you want to make. Learn from them, get inspired by them. 4 Key Parts to Podcasting There are four main parts of making a great podcast. They are:  1. Planning & Pre-Production  2. Recording & Production  3. Editing & Post-Production  4. Launching & Promoting Let's go through each of these steps in more detail. 1: Pre-Production / Planning the Show The Goal: Come up a title, theme, short description, branding/visual style, and format for your show, and choose a time in your schedule to work on it. The first step is to decide: What your show is going to be called (the title) What it's going to be about (the theme) What your branding or visual style is going to be (the look of your artwork) What the format is going to be (Interviews? Fiction / Story telling?) When you're going to work on it (In the mornings before work? In the evenings after work? Weekends?) The Title: Check Apple Podcasts and social media to make sure the title you want isn’t already taken. The Theme/Format: Will you do interviews? Chat with a friend about a new topic every week? Tell a story in a narrative style? Do something weird and bizarre? There’s no rules here, so you have freedom to create the kind of show that you want. I’m guessing you have a few ideas based on shows you already listen to and enjoy. Make a show you’d love to listen to, and have fun! The Branding/Visual Style: Eventually you’ll need to create or hire someone to create cover art for your show. Your podcast cover art needs to be a square image, 3000x3000 pixels, a JPG or PNG file format. The Schedule: Decide what your recording and publishing schedule will be. Can you produce and publish new episodes every week? Every two weeks? Want to record a season of 12 episodes all at once and then release them? You’ll want to block off some time on your calendar to work on producing new episodes, but also time to promote your show and episodes and invest in your existing listeners and also on getting new listeners. (Podcasting can take a lot of time, so give yourself more time than you expect when you're just starting out.) Don’t worry about getting it perfect right away! Don’t worry about getting everything perfect, just make a plan and keep making progress. You can always change things later if you decide you really need to. For more information about planning a show, check out: So You Want to Start a Podcast How to Write a Podcast Description That Attracts New Listeners How to Design Stunning Podcast Cover Art That Stands Out 2: Recording & Production The goal: Get some recording gear and plan and record some episodes. Recording Gear There are ways to make a podcast using only your smartphone, or you could spend thousands of dollars on professional microphones, cameras, and accessories. There are good options for pretty much every budget. I recommend starting off with gear on the cheaper or affordable side, and then upgrading later if you decide the extra sound quality or utility is worth it to you. You want to avoid spending $2000 on gear only to decide a few months later that podcasting isn’t for you. Questions to consider: What is your budget? What gear do you need for the format you’ve chosen? How serious are you about podcasting? I keep a list of my favorite gear at kit.co/podcastingwithaaron. (Those are affiliate links, so I get a small cut of the sale if you buy something using the link on that site). Recording and Editing Software/Apps There’s software and apps for recording and editing audio (Garageband, Audacity, Reaper, Logic Pro, Audition), and also software and apps for recording interviews (Squadcast, Zoom, Zencastr, Descript, Cleanfeed, etc). I prefer the paid software, but there are plenty of people who record and publish using free software. For best results, you’ll want to get an individual audio track for each person that’s on the podcast. This is why I like and use Squadcast. You don’t want to start off with one single audio track that has everyone’s voice on it, it makes editing and balancing the volume levels of each voice much harder. Practice recording to get comfortable with your gear and software before you start trying to record episodes that you plan to publish. I recommend doing at least couple of test/practice episodes that you don’t plan to publish, just so you can learn how to use your gear and the software without pressure to get everything right. This is especially important if you plan to do interviews. Creating Episodes For each episode, you'll need: An episode title/theme A short description of the episode (What is the episode about? Why should someone listen to it?) An outline for the episode (What are you going to talk about in the episode?) Episode notes or a script (You can write this before, or after. It can be as short or long as you like) Episode artwork (optional, but can be a nice touch) At the very least, you’ll need to have a title for the episode, how you’re going to start the episode, what you’re going to talk about, and then how you’re going to end the episode. Create / gather all this information, and then start recording! Be sure to save your recording when you're done. 3: Editing & Post-Production The goal: Edit your episodes and get them ready for publishing, and choose a hosting platform for your show. Editing a Podcast Episode Editing a podcast episode is definitely a topic that deserves it’s own episode or video, but the goal is to get all the audio files for the episode together, and then cut out anything you don’t want in the episode. Add music, sound effects, whatever else you want. I definitely encourage creativity with editing, but be aware that many new podcasters I’ve talked to find editing to be the hardest and most time consuming part of podcasting. If you’re just starting out, you might want to keep it simple. Only edit out really noticeable/terrible mistakes, and try to get the volume levels of the audio tracks roughly the same (this is known as mixing). Editing and mixing can take years to master or get good at, so be patient with yourself while you learn! Watching YouTube videos of other people editing will help. Once you’re done editing your episode, export an MP3 audio file. This is what you’ll upload to your podcast hosting platform. Choose a Podcasting Hosting Platform for Your Show You don’t actually upload episodes to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or the other podcast apps people use to listen to podcasts. Instead, you’ll sign up for an account on a podcast hosting platform that will provide you with an easy interface for adding information about your show and episode to an RSS feed. The RSS feed is essentially a text document that is hosted and updated by your podcast hosting platform. It will contain all of the information about your show, as well as links to where your episode audio files are hosted. You’ll give the URL or link for your show’s RSS feed to Apple, Spotify, and the other podcast apps and directories. That’s how you get your show listed there. Once those apps/directories have the link to your show’s RSS feed, they’ll get any updates or new episodes you publish in your podcast hosting platform automatically. Which hosting platform should I use for my podcast? There’s plenty of options for podcast hosting platforms: Anchor, Simplecast, Buzzsprout, Transistor, Captivate, Fireside, and Megaphone, just to name a few.  The podcast hosting platforms also provide you with a website for your show (important) and analytics so you can see things like how many downloads and plays your episodes get, where your listeners are, and which devices they’re listening on. Remember: You can always move your show to a different hosting platform any time you want.  4: Launching & Promoting The goal: Launch your podcast and start promoting it. Getting Ready to Launch Your Show At this point, you should have your show title, show description, and artwork, and at least one episode ready to be published (I'd recommend having 2-3 full episodes ready to publish before you officially launch). Create a Short Teaser Trailer Episode for Your Show I also recommend writing and recording a teaser trailer episode. This is where you introduce yourself and the show, talk a little bit about it and who it’s for, why you’re making it, etc. I recommend making this trailer shorter than 2 minutes (but you can make it longer if you want). Getting Your Show into Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Other Podcast Apps Once you've added the information about your show into your podcast hosting platform, and added your trailer or first episode, they’ll provide you with the link/URL to your show’s RSS feed. You’ll submit the URL/link to your show’s RSS feed to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and the other podcast apps. Some will take a few days to review and approve your show, some will approve and publish it pretty much right away or within a few hours. There’s a great help article from Simplecast that has links and instructions about how to submit a show’s RSS feed to every major podcast app or directory. Visit How to Publish Your Podcast on the Popular Podcast Apps. Publish Your Trailer Episode First, Then Your Full Episodes Later I recommend publishing your trailer episode first, then submitting your RSS feed to Apple and the other places, then publishing your first few real episodes a week or two later. This gives you time to make sure your show is everywhere you want it to be before you publish full episodes, and having a trailer out allows you to begin promoting your show and getting people to subscribe to it before you publish the full episodes. Start Promoting Your Show At this point, you’ll want to create social media accounts for your show if you don’t already have some you plan to use. You don’t have to be on every social media platform: Focus on the ones where your target audience are the most active. Tell your friends, family, social media followers, etc. If you know of any magazines or blogs or publications that might be interested in featuring your show, reach out to them as well. Basically, you gotta get the word out and convince people to listen to your show. For more information about promoting a new podcast, check out: Buffer: We Didn’t Know How to Promote a Podcast. So Here’s All We Learned Podcast Marketing: 50 podcasters share the tactics they used to grow their shows Hack Your Way to 10,000 Podcast Downloads with These 15 Tips Want to know what worked for a real podcast (Darknet Diaries)? Check out this post. There's tons of other articles online about promoting and marketing a podcast, so plan to spend a few hours reading tips. Mostly it comes down to creating something people will want to listen to, and then convincing them to give you a chance. Easier said than done! What's Next? By now you should know just about everything you need to know to get started, but I have a few more tips to share before you go. Keep creating and publishing new episodes. Keep improving. Experiment. Have fun. There are hundreds of helpful articles, tutorials, videos, books, and online courses about everything related to podcasting and growing an audience. Google search is your friend here! If there’s something you’d like to learn more about, put your question in a search box and start reading or watching. Ask questions if you need help or if you get stuck. Connect with Me I’m going to keep making episodes about podcasting, and I’m happy to answer questions. Leave them in the comment section on my YouTube videos , or email me at coldwaraaron@gmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter, i'm @aarondowdtx. I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your show, and happy podcasting! Aaron Dowd Granbury, Texas December 20, 2020(Last updated September 28, 2022)

Why are you procrastinating? This is an important question, and is worth considering, reflecting on, and writing about. It could be a few different things. You've decided that something else is more important. What are you doing (or what should you be doing) that's more important than your podcast? Maybe a podcast isn't what you're supposed to be focusing on right now. That's ok! You can come back to podcasting later. I'd suggest prioritizing sleep and rest, exercise, time with family and friends, and time addressing any major issues or distractions in your life before you invest time in podcasting. Basically, get your shit together first before spending time and energy on a podcast. Make sure you are in a good place mentally and physically. It's very hard to create and share something with the world if you're overwhelmed, stressed out, exhausted, or distracted. Not impossible, but difficult. The main reasons I procrastinated on podcasting: 1. I prioritized the wrong things 2. I was burned out 3. I was scared that what I was making wasn't good enough Maybe you don't know what you need to do next. Write a to-do list with action steps. Make it as detailed as possible, but give yourself a 20 minute time limit. Maybe you do know what you need to do next, but you haven't decided when you're going to do it. Once you know what the next steps are, you need to decide when you're going to work on them. I found it helpful to pair actions together until they become a habit. This is commonly called Habit Stacking. For example, everyday after I wake up, I do yoga for at least 20 minutes. After yoga, I make coffee. As soon as coffee is done, I walk the dogs. Having those three actions linked together like that has made it extremely easy to do them every day. I've only skipped this morning routine one or two days in the past 4 months (Thanksgiving and the day after) thanks to habit stacking. Do something like this with your podcast production and make it easier on yourself to make podcasting a habit. For another example, after I've done recording and publishing this episode, I'll be going on a long bike ride. After the bike ride, I'll watch the latest episode of the Mandalorian with a friend. Habit Stacking. It works. You decided when you're going to do it, but then did something else that felt more important. There's two questions I think are the most important questions to consider when it comes to making a podcast. What do you hope to get out of the podcast? What do you hope the listeners will get out of it? If you don't have a clear and concise and compelling answer to both of these questions, it's going to be very easy for you to make something else a priority. Remember, your brain doesn't want you to do work. You're only going to invest the energy if you know the work is important and that it will result in some kind of reward. Get clear on why you're making a podcast instead of doing something else. Maybe you tried, didn't like the results, then gave up. It's easy to talk about or think about having a podcast. It's safer than actually making one and putting it out into the world. Making a podcast will cost you time and money and effort. Our brains try to do as little work as possible, and podcasting is work, so your brain will try to keep you from expending the energy. You also might struggle with the voice in your head that's doubting your ability to succeed. ”What if no one likes it?” the voice asks. ”What if no one listens? What if you're no good? What if you waste your time? What if people make fun of you? What if you make a mistake or say something that's incorrect?” It's easy to let these fears keep you from making a podcast. Forget about making it perfect. Focus on making it, doing the best you can now, and improving as you go. I promise you that you probably have much higher expectations for your work than anyone else does. Set realistic expectations. What can you actually accomplish today, or this week? How much time can you invest in the show on a daily or weekly basis? If you're working a full time job and have a family to take care of, you'll need to be very focused and honest about how much time and effort you can invest in the show every week. Maybe you can only devote 2 hours to recording and publishing the show once a week on Saturdays. What can you finish in two hours? The Goal should be to finish and publish something. (Or just finish and not publish. That's ok too.) Recap: Get clear on why you want to make a podcast. Talk to someone you trust about why you want to podcast. Ask yourself if a podcast is really what you want or need to be spending time and energy on right now. Make sure you're taking care of yourself so you can create something to share with others. Make a list of things you need to learn, and things you need to do. Get clear on when you're going to make a podcast. Block off time on your calendar to work on it. You'll need to make a commitment to show up and do the work. Get clear on how much time you can devote to making a podcast. Don't try to make it perfect. Finished, not perfect. It's good to set big goals, but be honest and realistic about what you can accomplish and finish right now. Helpful Resources: So You Want to Start a Podcast? (Slide Deck) What Does It Cost to Make a Podcast? Finished, Not Perfect Habit Stacking Q&A Q from Matt G (Food Under Fire podcast): I've been having a lot of fun with my show. I have dedicated myself to getting better and better with every part of the process. Yet, I still feel like there is a lot to be improved. For example, the thing that's driving me the craziest right now is volume. It always seems kinda off to my ears? It sounds one way on Logic, but then I upload it, and the dynamics seem off (my voice is too quiet/loud, same with music). What part of the process would rectify that? Better mixing? While equipment does play in a role in getting good sound quality, from what you've told me about yours (Shure SM58s mics into a Zoom H6), I think better mixing and mastering should be what you focus on learning. If you're doing the best you can in the recording stage (good mic technique, setting input gain levels correctly, etc), then the mixing and mastering stage is where you'll fix any issues and polish up the sound. I'd recommend investing time learning about noise removal, compression, limiting, and using a loudness meter. I have a video introduction to these topics called How to Process Podcast Vocals in Logic Pro X that should help you get started. Fixing the "music being too loud" issue is easier than you might think. If the music sounds too loud to you, turn it down. (Watch a tutorial video about automation if you're not already familiar with it, and trust your ears.) Try downloading an MP3 file of a podcast that you think sounds really good, and then start comparing your finished MP3 files against it. It'll take time and experimentation for sure, but you'll get better with practice and effort. Good luck Matt, and thanks for the question! News / Recommendations IAB Measurement Guideline Updates From Pacific Content: 14 Podcast Predictions for 2021 from Industry Leaders Connect with me: podcastingwithaaron.com. Links to social accounts and more there. Email aaron@thepodcastdude.com or visit if you have questions you'd like me to answer on the show.

Hey friend! Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you're having a good day wherever you are. If this is your first time hearing or seeing me, welcome! I'm glad you're here! My name is Aaron Dowd and I'm here to help you learn about podcasting and connect you with other great podcasters in the podcasting community. If it's been awhile since you heard from me, I'm sorry I've been absent for so long, but thanks for giving me another chance! If you've been following for more than a couple years, you know I used to host a podcast and YouTube channel called The Podcast Dude. I'm renaming and relaunching that show and calling it Podcasting With Aaron. My Two Goals for This Show First, to share everything I've learned about podcasting so far. I've been making podcasts and helping people make podcasts for about 8 years now. I don't know everything, but I'd like to share what I have learned, and hopefully it will be helpful to you. Let's learn together! Second, I want to introduce you to other podcast producers and people working in the podcasting. I know that it's hard to do things alone, and finding other people who share your enthusiasm for podcasting can be challenging. Fortunately there's an amazing community of people who are passionate about podcasting, and I think we should all be friends. I want to help facilitate those friendships and make introductions through this show. New Episodes Every Saturday That's right: New episodes every Saturday! I know how important it is to have something to look forward to, and a weekly cadence is what I'm committing to. The format for the show will be simple, to prevent me from overthinking it and procrastinating. I'm going to record a video for YouTube first, and export the audio from the video to publish in my podcast RSS feed. I think you'll enjoy the video version the most, but I understand if you like listening in your podcast app better. I'll try to make sure the audio-only version is just as good as the video version, and include links to anything I show in the video in the podcast show notes. I'll have a few different segments that I'll be doing regularly: Q&A, where I answer your questions Tips & tricks, where I talk about a specific topic related to podcasting Interviews, where I talk to podcasters and people making useful things for podcasters Recommendations, where I talk about things I think you should know about or check out (news, videos, blog posts, gear, etc) Personal updates, just to give you a peek into my life and what I've been up to I'll aim for 15 minute episodes, and try to keep them under 30 minutes unless I'm doing an interview (sometimes it's nice to let those go a little longer). I'll bring an outline and notes, but I'll try not to script it too much. I'll make sure to have the next week's topic ready and share it at the end of every episode. What I Need From You: I do have a favor to ask: Please leave a comment in YouTube or a review in Apple Podcasts and tell me about yourself and your show. I'd like to know how you found me, how long you've been listening or watching, and what your podcast is about, and if you have any questions or things you're currently struggling with related to podcasting. This helps me get to know you a little better which will help me make this show better, but it will also help other people connect with you as well. And if you have any feedback, suggestions, or encouragement you'd like to share, I'd love to hear those too. The website for this show is podcastingwithaaron.com, that's where you can find links to my social media accounts and other resources and stuff related to me and this show. If you have a question you'd like me to answer on the show, record a voice memo and email it to aaron@thepodcastdude.com. Dedications I'd like to dedicate this show to a few people. To Sofia, for always inspiring me to get better, and to my nephew Silas: I hope this show inspires you to start your own helpful YouTube channel or podcast someday. And finally, I dedicate this show to you (you reading, watching, or listening). Thank you for joining me and following along. Podcasting is definitely more fun with friends, so I'm thankful you're here. Recommendations There's a YouTube channel and a podcast that both inspired me to get back into making videos and podcasts.  The YouTube channel is Yoga with Adriene, and the podcast is Deep Questions with Cal Newport. I'm not exaggerating when I say they changed my life this year. They're both made by incredible people and absolutely worth your time. Next Week on Podcasting with Aaron: Next week's topic will be How to Stop Procrastinating and Make a Podcast. This was a question from Chris B. on Twitter, and a topic I have YEARS of experience with.  If you've been procrastinating on starting a podcast or making new episodes, leave me a comment or send me a message and tell me about it so I can talk about it in next week's episode. Happy podcasting, and I'll see you next week! Aaron Dowd Granbury, Texas December 5, 2020

Juleyka Lantigua-Williams shares her strategy for audience growth and how it's put her shows on the path to reach 1 million downloads by the end of the year. Here's what I learned in this episode: Audience growth isn't something that magically happens once you start publishing episodes.  If you want to grow your audience and get more listeners and fans, there's three important questions to ask yourself. These questions are important regardless of how long you've been podcasting. The three questions are: 1. Who is the ideal listener for my show? 2. What needs do they have that I'm trying to address and fulfill with my show? 3. Where is my ideal listener spending their time and attention, and what's my plan for getting their attention? ••• Juleyka Lantigua-Williams is the founder of Lantigua Williams & Co, an audio production company. She describes her role as building teams that make podcasts and films. So a little more about Juleyka: Juleyka is the Founder/CEO of Lantigua Williams & Co., an award-winning and Peabody-nominated digital media studio that builds teams that create beautiful experiences in digital audio and film. She is a journalism veteran with 20 years of experience as a writer, reporter, editor, syndicated columnist, book editor/scout, lecturer, and audio producer. Lantigua Williams & Co. produces original shows like Latina to Latina, 70 Million, and Feeling My Flo, and provides tailored consulting and white-label production services for clients that include Macmillan Podcasts, the Phi Beta Kappa Society, WHYY, KQED, and Civil Beat. Juleyka says she first fell in love with podcasts after hearing Serial. After devouring that show, she became fascinated with the way story-telling techniques were being used in audio. She got the chance to work on Code Switch at NPR, and fell in love with the process of making podcasts. I met Juleyka last year when Lantigua Williams & Co started using Simplecast for hosting. After several interesting and insightful conversations about podcasting, I asked her if she would be willing to be a guest on my show to talk more about her approach to audience acquisition. Couple quick things to mention before we get into the interview: First, Juleyka is hosting a series of webinars about working in podcasting she's calling Podcasting Seriously. If you're interested in getting into working in the podcast industry, or if you'd like to take your podcasting skills to the next level, I'd encourage you to check it out and sign up. Visit https://www.podcastingseriously.com/ to learn more. Second, we recorded this interview using Squadcast, which dropped the call multiple times. Kind of a bummer, but that's how it goes sometimes. Next time I'll be sure to record locally as well. Luckily I was able to edit the show in a way that the drops aren't noticeable. Alright, let's get into my conversation about audience acquisition (and more) with Juleyka Lantigua-Williams. Tip #1 for Audience Growth: Know as much about your ideal listener as possible without violating their privacy. Q: Who is the ideal listener for your show?  If you're like me, you might answer that question with something slightly vague, like, ”My ideal listener is someone who is interested in making a great podcast.” That's a decent start, but let's dig deeper. Let's get specific. So where do you start? What are the fundamentals? So many people start podcasting before they've identified their show's number one biggest fan. You've probably heard about creating for an ideal listener before, but Juleyka takes the idea to the next level. Juleyka looks for factual evidence for what she believes is true about her ideal listener, who even has a name and a face (check out the website). Things you should know about your ideal listener: Age Education level Career level Relationship status Family info Where she lives Digital experience habits Hobbies Purchasing habits How many other people like her are there? Juleyka's ideal listener even has a name: Kenya. Why this matters: Knowing your ideal listener gives you a target. It will help guide your decisions as you're planning out your content and pitching the show to advertisers. If you're thinking about starting a show, answer this question: "Will my ideal listener listen to this show?" If you know that she will listen, then pursue the idea. Tip #2 for Audience Growth: Meet the needs of your ideal listener. Once you've figured out who your ideal listener is, start thinking about what their needs are. What podcasts do they listen to and why? What are their needs? How can you make something that addresses those needs? These can be difficult questions to answer, but if you know a few people who match the profile of your ideal listener, you should ask them which podcasts they listen to, and why. I think you'll find the answers interesting and thought-provoking. Tip #3 for Audience Growth: Once you know who your ideal listener is, go where they are. "Once you know who she is, you need to figure out where she is and go there. Where is she? How can I take the show to her?"" Where is your ideal listener spending their time and attention? Don't wait for them to discover you. Take the show to them. Juleyka mentioned looking for consumer data about her ideal listener, which is something I've never really looked into getting before. I didn't get a chance to ask her for more details, but here's a link I found on Google that might be a good place to start: Where Can You Buy Big Data? Here Are The Biggest Consumer Data Brokers Shows mentioned in this episode: Code Switch Latina to Latina Feeling My Flo 70 Million Follow and Support Juleyka: https://www.lantiguawilliams.com/ @juleykalantigua on Twitter @LanWilCo Podcasting, Seriously with Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Whether you’re an independent creative or someone looking to make a career move to podcasting, this series is for you. With so many excellent 101 resources available about HOW TO podcast, it’s time to take a deeper look at skills and ideas that will take you a step further into podcasting as an industry. Let’s talk, seriously. Get your tickets now! ••• Connect with me at https://www.aarondowd.com, and get more podcast episodes at podcastingwithaaron.com. Thanks for listening! Aaron DowdJuly 23, 2020Fort Worth, Texas

In this episode, Sean and I discuss his new mobile recording setup, the challenges of the paid membership model for podcasts, Spotify's recent moves in podcasting (Joe Rogan, etc), how to grow an audience for a podcast, the best ways to make money with a podcast, what most podcasters get wrong about podcast promotion on social media and what they should do instead, and so much more. If you'd like to support this show, please share it with a friend, leave a review in Apple Podcasts or your podcast app of choice, or become a paying member of The Podcast News. Show Links: Sean's website: seanwes.com Sean's Mobile Recording setup: Rode SmartLav Mic Rode SC6L Lightning Interface Ferrite (iOS app) Brusfri Noise Reducer More Cool Stuff to Check Out: Recommended Gear: https://kit.co/thepodcastdude More Podcast Episodes and Resources: https://podcastingwithaaron.com Blog: aarondowd.com

Topics: When is the right time to start looking for sponsors for a podcast? How does having a niche audience help you with finding sponsors? 3 things you should include in a proposal to a sponsor Why getting brands excited about sponsoring podcasts needs to be a community effort Questions to ask yourself before you start looking for sponsors What Podcorn is, and how it works And more If you'd like to support this show, please share it with a friend, leave a review in Apple Podcasts or your podcast app of choice, or become a paying member of The Podcast News. Links: Podcast Me Anything - Mathew Passy How Do I Build an Audience for My Podcast? - Dan Misener, Pacific Content Podcorn | A marketplace for podcasters and sponsors Tips on how to get podcast sponsors - Buzzsprout How to make great podcast ads - PodSchool Podcast ••• If this is your first time hearing this show, welcome! You can learn more about the show here: A Podcast About Podcasting, for Podcasters You can find more episodes, links to cool stuff, and everything else at thepodcastdude.com. Thanks for listening, and happy podcasting!

My guest today is Steph Colbourn, founder of Edit Audio, a podcast consultation and production company. In this episode, we discuss how she got into podcast editing and production, how she connects with and on-boards new clients, her process for working with them and helping them be successful, what she's learned about launching and marketing shows, how she manages money and scheduling, why she's optimistic about the future of podcasting, and so much more. About Steph and Edit Audio Steph is passionate about creating high-quality podcasts, driven to get more womxn and LGBTQ+ people behind and in front of the mic, and working to ensure more voices are heard and to create media more representative of the world we live in. Her company, Edit Audio, is a team of womxn working to record, produce, and market high-quality podcasts. She started the company in Toronto in 2012 and quickly expanded into the US and UK markets. Their clients include Harpers Baazar, Stack Overflow, Element AI, Cosmopolitan, If These Ovaries Could Talk, Glossier, Postlight, Tinder, and more. Connect With Steph: Edit Audio website Follow Edit Audio on Twitter Follow Steph on Twitter Follow Steph on Instagram Connect with Steph on LinkedIn More Cool Stuff to Check Out: Please check out my new weekly show, The Podcast News Recommended Podcasting Gear Subscribe on YouTube Simplecast Blog (Helpful Articles About Podcasting) If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts, or share the episode with a friend. Thank you! 💙

Cool Stuff to Check Out: podjobs.net Without Fail: Ira Glass: The Man Who Launched a Thousand Podcasts (That Gimlet podcast interview I mentioned, real good) Most Jobs Don't Have An Official Job Posting Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. - Anton Ego, Ratatouille The best jobs are never advertised. - Unknown The jobs I linked to in that Twitter thread just the ones I found easily on job boards with a quick Google search. I know there are more podcasting jobs that aren't being shared on job boards because I've landed a few of them myself over the past 5 years, and that was before the big podcasting boom of 2017. Podcasting is still a relatively new field, and many people, companies, and brands are only now beginning to think about starting a podcast. They might want to hire someone to produce a podcast, but they may not know how to put together a job posting, or they may not want to. They might not know which skills are required or what kind of person they need to hire in order to end up with a good podcast. This is a time of opportunity for motivated podcast producers at all levels. Q: If I want to be a professional podcast producer, what do I need to know and be good at? I took a look at the job postings again to get a sense of the most commonly listed skills and requirements, and here's what I think are the essential skills for podcast producers. Essential Skills for Podcast Producers: Content creation and direction: You should have experience developing shows and episode content, writing scripts and stories, participating in brainstorming sessions, etc Audio recording and editing: You should know how to record audio that sounds good, how to put a project together and edit it in audio software, how to write narration (if necessary), add music, mix and master, and whatever else the production requires Working well with others: You should be able to work with—and possibly manage—producers, writers, audio engineers, editors, freelancers, guests, and so on Ability to work under deadlines: You can get stuff done and shipped on schedule (time management skills) Proactive problem-solving skills: There's going to be stuff they don't know, stuff you don't know, so you should be able and willing to figure it out Leadership skills: This means you have opinions and taste and are comfortable with setting goals and identifying how you'll measure success Q: What if I don't have all those skills yet? That's ok, I didn't have all those skills when I started producing podcasts either, and I'm still working on getting better at all of them. Study those podcast producer job postings for insights into what you should study, but remember that you don't need to be a master of everything to produce a great podcast, and the best producers are always learning on the job anyways. The important thing is to have a firm grasp on the basics and a willingness to work hard, experiment, take feedback and criticism, and keep learning. But since this is a prescriptive advice podcast, here are a few things I believe you should focus on if you want to increase your chances of landing a job producing podcasts. How to Increase Your Chance of Landing a Job Producing Podcasts 1. Learn everything you can about recording and working with audio Study all the various options for capturing audio in studio and live environments: Microphones, audio interfaces, soundboards, etc. Practice recording with different gear and in different locations. Learn how the gear and the room or environment changes the sound of a recording. Learn everything you can about how to manipulate and work with audio once it's been recorded. Learn about editing and post-production: EQ, compression, noise removal, limiting, and loudness metering. Learn how to organize and share your audio files, and how to backup and archive your finished projects. You can learn the basics in a few hours, but mastering recording and working with audio is a life-long project. That might sound intimidating, but I promise that it's actually a lot of fun (doing the same thing every day sucks). 2. Learn pro audio software like ProTools, Logic Pro X, or Audition Many people get started with podcasting using the free or easy tools like GarageBand or Audacity, but if you want to be a powerhouse podcast producer, you should acquire and master a professional DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) like ProTools, Logic Pro X, or Audition. While it's true that you can make a successful podcast with almost any editing program, the professional DAWs have useful (maybe even essential) features that the free or cheap DAWs don't, including non-destructive and multitrack editing and other features for tweaking or enhancing audio once it's been recorded. Professional production studios and other podcast producers are also likely using the one or more of these pro DAWs, so if you're serious about producing podcasts, try to master at least one of the three DAWS I listed above (Pro Tools, Logic, or Audition). 3. Learn the most popular technology and software tools used by podcasters In addition to your DAW of choice, you should also learn and be familiar with (if not good at) all the various apps and software used by podcasters and podcast producers. That includes: Recording gear & software Writing apps and other collaboration software for communicating with co-workers, developing episode ideas and scripts, show notes, and so on Graphic design apps for developing visual assets Content management systems (websites) and podcast hosting software (like Simplecast) Social media platforms and whatever else podcasters are using to make or grow their shows You don't have to master every single app or software in each of the categories I listed above, but you should be able to learn and use them quickly if needed. If you tell yourself you can't (or don't want to) learn new software tools, you're right, and you'll probably have a hard time being successful as a podcast producer. Keep an open mind and be willing to learn. 4. Study and learn from other producers (especially the great ones) Producing great audio is a craft, and there are many great audio producers to learn from. Keep your eyes open for them. Seek them out. Follow them on social media, subscribe to their shows, read their articles and books, and take their online courses. Ask them questions when you get the opportunity, but analyze their work either way. It's a great way to learn about how things are done and may give you some ideas about things to improve or how to do things differently (and hopefully better). 5. Don't wait to get hired, start your career as a producer today Don't wait for someone to hire you: Go out and start your own show, or help your friends start shows and try to figure out how to make them successful. Do the best you can and try to make work you can be proud of. A good self-initiated portfolio will go a long way towards convincing other people to hire you, and you'll gain more experience (and probably even learn more) by doing instead of just reading or watching tutorials. Q: What if I don't live in one of the big cities where these jobs are? Good news! While it can certainly help to live near a large city like New York City or Los Angeles where there are podcast companies or businesses looking to hire podcast producers, you can help produce podcasts from almost anywhere. The internet has made it possible to connect with people all over the world and the rise of broadband and fast internet means you can collaborate in real time or easily send audio files back and forth over Dropbox or Google Drive. And you can certainly learn everything you need to learn about podcast production as long as you have access to the internet and a library. If you'd like to land a gig producing podcasts, I'd encourage you to invest time in developing the skills I listed earlier, but also in networking and connecting with other people in the industry or similar industries. For example, I've learned a lot from writers, web designers, programmers, marketers, managers, folks who work in the film and book industries, and many other kinds of professionals. Again, don't wait to get hired as a producer. Start studying and producing shows today. Have a question, or just want to say hi? Send an email to aaron@thepodcastdude.com. I love connecting with other podcasters. Happy podcasting!

Q: What is an RSS feed? An RSS feed is a formatted text document that contains all the important information about your show. It's hosted on a server somewhere (usually public) and has a URL so anyone can view or access its contents. It contains info about your show and your episodes: Things like your show’s title, description, episode titles, and links to the audio files for the episodes. It is possible to write and update an RSS feed yourself, but it’s time consuming and errors or typos can break things, so managing the RSS feed is usually handled by a podcast host. Q: Why do I need an RSS feed? The RSS feed is basically your show. Without it, you’ll just have blog posts or audio files, but no way for people to subscribe and get new episodes unless they visit your website (or SoundCloud page or Youtube channel, etc). Your show’s feed is what podcast apps and directories (like Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and so on) will use to display your show and episodes in their apps. People can also bypass the podcast directories and subscribe to your feed directly using any compatible app. Since RSS is an established standard, there are many apps that can subscribe to and display info from RSS feeds. In fact, I use a mac app called Reeder to subscribe to the RSS feeds for multiple blogs and websites. Q: How do I make sure my new episodes get into Apple Podcasts and the other directories? In order to get your show into Apple Podcasts and the other podcast directories, you’ll need to submit your show’s RSS feed URL to them. This is almost always done via a web portal, like Apple’s PodcastsConnect website or Spotify’s Podcasters.Spotify.com portal. Once the podcast directory approves your feed (most places will within 48 hours), they will use the info in the feed to display your show in their directory. They’ll also check the feed regularly for changes and new episodes. Here's how it works: Your show has an RSS feed and you’ve already submitted the feed url to the directories. You publish a new episode in your podcast host, and some new lines that contain info about the episode are added to your show's feed. Since the directories are checking your show's feed for updates and new episodes, they see that a new episode has been added, and they use that info in the feed to display the episode in their app. As soon as the directory gets the new episode and adds it to their app, anyone who has subscribed to the show through that directory will get the new episode as well. Q: What do I do if my new episodes don’t show up in the directories right away or at all? As long as you included the required info about your episode when you published it, the directories and apps should see the changes and update pretty quickly, although Apple says it can take them up to 24 hours to update their podcast directory. If you can’t see the new episode in any of the podcast apps or directories, then it’s likely an issue on your end. Check with your podcast host or whoever manages/updates your show’s feed. If you can see the episode in all the apps/directories except one, then it’s likely an issue with that directory and not anything wrong with your feed. If you’re concerned, reach out to that directory’s support team and ask if they would mind taking a look. Q: Can I change podcast hosts or RSS feeds without breaking things or losing my show’s subscribers? You can move hosts anytime, although it’s easier with some hosts than with others. Most hosts will copy an existing RSS feed and audio files over to their service. After you have the URL for the new feed that was setup for your show, you’ll need to update the podcast directories so they check your new feed for updates and new episodes instead of the old one. This is usually done through the same web portal that you used to submit the show, although some places require you to send an email. Your host should be able to help if you have questions. You can check out this article for links and instructions for submitting and updating feeds. Q: What is a 301 redirect? The 301 redirect directs anyone who visits the old feed URL over to the new feed URL for your show. It’s kind of like setting up a mail forward. Your podcast host should allow you to add a 301 redirect to your old feed if you’ve moved your show to a new host and gotten a new feed for your show. If your podcast host doesn't make it easy for you to easily redirect your feed to a new feed, your host sucks. Q: I’ve read or heard about an iTunes new-feed tag that needs to be added to a new feed. What’s that? The iTunes new-feed tag just lets Apple know that this is a new feed URL for your show. I’m not sure why they ask for this if you also have to log into PodcastsConnect and update the feed URL for your show there, but they do. Your host should handle this for you (Simplecast adds this tag automatically whenever a show is imported). Recap: You don’t have to be afraid of RSS feeds. They are just formatted text documents that contain info about your show. You can access or copy them anytime. If you move your show to a new host and get a new feed, you’ll need to redirect your old feed over to the new feed, and also update the podcast directories so they check the new feed for updates instead of the old one. You won’t lose any subscribers if you follow these steps. Cool Stuff to Check Out: Recommended Gear Podcast Twitter Youtube Successful Podcasting Simplecast Blog A Podcaster’s Guide to RSS (from Apple) Have a question, or just want to say hi? Send an email to aaron@thepodcastdude.com. I love connecting with other podcasters. Happy podcasting!

Questions Discussed in This Episode: How do you find your first clients? Do you need a website and/or tutorials to attract clients? What are people hiring podcast editors looking for? Should we be making tutorials and content to attract clients? Should you invest time in trying to convince people to start podcasts? Should you only work with shows that are aligned with your goals and values? How much should you charge for your services? Links: Connect with Sidney Open Convo Podcast Podcast Editor's Club (Facebook Group) If you enjoyed this episode, check out my conversation with Dan Powell, producer and editor of audio dramas Archive 81 and Deep Vault. Have a question or just want to say hi? Send an email to aaron@thepodcastdude.com. I'd love to hear from you.

My guest this week is professional audio engineer Ryan Monette. Ryan graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Music Production & Engineering. For the last 4.5 years he's been the Post-Production Audio Engineer on staff at Elevation Church, in Charlotte, NC, where he mixes their global TV show, and has many other responsibilities (boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, etc.). You may have heard some of his work, as he sound-designed and mixed the opener video for the Circles conference for the past two years. He even had his own podcast for a short while (TheQueuecast.com). I asked Ryan to come on the show to share his journey towards becoming a professional audio engineer (a job that I've always wanted), and to get him to share some tips for anyone interested in working in audio/video professionally. Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: Think long term and dream big. If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone. Take advantage of free online courses to learn more about audio engineering. Get started with whatever you have. Your mix may sound completely different in a different environment, so listen with different headphones/speakers in different locations. Master the basics and keep going back to them. If you’re mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent. When mixing, always use a reference track. Show Notes Aaron: You graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in music production and engineering. For the last five years, you’ve been the post production audio engineer for Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. You have a lot of jobs there: boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, and you mix their global TV show. Do you mix that live? Ryan: Not necessarily. We can get into that later. There’s a process for that. Aaron: Some of the creative people here might have heard of some of your work. You sound designed and mixed the opening videos for the past two years of Circles Conference, which I was at. Have you been there for the past two years? Ryan: I haven’t been personally, no. I have wanted to go. I love it from afar, and I want to go in person. Aaron: I wanted you to come on this show because when I first got started, I had dreams of being a professional audio engineer. I thought, “How cool would it be to work in audio and get paid for it? That’d be awesome!” I fell backwards into it by doing podcast editing as a hobby first, then for money, then I met Sean McCabe and ended up working for him full time. I edit podcasts and help out with a ton of other stuff. I asked you to come on the show to share your advice for anyone who’s interested in working in audio/video professionally, and to talk about how you got there yourself. So tell me a little bit about how you got into audio. When did you first realize that this was something you wanted to do? Ryan’s Journey to Becoming a Professional Audio Engineer Ryan: I love listening to your podcast, Aaron, and what I love about it is I feel like you and I have a lot of similarities in our backgrounds. You’re a musician, a drummer, and I’m also a musician. I play several things. My primary instrument is bass, but along with that, I started on piano. I picked up bass, and with the bass I picked up guitar. I took some drum lessons here and there as well. I sing as well. I dabbled in a little bit of everything. I’m kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. I’m okay at a lot of things, but I’m not superb at one thing. Anyway, right around junior high or high school, I started playing the bass. I started playing in little bands here and there. When it came time for college, I had no clue what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I loved music. Aaron: Same here! Ryan: I was living in Las Vegas at the time, so I decided, well, everyone has to have that college experience, and I didn’t want to go to college in the same city, so I decided that I needed that “being away from home” experience. I went to the University of Nevada, Reno. I took your basic, general classes, not knowing what I wanted to do. At this time, for my high school graduation, I had received a graduation present of a Macbook Pro. With that, of course, you get the wonderful iLife suite, including Garageband. As a musician, a whole new world was opened up to me. When I was in a band in high school, I was the gear head—I loved the PA and putting cables together. I was drawn to that. Once I had this Macbook Pro with Garageband and I had my bass and my guitar in my dorm, I was like, “I can create music!” I figured out how to work it and record myself. I bought a USB microphone, and that world was opened up. When I was there, I had a friend, and her brother went to this school where all they learned about was music. I was like, “Wait, you can do that? You can go to school for just music?” That’s how I found out about Berklee School of Music. I applied, and you have to audition as well. I applied and auditioned, and the first time I tried, I actually didn’t get into the music school I wanted to go to. Aaron: This sparks something in my mind. I feel like I might have read an article about Berklee or looked into it and thought, “No, they’re really strict on who they accept, based on your performance.” That was intimidating to me at the time, because I never felt like I was that good of a drummer. Ryan: It was intimidating for me, too. Clearly, I wasn’t up to par. Aaron: Yet you went for it. That’s more than a lot of people would do. Ryan: Yeah. After I finished my first year at UNR, I moved back to Vegas and went to UNLV, the University of Nevada Las Vegas. I took all music classes, forgetting the general ed stuff you need to get a degree. I took all music classes—music theory, because I had never had actual music theory classes, so I thought I needed that. With that, there were some audio classes that I took as well. I was like, “Hey, I like this audio thing.” At the University of Nevada Las Vegas, I had my first exposure to a formal audio class, where I learned all the proper techniques. Later on that year, I applied and auditioned again for Berklee. I got accepted, and the next year, I moved to Boston and went to Berklee for about three and a half years. Then I graduated. When I went to Berklee, the only thing that drew me as a major was Music Production and Engineering. I naturally loved the gear side of things. I fell in love with recording. I was like, “This is what I want to do.” Aaron: You got to spend three and a half years there, studying and learning? Ryan: It is non-stop, 24/7, music, audio, and to be honest, I miss being in that environment so much. Aaron: That sounds fantastic. I always love setting aside time to take online classes, read books, and listen to interviews about audio. Think Long-Term Aaron: You were drawn to the audio engineering stuff, and then you graduated. Ryan: I can remember a specific time in my life, and I’m pretty sure it was my last semester at Berklee. They went by semesters instead of years. It was in one of my capstone classes. Our instructor asked us the typical, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” question. Aaron: I love that question now. I hated it when I was 22. ** Think long term and dream big** Aaron: Plan out where you want to be, because if you can envision it, then you can figure out how to get there. But you have to start by saying, “I want to do this thing someday.” For me, it was, “I want to do work from a laptop. How do I get there?” Now I’m there. So you were 22 and someone asked you, “Ryan, where do you want to be? Where do you see yourself in five years?” Ryan: At that moment, I was trying to figure that out, naturally, as you do when you’re approaching the end of college. While I was at Berklee, I loved music. I loved recording music, but my absolute favorite class—they only had one of them, but it was the class I yearned for, that I wanted to take and put in all these extra hours for—was audio for visual media, audio for video. By far, that was my favorite class. The whole class, we were working toward our final project. You choose a five to seven minute clip from a well known movie, and all the audio is completely stripped. You have to recreate everything. That’s all the dialogue, all the foley, all the ambient background, all the hard effects, and so on. You have to connect with a film scoring student there at Berklee, and they have to provide the score. I absolutely loved every aspect of that project and the process. When it came time to decide what I wanted to do with my life, it was between audio engineering at a recording studio, working at Disney as an Imagineer, or doing audio at a church. I have always been involved with church, playing on worship teams and whatnot, so I also saw myself doing audio for a church. Long story short, I was really privileged to dip my feet in all of those things after college. After I graduated, I moved back to Las Vegas. Eventually, I found an incredible recording studio, probably one of the top two recording studios in Las Vegas, and I landed an internship. First Audio Engineering Jobs Ryan: I say “internship” loosely, because your typical studio internship is all the stereotypical grunt work—taking out the trash, doing the coffee, and whatnot. I showed up, and they were like, “You went to Berklee? Berklee guys are cool. Here, hop in this session and help us out.” It was open to me, thrown at me, and next thing I knew, I was assisting on sessions with huge clients, I won’t name drop. Aaron: You can drop a couple of names if you want. Ryan: I had a pretty fun time helping out with a session with the famous engineer Eddie Kramer, who is engineering for Carlos Santana. Aaron: Dang, man! That’s awesome. Ryan: That was pretty incredible. But while I was there, I had this gut feeling inside of me saying, “This isn’t it.” Aaron: It’s fine, but it’s not quite right? Ryan: I could see myself staying there and working my way up, but it didn’t feel right. A few months after I realized that I didn’t want to stay at the studio, I applied and was offered a job at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I packed my bags, moved to Orlando, and I was working as a stage technician at the Epcot park. There, they found out that I was an audio guy, so they pushed me toward the live audio side of things. I was mixing shows and bands at Epcot and what was at the time Downtown Disney, now Disney Springs, area. Same thing. Almost as soon as I got there, the same gut feeling came in. I was like, “This isn’t it. I’m more of a studio engineer. I definitely don’t want to do live stuff.” Although I love Disney, it just wasn’t sitting right. I was only there three months before the next great opportunity came up, which is where I am right now. One of my friends told me about a job opening for this church in Charlotte, North Carolina, Elevation Church. I had actually been following them because of their podcast. At the time, I was kind of like, “I’ve got a job, whatever.” For some reason, I ended up on their website, looking at the job. I was reading, and I was like, “Wait a minute, they’re looking for someone to do audio for video. That’s what I really want to do!” On a whim, I threw out my resume. Next thing you know, I’ve been here going on five years. Aaron: Did you mention that you were a podcast listener when you sent in your resume? Ryan: Yeah. Aaron: The connections you can make through podcasting is really incredible. Ryan: It is. And I’ve been working there for 5 years now. How to Get Into Audio Engineering Aaron: I want to jump into what you do at your job at Elevation, but let’s pause and do a section on what advice you would tell someone who’s wanting to get started. I wrote a couple of things down here. I think it’s hilarious that you got a Macbook and your first microphone was a USB microphone. Ryan: Which was the Blue Snowball, by the way. Aaron: That’s the worst microphone! Ryan: I had no idea how to use it, either. If I find some of the earliest recordings I did, there are times I’m clipping to the max, square waves. Aaron: Probably bad mic technique, too. But hey; it got you started! If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone. Any USB mics will work for getting started. I like the Blue Yeti, but it’s like $100. The ATR-2100 is fine, too. You just have to get something that can record some audio and start playing with it. Start playing with Garageband. Start playing with the free programs. Learn how to enable recording on a track, how to set your input device to the microphone, how to set your output device to wherever your headphones are plugged into, whether that’s your mic or your computer. It took me so long to figure that stuff out. I was like, “Why can’t I hear the audio in my headphones? What is going on?” Ryan: Same here. Aaron: You have to set input and output, then you have to record enable or do the input monitoring, all that stuff. But start with the USB microphone. Take some basic classes. There are so many great online classes. If you don’t have any money at all, if you’re super broke like I was when I started, watch some free YouTube videos. Read a book. Ryan: If you go to Coursera.org, they’re a website where you can pay to take online courses and get certifications and whatnot, but they also offer free online courses. They even offer free online courses from Berklee. I’ve seen a music production class there. I’ve taken a free online song writing class. Check out free online courses, because they can be a pool of incredible knowledge. I took a photography class on there. Coursera is a great place. They’re great if you want to take free online courses. Aaron: There are places where you can learn all this stuff. You just have to invest some time. You really just have to start: Don’t wait until you have $500 for an interface and $200 for some professional headphones and microphone. Whether you want to start a podcast, start recording audio for a video, or record and mix a demo for a band, start doing something. Stop spending all your time thinking about how you can’t do anything because you don’t have certain gear or you’re not in the right place. You’ll learn as you do, especially in audio. You’re going to make a ton of mistakes. Ryan: That’s how you learn, though! That’s one of the most valuable things I’ve learned in life. You learn from your mistakes. Aaron: You don’t really learn when everything goes well. Just Start Aaron: Any other advice you would give somebody, thinking back on how you got to where you are right now? Ryan: Honestly, you hit the nail on the head with “just start.” It’s as simple and cliche as Nike, “Just do it.” There is always going to be the next latest craze, the gear, and we’ve all been susceptible to that. We say, “Oh, well, I could do this if I had X.” It starts with the drive and determination, wanting to do it. There’s knowledge out there everywhere. You just have to dig for it. Chances are, you have at least something you can start with. Record something on your phone. Aaron: I have a friend who makes some awesome music on his iPhone. Ryan: Oh, totally. It’s as simple as getting an adapter. You can plug your guitar or whatever into your phone. Aaron: Kids these days have it so easy! Ryan: You have Garageband on your phone. I remember when I was figuring this out in high school, and we actually had a four track tape recorder. That was my first start. Get started with whatever you have. Aaron: What kind of stuff do you do at the church? What’s your day to day life like? Are you there every day, or is it just a couple of days a week? Ryan: Oh no, I’m definitely there every day. It has been a whirlwind for sure. In the past five years, I have probably played every audio role that there is to be played here. My main thing now is audio for broadcasts, pretty much anything that leaves the church. Our biggest output is the sermon, which goes to a lot of places. It also goes in the TV episode, which we talked about, which goes locally, nationally, and, I believe, globally as well. That’s a lot of what I’ve done. We also create a lot of films, short films, for our worship experiences, anything you can imagine that’s video and audio related. Audio post production, like we talk about. I’m constantly on video shoots using field recorders, the boom op, anything you can think of. Audio for video, I’ve done it. The Gear Ryan Uses Aaron: Let’s talk about your gear a little bit. What kind of stuff are you using most in everyday life? I’ll do a quick recap: I have the Shure Beta 87A Mic as my main podcasting microphone. It’s attached to a Scarlett 18i20 USB Interface (update: I’m now using my Zoom H6 exclusively), which is plugged into a quadcore iMac that’s a couple years old. Nothing super fancy, but I’m really happy with where I am. I remember wanting all this stuff back in 2011, thinking how awesome it would be to have it. I have a Zoom H6 portable recorder and a couple of SM58 microphones. I’ve been pairing down my gear collection because I’m planning on moving in the spring. What kind of stuff are you working with? I use Logic Pro X for editing, and then Izotope iZotope RX 5 for cleaning up background noise or fixing clipping. What about you? What’s your day to day favorite gear? Ryan: We use a lot. There’s a bunch of gear for field recording and then in my office, which is where I’m at right now. I’ll start with my office. Right now, I’m talking into my personal mic, which is a Rode NT1A. It’s very affordable. The Rode NT1A is a nice beginner mic which works and sounds great, and I use it for a lot of voiceover projects. Aaron: I like those mics. Ryan: I’m talking into that right now. We also use the Shure SM7B. We have a nice Neumann that we’ll use for bigger projects. We like to use Universal Audio Interfaces, so I’ve got one of those. They’re great. They’re rock solid. You really can’t beat them. At our main recording/editing audio work station, we use Pro Tools. That’s very standard, and I’ve been using that for years and years. I use a lot of plugins. I use a lot of the Waves Plugins. I do use RX as well, and that’s the bulk of it. I do a lot of processing, depending on the project. I have a really huge sound library for if I’m doing narrative pieces that involve sound design, sound effects. I have a great app called Audio Finder, which a lot of electronic musicians use to help them find sounds. I use it to help me find sounds. It’s a nice way to catalogue sounds if you’re a sound designer or anything like that. You can basically tag all these audio files with meta data, and you can search for sounds by their title. Or, if you type in a word in the search bar, it can pull up things based off the the metadata. If you have notes on something, it can find it. Audio Finder is a great way to find sounds. I have some other things in here. I have the Artist Mix Controller made by Avid. I use those if I’m automating stuff. I use those a lot, actually, when I’m mixing the sermons. I do a lot of automation for that. If I’m mixing a piece with a music bed or something, I like to automate the music by hand. It feels more natural, as opposed to clicking and making little dots. That’s the bulk of it here in the office. All of our audio engineers have a nice pair of Focal monitors. I also have another set of monitors I built myself. When I mix TV episodes, I have an output routed to a TV here in my office so I can hear how it translates on TV speakers. Recording Audio for Video Ryan: On the front end of things, if we’re doing shoots for videos, we use Sound Devices field recorders. We have three different models: the Sound Devices 788T 8 Channel Recorder, a 702 2 Channel Recorder, and then a 633 6 Channel Recorder. That last one is one of their newer models, which is great. Sound Devices are steep in price, but they are rock solid. One of the most trustworthy, well known field recorder brands on the market. That’s what you’ll see on pretty much every big budget shoot in some way. I do a lot of freelance on the side, which gives me the opportunity EPK shoots or BTS shoots for, recently, a show on HBO called Outcast. Aaron: Outcast? I’ve been seeing that (I watch Westworld). Ryan: I’m pretty sure it’s the same writers or producers or something. I know it’s the same writer as The Walking Dead. They shoot here in North Carolina, so with a local production company, we’ve done some interviews with some of the cast and crew. It’s been really neat to be on set and see what they’re using. It’s cool to see how similar their world is to what we’re doing day to day, just with more money and more resources. It’s the same thing. Most of their audio guys have some sort of Sound Devices. A lot of them use the 788 as a backup recording rig, and they’ve got larger multitrack recorders as well, that are also made by Sound Devices. Sound Devices is a great brand. They’re crazy expensive, but when you buy that, you know you’ve basically got it for life. Aaron: Yeah, I’m looking at the Sound Devices 788T SSD 8 Channel Portable Solid State Audio Recorder. It’s almost $7,000. I love that! So fancy. Ryan: That SSD does have an internal hard drive. Ours has a hard drive as well, so it’s great, because it has the internal hard drive, but you can also use CF cards. You can record on two different mediums. In case something runs out of space, you have it in two places. Aaron: This is super professional stuff. Ryan: Yeah. It is. It’s top of the line. Aaron: Fantastic. For all the rest of you, just go with the Zoom H4N or the H6. Ryan: Hey, we do have a Zoom H4N, and we do use that every now and then. Before I came on staff, our first field recorder was the Zoom H4N. Aaron: If I could start over and go back to before I had any kind of interface at all, I think I would buy myself an H4N or an H6. Not only are they portable field recorders so you can walk around with them—they have little stereo condensor mics on them—but they work as audio interfaces, too. You can plug it into your computer with a USB cable and record straight to your computer if you do any kind of podcasting or stuff like that. It’s good for the price. Otherwise, the little two channel interfaces are great. They’re about $100 for a good one, but they aren’t portable. You can’t take them to a show or out to a video shoot the way you can an H4N or an H6 or something. Ryan: Speaking of Zoom, they’ve recently come into the more professional field recording market. About a year ago, they releases the F8, I believe, which is an 8 channel field recorder with 8 mic pres. It’s $999 for something very comparable to a Sound Device. It’s not quite as high-fidelity, but for anyone starting out, you’re really not going to notice the difference. Mixing On Expensive Headphones or Monitors Aaron: I was going to ask you this earlier. You mentioned that you had Focal monitors. Did you listen to the episode I did a few episodes back where I talked about mixing on headphones (Episode 69: Do You Need Expensive Headphones to Mix a Podcast?)? Ryan: Yes, I did. Aaron: I mix on $10 Panasonics. What do you think about that? You can be totally honest with me. You can tell me that it’s a stupid idea or that it’s okay. Ryan: I agree to a certain extent. I agree that you should be listening to what you’re making on whatever the majority of people are going to be listening to it on. For a lot of audio engineers mixing music, that’s iPod earbuds, those standard earbuds you get. Something like that. When I mix TV, I have an output routed to a TV in my office, so I can hear it on TV speakers. I do also believe in mixing on something with some sort of higher fidelity type of monitoring environment, whether that’s nicer speakers or nicer headphones. Naturally, you’re going to hear things differently. The main thing to take away is how things translate. If you’re listening to something on one source and you make it sound good there, that’s great, but in a different environment, it may sound completely different. iPhone earbuds may not have the bass that a car stereo has. You want to hear how it translates from one thing to another. That’s why it’s good to at least listen to it on two different sources and not just narrow yourself down to one cruddy thing. That’s good in theory, but again, the key takeaway is translation. Aaron: Maybe it’s a little bit different for me and I can get away with it because of the consistency of the microphones and the recording environment set we use. Ryan: Yeah, totally. Aaron: I think if I was doing more stuff like you are, with videos and clients and all that kind of stuff, I would absolutely be using my higher fidelity headphones. Ryan: Very true. The bulk of your work is dialogue, podcasts. Aaron: Yeah, that’s really it. Just dudes talking into a microphone. Ryan: Yeah. I have done a lot of work here where I’m working in a small studio, but a lot of my mixes have played in auditoriums and arenas. If you’re working on projects like music or film that have different audio frequencies and spectrums, remember that sound will be perceived differently in different places. Aaron: How do you even test for that? Ryan: Here, I at least have a sense of how our auditorium sounds, so I’ve trained my ear to hear in advance and understand how it’s going to translate. For something like when we did a live recording in the biggest arena here in Charlotte, we had a video opener piece. I was on point for mixing that, so basically, I had to work with tech and production to find a time after setup where I can bring my session, copy it onto a laptop, and play it through the PA. Then I can make any final mix tweaks there in the auditorium or the arena. I perfected it in my studio, and any small tweaks I was able to do in that actual environment. Granted, a lot of the times, we may not have that luxury. There are also great plugins you can buy that simulate different monitoring environments, like Sonarworks. If you have certain pairs of headphones, you can tell the program, “I have these headphones, now make my mix sound like it’s coming through these headphones or these speakers,” so you can hear how it might translate. In that program, they have a final output like the Beats headphones. You can hear how it might sound on there, super bass heavy. Aaron: I hear they’re getting better, but I still have never bought any Beats headphones. I probably should (just for testing purposes). Ryan: There are definitely programs out there to help you see how things translate to different monitors. On Location Gear Ryan: We were talking about the gear we use for on location recording. Sound Devices would be our main recorders. For our mics, we use Schoeps. It’s a shotgun microphone, so it’s a narrow polar pattern with good off axis rejection. Schoeps is a great brand. Again, you’ll see this on professional movie sets. That’s the mic we use. We have some Sennheiser shotguns as well, the ME66, we have a couple of those, which is more their entry shotgun mics. Recently, I rented some of the MKH416. Aaron: I would like one of those. The Sennheiser 416 is well known as the classic TV shotgun mic, right? Ryan: Exactly. I rented those out because I wanted to try it out for that reason. The Schoeps is very good and very well known on set as well, but so is the 416. I rented it to try it out. It’s a trusted mic that a lot of people use for these professional things, and it doesn’t really break the bank for what it is. Aaron: They’re like $1,000, I think. Ryan: Yeah, and it sounded great. Aaron: The next mic I get is either going to be that or the Rode NTG 3. Ryan: I’ve heard a lot of great things about that. I haven’t tried one myself. Aaron: That’s the shotgun mics we shot my podcasting courses with. Ryan: Yeah, I know that Sean uses that for all of his videos. Aaron: I’m excited about getting to go work with those (I’m moving to San Antonio in March or April). Master the Basics Aaron: That’s a pretty good run through of your gear. I’m sure you could keep going and discuss a lot more, but I don’t think we need to go into that. It seems like you guys are at a super professional, high quality. You have made big investments in professional gear, which is fantastic. I encourage everyone to strive for that, to aim for that, but like we said earlier, use what you have right now. I don’t have anything close to what you guys have, but I’m still doing my podcast. I’m doing the best I can with what I have. Ryan: It still sounds great. Aaron: Thanks! It’s mostly just knowing how to set gain levels and not having a noisy room. It’s crazy how far the basics will get you— everything else is just icing on the cake. I’ve been watching this video course called Zen and the Art of Work, which I really recommend to everybody. It’s mindfulness training mixed with productivity training, which is such a great combination. In this course, he says, “So many of the masters continually revisit the basics.” Mastery is staying on a path. It’s not reaching some final goal, it’s more about being with the work and investing in getting better, but also revisiting the basics. He was talking about playing piano. He was like, “A lot of times, I just start by touching the keys, pressing the keys, and then doing basic scales over and over again.” It’s true. When you get so good at the basics that you don’t have to think about it, that’s when you start to expand and get to that level where people say, “Wow, you’re so good at that. How did you get so good?” You’re like, “That was just doing the basics. It’s not anything fancy.” It’s so important to master the basics and keep going back to them. Learning More Aaron: What’s next for you? How do you invest in yourself and improve? Or are you working so much that you always have more learning opportunities? Do you buy books or courses or follow any websites to learn more about this audio stuff? Ryan: Honestly? We had a shift at work to where my role has shifted to mainly just broadcasts. That has enabled me to have a little bit more flexibility and free time, so I’ve been doing a lot more freelance work. That’s great, because it energizes me and keeps me engaged. It keeps me from routine. Routine is great. I love routine, that’s very much my personality, but freelance work keeps things interesting. For me, it’s all about where and how I can get inspired and constantly feeding that. It’s about feeding my desire for creativity. We’re all creatives. We like to create. We were designed to be creators, really. Everything I try to do is about how I can become a better creator and what I can create next. It’s about finding things that inspire me, really. We touched lightly on a few of the resources that I like, things I’ve learned and places I’ve picked things up. If you’re interested in audio for post production, there are a couple of great books by Ric Viers. I have two books by him that are really great. The first one is The Sound Effects Bible, and it’s not just sound effects in there. He talks about everything from gear to microphones, basics, setting proper gains, compression, some mixing techniques, etc. He also has The Location Sound Bible. There are a lot of similarities, but there’s also a lot of talk about gear, shotgun mics, lop mics, recorders, and then he also dives into some of the basics when it comes to mixing, proper gain staging, and so on. Those are a really great pool of knowledge in book form. There are a lot of other books out there, but I have found those two to be really helpful. Other than that, when it comes to audio for video, it’s a very small, niche field. There isn’t a crazy amount of stuff out there, like there might be for mixing music. For that, you’ve got tons. You’ve got Pensado’s Place, all these people on YouTube putting out channels on mixing, mixing from home, mixing on a budget, etc. There’s plenty of that. Aaron: Graham Cochrane and Joe Gilder are pretty awesome resources for anyone who wants to start a home studio. Ryan: YouTube can be a pool of knowledge for anything and everything, too. You have to dig a little bit and do some searching. On the inspiration side, for me, since I love audio for video, Sound Works Collection is a great place. They’ll do mini videos interviewing the sound people that did sound for X movie. Whether it was the last Harry Potter or anything and everything, big budget films, they’ll sit down with the recording people, the sound designers, the mixers… It’s really cool, because they’ll show footage of them doing stuff on location or the foley artists. It’s cool to see their process. For me, that helps me stay inspired. It gives me ideas to do other things. They have a podcast as well, and that’s great. The videos can be kind of short, maybe 10 minutes or so, but the podcast will go on at length, talking to the audio guys who have made sound for videos possible. It will also be music composers for movies as well. That’s really great. I found that great not only as inspiration, but to know what and how audio professionals for big budget films get inside their minds, how they’re thinking, and what their process looks like. It’s neat to see stuff about sound engineers for big movies and realize that we’re not so different. Dealing With a Broad Loudness Spectrum (Dynamics) Aaron: I have a nerdy question here. This is about normalizing and compression, I think. Aiya had asked, “I’m so torn about normalizing sound clips. If I’m working on a longer project in segments, would it be better to adjust my peaks manually for the sake of consistency? It’s for a video project.” I’m hearing that there are differences in video volumes. How do you deal with that? Do you do compression? Do you do automation for the different parts? How do you deal with dynamics? Ryan: It depends on the project. I’ll talk about how I would mix a sermon, because that’s very dynamic. Our pastor will go from whispering, holding his handheld mic close to his stomach, to screaming, holding the microphone, cupping the capsule. Power and respect to him, because it creates a certain atmosphere, which has a powerful effect. That’s what I’m dealing with on a weekly basis. That dynamic range is tremendous. Keep in mind, this is going to TV eventually. TV has very strict restrictions. It’s not so much on level, but on perceived level. There’s a difference between what you see meter and what you’re hearing. I can talk at length about that, too. Aaron: Could you give us a super short version? I’m kind of aware of that, but since I just mix in Logic, I’m not sure how to measure it. Is there a way to measure it in Logic? Do you know? Is there a plugin you use? Ryan: I use a plugin from Waves. It’s a loudness meter, and its just that. It has a lot of presets, so I’ll use the TV standard preset. I’ll use it for ATSE85, and I’ll use it for a dialogue bus. They’ve also got one for a master bus. The standard right there is your average level around -24 dB LUFS, so that’s full scale. If you have a classic meters, your peak would be zero, so that would average metering right around -10. At least for TV, I’ve got a hard limiter at -10 dB, to where nothing can go above that. The difference between levels on a meter vs. perceived loudness is the differences between what we hear and the actual energy. In our TV program, we’ll have the sermon, but we’ll also have a talking heads segments, which is dialogue and a music bed. We’ll also go into segments where they’ll go into worship from our live album, which had been mixed and mastered as an album. That thing is slammed. If you look at the wave form, it’s a sausage. If I’m setting all that by the meters alone and they’re all hitting -10, it may look right, but if I look at my loudness meter, that worship segment is going to be off the charts. There’s so much more content in there. There’s so much going on with all the different frequency ranges as opposed to a dialogue track, which is a narrow field in the frequency spectrum. That’s the gist of it. When it comes to my technique for controlling dynamics, for something like mixing a sermon, if I’m going down my plugin chain, the first thing I naturally have is a high pass filter. I’m rolling off those unnecessary lows that are hogging energy. The next thing I’ll do is use a compressor, and I’ll set the attack to right in the middle, so not fast or slow, and I’ll have the release time at fast. We don’t want to hear it pumping, letting go. That’s catching my peaks. It’s not doing a crazy amount, but it kind of is. That’s helping do a lot of the bulk compression. Before anything really hits the compressor, I will go through, and as I work my way through the mix, I will clip gain the wave form, so that, say, if he’s whispering somewhere, I might keep that, depending on how I have my compressor set. Then, if we go up to a part where he’s screaming and my wave form is huge, I will take that down and create those nodes, those dots in the wave form, and drag the actual clip volume down, that gain down. That way, it’s not going into the compressor at this high gain level. It’s hitting the compressor evenly as the rest of it would. That way, it’s not driving the compressor crazy. Then I’ll go through and do some EQ and DSing and whatnot. I might add some more compressors in there, just to grab some of those little things coming through. After that, it’s subtle, just smoothing it out. Aaron: It is a little bit of both. If she has access to an audio editing program—I don’t know what she’s using for editing. If you can put a compressor on the track, do that. It’s not exactly the same, but I did a YouTube video about how I process podcast vocals, and it’s very similar. For podcast vocals, I start with a Logic noise removal plugin. Ryan: I actually have my noise suppressor, and I’ll use that later on down in my signal chain. My way of thinking is that if I’ve got all this compression going on, the compression is narrowing that dynamic range, so it’s bringing up that noise floor. I tend to do my noise suppression after the bulk of that compression, because the noise floor is higher and it’s easier to work on a supressor. If that makes sense. Aaron: I’ve thought a lot about whether you should do the noise removal before or after you add a bunch of gain with a compressor or something, and I can’t think of a good reason that it matters. You can take out the noise before you add a bunch of gain, or you can add a bunch of gain and take out the noise afterwards. Which is better? I don’t know. Anyways, after the noise removal plugin, I put an EQ with a high pass filter, a peak compressor, an RMS or an average level compressor, and then a limiter. Ryan: Like I mentioned earlier, before I had my long-winded answer, it also depends on what it is you’re mixing—whether it’s music, or a podcast, or something for film. When it comes to dialogue for film, you want it to sound as natural as possible, but you also want to be able to hear if someone is whispering. When it comes to that, I’ll still use a compressor, but it will be very, very light. If there’s anything I need to do to meet loudness, that I will automate the volume on my dialogue bus. I’ll bring that up. That way, it sounds a little bit more natural, instead of solely relying on a compressor to do all the work for you. Aaron: That makes sense. For podcasts, if I notice that there’s a section where someone was talking much quieter, like if a guest backed away and talked like that for four or five minutes and then went back to the normal distance from the microphone, in Logic, I’ll turn that into its own clip. I make a cut on either side of the quiet part, and then, in Logic, you can double click on it and change gain by hitting Control G. Then you can add 3, 4, or 5 dB to it. That works out pretty well. If it’s every five seconds or I have to do it more than five or six times in an episode, I won’t do the clip gain changes, I’ll just use a compressor. Look at the overall audio file and see if there are long stretches where you can use automation to change the gain, or change the clip gain. Common Audio Mistakes Podcasters Make Ryan: You asked a question that I think would be good to talk about in regards to podcasting. You had asked, “What do you like about podcasts? What common mistakes do you hear people make?” Initially, I read this and thought, “I don’t know,” but I spent some time thinking about it. This is great, because it piggybacks off the loudness thing. A lot of the mistakes that I hear when it comes to podcasts in regards to audio is the levels and loudness aspect. I’ll listen to some podcasts that sound great, and I’ll put on another podcast where the whole thing is super quiet. Then they start laughing, and it’s really loud. There are some, like mine, where they have a music bed underneath the entire thing, and then sometimes the music bed is so quiet that you hardly know it’s there. You’re like, “What the heck is that noise in the background?” Sometimes, it’s the opposite. Sometimes, the music bed is way too loud. That’s a few of the things I’ve noticed. A lot of the fixes relate to what we just talked about. It helps to have knowledge of levels and perceived loudness. If you’re mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent. One of the biggest things I can recommend for anyone mixing anything, whether it’s music, movies, a podcast, is the importance of having a reference track. Aaron: Yeah, I don’t talk about that enough. Ryan: That is huge. Professional audio engineers who mix platinum records still do this. They will pull in a track from a different song that is mixed well and is mixed how they want theirs to sound, and they’ll have it muted in their session. When they want to have a reference to listen to or train their ear, they’ll un-mute it, and they’ll go, “Oh, okay.” I’m sure you’ve done the same thing as me, where you’ll be so involved in a mix, you’re in it, and you think it sounds great, and then maybe you go away. You go home, sleep, and maybe you come back, and you open it up and you go, “Woah! What was I thinking!” You can get so involved in it that the blinders go up. You get tunnel vision, and you’re not aware to some things. It’s good to have a reference track or get an outsider’s opinion on a mix. The main takeaway here is the reference track. That would help with anything, whether it’s the timbre, how you’re EQing, or the loudness. You pull in their track and it’s far louder than yours, and you automatically know that you need to do something about it. Aaron: That’s a great idea. You can kind of do this before or after. You go through and you edit your whole podcast, get everything set up the way you want, create an extra track, and then find a podcast that sounds really good—This American Life or pretty much anything by NPR—download an episode, drop it into your editing program, and play it, mute it, and see what the difference is. Maybe you need to add some gain with an adaptive limiter or with a compressor, or maybe you can tell that your track sounds way sharper or harsher. Are there are too many high frequencies or too much bass compared to your reference track? You can adjust those things. I’m so glad you mentioned that. I’ve never thought of that before, and that’s such a good idea. Ryan: It’s one of those things you don’t think of much, but once you do it, you’re like, “Oh my gosh!” It’s really eye opening and really helpful. You can find Ryan online at ryanmonette.com, and follow him on Twitter @RyanMonette.

Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think and work. Work on building your focus muscle. The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest. Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time. Show up every day and do your best creative work. If you can’t overcome fear, push through it—fear is a sign that you’re doing something that matters. The way you feel about a product doesn’t change how much it’s worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it. Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before. Don’t undervalue your products. Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing. Pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal. Show Notes: Aaron: We both really loved Cal Newport’s Deep Work book. When did you get interested in the idea of intense focus and structuring your life in a way to make sure you get your best creative work done? When did you find that book or that idea and really start working on that? Shawn: I think I found the idea years ago. When I was a creative marketing director, like I mentioned, I was doing 80 hours a week. Part of my schedule was that on Fridays, I would come home and work from home. I wouldn’t be on email or answer the phone. I had an assistant, and anyone who needed to get ahold of me needed to go through my assistant. She would screen anything and see if it was urgent or important for the day. If it was, she’d let me know. I set up this distraction-free work time for myself on Fridays, because as the director for the marketing and all the creative stuff we were doing, it was on me to make sure that our marketing campaign for this big, end of the year, 25,000 person conference was going to happen. It was all on me. I had to drive that. You can’t do that in 10-minute time blocks scattered throughout your day. For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think, process, come up with ideas, and work on stuff. That was my first experience of going, “I have to have this. If I don’t, I won’t be able to do my job, and I will always be in reaction mode.” That was my first experience, and that was in 2008 when I came across that idea. It was born out of necessity for me. Obviously, that’s not new to the world, but it was new to me. When I quit my job and started blogging for a living, I came to that same spot of saying, “I need to set aside time every day to write without distractions, intentionally.” That has evolved as we’ve had kids, schedules have changed, and seasons of life go up and down. I need uninterrupted stretches of time on a regular basis to do my most important work and to focus on the stuff that’s not urgent today but is very important. If I neglect it, those things will become urgent, or the needle is going to start going backwards and I’m going to start losing ground. Why Deep Focus Matters Shawn: Focused time has always been important. Then I came across Cal’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. I read that in 2015. That’s a fantastic book. There was this chapter in there on intentional practice, and that resonated with me so much. It’s very similar to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow. He has a lot of books on very similar topics on finding flow, getting in the flow, whatever. He has one book called Flow and another one called Finding Flow. It’s the idea that not only do you need those times of uninterrupted work, but when you’re in that moment, if you can get into the flow, it’s challenging, it’s hard, etc, but you feel more rewarded. You feel better. You have a higher motivation about the work you’re doing. You feel like you accomplished something. I don’t know if anyone listening can relate to this. You spend your whole day in reaction mode, bouncing around between your email inbox, your Twitter feed, your Facebook feed, your Instagram feed, back to email, back to Twitter, back to Instagram, back to Facebook, back to email. You’re bouncing around all these inboxes, and then you’re like, “Wow, I just spent four hours. I haven’t done anything.” Aaron: You read a bunch of short emails, maybe you replied, maybe you sent some tweets, maybe you saw some articles. It’s so easy to spend all day doing short, quick tasks that don’t really change anything. Shawn: Exactly. They don’t change anything, and you feel zero satisfaction afterwards. You don’t feel like you got anything done, as opposed to if you took those four hours and, instead, spent it focused on something intentional, something that was challenging. If you set aside time to do deep work, when you come out of that time (even if it’s just one hour or half an hour), if it was distraction free and you’re focused and being intentional, you come out feeling better. After spending intentional time working on something without any distractions, you feel more motivated and you have more energy. It’s this muscle. You have a focus muscle that you have to work on, as opposed to the distraction muscle. Why is Creating Focused Time So Hard? Shawn: The hardest thing for getting into that focused work time, getting into the flow, is called the Activation Energy, just getting started. The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest. Something I like to do is have a set time every day when I am going to have my focused writing time, and before I even get there, the day before, I write down what my single most important thing is that I’m going to be writing about. I have the time on my calendar, and I have the challenge, project, or task that I’m going to be working on. As Cal Newport would say, what’s the artifact that I’m going to try and get from that focused time? Then I come, sit down, and do the work. I know that the first five minutes will be hard and I probably won’t be into it. I have to power through those first five minutes, and then you get into that flow. Time begins to get lost. Anyone who has been a painter, artist, musician, whatever, you can usually relate. You say, “I was just in the flow. I was in the zone.” That’s where your best work is going to be created. That’s where you’re going to feel the most satisfaction with your job. That’s where you’re going to increase your skill level as a creative person. You’re going to level up your ability to do stuff. Sean has talked about this so much with his Learn Lettering course: he did 9,000 hours of intentional practice! That’s what he was doing every day. He had this focused time where he was practicing letters. You have to put in the time. How to Stop Procrastinating and Do Your Best Work Aaron: Everyone should read Cal Newport’s books, So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work. Both of those books are phenomenal. It’s so important as podcasters to pick a day to outline and record an episode, and write the topic in advance. Say, “I’m going to spend 30 to 45 minutes at this time writing about this thing, and then I’m going to record an episode.” Otherwise, what ends up happening, and this is true of so many areas of life, is that you will spend a lot of time thinking about how you should do a thing. I’ve been thinking about how I should record a screencast for three weeks now. “Hey, I have to record that ‘introduction to limiting’ screencast for my Logic course,” and I’ve been thinking a lot about it, but I haven’t done it yet. It’s so silly, but that’s how procrastination works. You spend more time thinking about how you should do a thing instead of just doing the thing. Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time. That’s such a simple version of an idea presented in Deep Work that is so life changing. I talk about that book all the time because I love it, and I know there are still some people who haven’t read it yet. It is a book that anyone who wants to create stuff for a living professionally needs to go listen to. Shawn, you should do a whole series of videos or interviews where you talk about deep focus for creative people. Shawn: I do. I did some stuff, like the TheFocusCourse.com/margin page. I interviewed Cal Newport, and we talked about this. I interviewed a few other folks and wrote some articles, and it was on this topic of having margin in your life, the breathing room, so that you can do your best creative work. That’s our mantra over there at The Focus Course: Show up every day and do your best creative work. I think margin is a huge part of that. The deep work, the focus, it’s a huge part of it. Otherwise, you’re just working on your email inbox all the time. That’s no fun. Push Through Fear Aaron: The first question I want to talk about is this one from Mariali. She asked, “How did you overcome the insecurity of giving birth to a new idea you weren’t sure people would respond well to?” I think this was about a book but it could be about anything, really. Shawn: I didn’t overcome the fear. I put it out there and stuck to the plan. The way that worked with my Delight is in the Details book, was that I had done it as a podcast mini series for my members only. It was a little five part podcast, and I got a lot of positive response from people. I had teased it out, and I got a positive response, so I thought, “I should sell this for maybe like $5 as a sample for the Shawn Blanc membership thing.” I thought, “I should rewrite it, so it’s a little bit more structured. I’ll rerecord it so it doesn’t have the welcome in it, so it’s a little bit more of its own product.” As I’m doing that, it goes from five episodes to like 12. There were all these extra chapters that I ended up writing. Then I thought, “Gosh, if I’m going to to this, I might as well interview some other people, and then I can charge more for the thing.” Instead of charging $10, I could charge like $20. That would double what I’d make from it. So I made the book, and when I was getting ready to sell it, that was the hard part. That launch day, I just felt super insecure. I felt bad and sick to my stomach. I texted a few friends of mine. I was like, “This book is coming out in an hour. People are going to hate it.” Everyone was like, “Stick to your plan. Put it out there.” The people I trusted, who’s opinions I cared about, all said, “You’re fine, keep going.” I listened to them, and I did. I kept going and it. I pushed through that fear. I never overcame the fear—I just pushed through it. I kept going. You begin to learn that the fear becomes this mile marker for you, a sign post that you’re probably doing something that matters and creating something that matters. Now I’ve learned that when I feel that, “This might not work,” or, “Holy crap, what am I doing? I’m in over my head!” I should probably keep going, because I might be on to something that matters at this point. Aaron: That’s fantastic advice. The Market Decides What a Product Is Worth Aaron: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I talked about this in the Fired Up Mondays podcast this morning, which is that the market decides what’s valuable. People will complain when they see a product that they don’t think is worth as much as the company is charging for it. Let’s say that you look at a Lamborghini, and you’re like, “I don’t know why anyone would ever pay $400,000 for that car. Why would you want that car? You could just buy a 1999 Toyota Camri that has 140,000 miles on it for $4,000.” “This ’99 Camry works great. It gets me everywhere. Good gas mileage, pretty comfortable. Not the most amazing sound system, but it does have a Bose sound system in it, so it’s fine. Why would anyone spend $400,000 on a Lamborghini?” The way you feel about a product doesn’t change how much it’s worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it. There’s somebody out there willing to pay that much money. They have that much money, and it doesn’t matter what you think about that product. Somebody else went out and made that, and they’re going to make money from that while you’re at home complaining about how somebody else is spending $300 for a picture book from Apple. How you feel about the price of a product doesn’t matter. Shawn: It’s how the people that are buying it feel that matters. To say, “I’m not going to start a Lamborghini company because used Toyota Corollas exist,” that’s silly, but that’s how we feel. Aaron: Relating to my courses, which I’m getting close to wrapping up, pricing is interesting for me. If I hadn’t met Sean and the people in the seanwes Community, I think I would have charged a fraction of what I’m planning on charging. I probably would have charged closer to $20. I would have put all this time and energy into it and not priced it high enough, because I didn’t realize that there are people out there that sell courses for $1,500 and $10,000. Don’t Undervalue Your Products Shawn: I bought a course recently that cost me $2,000. Aaron: So many people don’t know that. A lot of us still think that $2,000 is a ton of money. For a lot of people, it is. That doesn’t mean that you have to apply such a low price to the product that you’re making, just because you feel like $50 is a lot of money. Don’t charge too little for your product because you feel like a higher price is a lot of money—that’s an easy trap to fall into. Shawn: That’s very true. You have to step back. This course I bought, for me, it was a no brainer. I bought the book that was written by the guy, and I went through the book and implemented some of the stuff in there, and it helped me launch my time management class. That did $20,000 its first launch week. I spent something like $18 on this guy’s book, and it helped me make $20,000. So his $2000 course was a no brainer for me. This master class version of that book, the online course version of it, that was a no brainer for me. There were a ton of videos, all this implementation stuff, coaching, and all this stuff that was involved in it. There were all these things you can do that can increase the value of your stuff. Don’t increase your price just because. Start with your basic price and then double it and double it again. Now you’re probably at a decent starting point. You’re so prone to under-valuing your own work. You don’t just jack the price up because people say so. You need to look objectively and say, “Alright, am I providing the value?” If someone comes in and takes my Focus Course, for example, we charge $350 for it. It’s not a lot, but it isn’t a little, either. If someone spends $350 and goes through this course, are they going to be able to walk away with at least, ideally, $700 worth of value? I want them to get at least double the value they’re paying for it. Can I get it to be even more? Can I get them to walk away with $3,500 worth of value, 10X the amount of value that I’m providing? You charge that, and if people take it seriously, they’ll walk away with something that wil literally change the way they spend their time with work, family, health, and finances. This is across the board for their life, and you can’t put a price on that. Objectively ask yourself if you’re delivering on your promises and providing the value that you say you are. With your stuff, Aaron, with podcasting, if you can help people get a podcast off the ground, they can turn that into a full time business. That’s worth $50,000 or $100,000. Someone could say, “Thanks to your stuff, I started a business that’s now thriving. I do this as my job.” That’s worth so much money! To charge $20 for it? Don’t undervalue your stuff. First Steps to Improve Your Focus Aaron: I want to answer Kyle’s question here in the chat. I’m going to read his question and I’ll let you take a stab at it, Shawn. Kyle asked, “Is there a best first step to improved focus? I can think of so many directions I should go: exercise more, eat better, write down what I’m doing the next day, sleep better, etc. Trying to do all of it at once isn’t sustainable. What should I start with?” Shawn: This is great, Kyle, excellent question. I feel like there are two best first steps (which obviously doesn’t make sense, you can only really have one first step, but play along). We talked about this in the Focus Course. On the very first day of the Focus Course, there’s this super dorky assignment. You have to set out your clothes for what you’re going to wear tomorrow. Tonight, when you go to bed, pick out tomorrow’s outfit. It’s super dorky. You can do it in two minutes. In the morning, you have to wear the outfit you picked out the night before. You have to actually follow through with your commitment. You set this thing out, and you say, “I’m going to wear these pants and this shirt,” etc. In the morning, you wake up, and you have to wear it. You’ve made a commitment to yourself the night before. In the morning, you wake up and you follow through on that commitment. It’s a small step towards strengthening your personal integrity, which is your ability to follow through with your commitments to yourself. That’s super powerful. The other component to setting out your clothes the night before and then putting them on is that it’s your current self helping your future self. You’ve saved your future self five minutes in the morning. The quality of my time in the morning is super valuable. My mind is fresh, it’s the beginning of the day, there are no fires happening yet. That’s my best chance to get my best work done, early in the morning. Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before. It’s this idea of helping your future self. Once you get your toe in that water, you begin to see all the other areas of your life where you can begin to help your future self. We were talking during the podcast about this. Kyle says, “Yes, I’ve done this.” That’s awesome. As Aaron and I talked about earlier, when you have that deep work focused time, try to decide ahead of time what that focus is going to be. This is your current self helping your future self. It’s so powerful. For me, I write down my topic that I’m going to be writing about tomorrow when it’s time for me to write. I have the topic ahead of time, so I know what to write about. Then, when I sit down, I don’t have to think about. I have the singular focus to write about this topic that I’ve already chosen. That can really help with improving focus. Be ahead of your own curve and help your future self. Those of you who are registered for the Creative Focus Online Summit will get to hear Josh Kaufman and I talk about this. He talks about the importance of going on a walk in the morning and having 30 minutes where you leave your phone at home. You go outside, you’re moving, you’re getting sunlight, but also, it’s 30 minutes of thinking time where you can be undistracted. You can just think. He calls it “noodling.” You let your mind “noodle.” He talks about how when you have a productivity system and a focus system that gives you space to think and to be uninterrupted for a little bit, you’re going to be far more productive than if you have a system that doesn’t give you space to think. For him, he says that that is the number one, single most important component of being more productive and focused—actually having carved out time on a regular basis where you can just think. Be distraction free. That’s why he says to take a walk. You can combine that with movement, being outside, getting sunlight, and things like that. It’s easier than sitting on your couch and staring at the wall for 30 minutes. I don’t say that to put that idea down, but it can be easier to be undistracted when you’re outside walking around and you leave your phone at home. As opposed to, you put your phone next to you on the couch and you hope that it doesn’t buzz. You can put it in airplane mode, obviously, but it’s still right there. You want to grab it and take it off of airplane mode. So coming back to Kyle’s question: You have so many directions you want to go. Exercising, eating, writing down what you’re doing the next day, sleeping better. Right? People say, “I want to improve my relationship with my spouse. I also want to get better at budgeting my finances. I also want to get better at budgeting my time. I also want to read these books.” You look at it, and there is so much stuff that you want to do. You can’t do all of it right now, so pick one thing. What’s the one that’s most exciting? Build One Habit at a Time Shawn: Kyle, you listed exercise as the first thing on your list, so I would start with that. Not to pitch my course, but I’m going to pitch my course. We go through all the core areas of your life: your job, your relationships, your finances, your “down time,” your physical health, and your inner or spiritual life. These are the six areas of your life. We go through each one of those and spend time on each one, where you list out what’s important to you in this area of your life. What’s a goal that you want to have or a lifestyle practice that you want to implement, and how can you move the needle forward toward that goal? You come up with six goals and six action plans, one each for the main areas of your life. Spoiler here, at the end of the course, you pick one. Focus on improving one area of your life for six months and ignore the other ones. Don’t ignore them in terms of ignoring your wife for two months while you’re focusing on work, but you pick one area to build a habit, a routine, a lifestyle practice, that has you making meaningful progress in that area of life. A lot of people say that it takes 21 days to build a habit. Actually, if you’re a habit building master, you might be able to do it in 21 days, but it takes most people 60 days to build a habit. That’s the average. That’s two months! I think a lot of people are probably familiar with the Jerry Seinfeld productivity tip with the calendar. You write a joke every day and you put a big X on your calendar, and you don’t want to break the chain. It’s the same with this new habit of yours. Say, “What’s one thing I can do on a daily basis that’s going to help me move toward my goal of exercising more, of being more physically active?” What’s the minimum dose, the smallest thing you can do? You’re going to go walk for 20 minutes, or whatever it is. Do that every single day for two months. It’s a small start, but now you’ve done it. You’re two months in, and now, instead of it being this thing you are trying to get the motivation for to move forward, you’re doing it. It has become routine for you, which requires far less activation energy, far less mental energy. It has moved into your life. It’s there. It’s something that you’re doing on a daily basis. Now, you pick the next thing. “Okay, I have the exercise thing.” Keep that and layer the next thing on top of it. You’re doing that for your physical health. What about for your inner life, your spiritual life? What’s something you would want to layer on top of that, something you could do? Now, during that walking time, maybe you’re going to think about something. If you read a Bible or something like that, you could say, “I’m going to have a Bible verse that I think about during my 30 minute walk.” Maybe you’re trying to improve your relationship with your spouse. Bring them along on your walk. Now, you can incorporate this. Say, “I’m going to do this on a regular basis,” and you do that for two more months. Then you pick the next layer. Maybe it doesn’t build on that 30 minute walk itself. Maybe it’s an entirely different part of the day, but the core is the same. Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing. This is why New Year’s resolutions never work. We say, “I’m going to go to the gym for five hours a day every day starting on January 1st, and I’m going to start budgeting, and I’m going to stop eating chocolate, and I’m going to go on date nights every week, and I’m going to read a book a week.” January 1st, go! It’s so much. You’re going to run up and try to push a truck, but you don’t have the energy, the strength, to move and change that much that quickly. With the truck analogy, if you’re driving a car and you want to try and tow another car, you don’t gun it with all this slack on the tow line. You’re going to rip both of the bumpers off. You start super, super slow. You slowly build up that speed. That’s how you do it without getting in a wreck. You actually make that momentum. Start with just one thing. The hard part is giving ourselves permission to pick one thing and focus on that for two whole months. That’s the hardest part, really. It’s not in the doing. It’s in the not despising those small beginnings. That’s the crash course of the Focus Course right there. This is the value. If you stick around for the after show at seanwes, this is what you get. Aaron: I’ll agree with Shawn and say this: pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal. I know how many goals you have right now. I know, because I have that many goals, too. Pick one thing and write it down. Get a little calendar. Make a big X. Do that every day. You’ll get other stuff done, too, but you need to think about doing one important thing first thing in the morning right after you wake up. Get that thing done, and then pat yourself on the back, feel good about it, and move on to the next thing. You can follow Shawn Blanc on Twitter @ShawnBlanc, and be sure to check out his website at www.shawnblanc.net.

Shawn Blanc is a writer, small-business owner, productivity coach, and creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons. Shawn has been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade, and his online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life’s tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He wrote about the importance of creating a customer avatar and developing a content strategy to connect with them and help them achieve their goals. I liked the email so much that I emailed him back and asked him to come on my show to talk about his journey to making a living through writing online and what he’s learned about growing an audience. Shawn also shares my passion for productivity and deep focus; so much so that he’s gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a free 5 day online summit about the power of focused life. In this episode, Shawn shares how he was able to make a full-time living by writing online, and we discuss how you can grow your audience by creating a customer avatar (your ideal listener) and creating content that addresses their needs and desires. Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: Interview your customers to get a real life picture of your audience. Start selling products as early as possible. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. Be in people’s weekly cycle at a minimum. Your niche is going to draw your audience but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. Show up consistently to earn people’s trust and create an anticipation of future value. Do guest-based podcasts to grow your audience. Reach people that are far outside of your social circle by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Show Notes Aaron: Shawn Blanc is a writer/small business owner/productivity coach/creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons, and Shawn is a member of our Community. He’s been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade now. His online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life’s tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He was writing about the importance of creating a customer avatar, that’s knowing who you’re creating for and what you want to help them achieve, what kind of person you want to help them become. I thought it was really interesting, so I sent him an email right back. I said, “Shawn, do you want to come on the show to talk about this? I think podcasters need to hear about this idea of customer avatars and also content strategy.” Shawn agreed, and he also shares my passion for productivity and focus, so much so that he has gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a five day online summit about the power of a focused life, and that’s going to be starting, I believe, as this episode comes out. If you’re listening to this in your podcast player, it’s starting today, I think. I’ll give you that link later. In this episode, I want to talk with Shawn about why you as a podcaster need to create a customer avatar, know who you’re creating for, develop a content strategy, and then also the benefits of deep focus, what we call deep work. A few small changes in your daily habits can lead to big improvements in your productivity and creative output. Shawn, that’s one of the longer intros I’ve ever done. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Shawn: Thanks, Aaron. I love it. Super excited to be here. Shawn Blanc Aaron: I think of you, Shawn, as a writer and as the creator of an online course called The Focus Course, which is great. You’re so much more than that. Do you want to give everyone a quick introduction, how you got here and where you came from? I would also like to hear what your biggest struggles have been over the years of getting to the point where you’re at right now. Shawn: Absolutely. I’m in Kansas City. Originally, I’m from Denver. I’m a Colorado guy at heart. I’ve been married for going on 12 years, and my wife and I have three boys. It’s insane at our house. We used to call the first two the Twin Tornadoes, but we just had our third eight or nine weeks ago. Aaron: Congrats! Shawn: It’s awesome. Love it. I love being a dad. I used to be a drummer. I know that we have a lot of musicians around here. Sean McCabe plays a little bit of music, I think. Aaron: Yeah, he used to write music, just like he used to do lettering. I still play drums. Shawn: I used to play drums for a large ministry here in Kansas City, and I ended up transitioning out of that. It’s a long story, but I ended up becoming a marketing and creative director. I ran a team, an in-house design team, with about 17 people—web developers, print designers, web designers, writers, editors, project managers, whatever. We did a bunch of stuff. One of our huge things was that we would host a conference at the end of the year that I was running. 25,000 people would come out for that. I did that for several years, and then my wife and I got pregnant with our first kid. I was like, “I don’t want to do this work as a dad.” Part of it was just super demanding. Anyone who has experienced working in the corporate design scene knows that it’s a very demanding spot. Everything is urgent all the time. I was doing like 80 hours a week, and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun, but I was like, “There’s no way. I don’t want to do 80 hours a week as a dad.” I had that, plus I had this little blog on the side, where I had been writing about marketing stuff. I felt like, “This would be a good opportunity to quit what I’m doing and take a leap, see if I can take my website full time. Could I blog for a living?” That was the thought. I was doing about $1,000 a month in advertising and some affiliate stuff. I figured that if I could give it 40 hours a week, I could get the revenue up to a spot where it could pay the bills. I figured that it could grow from there. Aaron: How old were you at this point? Shawn: I was just about 30, not quite 30, like 29, when I made that jump. I asked everyone that was reading on the site. I said, “I’m quitting. I’m going to do this thing full time.” I asked people if they would be interested in supporting me to write the site for a living. I was like, “If you like what I’m doing, I’ll write more if you want to give me some money to do it.” I did this little membership drive. I was going to charge $3 a month for membership. I was doing a daily podcast as a perk of membership. Aaron: You aren’t still doing that, are you? Shawn: It’s on hiatus at the moment. We’ll see. I’m going to be diving back into the podcast scene starting early 2017. I miss podcasting. It’s fun. Aaron: You decided to ask people to support you, give you $3 a month, to go full time with your writing? Shawn: Basically. I figured if I could get 500 people, at $3 a month that’s $1,500, plus the other $1,000 I was doing, and that would be $2,500 a month. That’s not a ton, but I figured that would be enough to cover the bare necessities. I figured that things could grow from there. People signed up, and I hit the 500 person mark by the end of the month before I had even quit. I started my new job, April 4th 2011, basically fully funded as an independent blogger. Aaron: I bet that was exciting. Shawn: It was really exciting. I felt like I got this permission slip from my audience to go for it. As a creative person, sometimes you need that. Sometimes you want to be like, “Do you guys care? I’m here. I’m making this stuff.” A lot of the work we do as creative entrepreneurs is for your audience. I know that we’re going to talk about this in a little bit, the customer avatar profile. It’s for these people that you really want to serve. When you hear back from them and they go, “Hey, we like what you’re doing. Let’s keep the relationship going,” it’s like having a DTR with your audience. There’s something cool about that kind of permission slip moment. It’s like when you sell your first product, or whatever it is. People are interested. You get your first positive review on iTunes or whatever. Obviously, there’s going to be the junk that comes later, but whatever. Aaron: Some of the haters that come later? Shawn: You forget about that stuff and you keep moving on. Aaron: That’s awesome. Asking for Money Aaron: When you think back, do you remember any big struggles or hurdles that you really had to overcome about that period in your life? Shawn: There were so many. It’s hard to say, “If I could do it differently, I would do it this other way,” because who knows? If I had done things differently, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out the way I thought it would. One of the biggest struggles for me was asking for money. It was a huge challenge related to the membership drive. I was asking folks to support me on a regular basis to write for a living. I was like, “Who am I? What kind of a dork says, ‘Give me money so I can blog for a living.'” Aaron: Nobody pays for things online anymore. Nobody wants to pay for writing. Shawn: Exactly. That was a huge challenge. It has continued to be a challenge for years. I have been doing this for almost six years now, full time. When I came out with my first book, it’s called Delight is in the Details, and it was an eBook package thing. I did some interviews. I charged $29 for my book, and I felt like this huge hypocrite. It was this feeling of, “This is information. Information should be free on the internet. Why would anyone ever buy this?” I felt like there was no value in this thing that people would pay for. I was like, “I have to do it. I’m going to charge for it.” Aaron: Sorry to jump in, but at the time, did you really feel like $30 was a lot of money? Shawn: Oh my gosh. I woke up feeling sick to my stomach the day I was going to launch it. I was like, “I can’t believe how much I’m asking for this.” Aaron: What did you think was going to happen? Shawn: I thought that people would buy it because they trusted me, and then they would read it and come and burn my house down because I had ripped them off so bad. I charged so much money for something. Aaron: It was your first time launching a product, right? Shawn: It was. It was my first product launch ever. It ended up bringing in like $5,000 in that first 48 hour launch window. It made $5,000 that first couple of days. In hindsight, it was this huge inflection point for me. I think I spent about 100 hours building the thing, made $5,000 from it in the first week, and I thought, “Woah, that was a great return on my time investment! Now I have this product that I can continue to sell.” Since then, in the last four or five years that I’ve sold it, I want to say that it’s sold $50,000 over the years. That’s awesome. There’s something great about creating a product, and it changed a lot. Producing and selling a book changed my relationship with my audience. Now I’m creating products for them to buy. That initial hurdle was huge. $29 was so much money. I think that was probably the biggest struggle, of being able to properly identify how much value I’m providing people and to price it correctly. That’s just hard. I think that’s why you should start selling stuff as early as possible, because you have to learn. There isn’t a formula for how much value you’re providing and how much you should charge for it. You can’t just plug your stuff into a worksheet and get a number back. You have to feel out the market, your market, your audience, your skill level. How much polish are you doing? How much depth of information are you providing? Whatever skill, service, or product it is you’re providing, you have to learn how to make money and price your stuff! It’s hard to do it when you’re starting. The biggest challenging for me at first was becoming comfortable asking for money and learning to accurately price my products. Aaron: The other thing is that once you launched that book and got familiar with all that stuff, that was a stepping stone to your future products, your future books and courses, and everything else that you’re doing. I’m sure, at that point, you felt like, “Okay. I’ve done this once before already. Now it’s like riding a bike. I just need to get back on and keep peddling, keep going.” Shawn: Yeah, absolutely. It really was a huge stepping stone. One thing I loved about creating and launching a product was that there was a start and an end date to it. This thing has to ship. I worked on it, and I was done. I put it out there. Boom, now it’s there. I’m done. It’s out in the world. Obviously, you iterate on it. A year later, I added some new interviews. I added some new chapters. I created some videos. I remastered all of the audio for the audio book. Product Launch Hiccups Shawn: Super random story related to this. It was the relaunch of Delight is in the Details, a year after it had come out, and I put it out there. People are buying it during that relaunch period. I get an email from someone going, “I was just listening to the audio book, and the last chapter sounds like it’s not edited correctly. Something is weird about the last chapter. You should check it out.” I recorded the audio book and edited it by myself. I go and I open up the audio book for the last chapter and I’m listening to it, and it is the original take that I did of the book. The way I did the audio book, I’m reading it into my microphone in GarageBand. If I goofed up in the middle of a paragraph, I would just take a pause, say, “Okay, again,” and then I would start talking again. That was my marker. The last chapter of the book was that track, the whole thing. The audio track should have been 10 or 12 minutes for that chapter, and it was 30 minutes because of all my edits, retakes, and pauses. The whole thing. What’s worse is, it was there from the very beginning. For a year, I had been selling that thing. I was mortified. For a year, I had been selling my book with the last chapter all messed up, and I was mortified. Aaron: Nobody said anything?? Shawn: They didn’t. Either no one listened to it, or when they listened to it, they just assumed… I don’t even know. I was so mortified. There you go. What worse thing can happen? Earlier, I had been so concerned about selling something that people weren’t going to consider valuable. Here’s this huge, huge mistake. What a goof! Aaron: I need to remind everyone that this audiobook is called Delight is in the Details. Shawn: The irony, right? That was one of the selling points of the book, too. I was like, “If you buy this book, it’s a case study in sweating the details itself. You’ll see all the areas where I’ve sweated the details in this product.” Whatever. Oh man. I was mortified. Aaron: Thankfully, no one came and burned down your house, and it was over a year before anyone even said anything. A lot of us are so curious about people who do such good work, so when a mistake does happen, it’s almost humanizing. It’s like, “Now I can relate to this person, because they’re not 100% on top of everything all the time, either, like I struggle with. I make a lot of mistakes, so it’s kind of nice when you see a really awesome musician on stage mess up a part and then jump back into it. You’re like, “Oh, they are humans, too.” That’s really cool. Nobody burned your house down, thankfully. Shawn: That’s why it’s so helpful to ship early. You get stuff out the door and you start learning. I love it. Aaron: I tell people this a lot, too, when it comes to podcasts. If you’re thinking about making a podcast, there are so many things you can tweak, improve, or work on forever, but it’s so much better to say, “What’s the minimum I have to do? I want to try and do a good job, but let’s do this, ship it, and iterate and improve on it every single week.” If you don’t ship something, you'll just pick at it and tweak it endlessly. Before you know it, it’s been a year and a half, and you’ve got three or five episodes you recorded 18 months ago that you’re still working on. In the meantime, nothing has happened. Start Moving Shawn: As well, we have this picture of what we want something to look like and what we want it to be, but we have zero experience. I like the analogy of those lifesize mazes. Especially around Halloween and Thanksgiving, there are those corn mazes. They’re these giant things. Imagine someone standing at the entrance of this life size maze, staring at the entrance to it, and in their mind, trying to figure out how to get to the end so they can get straight to the end the fastest way possible without making any mistakes along the way. Impossible! Not going to happen. You have to go in the maze and go left to realize that you should have gone right. Then turn around. You have to go through the thing to make it through. I like the phrase, “Action brings clarity.” Action brings clarity. You’re waiting for clarity before taking action, and it’s not going to happen—you have to start moving. You just have to get going and you adjust course as you go. You start to realize what you should major on and what you shouldn’t. Aaron: That’s an incredible analogy. I’m totally going to use that in the future now. It’s perfect. You sit there and you imagine yourself being at the end of the maze. That’s where you see a bunch of other people. Your friends have gone through the maze and they’re at the end, so you’re like, “I have to get to the end fast. I can’t make any mistakes. I can’t take a wrong turn, because that’s where all my friends are, and that’s where I want to be.” You do have to go through it. That’s really incredible. Creating a Customer Avatar Aaron: Shawn, you sent out an email and you were talking about this. I want you to explain how you think about customer avatars, and then if you did something like that for yourself when you were just starting, or if this is something that evolved over time. Customer avatar and content strategy, go! Shawn: This is great. When I first started as a writer, I was doing ShawnBlanc.net. My entire job was publishing articles and links on my website. I didn’t have a customer avatar or a customer profile, what I had was an ideal reader. I think, in terms of podcasting, it’s very similar. Who’s your ideal listener? For me, I actually had a person who was my ideal reader, who’s name was Shawn Spurdee. He was a really good friend of mine. He and I had become friends through the blogging Twitter-sphere back in the day. When I wrote articles or links, I had him in mind. I thought, “Is this something he would find interesting? Is there a story in here that he’s going to want to read? Is this a link to something he would like?” You had that ideal reader. John Gruber wrote about this for his site, Daring Fireball. He talked about his ideal reader, and he called it “a second version of himself.” He goes, “This person is interested in all the same things I’m interested in, and he cares about what I care about. All the design decisions I make on the site, all the articles I choose to link to, the stories I choose to tell, all of that stuff is with this ideal reader/listener in mind.” It was instrumental for me to have an “ideal reader” for all of the work I was doing. You know who you’re trying to target. I’m still the writer for sure, but we’ve switched a lot more of our focus onto direct sales, building a customer base, and selling products to our audience. I still don’t have that ideal reader. Who am I writing this for? Who is this product being created for? It has gone beyond just an individual person that I know. We did a customer profiling thing. I have a guy who works for me full time, and his name is Isaac. We took a couple of big, giant sticky pad things, two feet by three feet, they’re huge, these giant sticky notes. Aaron: Where do you get those? Can you get those on Amazon? Shawn: You can get a lawnmower on Amazon, so I’m sure you can get sticky notes. We got ours at Office Max, an Office Depot kind of thing. It’s weird. You drive to this store, and you can walk in, and they sell products on their shelves. You have to pick it up with your hand and drive it home yourself. Aaron: It seems like a waste of time. Shawn: For this customer profiling session or whatever, basically, we had these four quadrants. What do they think? What do they feel? What do they want? What do they say? Something like that. You’re trying to get this picture of this person. Who is this person? What are the things that they say? Like, “I love my family. I like to watch Netflix.” Whatever. Aaron: “I want to learn how to make a podcast.” Shawn: Exactly. It’s not just business, it’s just life. What are the kind of phrases they might say? If you ask them what they care about, what things would they list? What are their pain points that they’re feeling in life? For us, creating this customer avatar, we named him Brian. We found a random picture of somebody and stuck it up there to begin to humanize the person. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. We talked about, “Here’s Brian,” and we came up with this stuff. Brian has a job that he kind of likes, but he’s got these other creative ideas that he really wants to pursue. Maybe he wants to take it full time. Maybe not. That’s not really the most important thing for him. The most important thing for him is getting his best creative work out there and being able to do it and feel like he’s making progress on the areas of life that matter to him. He’s also a dad and a husband, and he cares about his family quite a bit. He cares about his kids. He still wants to be available for them. When he comes home from work, he’s really tired, so the evenings don’t feel like a good time to do his creative work, but he’s not a morning person either, so he doesn’t know when he’s going to get the time. These are some of the scenarios, the stories, that begin to emerge as you begin to write stuff about this person. What are the pain points that they feel? When they look around, what do they see? What kind of car does Brian drive? Does he like minivans? Does he have a minivan? How many kids does he actually have? You really kind of start to come up with this stuff, and there’s a lot you can do to get to a higher level of doing these customer profiles. You can actually do interviews with your customer base. Aaron: I do this! I try to meet people and talk to them, especially when it comes to podcasting. When you interview your customers, you can actually begin to get a real life picture of your real life audience. Creating an Empathy Map Shawn: There’s this thing that we did, an empathy map, and you take the empathy map to create your customer profile. We ran this survey to our email list, and we ran a separate one to our customer list. It was, “When it comes to focus, what’s your single greatest challenge?” It was just this open-ended question where people could write stuff down. Some people say, “Time.” Or, “I can’t focus. I’m distracted.” Then you get some people who go, “I’m trying to build my photography portfolio website on the side because I love photography and I’m trying to grow it. I’m working this other job, and when I come home in the evenings, family is first. I spend time with family, so by the time the kids are in bed, I’ve only got about an hour left in the day. I’m so tired, and I don’t want to spend time trying to work on my photography website, so I don’t know where to get started.” The person who gives an in depth answer to the challenge like that, vs. someone who just says “time”, they’re really in touch with their pain point. There’s a book called Ask by Ryan Leveque, and you can find it on Amazon. He teases out, “You ask these questions, and you separate the people with the longest answers. You put their answers up at the top.” You cut the list at 20%. The bottom 80%, forget about those people, and look at the top 20%, these “hyper-responders.” What are their challenges? What are their pain points? Aaron, you could do this. You could say, “When it comes to building a podcast, what is your single greatest challenge?” You’ll probably have someone who says, “Building my list.” Or, “Building my audience.” Or, “Technical stuff.” But then you might have someone who really gives this heartfelt, in-depth answer. If someone gives you a heartfelt, in-depth answer, they’re hungry for a solution. That person is going to pay for a solution. That person is going to digest this, and when you give them something, they’re going to check it out. Look for these hyper-responders and cater your response to them. That’s what we did. That’s how we figured out that our biggest pain points for people who go through the Focus Course are one of four primary buckets, so to speak. It’s time management, getting traction on their business or side projects, finding clarity on what’s important to them and what they should be doing about it, and a lot of people also feel overwhelmed by all that’s already happening in life. Or, they look at the thing that they’re trying to make progress on, and they feel overwhelmed. They don’t even know where to start. Really, all of these things feed off of each other. When one is in a rough spot, the others start to be in a rough spot as well. We go, “Okay, these are the main challenges we’re going to address as part of the Focus Course, in all of our writing. This is it.” The people that fit within these four buckets are the ones who are willing to pay for a solution. Use Your Audience’s Language Shawn: Read the actual responses, the answers, and take the language that people are saying and use it in your articles. Answer their actual questions in podcast episodes. You use it in your marketing language. The landing page for your product, or your podcast, or your sign up, or whatever—use the actual language of your hyper-responder customers. Now, not only are you listening to them and you know who that ideal customer is, but you’re also even speaking their language. A) it’s going to be cool because hopefully you’ll do more sales, but B) you’ll actually get to connect with the people you want to connect with. That’s the whole point. That’s why we’re here. That’s one of the huge benefits of having these customer profiles. It can help you stay focused on who you’re trying to talk to and what it is you’re trying to talk about, to help them. Aaron: That’s mindblowing. That’s fantastic. At the core, I kind of know this stuff, but hearing you explain it made it even more clear to me. I love that. I want to take it in this direction. How to Grow Your Audience & Create Deeper Connections Aaron: One of the most common questions I get about podcasting is about growing an audience. It’s always, “How do I get more attention? How do I get more listeners? How do I grow an audience?” I love what you said right here. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. That’s where listeners come from. So many people think that they’ll magically get 100,000 people to listen to their podcast, and they won’t have any idea of who these people are. They’re nameless, faceless avatars on the internet. No! Especially in the beginning, you start small. You develop relationships with people who care passionately about the thing that you’re talking about. By investing in them, getting to know them, and asking them questions—regardless of whether you’re doing some kind of business thing or not—by just talking to them and getting to know their language, that’s how you’re going to resonate with them and even more people. What methods have you found effective for growing an audience and developing deeper relationships? Shawn: I think that’s a great question. Everyone wants to know the answer to this. For me, there are three primary keys to growing an audience: Consistency Honesty and transparency Relationships. 1. Consistency Shawn: Consistency is core. This is a phrase in the seanwes Community, and it’s a phrase I like to use, and that’s this: show up every day. That’s consistency. We’re just people of habit. The internet is a thing of habit, so you have to have that consistency where you’re in people’s regular cycles. Sean McCabe talks about this a lot. You want to be in people’s weekly cycle at a minimum. Show up on a regular basis. Also, that’s how people know you’re going to be there. There’s something about that consistency. One of the ways you develop an audience where people are tracking with you and paying attention when you’re showing up consistently. When you show up consistently, not only do you earn people’s trust, but you create an anticipation of future value. You want to have that. That’s huge. People are like, “I want to know what’s next. I want to follow this story and be here.” Consistency is huge. 2. Honesty & Transparency Shawn: This comes out in a lot of ways. In some ways, you want to have the transparency like Nathan Barry talks about, to “teach what you know.” Share what you know. Also, there’s a human element, passion and persona, who you are as an individual. Humanizing yourself is so helpful. We don’t want to connect with brands, we want to connect with people. As indie entrepreneurs or indie creative folks, when you are running your own thing, you are a brand but you’re also a person. You’ve got to keep the person aspect of it, the human aspect of it, you have to keep it there. Allow your mistakes to show through. Allow your passions to show through. For me, at ShawnBlanc.net, I cut my teeth and grew my audience originally by writing about Apple stuff. I wrote tons of product reviews. It was super nerdy, gadgety stuff. I would also write about coffee, camera gear, books I was reading, music, and things like that. Aaron: Stuff you cared about. Shawn: Exactly. Other interests that were related to Apple gear because it was my site, and I can write about whatever I want. That humanized the work that I was doing. So many people came to my site because of the Apple stuff but they stayed because of the coffee stuff. Your focus, your niche, is going to draw your audience, but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. You’re a real person with real interests who is not just this robot spinning off the same thing all the time. 3. Relationships Shawn: This is huge. I stink at it, but I’m trying to reply to emails. When people email me, replying back to them. Also, here’s a prime example, having me on your show, Aaron. The practicality of it is that when this show goes live, I’m going to tweet about it. I’m going to link to it. I’m going to point the people that track with me over to your stuff. That’s a way for you to grow your audience, but it’s also a way for me to grow my audience. Your listeners, a lot of people, don’t know who I am. Now, hopefully, some of them will come check me out and sign up for our stuff. There’s a really cool dynamic here of introducing your group to someone else. Hopefully, that person will also introduce their audience to who you are. Doing guest-based podcasts is an awesome way to grow your audience. I did some back in the day, when I was first starting my site. I did interviews, blog interviews. The whole thing was conducted over email, and it was just this back and forth email. I did one with Daniel Jalkut, who used to work at Apple and then started Red Sweater. He has the best blogging app on the planet for Mac, MarsEdit. It’s a super great app. I emailed him and did an interview with him. I did an interview with John Grubar. I did an interview with Brett Simmons, all these people who are super famous Apple people. I’m going back and forth with these guys and posting their interviews. They link to me on my site, and I get this influx of new readers. Or you find software that’s awesome. I would do super in-depth reviews about this stuff, and then people would link to those reviews. Honoring other people, connecting with other people, and doing stuff that’s worth talking about. Then the word will spread. That consistency, being transparent and honest about who you are, having that passion and that human dynamic to the work that you do, and then just trying to connect with other people. Do things that people are going to want to talk about. Another example is the summit that we’re doing, the Focus Summit. I’m punching way above my weight class here with some of these folks, and it’s a chance to hopefully get some of their audience to discover the work that we’re doing and visa versa. I hope that people who sign up for this summit will get introduced to some new people and that they’ll find some incredible resources. It’s just fun. We’re all just folks trying to do our best work, right? Aaron: Absolutely. I love that. That’s one of the best answers for building an audience that I’ve ever heard. The Importance of Investing One-on-One Time in Your Listeners Aaron: The thing that I’m working on, and I just want to share this, is investing more time in my listeners. It’s hard sometimes, because you can spend all the time in the world talking to people on the internet, as I’m sure you know, Shawn. I’m sure people are constantly emailing you, asking for your thoughts, your advice, and your feedback on stuff, and you try to stay really focused. Something I’ve wanted to do is spend a little bit of time every day, like on Twitter, reaching out and telling people that I appreciate what they do. Or, if somebody emails me, having a conversation. In depth, giving them 15 or 20 minutes of focus time to reply, and even asking them questions. Someone says, “Hey, thanks for doing your show. I really appreciate this thing.” I’ll reply and say, “Thank you so much. How is your podcasting journey going? What are you working on right now? What do you want to get better at?” Some great conversations have come out of that. I’m trying to invest a little bit more in my listeners. I’m at the point now where I’ve started inviting some of them on the show. “Hey, you sound like you’d be a cool person to talk about podcasting with. Would you like to come on the show?” It just spreads. It’s the building of community that will eventually attract people to you. When I started, I had 30 or 40 friends, maybe a couple hundred followers. Every new person that finds my show and gets to know me as a person, who respects the work I do, they might have 200 people that follow them, and they share my show with those people. It just spreads out from there. It becomes this big net. You can eventually reach people that are far outside of your social circle just by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Let them do the work of sharing your stuff with their people, too. Shawn: Yeah, exactly. Focus Summit & Products Aaron: That’s fantastic. We’re getting close to the end of the episode. We need to wrap it up. I told everyone in the beginning that I would get you to talk about this Focus Summit that you’ve got coming up. What’s the deal with this? Tell us a little bit about that. Shawn: The summit! I’m so excited about this. We have Jocelyn Glei, who just wrote this book called Unsubscribe, which is a fantastic book. It’s about email distractions and stuff like that. We’ve got Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA. Anyone who is trying to do anything related to business, you need to read The Personal MBA. It is a bargain. Aaron: So much good advice. Shawn: It’s like a $35 book, and that book is so packed. Excellent, excellent stuff. Sean McCabe is on it, and Sean and I talk about how quantity leads to quality, which ties right into this stuff on showing up every day. The summit is going to be really, really cool. When this podcast drops, the summit is going to be kicking off. Here’s the link: The Creative Focus Summit. After the summit wraps up, we’re opening up registration for our Focus Course. That has become my flagship product. It changed everything for me, in terms of what I was focusing on. I came up with this course as the next product in a series. I had done Delight is in the Details, and I wanted to write a book about diligence and productivity. I wrote the book, and then, long story short, I realized that it needed to be a course. I felt like the way that I wanted to get these ideas across wasn’t a book that someone would read, highlight, think was cool, and then puts back on their shelf and returns to life as usual. I want something that’s really going to effect change. I knew that a book would probably go farther, broader, and reach a total number of more people. I would rather fewer people go through the course but have a higher number of them really get real impact. For me, the book ended up turning into the Focus Course, and we’ve had close to 1,300 people go through it. It’s basically productivity training for creative people and entrepreneurs and leaders. It’s way, way more than that. It’s not tips and tricks. It’s what I call “meaningful productivity.” It actually gets to the core, the heart, and the foundation. What do you really care about? How are you really spending your time? This is not a “Five Life Hacks That Will Help Me Go Through My Email Inbox Better.” It’s hard questions that will make me challenge my assumptions about my family, my work, my down time, and my rest time. Anyone that thinks that taking a nap will improve productivity, the Focus Course is for you. Aaron: That’s me! You have to have a healthy life to do your best work. Shawn: You can’t sprint this. This is a marathon, so you have to have that breathing room. The Focus Course opens up after the summit is over, and I’m super excited about it. We’re going to have a whole group of people cruising through in January. We’re doing a winter class for it. We’ve got some forums, so everyone can share their progress. It’s going to be a blast. I’m really excited about it. The summit is free, and the Focus Course itself is going to be something we charge for, obviously. Aaron: You have to charge for things, or else people won’t take it seriously. Shawn: It’s so true. Aaron: You have to invest. Shawn: That’s something else. We didn’t get into that earlier when we were talking about the pricing stuff, but that’s another reason to charge for your work. Someone is actually going to have skin in the game. They’re going to find value for it. Aaron: They have to ask themselves, “Okay. Do I think this is going to help me enough in my life journey to actually put money towards it?” If they answer that question for themselves and then make the choice to give you that money, they are going to say, “I told myself, I believe, that this is worth my time, so I need to invest my time in it.” Shawn: Exactly. Very true. Aaron: Where should people go if they want to follow you, connect with you, or ask you questions? Shawn: Twitter is a great spot. I’m @shawnblanc on Twitter.