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Buzzsprout's New Home Screen Widgets · Buzzcast

0:00
Alban: I want a 240 volt put into our garage and I don't want to do that myself.
0:04
Kevin: Oh, I'll come do that for you.
0:05
Alban: Let's do it together.
0:06
Alban: That one's just outside of what I want to do.
0:09
Jordan: Like electrical work.
0:10
Kevin: It's not hard at all, it's super easy Really.
0:12
Kevin: Now the challenge and I think we should take on the challenge is to do it without cutting the power to the main breaker.
0:21
Jordan: It's going to be like a game of operation.
0:22
Jordan: Yeah.
0:25
Kevin: I just did that.
0:25
Kevin: I was at my mother-in-law's house in North Carolina this weekend and she had a couple ceiling fans that she needed to get installed, and I challenged myself to install the ceiling fans without cutting the breaker.
0:34
Jordan: You did not.
0:35
Kevin: Yeah, I did.
0:35
Kevin: Why not?
0:36
Kevin: It's so much cooler Like I've hung dozens of ceiling fans, I don't need another one on my list.
0:41
Kevin: I need to do one without cutting the power.
0:44
Alban: We had a friend of a friend die when I was a kid doing his own electrical work.
0:48
Kevin: Oh, thanks for bringing it down, man.
0:57
Jordan: Welcome back to Buzzcast, a podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout.
1:01
Jordan: So I'm back.
1:03
Kevin: I think you guys did a great episode.
1:04
Kevin: Thank you to Tom, if you're listening for stepping in.
1:07
Kevin: I was really sad to miss Like I'm always sad to miss whatever you guys are talking about, but Backtracks in particular is a really fun thing to talk about.
1:14
Kevin: I know and you guys did a great job.
1:16
Kevin: I'll tell you my favorite part of the episode.
1:18
Kevin: It's always fun to like be out that you're a part of usually and then listen to it and find your favorite parts.
1:22
Kevin: My favorite part was something that I hadn't heard before, but when you came in as editor, jordan, with your little side note yes, and then step back out.
1:30
Kevin: I really liked that.
1:31
Jordan: That was one of the things I was like he's either going to love this or absolutely hate it and be like don't do that again.
1:36
Kevin: I really liked it.
1:37
Kevin: I was curious, like how many takes did you do to do that?
1:40
Kevin: Was that a one take deal?
1:41
Jordan: I actually did too, and the only reason I did too was because my daughter was home at the time and she started singing and I had to tell her to be quiet, right.
1:50
Kevin: Yeah, it sounded.
1:51
Kevin: It was great.
1:51
Kevin: I loved how that came in and it was a fun surprise when I was listening to the episode.
1:55
Kevin: Cool, so I was thinking while I'm listening to this episode and I'm listening to y'all talk very eloquently about backtracks and our thoughts behind it and how fun it is to celebrate accomplishments as a podcaster at certain milestones and the end of the year and a new year beginning being a milestone that we can rally around, I was starting to think about other hobbies in my life.
2:16
Kevin: So I know that we are in the podcast profession.
2:20
Kevin: We work a lot in podcasting.
2:21
Kevin: That's how we make our living, but, like this show, it feels like a fun break from that because we also enjoy podcasting.
2:27
Kevin: So it kind of feels like at least part of my job overlaps with something that I might do even if I didn't work in this profession.
2:33
Kevin: Yeah, podcasting is fun, right, yeah.
2:35
Kevin: And I found myself in this place where I think that I got the backtracks.
2:40
Kevin: I thought it was cool.
2:41
Kevin: I saw some stuff in there that I didn't really know about our podcast and some of it was like oh, that's pretty interesting and other was.
2:49
Kevin: But I felt like I had this really healthy sort of distance from that, needing to affirm the fact that I just like podcasting, and I just I don't always feel like podcasting.
3:01
Kevin: Every time we have one of these schedules, I don't always come in saying like I can't wait to do this, but once we get into it, once I see you guys and once we start laughing and sharing and talking about these topics, I always end up at the end of it being like that was enjoyable.
3:12
Kevin: That's why I like podcasting.
3:13
Kevin: This is fun and I would probably try to find a way to do this even if we didn't work at Buzzsprout Recently.
3:19
Kevin: So this is a long, complicated story, but I started thinking about other hobbies in my life and like, why do I enjoy them?
3:26
Kevin: And I was thinking about that because there's one hobby that I'm starting to come back to now, after taking a very, very long break, and that's golf.
3:33
Kevin: So I was a high school golfer and I was pretty serious about it.
3:37
Kevin: I was decent, like I was never great, but I was decent and I worked on my game and I tried to get get good.
3:43
Kevin: And I played on the high school golf team and I wanted to, you know, get do good enough every week to make the team that play it against other schools and all this kind of stuff.
3:50
Kevin: And then it got to the point where it's one of the areas in my life where you ask yourself do you have you ever experienced burnout in something like I can?
3:58
Kevin: I would definitively come back to that's like my burnout moment burnout moment.
4:05
Kevin: So there's jobs that I felt burnt out on and like school.
4:06
Kevin: You know there are certain points in school where I felt burnt out.
4:07
Kevin: But if somebody asked me, have you ever felt burnt out Like I would say oh yes, and I would tell the golf story.
4:10
Kevin: I got burnt out on golf and it was all because there was.
4:13
Kevin: You know, it starts as something that you love and something that you're just passionate about and you just play for fun.
4:19
Kevin: It's this hobby.
4:19
Kevin: And then you start getting good enough where it starts becoming competitive and it's all about the numbers and the score and the rank and the something that was fun.
4:29
Kevin: It got to the point where more times than not, it was not fun, because more times than not you play not up to your expectations than playing up to your expectations.
4:38
Kevin: So for every 10 rounds you'd have one that kind of met or exceeded your expectations, but there was nine where it was below and, like that, just went on for too long, to the point where I lost any desire to play this game.
4:50
Jordan: So what made you go back to it?
4:52
Kevin: What brought me back is that I now have a 14 year old and his friends are starting to play golf and so he starts, you know, swinging their clubs and hitting some balls and going to the driving range with them, and some of them live on a golf course, so he's like when he goes over their house they'll just go hit around on holes, and he's like I want to learn how to play golf better and I'm like that's something I know something about, but I also kind of hate it right now in my life.
5:12
Kevin: And so I was like forget my hate for golf.
5:15
Kevin: Why don't you embrace the spending time with your child and go see what it's?
5:18
Kevin: And all that competitive stuff was gone.
5:21
Kevin: So, anyway, I'm coming back to that.
5:23
Kevin: But it got me thinking about podcasting and we've talked about this before.
5:27
Kevin: But I guess I was just wondering what can we do to protect ourselves from getting too competitive to get burnt out in podcasting?
5:35
Kevin: It happens all the time and it's so unfortunate Not just from like I don't know, like from a selfish business perspective is like we want to prevent podcasters from burning out because we don't want to lose customers, but there's a much sadder story when somebody goes from being able to engage in something they love and gives them life and they just like doing to feeling like I can't do that anymore because it doesn't give me any joy.
5:58
Jordan: Yeah, it's one of those things where they say, if you really love something, like, don't make it your job.
6:03
Jordan: And I did that and it's been okay so far.
6:06
Jordan: You know, I'm like I don't know how many years in five years in podcasting and it's going pretty good.
6:11
Jordan: But I do think that there is a point where, once you start putting that amount of weight on it, where it becomes like everything and you rely on it to pay bills or you know something like that it stops being fun, especially, you know, as the market of the industry like ebbs and flows and it's really easy to get discouraged, you know, if you're not making as many sponsorship deals as you used to be and stuff like that.
6:33
Alban: So yeah, there can be something corrosive about stats.
6:36
Alban: Yeah, because stats are often a measure of your impact in just a numbers game.
6:43
Alban: And I think when you see it, you go okay, so eight is better than seven, 20 is better than eight.
6:49
Alban: And you just go up and you're like more numbers is better.
6:52
Alban: So every time you reach a new height as far as listener numbers, you go.
6:56
Alban: It needs to be better than that going forward.
6:58
Alban: Or if you shoot a really good round of golf, you go well, now that is the bar of excellence.
7:03
Alban: It needs to be better than that.
7:05
Alban: Where the goal in the beginning was, you know, hitting a few good shots and having a good time with friends, that's the win.
7:11
Alban: You're outside in nature, that's a win.
7:13
Alban: Recording with your friends on a podcast, that's fun, that's a win.
7:17
Alban: And I think of so many things where it's like, as soon as something that comes in is really quantifiable and you say you see it enough, it's very tempting to make that the only measure of success.
7:29
Alban: It's good to see, oh, we did something and we got twice as many views, or we got.
7:34
Alban: You know, I dropped my golf round a couple strokes, like it's good to notice which things are helping, which things are hurting, but I think it's really important to keep this like is this good?
7:44
Alban: Do I enjoy what I'm doing?
7:46
Alban: Do I think we had a good episode Our episode two weeks ago?
7:49
Alban: I listened and went this is really good.
7:51
Alban: That was one of my favorite episodes that we'd ever done and I haven't gone and looked at the numbers for it.
7:58
Alban: I just feel that it's good.
7:59
Alban: But if I went and looked, it's obviously not going to be as big as some of our old episodes.
8:04
Alban: And if we ended up going down this path of just trying to one-up the numbers from years ago, then we would end up with a pretty boring show, or at least a show that I probably wouldn't be loving doing each week in, week out.
8:18
Jordan: Well, it'd be stressful.
8:18
Jordan: You actually make a really good point there.
8:20
Jordan: If you're constantly trying to make it competitive, you're constantly trying to one up it, it becomes more work than it's worth.
8:26
Jordan: And I think that there is something to be said about.
8:29
Jordan: If you do have a podcast that you know maybe is your primary source of income, if you're lucky enough to have that, then maybe you also have one that you're a little bit more precious with as a hobby and you don't push it into that realm of advertising and stuff like that.
8:44
Jordan: Like you don't rely on that.
8:45
Jordan: That is only your source of expression and creativity, and I think that that would actually help a lot with preventing burnout.
8:52
Kevin: So you guys are circling around this train of thought that I had.
8:55
Kevin: It sounds similar like you're honing in in the same direction of kind of where I landed when I was thinking about this and that is something that would qualify as a hobby for me, that I get joy out of where it shifts from being joyful to being like pressure-y, and then I feel like if I well, if I do good, it's great, but if I don't and most times I'm going to get it's going to be a don't then I feel awful.
9:18
Kevin: And that is the difference between like practice mode and being able to just enjoy whatever it is you're doing, and for me in my life, that could be exercising, it could be playing pickleball, it could be playing golf, it could be podcasting, it could be any of those things.
9:31
Kevin: Those are all hobbies that I enjoy.
9:32
Kevin: I enjoy the practice part of that, but oftentimes every time you do it becomes the tournament, and so this is this is very real.
9:41
Kevin: In my experience in golf and this is kind of what helped me get here to this place is that I found after I got out of like high school golf where we had this was clearly a practice session and this is clearly a tournament.
9:51
Kevin: Now it's like I only play golf like every two or three weeks.
9:54
Kevin: It's very expensive and I'm playing with three other guys who also spend a lot of money.
9:57
Kevin: Everyone wants to play.
9:58
Kevin: Good, it's tournament day.
10:00
Kevin: They want to bet on the games, they want to bet on the hole, they want.
10:03
Kevin: So anytime I played was high pressure and it wasn't practice, it wasn't fun, it wasn't.
10:08
Kevin: Oh, I hit a bad shot, I'll just hit another one.
10:10
Kevin: It was always tournament day every time I played and I quickly like I don't want to anytime I play, have it be tournament day.
10:17
Kevin: That stinks, that's terrible.
10:18
Kevin: I need some practice days where I can just enjoy it.
10:21
Kevin: And so, like I thought about well, how does that translate to like pickleball?
10:24
Kevin: Well, pickleball, it's like.
10:24
Kevin: I rarely ever play tournaments.
10:26
Kevin: I'm mostly just out with friends and we're just having fun and it's light and if I win I win, if I lose I lose, but it's fun.
10:31
Kevin: Either way, Once in a while I do go play a tournament.
10:34
Kevin: Usually at the end of those tournaments I'm thinking well with podcasting, how do we help people get to the place where every show you do, every episode, is not tournament day.
10:41
Kevin: Every episode you do can be practice day can be practice day can be practice day Once in a while.
10:54
Kevin: You might want to do a special event.
10:55
Kevin: You might want to try to do a live event.
10:57
Kevin: You might want to go on somebody else's podcast.
10:58
Kevin: So I'm guesting and I really want to give my best performance.
11:01
Kevin: So I really want to do a bunch of research.
11:03
Kevin: I really want to listen to back episodes.
11:04
Kevin: I really want to make this point or this point.
11:06
Kevin: Those are tournament days, but every episode you do for your podcast can't be tournament day, or I think you're going to set yourself up for burnout.
11:13
Kevin: What do you guys think?
11:14
Kevin: That's where I landed.
11:15
Alban: I'm still trying to think of what that looks like, but I'm reminded of something that talked about before, kevin, that we will try new things, and one of the ways to make any experiment fail is to be like well, how do we make this happen all the time?
11:29
Alban: If it works out, what's the long-term plan here?
11:32
Alban: I don't know if this is too much of a spoiler, but you sent me this laser engraving thing yesterday and we're like what if we laser engraved some leather tags?
11:42
Alban: And my brain initially goes to well, how do we do this at scale?
11:46
Alban: Who do we decide to do it for?
11:48
Alban: How much is it going to cost?
11:50
Alban: What's the quality?
11:50
Alban: And then I went yeah, yeah, those are all other problems to solve, but would it be fun to just get a laser engraver and play with it and try to make some cool podcasting stuff?
11:59
Alban: Yes, that would be fun.
12:00
Alban: And then I went that's the whole solution here.
12:03
Alban: That's all I need to know.
12:05
Alban: This would be cool, right, nothing else needs to come into this.
12:08
Alban: Yet If it works and we make something fun and exciting, then we can solve this new problem of how do we replicate this.
12:17
Alban: So it feels a little bit like kind of practice day, tournament day, it's just practice day in the beginning.
12:23
Alban: If it becomes something that we're good at, we can see a way for it to scale.
12:27
Alban: Well, then we can try to go and do tournament day, where we're really focusing and we're squeezing all of the efficiencies out of it and we're trying to ramp it up.
12:35
Alban: Yeah, but we're not there yet.
12:37
Alban: In the beginning you're really just practicing and hopefully having fun.
12:41
Alban: Yeah.
12:41
Kevin: And this always feels like whenever the three of us get together and do the show.
12:44
Kevin: To me it feels like practice day.
12:46
Kevin: I don't feel a ton of pressure.
12:47
Kevin: I don't feel like I have to perform.
12:49
Kevin: I want to, but if I do, great and if I don't, don't Like we don't have to always.
12:54
Kevin: Every show doesn't have to be better than the last.
12:56
Kevin: Of course that is part of the goal, but sometimes we will and we won't and I don't get my value out of if we accomplish that or not.
13:04
Kevin: But I was reminded when I was trying to think how does this analogy apply specifically to podcasting?
13:07
Kevin: I was reminded like three, four months ago we went on Alex Sanfilippo's show.
13:11
Kevin: He did a podcasting event and he had us on as a group to represent Buzzcast, and that I mean more so than we do for this show.
13:18
Kevin: We said like, well, how do we want to present ourselves, how do we want to answer questions?
13:21
Kevin: And we landed on some good things, like we want for anybody who listens to this, this is new exposure of new audience people to us.
13:27
Kevin: We want them to get a sense and a flavor of how we interact on our normal show and that's not going to jive exactly well with how Alex runs his show stuff, because it's a little bit more professional, it's a little bit more like teaching from the front type of style, and we were like how can we kind of meet in the middle on that?
13:42
Kevin: And so we brainstormed it.
13:43
Kevin: We went back and forth with Alex a little bit, but that was a tournament day right, like we wanted to show up, we wanted to perform, we wanted to give our best representation of what it's going to be like.
13:51
Kevin: If you see us here in this different environment and then convince you to come and be a listener on our show once in a while, I think you should pick out milestones and say, oh, I actually want to now go try to perform, I want to compete now.
14:03
Kevin: But if you compete every time you sit down to record, I think you're setting yourself up for burnout.
14:08
Jordan: Yeah, and it doesn't really foster a whole lot of growth either.
14:12
Jordan: You know, like Alban was saying, you know, instead of being like okay, how can I move this into like a mass market kind of thing, instead of just saying okay, wouldn't it be cool if and we kind of did that with that episode that we did two weeks ago Wouldn't it be cool if we just did an entire episode giving people marketing ideas?
14:31
Jordan: Was it a risk?
14:32
Jordan: Yeah, that could have fallen pretty roughly, like they could have been like these are terrible, this episode sucks.
14:35
Jordan: We kind of took that risk and I think that it helped with us being like hey, you know we didn't say they're good ideas are unique, but we hedged it a little bit.
14:44
Jordan: Yeah, but it's one of those things like if we didn't risk that, we wouldn't have had what we personally feel was our best work of the year.
14:50
Jordan: So it's one of those things.
14:52
Jordan: You have to kind of be okay with experimenting.
14:54
Jordan: You have to really go with your gut when you're like wouldn't it be cool, wouldn't it be fun, if we did this Right?
14:59
Jordan: And I think that kind of helps abate, like the burnout.
15:03
Alban: Yeah, Tournament day is always very risk adverse, at least in the beginning.
15:06
Alban: Yeah, I know this from golf.
15:08
Alban: Like one time I was like I want to play well and I can't hit a driver at all right now but, I, can hit my irons pretty long.
15:15
Alban: So I went I'm not going to hit driver all day, right, and I played one of my best rounds because just being very conservative the whole time but it's not the most fun.
15:25
Alban: Most fun is like, oh, I'm going to see it hard as I can hit this driver and like half the time was that a smart decision.
15:29
Alban: The other half it was definitely wrong.
15:31
Alban: But you hit a really good drive and then you have a great hole.
15:35
Alban: You're like, oh man, I'm a genius.
15:37
Alban: This is so much fun.
15:38
Alban: It's the best way to play.
15:40
Jordan: You know, it would be really great if there was like a way for us to do some sort of like achievements.
15:45
Jordan: You know what you're talking about.
15:46
Jordan: It reminds me so much of it's.
15:48
Jordan: It's some it's always something stupid or farm like 50 pumpkins.
15:50
Jordan: You're going to figure out how to farm pumpkins by the end of it.
16:10
Jordan: You know what I mean, depending on what game you play.
16:12
Jordan: I play a lot of different ones here, but what I'm saying is pumpkin farmer.
16:16
Jordan: Yeah, it's this fun thing where you get this achievement, so you have that like yeah a badge of.
16:29
Kevin: I did that, but it also makes you better at the game, and so I wish that there was like some way to do this with like podcasting.
16:32
Kevin: I don't know, there are some things, I don't know, that they're like SEO towards podcasting, but if you search for things around like how to improve your public speaking, there's lots of really good fun games, like even online things like where they give you, they'll throw like prompts up on the screen and you have to talk about them for 90 seconds or 60 seconds.
16:45
Kevin: I recently just listened to a podcast where somebody their full-time job is taking CEOs and making them better public speakers and he has all these games that he plays with the people who are trying to become better public speakers, and a lot of that stuff was like, tell me you know five things that you know a lot about, and then he prompts them based on things they know a lot about and he just gets them to talk about them.
17:07
Kevin: And anyway, and I remember listening to that episode and I was like, oh, this isn't just about to be a better public speaker, like this is really applicable to be a better podcaster.
17:15
Kevin: And then he throws some curve balls in there and like tries to help them get better and teaches them stalling techniques.
17:21
Kevin: So this is all.
17:25
Kevin: Also media training would be another keyword that you might want to search around to become a better podcaster.
17:28
Kevin: But, yeah, fun ways to improve your craft, not always doing it like.
17:31
Kevin: Back to the golf analogy again, and I'm probably overusing it at this point, but it's like the last thing you would ever do is try to improve your swing in the middle of a tournament, like you're not going to make a swing adjustment in the middle of a tournament.
17:42
Kevin: And so if you show up every week to record your podcast and that's every time it's tournament day, then there's no time to experiment.
17:53
Kevin: Like Alban said, like you got to play it safe, you got to hit the irons from the tee and that's just not a lot of fun.
17:55
Kevin: Yeah, you might be doing okay, well, the numbers are growing, but it's not fun anymore.
17:59
Kevin: And so then you, you, you land in this place where you're actually a really good podcaster, but you hate it and you're burned out, anyway.
18:04
Kevin: So, to bring this ball back to backtracks, I was kind of like golly, like we've done a lot and I like that about backtracks.
18:10
Kevin: Is it kind of captured that in a snapshot?
18:11
Kevin: I was like we've reached all these countries and we did this many minutes and it was fun all along the way it was.
18:17
Kevin: I just felt like we were just practicing and having fun and talking about things that we want to talk about with people who I like, and in that we accomplished all this and I love that about the Backtracks episode.
18:27
Kevin: So I wasn't here.
18:28
Kevin: I wanted to say that and I know that I used up a lot more time just to say that simple thing than I probably should have, but anyway, great job to all of you guys.
18:35
Kevin: Great job, tom.
18:36
Kevin: It was a fun episode.
18:37
Jordan: Kevin, that's actually a really good segue, because in the last episode, during our sound off segment, we asked people to like listen to an older episode of their podcast and tell us one thing that they'd like to improve, and so it ties in a little bit with, like, the practice portion of that discussion.
18:55
Alban: Alban, do you want to read the first response that we got for that?
18:56
Alban: Sure, sander, who has the Freemasons podcast, wrote in my old episodes weren't mixed and mastered, so when I listened to my older episodes, the audio quality was good because I recorded in a studio, but it could use improvement so I decided to mix and master them all.
19:10
Alban: It's a lot of work, but they do sound better now.
19:12
Alban: Yeah, I'm a little bit partial to holding on to a few bad old episodes, only because it's so valuable for people who are just starting out to be able to go listen to their favorite creators and hear things that aren't great.
19:29
Alban: I think Pat Flynn used to have a talk where he would play his first podcast episode from like 2008.
19:35
Alban: And it hurts to listen to and I'm not even the one who did it and he'd play it from the front stage and he's like all right, that was my first episode and now you're all here to listen to me talk.
19:47
Alban: You can have the same level of growth.
19:49
Alban: You're probably going to be better than that 2008 episode and it's really affirming for people.
19:55
Alban: It's really inspiring because they go oh wow, there's a lot of opportunity to grow.
19:58
Alban: So at least hold on to those old episodes, maybe in their original form.
20:04
Kevin: And, to be fair, pat Flynn is a podcast coach, so he's looking for that.
20:08
Kevin: He's seeing, oh, there's a byproduct of me starting bad and getting better.
20:11
Kevin: That's true, and the byproduct is that it's encouraging to people who I'm also trying to help get okay with starting bad and getting better, and so not everybody's in that same camp and there might not be that same benefit for you.
20:23
Kevin: So, going back and remastering your episodes, like you said, a lot of work, but you're more proud of it now.
20:30
Kevin: That's fantastic and I also think you should do like what Alban said is like, but also like hold on to the old, unmastered janky things, cause you might want to bring them out Like at some point.
20:36
Alban: Somebody in your life might say I want to start a podcast, but made for our YouTube channel and it was just like a screencast where I filmed myself, and I have no idea how I got this video, but the video of myself is way too zoomed in, like the top of my head is cut off and it's way overexposed, and I'm looking at it going.
21:04
Alban: How did I edit this and not notice how bad it was?
21:08
Alban: How did I publish this and how did this get past?
21:11
Alban: I mean, probably, Kevin, you'd seen that I'd worked on it for a few days and you're just like I can't bring up another thing, but it was all these things that I didn't even have the expertise to notice.
21:22
Alban: It was bad yet.
21:24
Kevin: Yeah, mm.
21:24
Kevin: Hmm, cheyenne Wyoming wrote in and said I have an interview style podcast.
21:28
Kevin: I'm trying to do less rambling and ask more concise and thoughtful questions.
21:31
Kevin: Ask better questions, get better answers.
21:34
Kevin: I can't argue with that statement.
21:37
Kevin: I can add to it, though.
21:38
Kevin: I can also say you can also ask a lot of questions and then, in the lot of questions that you ask, there's going to be some gold there, and then you can edit.
21:46
Jordan: Yeah.
21:46
Kevin: And so that is.
21:47
Kevin: The secret to any valuable content that comes out of this podcast is that we've we talk for three hours, we rambled on a whole bunch of stuff, and then Jordan does the heavy lifting of finding the gold and cutting it down to roughly an hour.
22:00
Jordan: Yeah, which we only have about 67% gold, as it turns out.
22:04
Jordan: So you know what I actually um encountered the same thing and I bought a book called Talk to Me how to Ask Better Questions, get Better Answers and Interview Anyone Like a Pro, and this is by Dean Nelson.
22:17
Jordan: It is the best book about interviewing with a purpose, like having intentionality in your conversations, and I can say that it completely changed my view as, like a podcaster, and it helps me so much with like helping you know my co-hosts when they're trying to figure out like interview questions when they have guests on and stuff like that.
22:38
Jordan: I'm able to look at it through that lens of you know, maybe like a reporter, how a reporter would do it, or just really getting the really good information and making sure that the questions you know might not be like redundant or they are actually interesting or they add to the story that you're trying to tell for your listeners.
22:54
Jordan: And this book was so easy to read.
22:57
Jordan: I read it on a flight and it is dog ear to death and there's post-it notes sticking out of it.
23:02
Jordan: It is just a gold mine.
23:03
Jordan: So I highly recommend that book.
23:05
Alban: What was the name of it?
23:06
Jordan: again, talk to me by talk to me by Dean Nelson.
23:10
Jordan: Dean Nelson All right.
23:12
Alban: We also had a message from D sparkling life coach.
23:15
Alban: Definitely my audio needs improvement.
23:18
Alban: I've tried both the dynamic and condenser mic.
23:20
Alban: I've also tried adjusting all the levels, but still, since I really don't know what I'm doing, it hasn't improved.
23:27
Alban: It's so bad.
23:27
Alban: Even magic mastering doesn't even help, and I live and record in a mobile home near an airport.
23:33
Alban: So there's that.
23:35
Jordan: Yeah.
23:35
Alban: Hiring an editor.
23:36
Alban: I would love to know where I can go to learn more about how to correct my audio or what equipment I'm missing.
23:41
Alban: That might help with this.
23:43
Jordan: You know, I went back and I listened to these episodes and I think that she has a case of being too hard on herself, because I listened to it and I was like her audio is amazing.
23:54
Jordan: What is she talking about?
23:56
Jordan: So that's just me, but I mean, I really didn't listen to it and I was like this sounds fantastic.
24:01
Jordan: So I'm not sure what she's picking up on that makes her think that her audio is terrible, but I thought it was fantastic.
24:08
Alban: My experience, jordan, you're always the hardest on audio of the three of us, so if you think, it's good, I think that is gets my endorsement as well.
24:15
Kevin: I agree with you, jordan.
24:16
Kevin: I went and listened to one of her episodes and I did not think it was bad at all.
24:20
Kevin: Now I didn't know if you were going to give it your Jordan, you know quality seal of approval.
24:25
Kevin: I do think there is some area of improvement.
24:28
Kevin: But there's a clear line for me between like, yeah, the audio is good enough that I have no problems with it.
24:34
Kevin: And then every once in a while I stumble upon a podcast and I'm just like, oh my gosh, they sound ridiculous.
24:40
Kevin: Like, how are they getting that level of audio?
24:43
Kevin: That's super rare that I come across a podcast and I never subscribed to a podcast because of that.
24:48
Kevin: I'm just kind of impressed by it, being somebody who podcasts as well.
24:55
Kevin: And so I think, as long as you're like above the bar of and I know where Jordan's bar is because I tried to record from my car and I didn't pass her bar, so it's pretty high and I had, you know, I didn't think I sounded terrible in that car, but she did, and so I would say D you're above the bar of acceptable quality, I don't think anybody's going to not listen to you, at least from what I heard.
25:14
Kevin: Now, maybe some of your older episodes are different, but you can be tough on yourself sometimes.
25:16
Kevin: Well, I should say, you know people can be hard on ourselves sometimes, not necessarily you.
25:20
Kevin: And so, yeah, have a little bit of confidence.
25:22
Kevin: I think it sounds good.
25:23
Jordan: And in addition to that, you know you're talking about how you're trying both dynamic and condenser mic.
25:28
Jordan: I will say if you are near an airport, I am as well.
25:32
Jordan: Stick to dynamic.
25:33
Jordan: Condenser mic will pick up all the ambient noise and so make sure that you're only using that dynamic microphone.
25:39
Jordan: That will be a huge step forward in making sure that your audio quality is good.
25:43
Alban: So did either of you do this as well?
25:45
Alban: I went back and listened to a Buzzcast episode.
25:49
Alban: I listened to the one we did with all the marketing tips, and I came away with a pretty clear answer of something for me to work on.
25:56
Alban: When I go into Alban on a podcast recording mode, I think I talk way more nasally than I do normally, or maybe it's just the fact that I'm listening to myself and so I'm trying intentionally to talk a little bit more like diaphragmatic breathing a little bit lower in my chest and not as much talking on my nose, so that was the sound I was getting and I didn't love it.
26:23
Jordan: Interesting.
26:24
Kevin: Well, you don't have a breathe right strip on you should be.
26:28
Alban: You think that's probably the big thing is put a big breathe right.
26:30
Alban: Have you seen?
26:31
Kevin: the new magnetic ones that, like magnets, go inside your nostrils and then they, oh, they look weird that looks like something that would not be a great idea.
26:40
Alban: Like one of those goes up your nostrils and never come back out.
26:42
Kevin: Yeah, I don't know how that works exactly, but I expect to see you wearing one next week.
26:46
Jordan: Yeah, speaking from your diaphragm I mean coming from like a theater background I know that you don't run out of air as quickly.
26:53
Jordan: So sometimes when people are speaking from their nose or from like the top of their head, basically they're pushing the air up and they're taking shallow breaths and then they're sometimes running out of air like mid word or mid sentence, and that happens a lot with people.
27:07
Jordan: But if you, if you speak from your belly button, then you will not run out of air so much and the vocals sound a lot more clear and pretty.
27:15
Alban: Talk from your belly button.
27:17
Jordan: There you go, talk from your belly button.
27:19
Alban: Kevin, I know yours is, I think I do.
27:21
Kevin: I was using the one that I talked about a couple episodes ago, where I every time you guys finish saying something and I want to add to it, I say yeah, and then I say it.
27:29
Kevin: It's now gotten to the point where I first heard it by listening back to one of the episodes and it was annoying me as a listener.
27:36
Kevin: Now I've identified it and it's front of mind.
27:38
Kevin: So now it's annoying me every time I do it in real time, and it's probably annoying Jordan, because now every time I do it I say dang it, I did it.
27:45
Kevin: Sorry, Jordan, cut that out.
27:47
Kevin: And then I start again.
27:51
Jordan: Okay, did it?
27:51
Jordan: Sorry, jordan, cut that out.
27:51
Jordan: Cut that, and then I start again.
27:52
Jordan: Okay, now that you both have shared something to work on, I mean I can tell you, without listening, something that I have caught while recording, happy to help with Priscilla.
27:59
Jordan: What I have noticed is sometimes I just want to be a part of the conversation so much that I will piggyback on a thought or idea without contributing to the actual point of the conversation.
28:09
Jordan: So they'll say something and I'll have like a fun little anecdote, and does it actually further the conversation?
28:14
Jordan: Probably not, and I wind up cutting it.
28:16
Jordan: So that is mine.
28:18
Alban: I did this more when I was doing Buzzsprout conversations.
28:21
Alban: As soon as I heard the person in Wyoming say ask better questions, get better answers One of the things I don't know where this came from Such a bad habit.
28:30
Alban: I'd ask a question, they would answer, and then I would answer the question too.
28:34
Alban: I was like that's such a bad conversationalist.
28:41
Kevin: So they're thinking either I gave the wrong answer or not a good enough answer, or something.
28:47
Alban: I think it was kind of what Jordan said.
28:49
Alban: I just wanted to be a part of the conversation.
28:51
Kevin: Yeah, but how do they interpret that?
28:53
Alban: Oh, I'm sure they got it as like yeah, I just said that.
28:56
Alban: Or oh so you think I said it wrong, right?
29:03
Jordan: We have a new addition to the Buzzsprout mobile app home screen widgets.
29:09
Jordan: So first we brought the app, then we had our lock screen widgets and now we have something a little new for our mobile users.
29:17
Kevin: I think that the way to set this up and I know we're doing this real time- but I think the way to set this up is it's the holiday season and we have a new gift.
29:24
Kevin: Oh, that's so much better Do you like that?
29:27
Kevin: Yeah, it's so good.
29:28
Jordan: Yeah, it's so good.
29:29
Kevin: Yeah, so if your apps are set to auto update, you might have a gift that you don't even know you have yet.
29:35
Jordan: Yeah.
29:36
Kevin: And if your apps haven't set to auto update, go grab the latest update of the Buzzsprout app, because there's a little gift in there.
29:42
Kevin: And if you don't have the Buzzsprout native apps yet, what are you doing?
29:46
Jordan: I know.
29:52
Kevin: Go to the app store on iOS or the Google Play Store on Android and grab that app, because now we've had lock screen widgets for a little while and now we have home screen widgets.
29:57
Kevin: And so for those not in mobile development to understand the difference, if your phone is locked and off like in your pocket or something, and you take it out, you can put some widgets right on the lock screen.
30:05
Kevin: Those are lock screen widgets.
30:06
Kevin: We've had those for a couple months.
30:06
Kevin: We wanted to take that same goodness because we know not everybody loves lock screen.
30:08
Kevin: Those are lock screen widgets.
30:09
Kevin: We've had those for a couple months.
30:10
Kevin: We want to take that same goodness because we know not everybody loves lock screen widgets.
30:12
Kevin: They'd rather have them on their home screen, on a specific page or around icons that they use.
30:16
Kevin: And you also can do more fun things with them, like you can.
30:19
Kevin: First of all, they're available on Android, which lock screen widgets are not, and second of all, you them Like.
30:25
Kevin: You can make them colors and you can have background images and you can show off podcast artwork, and so those are all ideas that we pressed into when we were creating these lock screen widgets.
30:34
Jordan: And I think that a lot of people agree that the best Christmas gifts are the ones that you can customize to fit you Right.
30:43
Kevin: Yeah, like who wants to open up the pair of skinny jeans that, like you're just dreading?
30:47
Kevin: I know that's not going to fit me, and how do we work this out?
30:51
Kevin: Yeah, so these are, like I don't know, elastic waisted pants.
30:56
Jordan: Yeah, you can make them.
30:57
Kevin: They'll fit anybody.
30:58
Alban: You guys are not selling it.
30:59
Jordan: But with the zippers around the knee that you can undo and make them shorts if you want.
31:03
Alban: Right, oh my gosh.
31:05
Alban: Okay, they're the elastic zip off.
31:08
Alban: Pants.
31:08
Alban: How, oh?
31:08
Alban: Okay, they're the elastic zip off pants.
31:09
Jordan: How's our messaging album?
31:10
Jordan: Is it on brand?
31:15
Alban: This is on brand.
31:16
Alban: Let me describe these for anybody who's trying to imagine it.
31:18
Alban: So, on the page where you would have your apps, you can have these much larger widgets and they say keep podcasting.
31:22
Alban: And they have your stats for today, the stats for the week, but they also have a picture of a podcast microphone and these are really, really pretty line art drawings of the most popular microphones.
31:36
Alban: Kevin, you drew all these right.
31:38
Kevin: I did.
31:38
Kevin: Yeah, I drew every single one of them.
31:40
Kevin: These look so good.
31:42
Alban: So, I was playing with it and all three of the microphones I've used over the years consistently were in there the Samsung Q2U, the SM7B and now the Earthworks Ethos.
31:55
Alban: That I have made the cut.
31:57
Kevin: Well that was a hat tip, Alban, specifically mostly for you and me, because I don't know how popular of a podcasting microphone this is, but you and I use it and it's becoming more popular and I feel like when people step up from those entry-level mics, which are great but around the $100 price point, to something in the $300 or $400 range, I think it's just a great contender.
32:20
Kevin: It used to just be everyone go with the SM7B if you want to spend $400.
32:24
Kevin: And now I think the Ethos should be in the conversation for most people, even though it's a condenser.
32:30
Alban: I took a screenshot of it today and I sent it to Steven Robles, who's the one who got me on this microphone back in the day, and I was like, oh, do you recognize these?
32:39
Alban: Of course I recognize them, but they're really good because they can go light mode, so it's like white with a gray microphone, like very subtle.
32:50
Alban: Then you could go dark mode, which is like a dark, maybe like charcoal, with black drawing microphone, and then you can do the tinted and with the tinting you can get all sorts of different colors and these look really, really good.
33:05
Jordan: It looks cool.
33:06
Jordan: I gotta say like the tinting looks way better than I thought.
33:09
Jordan: I actually don't like a lot of widgets with the tinting on, but the buzzsprout ones are chef's kiss.
33:15
Jordan: They're so good.
33:16
Alban: Yeah, I agree.
33:17
Alban: Kevin, you nailed these out of the park and Dylan, fantastic work on getting all these to work on both iOS and Android.
33:24
Alban: I know.
33:25
Alban: Yeah.
33:26
Kevin: And Cameron helped a lot too in bringing a lot of polish to the table and so we decided, oh, a little less than halfway through the project, like what is going to be the focus here?
33:37
Kevin: We could have gone in a bunch of different directions, right?
33:40
Kevin: We could have gone like super stats heavy with graphs and charts and progress bars and circle graphs and donut graphs and everything, and we explored a bunch of those ideas, but none of them felt right.
33:51
Kevin: Like you know, we talk about all the time Stats are important and it's fun to keep track of them, but it's not all about stats.
33:58
Kevin: There's some motivational stuff, there's some beauty.
34:00
Kevin: You're doing something that's in a hobby and it's a bit of an art form and everyone is unique and everyone is different.
34:05
Kevin: Everybody's podcast is different, everybody uses different podcast mics and everyone has different podcast artwork, and some people run their phone in light mode and some people run their phone in dark mode, and some people tint their screens and some people don't.
34:16
Kevin: And it's like how can we, how can we bring all of that beauty and customizability and uniqueness into what we're doing?
34:22
Jordan: Yeah, it's a tall order.
34:24
Kevin: It's a tall order, but that's the direction that we all started getting really excited about.
34:28
Kevin: It's not about just showing more numbers, not just about graphing numbers or whatever.
34:32
Kevin: It's about, like can we give this to our customers in a way that they can make it uniquely theirs?
34:36
Kevin: And so, like, I want to go to a podcast conference and I want to see widgets on people's phones and I want to see how they set it up.
34:42
Kevin: Are they showing their podcast artwork?
34:43
Kevin: Are they highlighting their microphone?
34:45
Kevin: Are they running it in light mode?
34:46
Kevin: Are they running it in dark mode?
34:46
Kevin: Are they running the large version of the widget?
34:48
Kevin: Are they running the small version of the widget?
34:50
Kevin: Are they running it on the lock screen?
34:51
Kevin: Are they putting icons around it?
34:52
Kevin: Are they putting it on their own dedicated page?
34:54
Kevin: There's so many like who knows?
34:58
Kevin: I haven't done the math to figure out how many variations you can actually create of these, but I feel confident in saying that you can set this up in a way that's going to match your personality.
35:05
Kevin: It's going to match your podcast and yours is not going to look like anybody else's, and I think that's really fun.
35:10
Kevin: Like, how often do we get to do that as people who make tools for podcasters?
35:13
Alban: Not very often the thing I love about the microphones is like it's a microphone, it's the message keep podcasting, and you have the stats there.
35:21
Alban: But it's for me it's just a reminder of the podcast that we're doing.
35:26
Alban: And even between recordings where I'm not really thinking about the podcast, I still see, like today, 24 downloads.
35:32
Alban: I'm like, oh, we didn't just put out an episode, 24 people still downloaded it today and it's a little encouragement each day that something is happening with the podcast and hopefully that will encourage people to jump back in, record another episode, be excited about planning the next one, calling a guest and scheduling an interview, whatever the next step may be.
35:54
Alban: This can be like that constant little daily reminder hey, you're doing this podcast and you're doing a great job, Keep it up, Get that microphone back out and let's record some more.
36:05
Jordan: And if you're vain like me, you can have the large widget with your podcast cover art on it, because I love looking at it every day.
36:12
Jordan: And what I love about it actually is that the download numbers are smaller than the cover art.
36:19
Jordan: So it's not the main thing.
36:21
Jordan: The main thing is like, hey, look at this awesome podcast you created and then in big bold letters it says keep podcasting.
36:26
Jordan: And then there's like a little bit of stats, but I always find myself like kind of glossing over the stats numbers.
36:31
Jordan: I really do.
36:32
Jordan: I'm just like, yeah, I love this.
36:34
Jordan: It looks so good on my home screen, it just makes me so proud.
36:37
Kevin: That's great.
36:38
Kevin: We weren't trying to hide the numbers, but we were saying that's not going to be the main focus here.
36:42
Kevin: The main focus here is going to be, like motivation reminding people that they're a podcaster Every time they look at their phone, give them something beautiful that they can make uniquely theirs.
36:50
Kevin: And here's a little thing that I don't know, that a lot of people do.
36:52
Kevin: I did not do this for the longest time because I didn't use a lot of home screen widgets, but as I've had my phone longer and longer, I'm finding that there's actually some really useful widgets.
37:01
Kevin: So what I would always do is I'd still have the app icon and then I would also have the home screen widget and then, like, as I'm becoming a more advanced phone user, I'm realizing like once you install the widget, that is the shortcut to the app.
37:14
Kevin: Yeah, and so, like you can clean up your screens a little bit on your phones, just drop, like that Buzzsprout home screen widget on there.
37:20
Kevin: You can take the small one, you can take the large one, whichever one you like, customize it, you make it your own and then you can hide the Buzzsprout app icon.
37:26
Kevin: It's still available, like when you search or if you scroll like all the way to the right to like where all your apps are.
37:31
Kevin: It's still over there, but it's it's like not taking up space anymore because you've replaced it with something that still lets you have that same functionality.
37:38
Kevin: Anyway, little tip of the day for anybody who didn't think about widgets in that way yeah, I've gotten to where I don't have any app icons except at the very bottom.
37:46
Alban: So the you know texting and I have a few others on there, but besides I just everything else.
37:51
Alban: I search or I have a widget for it and it's kind of a you know for my favorite apps, like I use the widget that they have so I jump in or get stats or whatever it may be.
38:01
Alban: But besides that I've kind of started nuking all of the app icons.
38:05
Kevin: This also brings me back to.
38:07
Kevin: We didn't give away all of our thoughts when we launched the native apps earlier in the year, but you remember we had a discussion about like why didn't we go with the technical term for it is like a PWA, which is basically like a web app that you can install on your screen.
38:20
Kevin: A lot of other podcast hosting solutions have gone in that direction, or they just offer like a mobile, responsive view so you can open up a web browser and still kind of use their functionality.
38:29
Kevin: Why did we decide to invest and go all in on native apps?
38:32
Kevin: And this is another one of those promises that we made at the time Like there's things that native apps can do that these other technologies can't take advantage of, and so, slowly but surely throughout the year, we've been chipping away at that stuff, and so lock screen widgets are an example.
38:46
Kevin: These new home screen widgets are an example, and I can't give it away.
38:49
Kevin: But we have another feature that's about to launch in the native apps that you can only do through native apps, and I'm very excited about this, and so we'll be talking about that, if not in the next episode, the one shortly after.
39:00
Alban: So if you want to add a home screen widget, you just hold down on all those app icons so they start to like jiggle and then you can say that you want to edit and then you can click add widget.
39:12
Alban: Scroll down to the Buzzsprout app and then you'll have all the options for these widgets and then when you have like a widget on there, you can then customize that one more.
39:22
Alban: So I think you hold down on the widget itself and then you get to pick what images are on there and you've got clean.
39:30
Alban: You can have the SM7B, you can have a Blue Yeti pod mics, q2u, sm58, mv7, re20, pr40, rode Procaster.
39:42
Kevin: Yeah, and the Earthworks Ethos, I don't know.
39:43
Kevin: There's 10 total.
39:45
Jordan: That's 10 microphone designs.
39:46
Jordan: Right, 10 microphone designs?
39:47
Kevin: You don't have to choose a microphone design.
39:49
Kevin: You can also just use your podcast artwork, or you can choose clean, which means just like to put nothing on there.
39:53
Kevin: Yeah, let me tell you one other thing.
39:55
Kevin: I don't know how many people are going to use this, but I'm using it, so I'll talk about it.
39:58
Kevin: You can also install these home screen widgets.
40:01
Kevin: If you use a Mac, you can install them on your desktop computer.
40:05
Kevin: Yes, I didn't know this.
40:07
Kevin: I have it running up in the top right corner of my Mac computer desktop right now.
40:11
Jordan: I'm so angry with myself right now that I didn't know this.
40:14
Kevin: Yeah.
40:14
Jordan: I got to do it right now.
40:15
Jordan: It's very cool.
40:16
Kevin: And all the same customization options exist on the Mac as they do on the iPhone.
40:20
Kevin: I'm not sure if Android has a similar thing.
40:24
Kevin: If you happen to run like a Chromebook, I think maybe if you run a Chromebook there's a chance.
40:28
Kevin: I doubt, I highly doubt, it would work on a Windows computer, but I think if you run a Chromebook definitely if you run a Mac you can put these widgets on your desktop.
40:38
Kevin: That's awesome, yeah, so this is all the fun stuff that, like, you get all these amazing, cool things that you can do when you have native apps and we are having a grand time.
40:48
Jordan: Yeah, too much fun, too much fun.
40:51
Kevin: So happy holidays to everyone.
40:53
Kevin: We hope you enjoy this gift.
40:55
Kevin: We hope it makes your I don't know podcasting more enjoyable and that you keep podcasting.
41:03
Jordan: Okay, so Apple Podcasts has announced some updates with the iOS 18.2.
41:08
Jordan: So the first thing is that they have introduced favorite categories and so when new users open the app, they can pick their favorite categories on home to quickly influence recommendations.
41:20
Jordan: So the algorithm will be a little bit more tailored to the things that they're interested in, and listeners can now find categories in the library with favorited categories at the top, and this is kind of fun.
41:30
Jordan: The search now also showcases more categories and subcategories which are personalized to each listener.
41:38
Jordan: That's pretty cool.
41:39
Alban: Yeah, all these seem focused on helping people find more shows that they may enjoy.
41:44
Jordan: Yes.
41:45
Alban: Everyone says this is a pain point.
41:47
Alban: It is a pain point and Apple's trying to make it a little bit better.
41:51
Alban: Another thing in this vein was this new top series chart that they're doing, which are to be a great way, especially for people who are like they kind of go through series at a time rather than find ongoing shows that put out hundreds of episodes.
42:15
Alban: So that's a new chart to check out.
42:17
Jordan: So another thing that I saw that was kind of cool is chapters.
42:21
Jordan: Listeners can scrub the play progress bar to easily navigate to another chapter.
42:25
Jordan: So I imagine it's one of those things where you like press and hold down on the progress bar and maybe it like uh, what's the word?
42:31
Jordan: Like magnetizes or like auto clicks too?
42:35
Kevin: It is a heptic.
42:36
Jordan: Feedback is the word you're looking for Okay, I'm not going to remember that.
42:40
Kevin: You're going to get a little.
42:41
Kevin: You're going to get a little heptic bump when you hit a chapter, probably yeah.
42:44
Alban: And something else spotted in this latest Apple podcast update from Steven Robles, friend of the show, is the Apple podcast no longer cuts off long show notes.
42:58
Alban: So it used to be.
42:58
Alban: There's a bit of a strange way that Apple handled this.
43:00
Alban: For podcasts that you subscribe to through Apple podcasts, they would cut off the show notes at like 4,000 characters, but if you subscribe directly to the RSS feed, it looked like that limit wasn't there, and so we'd see this every once in a while in support, where people would put in a ton of content into their show notes and it would get cut off.
43:19
Alban: We'd try to work with them to figure it out, but now it looks like everybody is the benefactor of at least the limit if there is one is much longer.
43:28
Kevin: This sounds exciting.
43:29
Kevin: If true, I'm just taking it a little bit like I would like to trust but verify yeah, and so I'm putting it in that category.
43:38
Kevin: I don't know that we should report it as definitive yet.
43:40
Kevin: We should just say a reporter in the field has said this.
43:43
Kevin: We will look into it and follow up.
43:45
Jordan: What would you say to a listener that goes ooh fantastic, I can finally have 6,000 characters in my show notes on Buzzsprout.
43:56
Alban: I would say the same thing I'm saying to everyone who tries to put 4,000 in now.
43:59
Alban: No one's reading the 4,000 anyway.
44:01
Jordan: Yeah, and Apple doesn't search the episode description, so there's no point in word stuffing.
44:06
Kevin: When they're trying to.
44:07
Kevin: You know, oh, I have a scripted podcast, I'll just take my whole script and dump it in there.
44:10
Kevin: Well, that's not what it's for.
44:12
Kevin: It's supposed to be like a summarized, concise version of what this episode is about, and unless you're podcasting for you know 12 hours like it's a hardcore history podcast episode or something that's super long, then 4,000 characters should be more than enough for almost everybody, unless you're trying to do something that you shouldn't be doing.
44:30
Kevin: So I do like that.
44:31
Kevin: Maybe they've expanded it.
44:32
Kevin: Maybe it's not 4,000 anymore, it's 5,000 or 6,000.
44:34
Kevin: I don't think it should be unlimited, because that is going to lead to some people doing some things that they just out of probably making a mistake more than anything else.
44:42
Kevin: So I didn't realize there's a separate place to put my transcript, Something for us to look into and follow up on.
44:48
Kevin: But it is exciting.
44:49
Kevin: There's not a good scenario in which somebody has just written a lot of actually really helpful show notes and they're truncated Every once in a while.
44:55
Kevin: You'd see that and that was kind of lame.
44:57
Alban: Yeah, I just think there's so few reasons to go even up into the thousands.
45:01
Alban: Really, give us a short description.
45:04
Alban: Tell us the main things you covered.
45:06
Alban: Give us some calls to action, links to people's socials or whatever, and that's it.
45:13
Alban: Rarely have I ever looked at podcast show notes, and when I look at them I'm mostly looking for a link that they discuss and they say this will be in the show notes.
45:21
Alban: Besides that, I don't need to see a long written out description about what you talked about for an hour.
45:28
Alban: I just listened to it.
45:29
Kevin: Right, there's been a lot of hacking around the episode description field in recent years.
45:33
Kevin: People are putting a lot of stuff in there that it wasn't intentionally designed for.
45:36
Kevin: So I could see an argument for going a little bit beyond 4,000, because there are episodes like, if let's just say we're not doing this this year, but what if we did?
45:44
Kevin: What if we said, oh Well, that could get close to 4,000, because a link isn't just the 25 characters of the name, it's actually all the characters that you use to make up the link.
46:03
Kevin: Also, that also counts against you.
46:05
Kevin: Yeah, and so a lot of links, a lot of people.
46:08
Kevin: It became trendy for a little while when people started putting their podcasts on YouTube and before we had full support for chapters and Spotify, they would go ahead and list all their chapters in their episode description and they would link ahead and list all their chapters in their episode description and they would, you know, link those timestamps to jump around the episode.
46:25
Kevin: So there's a lot of stuff going in show notes that really shouldn't be in show notes, and so I'm wondering if Apple's just kind of like ah, too many people's show notes are getting truncated instead of trying to educate the world on how to properly use show notes.
46:33
Kevin: We're just going to let it go a little bit longer.
46:35
Kevin: I can see that That'd be good, but it still doesn't mean in most cases.
46:39
Kevin: Most of the time, for most people, 4,000 should be enough.
46:45
Jordan: So let's get into sound off.
46:47
Jordan: We have some fan mail messages.
46:49
Jordan: First is from Houston, Texas Team Buzz.
46:52
Jordan: Love the marketing episode.
46:54
Jordan: You really got my wheels spinning.
46:55
Jordan: Well done, Thanks, Houston.
46:58
Kevin: Chris from Podtastic Audio wrote in.
46:59
Kevin: While I don't host Podtastic Audio on Buzzsprout, I do record and produce a client show called Ace Relocation Nation hosted on your platform.
47:07
Kevin: I just wanted to say how much I love Buzzsprout.
47:09
Kevin: Your hosting platform is incredibly easy to use, to navigate, and the features you've designed for indie podcasters are outstanding.
47:14
Kevin: Keep up the great work.
47:16
Kevin: Well, that's very kind of you to say.
47:18
Kevin: Thank you, chris.
47:26
Alban: And we are glad you host something with us.
47:27
Alban: Jared from hey Chaplain, the police wellness podcast, reached out.
47:28
Alban: Can the episode pacing chart include more than four episodes?
47:30
Alban: I see the current and the three previous episodes, but I publish weekly so the oldest episodes never quite makes it to the 30 day mark.
47:37
Alban: Right now the pacing chart is just the four episodes, so you'll only see those and the real goal is for the first few days.
47:45
Alban: You kind of see, is it keeping up with the trend line that you had for the previous ones?
47:51
Alban: But good feature request and we can always pass those on.
47:54
Jordan: D sparkling life coach.
47:56
Jordan: Such great podcast marketing ideas and many of them can be used interchangeably Habit formation cards, google Drive with checklists etc.
48:02
Jordan: And I absolutely love the lavender seed packet idea.
48:05
Jordan: Great job, Alban.
48:06
Jordan: I'm actually scheduled to work a farmer's market this spring and this is the ideal giveaway to promote my podcast PS.
48:13
Jordan: So sorry, kevin, I can't help you with planting instructions.
48:16
Jordan: I have a brown thumb too, literally and figuratively.
48:23
Kevin: Clever girl David from no Stroke Podcast wrote in and said this episode was excellent.
48:30
Kevin: Guys and gal, Having a third party look in on your podcast and offer new marketing angles was terrific.
48:35
Kevin: I know it was a lot of work, but I hope you do it again, as I'd love to put your marketing microscope over our podcast.
48:42
Jordan: Yeah, and we actually had a lot more submissions for the marketing ideas after we record the episode and we're holding onto those.
48:50
Jordan: Maybe we'll do it in the future.
48:52
Jordan: But if you did submit your podcast and we didn't do a marketing idea, that is why it was a lot of work.
48:57
Jordan: But maybe in the future we'll be able to do it again, because it was a lot of fun.
49:00
Alban: Ken from Discount Storytime reached out.
49:02
Alban: Thanks so much for your advice for Discount Storytime.
49:05
Alban: I'm way too introverted for pop-up or open mic, but you sparked some great ideas.
49:12
Alban: I'm going to record video readings of each story at, hopefully, local bookstores and coffee shops.
49:16
Alban: A few others.
49:17
Alban: At the end, the store owners can give a plug for their business.
49:20
Alban: This is a way that local businesses can get free advertising and hopefully spread the word.
49:27
Alban: Plus, I'll give out some coasters bookmarks to them, as seen on the Discount Storytime podcast, with a QR code sticker linked to their episode.
49:33
Alban: Thanks again for the advice.
49:34
Alban: I absolutely loved the episode.
49:36
Jordan: Awesome, claire from Creativity Found Great suggestion.
49:40
Jordan: Thank you, Alban.
49:41
Jordan: I already have people in the Creativity Found membership who sell already crafty kits and have been guests on my podcast, so I just need to make the cards for them to send out.
49:51
Jordan: Wow, she already did that, just missing the last step there.
49:55
Jordan: That's really cool.
49:56
Alban: I actually went and bought a few of these kind of craft kits because I was had them on the brain, I guess, and so I bought them as Christmas gifts.
50:03
Alban: And as I'm buying them, I was like, oh, you know, what I really love is a podcast episode about the people who made these kits.
50:12
Jordan: All right, so what should our sound off be for our next episode?
50:17
Kevin: Okay, you're going to think this is a cop out, but this is definitely a cop out.
50:20
Kevin: I think it would be fun to just let people enjoy their holidays.
50:25
Kevin: No sound off homework for this episode Boo, so you don't like it.
50:32
Jordan: I'm just kidding.
50:32
Kevin: I'm just kidding, go on no-transcript and so if you haven't yet filled out that survey, we'll link it at the bottom of our show notes for this episode, and we'd really encourage you to do that.
50:50
Kevin: But besides that, I think, sound off question.
50:53
Kevin: We can take a break just for this one episode and we'll bring it back for the next one.
50:57
Kevin: But just enjoy your holidays and keep podcasting.
51:05
Jordan: Okay, so our dishwasher has been lightly broken for about seven years now, and just in the past month it has started.
51:13
Kevin: Seven years.
51:14
Jordan: Yeah, seven years, but it was working.
51:16
Jordan: You know what I mean.
51:17
Jordan: Like you have to put it on like a certain cycle, but it would run.
51:19
Jordan: It cleans the dishes, it's fine, and just in, like the last month, it has started like screaming high pitched at the top of its lungs for like 15 minutes whenever we run a cycle and we can't get a stop.
51:31
Kevin: At the beginning, middle or end of the cycle.
51:32
Jordan: The beginning.
51:33
Jordan: So we think it's something with a pump obviously.
51:35
Alban: How long Jordan Like two minutes the pump, obviously.
51:40
Jordan: How long?
51:40
Jordan: Jordan?
51:40
Jordan: Like two minutes, like 15 minutes, and the kids hate it, the cats hate it.
51:42
Jordan: It's a nightmare, um, but we just recently started looking at new dishwashers because it's like okay, if it's like begging for mercy at this point, we gotta get a new one.
51:48
Jordan: And so I looked online and you know what's crazy is with these appliances like a dishwasher that's like 250 is rated like 3.7 stars, and then the the other ones are, you know, $1,300, are also rated 3.7 stars.
52:04
Jordan: Like what's the point in getting a more expensive model?
52:06
Kevin: This is out of five stars, right.
52:08
Jordan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:10
Alban: I understand the scale.
52:11
Alban: Jordan.
52:11
Alban: This is going to be amazing if this ends up being it, but I feel like this is a solvable issue and I just started looking around online.
52:19
Alban: Loud screeching during the first few minutes of a dishwasher cycle is most likely caused by defective water inlet valve.
52:25
Alban: Valve controls water flow into the dishwasher and the diaphragm deteriorates over time.
52:30
Alban: Like you might just have to replace that and you're done.
52:33
Jordan: Yeah, but what about the other broken parts?
52:35
Jordan: I told you it was slightly broken to begin with.
52:37
Alban: Oh, there's additional broken pieces.
52:39
Kevin: This is additional broken pieces.
52:41
Kevin: Yeah, I think if your dishwasher is like over five years old then it's probably not worth the trouble, unless you, unless you or your husband liked to tinker, you know, and like oh, I'll take Saturday afternoon, I'll just carve out four hours and I'll just take apart the dishwasher and see what happens.
52:55
Kevin: If you like that, knock yourself out.
52:58
Kevin: If you don't, and it's over five years old, you're right, probably just replace the dishwasher.
53:02
Jordan: I don't know how old this thing is.
53:03
Alban: It's been broken for seven years, Kevin.
53:11
Jordan: Yeah, we've been married for 10 years and we bought it used and I'm pretty sure it was not anywhere near new when we got it, so I think this guy might be 15 years old now.
53:18
Kevin: Oh, yeah, I say get a new one.
53:18
Kevin: So I think this guy, like, might be 15 years old now.
53:20
Kevin: Oh yeah, I say get a new one, yeah, so so I have opinions on dishwashers.
53:22
Kevin: You want to?
53:22
Jordan: hear them.
53:23
Jordan: I love your opinions, Kevin.
53:25
Kevin: Well, you haven't bought anything yet, right?
53:26
Jordan: No, I have not.
53:27
Kevin: Okay, so I wouldn't give you my opinions if you've already made a decision, because then you definitely regret your decision.
53:32
Jordan: Yeah, there's too many decisions to make, so I actually appreciate this All right.
53:35
Kevin: Here's my opinion on generally this kind of applies to like all household appliances in general that they've been coming out with over the past 10 years.
53:43
Kevin: Okay, but for dishwashers specifically, I think it is worth paying for noise abatement.
53:49
Kevin: As you move up to the higher level dishwashers, they're going to get quieter and quieter.
53:54
Kevin: Oh, and usually what you're paying for is better insulation and quieter motors.
54:00
Kevin: Okay, but you can.
54:02
Kevin: You can spend so much money that you can't even tell if this thing is on or not.
54:05
Kevin: Yeah, it's that quiet.
54:07
Kevin: You'd be standing right next to it and you can't even hear it.
54:09
Jordan: With a bunch of ADHD people in my household.
54:12
Jordan: I don't know if that's the best idea.
54:13
Alban: Like I can't, tell this is actually an issue at our house we have.
54:17
Kevin: Well, they put lights on them now.
54:18
Kevin: So now they shine like little lights on the floor, Like mine shines a little blue light when it's running and it's a little green light when it's done.
54:26
Jordan: On the floor?
54:26
Kevin: Yeah, and you have to look at the floor to figure out if it's on or not.
54:29
Jordan: Your truck does that too.
54:31
Kevin: My truck does that too, yeah, but I hate noise, and so, for me, spending money to get the quietest one possible was a good spend.
54:41
Kevin: Now you have to be careful, though, because if you get too high end, then they start coming with like Wi-Fi connectivity and it's giving you all the stats Like.
54:49
Kevin: I honestly think this is a thing that they make some dishwashers with like cameras inside of them so you can see your dish, you can live stream your dishes.
54:55
Alban: You get your like, your Bosch, wrapped for the year.
54:59
Kevin: It's like you watch 7,000 how many food particulates we removed.
55:04
Kevin: Yeah, and and you don't want that because that stuff breaks all the time and it's super expensive.
55:11
Kevin: It's like, oh, my dishwasher is not working anymore.
55:14
Kevin: And they're like, oh, you need a new logic board and that's $3,700.
55:16
Kevin: You don't want that, so don't go too high end.
55:19
Kevin: But my opinion would be get the quietest dishwasher you can that doesn't have Wi-Fi connectivity.
55:25
Kevin: That is not a smart dishwasher, a dumb, quiet dishwasher.
55:29
Jordan: A dumb, quiet dishwasher.
55:31
Alban: I'm with you on most of that, kevin, but I'm red green colorblind and ours is extremely quiet and it does a red green light on the ground.
55:41
Alban: Oh no, and I regularly walk up, don't like see the light as being on, don't know it's on, open it mid-cycle and you can't just close it and restart.
55:49
Alban: You have to then like reset it to restart and like every time my wife somehow can hear it and she well, she mostly is the one who started it.
55:58
Alban: When this has happened, so I'll walk over, open it she goes why do you open that?
56:01
Alban: I don't know, I can't see.
56:04
Alban: I was trying to be helpful.
56:08
Kevin: Yeah, I hadn't thought of that issue.
56:09
Kevin: Golly, they should choose better colors.
56:11
Kevin: So many people are red, green, colorblind.
56:13
Alban: Or if it was just brighter.
56:15
Jordan: Yeah.
56:15
Alban: I mean, it is so quiet.
56:17
Alban: That is nice and it does a great job cleaning, but the lights need to be a little bit more obvious.
56:23
Jordan: Yeah, I think at this point like the bar has been set so low on what qualifies as a quiet dishwasher, so I think anything's going to be quieter here.
56:33
Kevin: Yeah, jordan will be able to use her podcast editing expertise here because, like all the loudness, it's all measured in decibels, it's all like dBs.
56:41
Kevin: So you're going to look like a pro when you go in there and they're all talking like this is 40 dBs, this is 52 dBs, and you're gonna be like, yeah, I know exactly what that is.
56:48
Kevin: I know the difference Exactly.
56:50
Kevin: I can hum to you Like I'm I'veBS.
56:55
Alban: You want to hear?
56:55
Kevin: 36 DBS.
56:58
Alban: That's 36.
56:58
Alban: Jordan, there's a video I've got to send you.
57:01
Alban: There's an hour long version of it, but there's also a 20 minute version where a guy like talks about the science of dishwashers and how to get the best performance out of any dishwasher.
57:11
Alban: It goes into so much detail but it is like I watched it I was like this is awesome.
57:16
Alban: And then I got Marie and my daughter together and I was like let's watch this video to get about how dishwashers work.
57:23
Alban: There needs to be some soap in there in the beginning for the pre-wash.
57:25
Alban: It's all about the pre-wash If you can get hot water in there for the pre-wash, which the U?
57:30
Alban: S the way we do it.
57:31
Alban: Marie's like.
57:39
Jordan: I don't care about this, and I'm like we can get so much better dishwashing out of the same dishwasher.
57:41
Jordan: Do you pre-wash your dishes, Jordan?
57:42
Jordan: Do you rinse them Well in the sink, but our pre-wash like function has been broken and so, if you like, leave it on.
57:46
Jordan: Pre-wash it actually like foams out and onto the floor, and so we've just been like putting a towel under it under it just in case, Like I'm telling you, this sucker is broken.
57:57
Kevin: This is another option that you're going to have to think through before you go dishwasher shopping is do you want to rinse the plates off before you put them in?
58:03
Kevin: Because some of them now will come with like a macerating pump, and so you can have huge chunks of food on your plate.
58:10
Kevin: Put them in there.
58:10
Kevin: That food is going to get washed down, but it can't go straight down the drain without getting browned up, and so you have to get up one with a macerating pump, kind of like a garbage disposal in your dishwasher.
58:19
Kevin: Yeah, no, yeah, and I think that's worth getting, but again, it makes it more noisy.
58:24
Kevin: So now I got to buy the higher end one with the macerating pump.
58:27
Jordan: Yeah, so yeah, I don't know if that's worth it.
58:30
Kevin: Or you just rinse it before you put it in.
58:31
Jordan: Yeah, I just.
58:32
Jordan: I don't know Rinsing things is so easy.
58:34
Kevin: You know, the more we talk about this, the more I kind of want to live stream how my dishwasher works.
58:37
Kevin: Now I'm just thinking that would actually be pretty cool.
58:43
Jordan: You want to see the food get masqueraded?
58:45
Kevin: Well, you know how addictive those tasty videos are, Like when you're oh yeah.
58:48
Jordan: Oh yeah.
58:50
Kevin: I think that you would just have one going in your house all the time.
58:53
Kevin: You'd have like I've got nothing to do.
58:54
Kevin: What should I do?
58:55
Kevin: Should I like go scroll doom, scroll, tiktok, or I can just wash my dishes, I can just like watch them getting clean.
59:01
Jordan: I think that this is a fantastic idea.
59:04
Jordan: I will just buy the one that has a live stream and then I'll live stream it to the internet, monetize it and pay for my dishwasher.
59:11
Kevin: Yeah, charge people.
59:12
Jordan: Yeah.
59:12
Kevin: Let them stream sats to you to watch your dish, To watch my dishes get washed.
59:20
Kevin: You could set it up too.
59:20
Kevin: You can be like.
59:20
Kevin: I'm not rinsing this plate at all.
59:22
Kevin: It's going in huge meatloaf slice right, it's stuck to the side.
59:26
Jordan: Yeah, like.
59:28
Kevin: Willis and Massery rotisserie chicken.
59:30
Kevin: Some of the most addictive videos that I get stuck on sometimes are like marble races or when people put all different types of things on a treadmill, like a soda can and a golf ball and a roll of duct tape, and they're like seeing which one stays there longest.
59:41
Kevin: Yeah, like I want to see all like Jordan's different meals, like which one hangs onto the plate the longest.
59:47
Alban: Like an entire cake in the dishwasher.
59:51
Jordan: Like does it wash?