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10 Podcasting Tips from 40 Years of Podcasting

• Buzzsprout • Episode 181

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The Buzzsprout team shares 10 essential podcasting tips gleaned from their collective 40+ years of experience behind the microphone. Drawing from personal insights, listener contributions, and industry observations, they reveal what truly matters for podcast sustainability and growth.

Your Podcasting Tips

  1. Focus on listener experience, not download statistics, as quality content precedes numeric growth
  2. Create podcasts that a hundred people will love rather than something thousands merely like
  3. Pick a publishing cadence you can consistently maintain, starting conservatively and scaling up
  4. Produce shorter, tightly-edited episodes that respect listeners' limited attention spans
  5. Expect slow, non-linear growth with small "viral" moments rather than explosive popularity
  6. Use podcasting as a networking tool to connect with people otherwise difficult to reach
  7. When recording, restart entire sentences if you make a mistake to create clean edit points
  8. Choose co-hosts who share your commitment level and enthusiasm for the project
  9. Be selective about guests and don't feel obligated to publish every interview you record
  10. Design your podcasting workflow to maximize enjoyment and sustainability

For our next full episode, text us your tips for finding, vetting, and working with podcast guests. We'll be sharing your insights on what makes someone a great guest and how to create memorable interview experiences.

Contact Buzzcast

Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!

Alban:

Kevin new podcast marketing strategy. Just dropped what. What we have a new podcast marketing strategy, new strategy, and I'm going to nominate you for this one. So I saw in pod news not only is Jacksonville, florida, the home of Buzzsprout, but now it is the home of a podcaster running for Congress. Oh, I want to do that. Is it you, mark K? I don't know who Mark K is, but on LinkedIn we have about 17 mutual friends. Mark K is now challenging John Rutherford and running for Congress.

Alban:

And his claim to fame is that he is a famous podcaster.

Tom:

according to this press release, Now, where does he host his podcast? That's the real question. If I'm going to support him, I need to know.

Alban:

Same question, Dom, that I had and I know all of us would have. But first I've got to read you a statement from Mark Kay about what he is, why he's running. He says he's been yelling at the politicians to change things for years. Now he's got to take it into his own hands. A fierce advocate for free speech and small business, Mark has been pledged to stand up for conservative voices being silenced online and push back against big tech censorship. Yes, and to answer Tom's question, hosted on Megaphone a.

Alban:

Swedish company measured by PodTrack and Nielsen.

Kevin:

I feel like we have an obligation to out him. This is hypocritical.

Alban:

I agree, we're going to have to come out. We might have to leak this to, uh, john Rutherford.

Kevin:

Yeah, hey, when we publish this episode, let's tag him and if he, if he, really wants our vote, then he will move to Buzzsprout. That's simple. I like it Pretty simple. We're, we're. We're easily persuaded.

Alban:

Kevin's a one issue voter. One issue. Do you have a podcast follow-up issue voter? Is it hosted with?

Tom:

us for 12 a month. You can buy our vote I think that's illegal, we'll fix it in post all right, we're back.

Kevin:

After the edit, Tom's audio sounded a little bit wonky. It's just because he had his gain a little high. So tip for anyone listening if you want clean recordings, keep your gain down and stay close to your mic. Thanks for that. Thanks for the demonstration.

Alban:

Tom I live to serve. Welcome back to Buzzcast, the show from the people at Buzzsprout about all things podcasting. Today we are joined by Tom Rossi, the co-founder of Buzzsprout. He's filling in for Jordan, or maybe I'm filling in for Jordan and Tom's filling in for me. Tom, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

Kevin:

So, Megan, who runs the Buzzsprout board, and I'm here too. This is Kevin, the trusty sidekick. He's always around.

Alban:

And also joining us is Kevin. You know Kevin, he's been on every other episode, he needs no introduction.

Kevin:

We all have our roles for a reason. Good job, alvin, let's go, let's go.

Alban:

So Megan, who runs the Buzzsprout blog and newsletter, and I have been talking about, I just celebrated my 10-year podcast anniversary 10 years working at Buzzsprout and recording shows and we were like, if I try to distill those 10 years into 10 tips, I feel like that would be kind of a good blog post, and so I titled this episode 10 Podcasting Tips from 10 Years of Podcasting. But now that I've got you and Tom I think both of you are 15 years plus right as podcasters. Yeah, when did you record?

Kevin:

your first show, your first podcast? Oh, I recorded my first podcast before we launched buzzsprout.

Alban:

Well, tom what was that?

Tom:

podcast you were on. What was the first podcast you were ever on?

Kevin:

a friend of a friend of mine. Um, back from my miami days and I started a podcast where we we were sort of doing like a technology show, like we just talk about I don't know stuff that was going on in technology. I think we recorded three or four episodes. They know this show never went anywhere. Um, I don't remember how we like I don't even remember the, what we used to publish it, but it wasn't buzzsprout, because it was pre-Buzzsprout. We did not make it past the seven episode hump. We faded early. That was my first foray into podcasting and then I might've guessed it on a podcast because, you know, before we launched Buzzsprout we had a time tracking product called Tick. Tick is still around and live and a lot of people still use it. It's a great product tickspotcom, if anybody wants to check it out, and we might've done some podcast episodes talking about that or talking about building a SaaS product in general or technology. Do you remember any podcasts you did in the?

Tom:

early Tick days. Tom, yeah, I feel like I'm a imitation podcaster because I'm just a guest. I don't have my own podcast, but I've been a guest on a bunch of different podcasts.

Alban:

You're a co-host. You've been here 15 episodes plus.

Tom:

I remember doing a number of podcast episodes, I think before Buzz Sprout, when we were just talking about SaaS, when we were talking about building the business and what it was like to run a software business.

Alban:

So I'm going to update this now Between the three of us. We're over 40 years, over 40 years of recording podcasts and collectively, both of you, at least 15, I'll give myself 10. And we're going to pull it together and we're going to do 10 tips, and some of these were sent in from our listeners. Many I sourced from Reddit and from blog posts and just reading online, and I'd like to get both of your reactions to these because I think some of them you're going to like, some of you won't. Okay, All right.

Alban:

Tip number one focus on the listener's experience, not the downloads. Stats lag behind quality. So you know you make a great episode. Then the stats come later and really number watching kind of just checking those stats repetitively really saps motivation, and I found this guy on Reddit who wrote this comment that I just loved when you're doing a podcast, do it for yourself. If you watch the numbers, you're going to lose motivation and let it die, but if you make the podcast for your own fun, you'll enjoy the process most of the time and produce a good podcast.

Tom:

Yeah, I think. I think this is this is a great first. A first one because you see so many podcasters that have the life just sucked out of them as they are, you know, constantly hitting refresh and looking at their numbers when, when they first started out of them. As they are constantly hitting refresh and looking at their numbers when, when they first started, they were so passionate about whatever it is they were talking about. I do think that there's there's people that get into podcasting as a business and it might be harder for them to reconcile that quote right, because they get into podcasting and I'm going to build a business around this, but the quote, the quote might not land with them, but the lesson is still true that you should focus on the listener's experience and not on the downloads. Even if you're building a podcast as part of a business and you want to make money from it, whether that's driving, using the podcast to drive traffic to your website or whether you know, whatever monetization strategy you have, focusing on listener experience is still better than focusing on downloads.

Alban:

Do you remember? We've listened to this podcast a few times called Lenny's podcast. Tom has recommended episodes to it from it for our leadership meetups and he had a quote. He had a whole blog post of tips that he's given and his podcast has done over 10 million downloads in the first two years, so it's done very well. Called the Lenny podcast and his first one was, instead of trying to make something a lot of people like, create a podcast that a hundred people will love. I love that idea of picking out just like it only has to be a hundred, but they have to really love it. Like don't try to make something mass market that everybody might kind of like. The two and a half men of podcasting that show that everyone was like it's fine, which is why it was big, but no one really loved the show.

Kevin:

You know, I I think I get what Lenny's getting at with this quote, but for me, in the way that my brain works, is it sounds like he's moving towards practical advice, but he's not quite there yet. For me, I'm still left with the question like, oh okay, that sounds great, but how do you make something that a hundred people love? Like? That still feels too abstract for me, and so let me try to personalize it. Maybe it'll help somebody who's listening. But for me, every time I record a podcast episode, like my, my meter of whether I feel like it was a good episode or not is was there something that we talked about? Was there a piece of that show that I'm so excited about, that I'm so proud of that? I have to share that with somebody, and so oftentimes, unfortunately for my poor wife, she's the recipient of a lot of this stuff.

Kevin:

But when we record a buzzcast episode, there might be a little segment in there where there's a part of the show where I'm like that was really good and I will. You know, we'll be on a walk together and I should be like you know what's going on, what's new, and I might share that part with her. I'm like, hey, listen to this, like what did you think of that? And so, for me, that's how I try to do. I think what Lenny is is suggesting here is create something that a hundred people love. Well, I, if, if we do something on this podcast that I am excited enough that I have to tell at least one person or more, then I know it was a good episode. That's what I'm looking for Every time we record is that there's something that I have to share.

Alban:

There's only one person you really know what they really like, and it's yourself. If you're paying attention, you know what you like and it is funny that we're all like, oh, other people will enjoy this stuff. I'm not really into it, but it's gonna work well in the algorithm. Like, just make something that you're proud of, and if you're proud of it, it doesn't really matter if the listeners come, but likely if you're proud of it and you like it, there's gonna be a lot of people who will think the same way you do.

Tom:

I think there's a practical application too, in terms of the content that you're talking about in your episodes. You know, I laugh a lot when I'm looking at podcast descriptions, for just looking through our, our podcasters, and there's, there's always a description that says something like two guys talking about stuff, and it's, there's. There's nothing specific about what they're going to talk about. And even you'll. You'll be at a podcasting conference and you'll ask them, like, what's your podcast about? Oh man, it's everything.

Alban:

It's music, it's pop culture, it's everything.

Tom:

It's politics, right, and you're like that makes it kind of hard to get a handle on what people are going to love about what you do. Now, some people can pull it off because it's their personality right, so they love your personality. So whether you're talking about politics or pop culture, it doesn't matter. It could work for your podcast. But I think that's really hard to pull off. It's much easier to pull off. Hey, I'm going to talk about something specific that I know people who love Dungeons and Dragons are going to love this podcast, you know. Or people that love gaming are going to love this podcast. But if it's just two guys talking about stuff, it's going to be it's going to be hard to get people to really love that.

Alban:

That's going to be a podcast I'm going to start. Welcome back to buzzcast. Three guys talking about podcasting stuff, all right, uh, great, first tip. Uh, we're onto tip two. Uh, pick a cadence you can always hit. So we talked a lot last week about the celebrity podcasters and which one succeeded.

Alban:

And really the sign of a podcast that's not going to succeed is a podcast that starts publishing infrequently, and I saw this quote every missed episode erodes trust with your audience. Quote every missed episode erodes trust with your audience. And I always tell people remember, you're still going to have a job when you launch this podcast and you want podcasting to fit into the life you have. And so you probably, in the beginning, need to be honest with yourself what is a show that you can commit to and then actually commit to doing it consistently? And you know we, we moved Buzzcast from two weeks because that's what we could commit to in the beginning, and eventually we said we're going to do a weekly show. We've talked about so many podcasts that have been consistent and said that that was kind of their bread and butter. That's what helped them grow. Have you either? You seen any examples with this Examples?

Kevin:

Nothing's. Nothing's popping into mind, but I do. I do like how you referenced Buzzcast. You know, when we started, when we started Buzzcast and we came up with this the idea for what the show is going to be, who's the audience going to be we talked a lot about. We all have a lot of responsibilities around Buzzsprout, and so this was going to cut into the amount of time that we had to give to everything else, and so what we could all commit to was making sure that we pushed out a show every two weeks and then, as the show began to grow, it was valuable always, whether anybody was listening or not. It was valuable for us to be connecting as a team, to be watching what's going on in podcasting, to collect our thoughts about that, to vocalize those thoughts and to share them with however many people were listening.

Tom:

Eating our own dog food.

Kevin:

Yeah, Eating your own dog food using our own product, Absolutely Again where does that phrase come from?

Alban:

Nobody's eating their own dog food. Hopefully, Hopefully yeah.

Tom:

That's a good point.

Kevin:

But as the show grew in the reach, it also started providing more value. So, like I said, there was always some value from the beginning, but as it started returning more value, then we were able to up our level of investment in it. And keeping those things in check I think has a lot to do with, like determining the cadence that feels right and that you can always hit. In the beginning. You're not going to have a lot of value coming back. The value might just be oh, it's fun and I get to connect with this co-host that I don't get to talk to on a regular basis, or I get to meet interesting people because I do an interview show, and so I'm always reaching out and finding new people.

Kevin:

But whatever, there's going to be value in the beginning, but it might not be so much value that you can justify a daily show or even a weekly show. So, starting slow and then, as it builds and you're like, oh, this is actually giving more than I'm putting into it and maybe if I put in a little more, it will give a lot more. And so that's what we saw with Buzzcast, and I think a lot of podcasters can see that. But the danger is that you make this massive investment up front, and it's going to take a long time for that value to even even out with the amount that you're you're investing, no less surpass it, and so the chances of you stopping before you break even are high and you say I think you're my soulmate.

Alban:

It's like your commitment is so high from day one that you're going to fail, Like whatever you just said. Like the person across the table is going, even if they're excited about that, they're like you're good, You're going to let me down. But if you go in you're saying, oh, this is a casual, we just got coffee. And then it ramps up and eventually you become soulmates. That's great and it feels like it's a one way road. You're going to do more frequent episodes, more intense interviews, more research, more, more, more. And I think it's much healthier to start at the lower level of investment and move up, because you never want to promise daily episodes. People get into it for the daily episodes and then two weeks in you're totally burned out going. I guess this podcast is dead, when really the podcast probably would have been great as a weekly show.

Tom:

There's something to be said about seasonality, to like seasons of podcasts. Like one of my favorite podcasts, this is land of the giants, that podcast will have a season and then they'll take a break and then I'm you know, I'm hitting refresh. I'm ready for the next season to start. I don't know how much it hurts them. Sure, they get more downloads if they created more content, but I think their bar is set pretty high in terms of what those episodes look like, and so that will work, even though it's an inconsistent cadence. So the lesson, the idea pick a cadence that you can always hit. I like that lesson from the perspective of the health of the podcaster, the idea that, as a podcaster, as a creator, if you pick a cadence that you can't always hit, there's a good chance you're going to burn out, and so I like this lesson for that more than I do about hey. You're going to get more downloads If you can pick a cadence that you can always hit.

Kevin:

Yeah, and you have to remember like it's not just the amount of time that you're recording. There's most podcasts probably have a certain amount of prep that goes into getting ready to record in the first place, like choosing a topic, choosing a guest, choosing all the stuff that goes in ahead of time, getting your equipment set up, yada, yada, yada. Then you get to record and that's the really fun part and but that's maybe only an hour you know most podcasts somewhere around an hour and then you have all the post stuff like how much editing are you going to do? Are you gonna? How are you gonna title your episode right? What's the description? And there are tools like co-host and stuff that make all that stuff easier.

Kevin:

But it's not just recording and oftentimes that gets missed up front. So when you're thinking about starting a podcast and you're thinking about like what's realistic for me in terms of how often I can publish, realize that whatever you think in your head, you probably should double or triple that investment. Start conservative. You can always go more. I think most audiences who connect with you, who love whatever you're putting out there again, that is the goal from the first tip. No one's going to complain if you're doing more, but they might be disappointed if you are doing less.

Alban:

All right, so I'm going to skip ahead to a tip I had a little bit later, but you kind of segued into this nicely, kevin. Uh, create shorter episodes. I think there's way too many big interview shows that are doing three plus hour interviews and a lot of new podcasters, myself included, look at that and go oh, that's the recipe for success. You know, I need to be doing long shows because that's where you get really good content and the truth is we don't have many. We need more great short shows, short episodes, less effort to put into them.

Alban:

You're gonna be able to you record for a long time, but you can cut a ton of the fluff. You can get down to what's the best quality content. And the truth is, attention is scarce and people are much more likely to jump into a 15 minute show and just try it on a whim than they are to a three hour episode I've had so many times people have said you should really listen to this episode of Tim Ferriss, but I look at it and it's two and a half hours and I go. I don't have two and a half hours and so it just sits in the recommended by a friend queue.

Kevin:

You know who's really good at this is the rework podcast. They're like 20 to 30 minutes. They're tight, they're they're they're shorter episodes and usually they're just chocked full of it's. It's not just like one great takeaway or two great takeaways, it's like five or 10 in 20 minutes. I don't know if that's a result of just the preparation that goes in ahead of time or if the fact that the it's David and Jason here on that show who do a lot of public speaking, they do a lot of message testing and honing and they've kind of got their messaging all locked in and they're talking about stuff that I pretty much heard them talk about before. And maybe the podcast is just kind of them Like we've already tested all this messaging, we already know where our thoughts are on all this stuff and so we're just giving you the best of it. Or it could be editing, it could be just done in post that they actually tighten it up. However it happens, I usually get to the end of those episodes and I'm like I would listen to that whole thing in its entirety again because it was so dense.

Kevin:

When you stumble upon podcast episodes like that, those are the ones I'm really excited about sharing. There's been like you said Tim Ferriss is a great example Plenty of great Tim Ferriss podcast episodes that I've listened to that I was like, oh, there's a good nugget there, there's a good nugget there. But I feel bad sharing them with somebody because I know like you're going to here's two hours of your life for this 32nd thing that I loved. So I'll share those, like with a timestamp. Maybe that's totally fine, like at least you're still sharing it, you're still introducing somebody to it. But I feel an extra responsibility as a listener now to be like hey, tom, check out this awesome podcast episode and I'm going to share it with the timestamp, because this is the part that's really gold. And if you want to listen to the whole thing, listen to the whole thing.

Tom:

But I don't want you coming back. I was like, oh, but there was this one bit, and Tom's like I didn't even get to that bit. You know, it was like I don't have that much time. Yeah, I think the create shorter episodes lesson is a good one, uh, and it can be tweaked a little bit to say go through and pull out the things that just don't land a hundred percent, that don't, that just aren't that valuable.

Tom:

It's so hard. I know I've seen this before where you're putting together a talk for a conference or something like that, and there's certain points that you want to make but they just don't land, as well as other points, and it's so hard to kill that point and just cut it because you've done the, you know, you've done the thought process, you've come up with the illustration, whatever, and cutting it out after the fact is just, you know it's like killing your darlings, it's, it's, it's not something that you want to do, but at the end of the day, it makes it so much tighter. Um, when you can just go through it and say, okay, this, this is the really strong point, this one, not as strong or maybe not as supportive, uh, of of the bigger point that you're trying to make with your episode, or the thing that you're trying to to expose in your episode, and being able to kill those things to be able to create shorter episodes, I think is really good takeaway.

Kevin:

Really good. Editors are pretty like brutal when it comes down to it, and there's a reason why usually the best podcasts have, you know, the people who are recording are not the people editing because it's a lot easier for somebody else to put themselves in the position of a listener and just say, oh, this is actually, you know, they're beating around something kind of interesting, but they never get there and it's not worth the 15 minute segment to get to a place where they're just kind of like that doesn't resolve powerfully and so I'm going to cut the whole thing. But as a creator, you're like that was 15 minutes Like, and we, we got close, so I'm just going to leave it in Like somebody. Somebody will find something Nah like. Ultimately, the episode will be better if you kill it, but, as Tom said, it's hard to kill your own darlings. I also understand that as, as somebody who's starting in podcasting, you're going to be your own editor, like Jordan's out this week. I'm editing this episode. We might end up with six good minutes.

Tom:

I have no idea how long this episode is going to be, and the thing is, you're your own editor and you like all your stuff because you said it.

Kevin:

It's your stuff, you said it. I'm like I'm so smart I'm not cutting that I'd leave you.

Tom:

It makes me think of. I was just on a family vacation and I'm sharing photos with the family. We have a shared photo album that we share pictures with, and you take 10 shots of the same thing. Right, we're all at the same place. You don't share all 10, man, nobody wants to look at all 10 of those photos. You got to pick one. Oh, but this one is just a little bit different. Oh, the kids just got, you know, a different smile on their face, and so it's so hard to kill those darlings and say I'm only going to share one of the 10 pictures that I shot, but, man, there's a better chance that people are going to look at those pictures.

Alban:

Right, all right. Tip number four expect slow, non-linear growth. Matt from Washington DC reached out to us and said growing an audience requires tremendous patience. It reminds me of the Eddie Cantor quote it takes 20 years to make an overnight success. Thanks to Matt, by the way, who was one of two people who wrote in to sound off and answered this question for us. But the point is, plateaus are normal Persistence wins. The marketing hacks are not what wins, and the truth is that podcasts in the beginning do grow very slowly and if you're creating great content, the downloads are going to come later, whereas for video and sometimes social media, they come right hand in hand.

Kevin:

Yeah, I agree, when we look back at some of the most popular buzzcast episodes, they're always old episodes and it doesn't mean that those were the best episodes that we ever had, but they were good and good enough to have some staying power. So they continue to get downloads in, like what we call the long tail. We published them two years ago, three years ago, and they're still generating a few downloads and that ultimately makes them our most popular episodes. Now, if you put them side by side with some of our more recent episodes, I'm sure some of our more recent ones we would say are objectively better. For all these reasons, our audio quality is better. We have tighter editing. We did a little bit more research so we were more honed in on the topic. It didn't take us as long to make the points we were making. Maybe we got better with our filler words. There's less ums and ahs, all that kind of stuff. It's an objectively better podcast episode and our audience has grown. So maybe the first 30 days on our newer stuff is looking better than it did for those older episodes, but there's no denying it. Like you, look at our top 10 episodes, there there's nothing that we probably published in the last year. That's in that top 10. It takes time, it comes in waves. That's another point that I didn't really clarify on. But every now and then you will have something.

Kevin:

Virality and podcasting does not look like virality on social media.

Kevin:

Social media virality is short, extreme bursts of massive numbers of impressions and virality in podcasting can just look like blips in your overall picture.

Kevin:

But you do once in a while get a little virality where on a podcast for an indie podcaster, that might look like an episode that got shared five or 10 more people and it's hard to pick that out. When you're looking on a chart you're saying, okay, this one looks a little bit higher. Was that a viral moment for you? Well, if you only get a hundred downloads typically per episode getting 105 or 110 or 115, that could be a bit of a viral moment for you. And of those extra 10 or 15 people who listened, maybe five of them become regular listeners and then slowly over time, those bars on your chart are getting a little bit bigger and then they might be flat for a while. But it doesn't necessarily mean you need you go from a hundred downloads a month or a hundred downloads an episode to 5,000. Oh, I had a viral moment in my podcast. No, the viral moments are small and sometimes they're missed, but they do happen.

Tom:

That's one of the great things about podcasting is that you've got this content that's out there. As people find out about it, they might go and start listening to older episodes. I see this in support. A lot People will write into support and they'll go hey, something might be wrong with my stats because I'm getting all these downloads on my old episodes and you're like no man. That's the beauty of podcasting. Somebody found your podcast and they were interested enough that they went through your back catalog and they downloaded some of your old episodes Like that's, that's great. That's the kind of growth that happens when you bring in new listeners. They go back and they listen to your back catalog.

Alban:

You know one of the tips I kept seeing when I was researching this was, your first episode is still going to get plays for years, so make sure it's perfect. And I was like what bad advice, because I know what the truth of what happens there is they never, you will never release. You know, you'll spend two years editing that one episode and never move on. Uh, the lesson is yeah, that will still get plays. And that's amazing. And everybody's first episode is not that great. This was in that article from the Lenny podcast. But he went through the first Andrew Huberman episode, the first Tim Ferriss episode, the first like of tons of podcasters, and he's like notice how bad the audio is here, look how bad the video is, look how uncomfortable this host is. You know, example after example. We're all just not going to be great at it in the beginning, uh, but we're going to grow over time.

Kevin:

I love thinking about first episodes is like that's the, that's now. I'm excited. So I've done this for two years, I've done this for three years and maybe I'm not at my goal yet. Maybe I'm not, I haven't you know, I don't have the exact body or the fitness level that I'm going for, but I'm sticking with it. I imagine there's going to be progress there and that progress is going to be visible in that photo, and so I am sharing that and it's like is it embarrassing?

Alban:

It's like this weird paradox of it's an embarrassing photo but I'm proud of it because look where I am today and I've never enjoyed taking those photos. No, no one's. Yeah, cause I'm like the reason I'm deciding I'm gonna get into this routine is cause I'm like I'm really not happy where I am right now, but you're taking it for your future. Cause you're like oh no, this is going to be the journey, and when I've committed and I've stuck with something for a few months, it's fun to look back and go. Man, I'm so proud of myself. You know, I wouldn't have noticed that it was that big of a difference, but now that I'm looking at two photos and the same lighting in the same room, I'm going, whoa, that there is a real difference. I'm proud of myself, yeah.

Tom:

I told a friend of mine who's starting a podcast and I said look, you're only going to get better. As long as you're committed to getting better, you're only going to get better. So your first episode is going to be your worst episode as long as you're getting better. And then he ended up having me on his first episode and then he introduced it as Tom's here on my worst episode.

Alban:

Good, that is awesome. Another tip that I loved was uh, podcasting is great for networking. I found this blog from tara reed through my guests I've been referred clients, affiliates and speaking opportunities, and then a pr agency owner, uh, credited her show for opening doors to ideal clients, conference stages and specific people that cold outreach never reached. So the funny, funny time you just talking about you getting onto somebody's podcasts, and podcasts really are a wonderful networking opportunity because you can get people on the podcast who probably don't want to get on a phone call with you.

Kevin:

Podcasting the numbers aren't public and visible like they are on other social media platforms. So if you think about, you know a Tik TOK or an Instagram or YouTube or whatever, anybody at any time can go and look and see how many subscribers do you have, how many followers do you have, how many likes did you get on you know an average post that you do? Podcasting doesn't have that. Some of it is good, Some of it is bad. The bad part is that you don't have ends or people who are looking to do promotions or promote a new book, or yada, yada, yada reaching out to you because they know that you have a lot of influence. Okay, they don't know. The good is that when you reach out to them, they don't know.

Alban:

So, um.

Kevin:

What they can see, though, is they can see consistency and they can see staying power. They can see consistency and they can see staying power, and so you have that opportunity as a podcaster to get that, regardless of how many people you're reaching at any given time. So, if you podcast for a year and you're doing a weekly show, you might have in the ballpark of 50 episodes, and so, when you reach out to somebody and say, I would love to have you on my podcast, I think you'd make a great guest. They're going to look and they're going to check out your podcast, and you're saying I have 50 episodes. That's pretty impressive, like whatever. However many people are listening, they must there must be enough of them that they're. They're providing enough value back to the podcaster for them to keep doing this thing. That's great. Even if those 50 podcasts are getting 10 downloads they don't know. They don't know if they're getting, you know, 10,000 downloads or 10 that can play in your favor, and you have total control over that. So I like that and I, but I think, really, what you have there is you have the power to use your podcast as a marketing tool, if you are, if you stick with it if you sustain right when somebody reaches out to any one of us to be a podcast guest on their show.

Kevin:

If we go and look besides Tom, who's happy to be your worst guest on your worst episode ever, most people are a little bit hesitant. When you only have one, two, three episodes Like so, those are great episodes for you to try. Hey, I'm going to try. My first episode is a solo podcaster. I'm going to, you know, find a friend or somebody I have a connection with, like Tom. This guy made a connection with Tom beforehand and then he came on a show for his first episode. Do those for a while, build up your catalog and then, when you get 20, 30, 40 episodes in, you can start moving up the ladder of my dream guest. Get closer and closer to that ideal guest that you want to reach out to.

Tom:

I would also put this lesson under a bigger lesson. Right, podcasting is great for networking. Another way to say it is there's tons of ways to get value out of podcasting that don't involve downloads. Right, you can measure the success of your podcast a bunch of different ways, and one of the ways is doors being open. Just being able to have a conversation with a certain person might make the whole podcast worthwhile. I knew a person who was an author and she started a podcast on how difficult it is to get your first book published. Well, she ended up getting to talk with all these publishers that the same people she was submitting her book to. So just the bigger point that podcasting is great for networking, but podcasting is great for all different types of of uh, different strategies besides. Just downloads.

Alban:

All right, Tip number six this one is a little bit more tactical. If you flub a line when recording, just restart the whole sentence.

Kevin:

I like this one as today's editor. The editor for this episode enjoys it.

Alban:

We do this all the time. There's so many times that we mess up something as we're saying it and one of us will catch it and just say redo the whole thing, yep, and you go back to the beginning of that sentence, because then you have a clean edit point, rather than trying to splice two or three sentences together to try to get one clean edit. Yes, to try to get one clean edit yes, this one came from Reddit, where they said the exact same thing, verbatim, but got to give credit to our fans over on Reddit.

Kevin:

I would also say, oftentimes we're a little bit too critical of what needs to be edited and what doesn't. If we give bad information, if we actually say the wrong thing like if we mean kilobits and we say kilobytes or something like that and we just go on and then we realize it later and we're like actually, can you just say kilobytes, so I can put that over that? That's actually a pretty hard little edit, but it's important to make that edit. It is easier if you just go ahead and do that whole thing again, but let's get the right word in there. The point I'm trying to make is oftentimes, like these are conversations, and when you have conversations with friends and when you're in a group of people and like people misspeak all the time and you can just correct it and no edit is needed at all and it feels more natural and it feels more authentic and it feels as a listener oh, I'm actually just listening in on a real conversation. There is something to be said about. Well, that was you know, it's not as efficient, but it doesn't have to be efficient. It has to be entertaining, it has to be engaging, it has to be educational these are the goals that we're trying to do and authentic, and we want that stuff as tight as possible, but you'll lose some of that authenticity If it's if it sounds absolutely perfect and rehearsed every time.

Kevin:

One of the things, one of the types of podcasts that I don't really enjoy, are podcasts where people write the whole outline and then they read it. I don't really enjoy that. I know that the content is probably better because it's so tight and so concise and they've already done all their editing, pre-recording, but it doesn't feel like something I want to listen to Books, audiobooks I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I don't get the same connection when I'm listening to an audiobook than I do with a podcast. I get the information and I like it because it allows me to receive that information in places where I can't read a book. When I'm driving down the highway, I can't be reading a book, but I really want to read this book. So it's it's good in that way, but I don't feel connected to the author or whoever's narrating the book. I don't feel connected to them, and podcasts allow you that connection, and part of that connection is that it's real and it's not perfect.

Alban:

So yeah, All right. Speaking of not perfect, where are we going here? Number seven pick the right co-host. We see this a lot. I think Tom and Kevin have very different perspectives on this one. A lot of times we see people who, Tom, you probably see a lot of the podcast breakups I do when people are reaching out to support.

Alban:

Kevin and I have been podcasting together for I don't know seven years now and one of the things I kept going back to when I was writing this one was you want to be evenly yoked with your co-host. This is a phrase from the Bible about getting married, but the idea is like both people are as committed to this thing together, like the commitment level is the same, and there's podcasts where it's pretty clear one person loves the show and is all in and they're doing the work and then they struggle to get the second person to show up for the recording. If you've got a co-host who's not as committed, it can really burn you out, and also, you're not going to be able to even record an episode if they just decline the meeting invite. I just feel like there's so many people that their experience of podcasts would be improved if they spent a little bit more time thinking about is this person that I'm kind of committing to doing the show with every week. Are they going to be excited and as fun to show up every week as I?

Kevin:

am. If you have somebody who you think might be a good co-host for your show, if you're having to talk them into it, that might be a bit of a red flag. If you're excited about this idea, you share it with somebody. If they quickly start reciprocating the excitement, it starts building on their side and maybe a day goes by and you didn't, you know, text them about it or whatever and they text you and they say hey, was that just talk last night? When you're talking about a podcast, or do you really want to do it? Like I've been thinking about it, like, okay, if that's where you are and that's where they are, that's how you're starting to figure out. Are we going to be equal in this endeavor? If you have to convince somebody over a long period of time a couple of weeks to do this podcast with me and you're dragging them into the first recording and you're like I'll do all the work, I'll do all this, you don't have to worry about anything, I'll have to, yeah, could be a red flag there.

Tom:

I mean you really do have to approach it like you're picking a partner to go to the gym.

Kevin:

Yeah, that's a good analogy.

Tom:

To get you know, start running that mentality of is this person going to be my gym buddy? That on the days that I don't want to go to the gym, they're going to want to go to the gym, and on the days that they're not going to go, I'm going to push them. You know, are we going to be in this together, or is it going to just be one sided, where I'm the one that's always trying to get them to go?

Kevin:

Right, and I imagine that in most cases anyway, there are the rare occasion where you just meet somebody brand new, fresh and decide to start a podcast and it can work out great. But most times you probably have some sort of relational backdrop for this. It can be tough and it can be a little brutal, but I think you have to ask yourselves like okay, what do I know about this person? When we set up a lunch date, did they show up or do they cancel half the time? Do they cancel 20% of the time? When we say we're going to go catch this movie together on Friday, am I pretty much? You know that's a 50-50 if they're actually going to go or not.

Kevin:

As Tom said, like when you're committing to something that you know up front, it's going to take a while to see results. Jim is a great example for this. It's going to take a while of us investing in this before we're going to get any return from it. I need somebody who's not just going to um, not going to actually just show up, but also push me. There's going to be days I don't want to do it. There's going to be days where I'm not feeling it. Are they going to reciprocate that. So I hope that most people have one or two people in their lives that they're like yeah, that is a person that I can depend on, I can give it to. Those are the types of people that you're looking for Anytime you're starting something that's going to have some challenges.

Alban:

Another tip that I really enjoyed was be picky about guests. So this doesn't mean go for the high profile guests every time, but there's a lot of shows that are like, oh, I'm trying to get an episode out, I don't have a good guest, and then they just find somebody who will show up and the person shows up. But it really dilutes the show's promise. If your show is we're talking about the latest in technology, we're talking about embroidery, we're talking about dog shows then get people who are interested in those topics. If you bring the dog show expert onto the tech podcast, no one's going to be excited, but it's also going to make the tech podcast get diluted because everyone's going. Why is this on here at all?

Kevin:

Yeah, this is a really good point. I think it can be hard, though sometimes honestly, in the beginning to be super picky about your guests because you're probably just excited to get anybody on your show right, and you have a little bit. Most podcasters struggle with a little bit of the imposter syndrome upfront, with like I'm a nobody, who am I to reach out to this person? And so you might reach out to people or potential guests that you might cast a wide net might be the most efficient way to say it, and then maybe some of the responses that you get back aren't ideal but you're like eh, it's better than nobody, I'm going to go with it. And I don't think I don't think you should like feel bad about that in the beginning, but as your show starts to develop its voice, as it starts to develop its audience, I think this can be a goal that you move towards, right, I think I have the luxury of having this perspective because I work in podcasting and I meet a lot of beginning podcasters and I don't guest on a lot of shows, like just to be perfectly transparent. But when I do, I try to remember to say upfront before we start recording hey, I'm glad we got this set up today. I'm glad I'm on the recording. Listen, I'm going to give you an hour of my time and I hope it's the best episode that you've ever recorded. That's, that's my goal for what we're doing today. But at the end of it, if you're listening back and you're editing this down and you don't feel like it's a good fit for your audience and you decide not to publish it, I'm fine with that. Like, this is my gift to you is this hour, and then what you do with it. From that point, whether you want to return it to the store or re-gift it to somebody else or just throw it in the trash can. Like that's not, that's not, I don't have a problem with any of that. I just want to give you this time and then you do with it what you want.

Kevin:

I don't think most guests probably have that perspective, but they don't work in podcasting. Now I would encourage you. Like you know what goes into podcasting, you know what it's like to get guests on your show and then try to make something. The interview didn't turn out the way I wanted and I'm trying to make something good about it, and I really wish I just didn't have to publish this, but I kind of feel obligated to the guests I was on. But if you're guesting on other podcasts, that's a gift that you can give them and that's something that we can try to do as podcasters who are guesting on other podcasts. It's gifts that we can give each other and I like that a lot.

Alban:

I really like the point that you're going into these saying it's a gift and I've washed my hands of it by the end of the episode, Like I've moved on and if you decide not to publish, that's okay, you don't owe it to me. I've recorded episodes that in pre-interview talks this is going to be so good. And then when I watched back the video or I listened back to the audio and went, yeah, this just doesn't land anymore and whether it be my fault or the guest fault or a combination, I'm not excited about even passing it off to an editor or editing it myself, because it didn't feel great and so we just didn't move forward with it. I think it would be healthy to try to keep back some of those episodes that we just, if you know I don't really love this, Well then, maybe don't pass it. You know bad guests who they? You know they put in the bad guest category or a bad interview category.

Kevin:

And they want to know, like is there an obligation for me to publish this? I think the responses that I feel like I've heard from the Buzzsprout team in general has been like, have a conversation with them about it. Like, have a conversation with them about it. If you don't feel good about the episode and the final edit you were able to come out with, chances are they might not either. You could have, you could shoot them an email, you could shoot them a text. You could say hey, can we hop on a phone call and talk about this? But do you guys have any other advice? When it comes down to, I thought this was going to be a great guest. I followed your advice. I was trying to be picky about my guest. I landed this guest, we set it up, we recorded it. It turns out at the end of the day, I don't feel like this is going to be a good episode to put out to my audience.

Tom:

What do you think I like the advice of? You shouldn't feel obligated to put it out. I don't think you should feel that obligation. I also like going back to the other things that we said of focusing on good content and shorter episodes. There's a chance that an hour long interview turns into a 15 minute episode, Even though you normally do a 30 minute or a 45 minute episode. Maybe you only do a 15 minute episode cause there was only 15 minutes of good content that you were able to mine out of it Like. I think that's acceptable. There's podcasts that I listened to that vary widely in the how long they are, based on who they're interviewing and how good the interview is. So sometimes it could be a three hour interview and you're going to listen to all of it, but sometimes it might only be a 30 minute interview.

Kevin:

Yeah, there have been a few podcast episodes. One stands out in my mind I think, alvin, you'll know what I'm talking about, cause we talked about this, but there's an episode of decoder. Yes, I already know they interviewed, interviewed um the substack founder, substack ceo, and they published it and it was so cringy and hard to listen to and I I felt like they probably justified it as, uh, you know, we recorded this episode and we have an obligation to share that conversation with our audience. They are a bit of a journalistic news thing, more than entertainment, and so they are fit.

Kevin:

But gosh, as a listener I felt so uncomfortable listening to it Like I almost would rather have not have listened to it. It got so awkward.

Alban:

I would prefer to not listen to it because it hurt to listen to, but I think Nilay Patel would counter and say the whole point was they didn't have any answers for pretty important questions to have, and that that's what the five minutes of stammering showed was. Oh wow, you really haven't thought through this yet. Yeah, that's, that's. That's not good.

Kevin:

But if the point of that podcast was entertaining, I was not entertained, I was uncomfortable. If the point of it is this is this is a journalistic show and we're going to ask hard questions and sometimes people get uncomfortable, then it fits and I feel like the decoder podcast sort of bounces between those two. Like it is an entertaining show and it's a lot of tech news and most of it is pretty light. That episode was not and I was uncomfortable and I just wanted it to end.

Tom:

I feel like we have to share this episode wanted it to end.

Alban:

I feel like we have to share this episode Tip number nine uh, write the episode title before you record. So I'm not a hundred percent sure if I agree with this, but I kept seeing things like this and I've gotten this feedback for YouTube videos before and I thought it was helpful for YouTube. I want to know what you think for podcasting, and the idea is, before you even hit record, there needs to be a theory of the case. There needs to be like here's the message we're trying to get out to the world. We have a little bit of an outline, we have a title, I have a guest, I have a point of perspective that I'm trying to hit and you have that in hand from the beginning. You're not post hoc. Oh, we did this recording. Let's come up with a title and fire that out into my podcast listeners.

Tom:

I don't know about having an episode title, but certainly having a direction for the content you're about to create, like I've. I've guessed it on podcasts before, where they start with like no, they know nothing, so tell me like what, tell me about your business? And you're like wait, where are we going to go with it? There's so many different things to talk about. Are we talking about how we lead our teams? Are we talking about podcasting? Are we talking about, you know, the early days of launching a SaaS product? Like, where are we have some direction of what we're going to talk about?

Tom:

And you know, you'll have those podcasters that are like, hey, I intentionally don't do any research before the episode. Oh, we can. I think that's. I just think that's a bad strategy, because how can you be intentional about mining the good content If you haven't thought through what are? What are my listeners going to be interested in this interview that I'm about to do or this content that I'm about to create? If you haven't answered that question, the chances that you're going to land that content with your listeners is pretty slim.

Kevin:

I think it's good advice. What's the thing you say all the time, tom? Like have strong opinions and hold them loosely. So could we apply that here? Like, have a title in mind, have a direction in mind, but hold it loosely is maybe how I'd spin this a little bit, which is I know who's coming on the show. I know a little bit of their background. I know why what they have experienced would be a good fit for my audience and why my audience is going to find this entertaining, and I'm going to start going in that direction. Now, if we stumble upon something golden and it goes off in another direction, I think that's what I'm saying Hold it loosely, because you don't want to stifle something unexpected that is magical, but don't just go in blind, like Tom was saying, hoping magic is going to appear. Like, have a golden path. And if you go off the golden path because the pot of gold is bigger on this side of the rainbow than the side you were aiming for, totally fine.

Alban:

The amount of metaphors coming out of this episode is just out of control.

Kevin:

I'm just a metaphor machine.

Tom:

I think there's a difference between, right, there's underprepared and then there's overprepared. I've also seen it before where the podcaster has the questions already done, to the point where there's an opportunity for us to go deeper and they don't listen to the answer. And they don't listen to the answer because you're just moving on to the next question and you're like well, wait a minute, there was more meat on that bone. Another one there was more meat on that bone, but we're not even going to talk about that because you've got another question and it feels like needle off the record transition. I love the idea of having questions ahead of time, but you shouldn't hold onto those so strongly that you can't go down this other path.

Kevin:

So I really do like the point of having a direction upfront, doing some research, knowing an idea of the story that you think is going to be interesting, that you're going to try to tell. But I think the best episodes are the surprises. I didn't expect the interview to go that direction. I didn't expect to have this light bulb moment where I had this insight and I shared this story or this reflection. That's really the exciting stuff, that's the organic stuff. That only happens when we're not reading from a script but we're having a conversation with, with real people in real time and you get reminded of something or um, I don't know you just say you know a great metaphor, that you don't normally speak in metaphor, but when you get on a podcast, for some reason, they just you know flow like the river.

Tom:

Exactly, exactly, nailed it.

Alban:

Uh at number 10, my favorite tip came from. Andy in indiana wrote in. I said I wish I knew before I started. Podcasting is just how fun and addicting it is, and I thought back to how many times in the first couple years of buzzcast, kevin and I would message each other and say we got to change this, and we'd be going back and forth. And one of us I think both of us, multiple times said it's going to be hard for me to be interested in doing this every other week if we keep X, y, z, and so we made a change and it wasn't like a threat, it was just a. It's hard to get excited when this is not fun for me, and this part of the show is not fun for me, this aspect of podcasting is not fun, and so we found ways to do something we found was to be fun, and I feel like the last five years have been much more fun than the first two years because we were focusing on what's fun so that it can be sustainable.

Kevin:

Yeah, I've, I've shared this many times on this podcast that I am a more introverted type person. I am generally like if we met in person and we went and hung out at the end of the night, most people would be like oh yeah, kevin, he's the quiet one. Yeah, I'm typically more quiet, and so the idea of sitting with a microphone in front of my face every week now it's a weekly show now and talking that's never something that I can't wait to do.

Alban:

That's never something I can't wait to do, nailed it.

Kevin:

It's never something I can't wait to do. I'm never super excited oh, today's a buzzcast day. I can't wait to pop out of bed Like this is going to be great. But every single time we get done with recording an episode, I am glad I did it. And we have found ways to take a personality like mine that's not a natural fit for this and make it fun and make it engaging and make it something, so that at the end of it I'm really glad I did it and at least for a few moments afterward I'm like I'm looking forward to the next one. That was fun, I'm glad I did it.

Kevin:

The gym is a great analogy for this, because I feel the same way about the gym. Anything that like requires hard work and I'm committed to it. I'm ramping up, but at the end of that I know the payoff is there I can keep doing it. But if I don't have the payoff and so that does happen from time to time we fall into lulls with this podcast where I realized, hey, at the end of that recording I'm not super happy we did it. I'm not super proud of that episode.

Kevin:

That felt a little bit more like a drag than I need it to for me to be able to continue doing this, and so Alvin and I and Jordan will have these, you know, little ping conversations Like is there something off? Is there something we can change? Is there some way to make this better? Because here's how I'm feeling and we've been able to do that and that, I think, has. How long have we been doing Buzzcast now? Five, six years, something like that A long time. It is seven, so it's sustained us for a long time. And Albin and Tom they know me well they will vouch for this, like the idea of me doing this consistently every week or two for seven years, like they probably would have bet against that.

Alban:

I would have bet against any of us doing it for seven years.

Alban:

For a long time Kevin was the one saying we got to do a podcast and I was like, ah fine, I'll show up.

Alban:

He's like, and I kind of want you to do a lot and it took a while to get me on board.

Alban:

And then I feel like it's really been totally different periods where you're like I'm kind of losing how much I love this show and we found ways for you to love it.

Alban:

And then there are periods where it was the exact opposite for me, where I was the one saying I'm not enjoying, I didn't enjoy the last few episodes and we kind of shifted what our roles and responsibilities were. So I think now we've ended up with a really good dynamic where Jordan preps the show because she wants the security of the outline, she wants to know here's what we're going through and she'll feel very comfortable leading the conversation. And then I look at it and I want to have gone deep on a couple things, because that's what I get a lot of fun out of is the research and finding something interesting in the story. And Kevin really loves coming in and like having takes and reacting in the moment to keep your energy up and we wouldn't have picked that in the beginning, but we fell into those roles over years of kind of refining and finding what's fun for each of us, and it turned out to be pretty different things.

Kevin:

Yeah, I love that. It's a very natural and normal part of our conversation. Now, when we talk about anything related to buzzcast, any changes we're thinking about making one of the top criteria is is this going to make it more fun or less fun for us to do the show?

Tom:

I think this is true for for work, this is true in work, for work in general. Right it's, it's it's difficult to do a podcast. It's difficult to work. There's elements of your job that are green, that give you life, and there's elements of your job that suck the life out of you and are red, and what you want to do is find the balance right, because everybody's got some red things that they need to do.

Tom:

You want to have enough green, and this, I think, has really penetrated the approach that we have with Buzzsprout recently, right when we started, when we rebranded ourselves and started talking about key podcasting, what we wanted to do was to focus on those elements that are green, that are life-giving to podcasters, and allow them to spend more time in those green zones and not in those red zones.

Tom:

I mean, that's where co-host AI comes from, that's where magic mastering comes from, this idea of the things that they don't love doing. We want to try to automate those as much as we can so they can. The majority of the time that they're spent working on their podcast is in these green zones, and so I think it's a really good conversation that people should be having. It's like what elements of what you're doing are life-giving. If there's no elements, you're not going to make it. You're not going to make it with podcasting. If there's no elements in your job that are green, you're not going to make it in that job. You've got to find the things that are life-giving and it should be a part of your normal conversation.

Alban:

All right. So every year Apple has WWDC where they kind of set the agenda for what they're going to do on the software side for all their products. So this is on their computers and their phones, their iPads, and I think we're all kind of in the tech world so we all watch it or at least read the news about it. And I went through and pulled out a handful of things that Apple announced that kind of relate to podcasters. So the first grouping is things that they kind of did for listeners. So these are all improvements. They're coming to the podcast app on iPhone, the Apple podcast app, and the first is this is right up your alley, kevin. 3x playback is now coming for the speed listening freaks like Kevin. It was 2X, now it's 3X freak speed listening freaks like Kevin. It was two X, now it's three X. It used to stop at two X.

Kevin:

It stopped at two X. You know, actually two would be fine with me. I don't really ever go above two Um, and my default for podcasts is one seven. And now I have found a few podcasts that I need to slow that down a little bit on. I have not found any podcasts where I really need to speed that up. I will say there was one last week where I was like borderline going to take it up to two, but it wasn't really because they were talking too slow, it was because the content was just boring. I was just trying to get through it faster. But yeah, who out there is listening above two X? That that does seem.

Alban:

I mean, I find uh, you know, above 1.1 to be strange to me. It's like if either I want to listen to it at one X, because it's really high quality and they did a great job editing and it's really worth my time, or I just want to hit stop and I want to go move on to something else.

Tom:

So I don't have on this issue.

Alban:

Tom.

Tom:

I don't know.

Kevin:

I don't mean you don't know, you have. You know what your podcast default is set to.

Tom:

But it depends on the podcast. Like I have some podcasts that I listen to at really fast speeds and then there's some that I don't.

Kevin:

What's kind of your default, though? Like when you start with a new podcast, is it starting at 1X?

Tom:

I think I start at 1.2, but I it depends on the on the podcast, like if it's for enjoyment I typically are going to, I'm going to listen at a slower speed If I'm just consuming content.

Kevin:

It'll be at a higher speed, but it depends. I think you're missing out on life, man. If you're enjoying it, then you should listen faster. You can enjoy more faster.

Tom:

That's like watching movies on Netflix at 2X.

Kevin:

Don't open that door, all right.

Alban:

What's next? Number two enhanced dialogue. So Apple's had all these features for, like AirPods that have tried to improve audio. So if someone's talking to you and you have AirPods and they can isolate their audio, their voice, and play it back in your headphones. And now they've I imagine it's similar technology. They're using real-time machine learning, audio processing, and they're going to turn on enhanced dialogue where they take kind of a suboptimal podcast recording that's in Apple Podcasts and they'll enhance the voices in that episode.

Tom:

Yeah, okay.

Kevin:

Everybody has a different flavor of this right Overcast, Pocket Casts, now Apple Podcasts.

Kevin:

Most players have some version of this feature and they all implement a little bit differently. So I think it's just very subjective At the end of the day. You might find that you like the voice boost over, the voice enhance versus the clean voice Like. But, yeah, the fact that Apple is probably sort of well now I'm now I'm speculating a little bit. I'm wondering if they're adding this at, like, the OS level or the pocket or the Apple podcast level, Like, is this going to be an API that other app developers could just use in their apps if they want, or if it's just going on Apple Podcasts? I don't know, it's not important, but I do think it is a table stakes feature for any podcast listening app, Like if, for whatever reason, you're listening to a podcast and it's hard for you to hear the voices and that can change from environment to environment, whether you're listening in headphones or in your car or something being able to click some sort of enhanced voice or voice boost feels important.

Alban:

I really love a voice boost and overcast so it's always sound. It's improved quite a few podcasts for me and I like that. Apple's doing it and of anybody you know podcast app developers. They're probably not going to have as much expertise with refining audio as Apple does. So I think Apple, especially with all the work they've done with machine learning on the chips, I think they're going to be able to do something really good. So I'm interested to hear how much improves bad podcast recordings, because bad recorded episodes it's just hard to listen to sometimes. This one is for listeners of Jordan's podcast. Maybe Tom as well. Airpods will now auto pause episodes if it thinks you've fallen asleep.

Tom:

How in the world is it going to know?

Kevin:

This is something only Apple could do, I imagine, because they must be tapping into some feature of the AirPod that's like monitoring your heart rate, or something. Who the heck knows what this thing is doing.

Tom:

Great Apple's capturing your biometrics.

Kevin:

Yeah, but it just, it just begs the question like how dangerous are these things to have in your head, and should you be falling asleep with them?

Alban:

Well, if you're listening to a help me fall asleep podcast and you're don't want to play it out loud, and you put in an air pod. It out loud and you put in an air pod. This new auto pause feature is now coming to new air pods. And, last but not least, apple podcast has always been the purple app on your phone. We've. That's how you recommend it to people. Often You're like, oh, you know, that app on your phone is purple, like, oh, yeah, that podcast, I've never known what that's for. And you tell them about podcasting.

Alban:

Well, now Apple is launching all these new themes which will look like see-through glass, and so the purple app may not always be a purple app going forward. So that's a big update for everybody listens to this podcast. Yeah, very exciting, very exciting. All right, but more exciting are these podcasts creator focused features we mentioned the AirPods are getting some updates. One of them is what Apple is calling studio quality audio recordings, and they're building on the benefits of voice isolation. Airpod users will now enjoy even cleaner calls with enhanced voice quality, and that's going to be useful for anyone who records using AirPods when they record their podcast.

Kevin:

This is really like legitimately exciting, because, especially for anybody who does a guest show, oftentimes you will run into issues where your guest does not have a quality microphone, and so we've talked about all sorts of crazy things, all the way from like sending them a microphone so they have a good microphone to record then they can send it back, or recommending really inexpensive microphones that are at least better than the laptop microphone that you could just, you know, spend $20 and send them this one from Amazon so they have something.

Kevin:

But one thing that so many people have are AirPods. Right Now, I know not everybody, but a lot more people have AirPods than a high quality microphone, and so the fact that that device is now going to be pretty close to a high quality microphone with this, these updates that they're doing at the OS level, is super fantastic. So now, if you're having somebody on your show, you can say, hey, do you happen to have a podcasting microphone? No, I don't. Do you happen to have AirPods? You probably have at least a 50, 50 chance that they do have AirPods, and so that would be great. Okay, let's just use those AirPods. I know that that'll be way better than using the built-in microphone on your computer.

Alban:

My daughter was just on a trip with my sister and her, my uh, my daughter's cousins, my nieces, and she called me a few times using voice isolation and she said sorry, I can't hear you. Everyone's talking in the car, it's so loud, and my experience was I could hear her voice perfectly and nothing else, and it did just a phenomenal job editing out all the other people talking in the background and the road noise because they're in the car. And if that's the level of voice isolation that we might get with studio quality audio recordings from airpods and I think it's only the new airpods that is definitely interesting, um, I think it would be a lot really nice, especially for guest shows. Like kevin said, new airpods are much more likely for somebody to have that high quality mic.

Alban:

A couple others from iPad One. You can now pick different mic inputs for each app or website, so your Zoom recordings could just use the iPad mic, but maybe if you record in some editing software, then you could use the mic you plug in and then one that sounds promising. I don't know how promising, though, is something called local capture. So we've been talking the last few weeks about what alternatives are there to recording using a browser like we do. Apple launched this, so maybe, kevin, you had a little sneak peek into what was happening at WWDC. Uh, you can record audio and video from any video app using local capture on iPad.

Kevin:

Yes, I. I think this is super exciting. Now it's super early days. It's only in beta right now and it's only an iPad Now. My hope is that the plan will be for once they work the bugs out and get it all working and see the popularity of it, that it goes beyond iPad.

Kevin:

To me, this makes a ton of sense at the desktop level, so for Mac OS as well as iPad OS and then maybe at some point even iPhone OS. But what it lets you do is record locally when you're on a video conference call, and the software that you're using to do that video conference call doesn't seem to matter. So whether you're on a Zoom call or a FaceTime call or a Riverside call or a, or a Squadcast or Adobe Podcast or whatever, it doesn't matter you can swipe down into your control center, tap on local recording and it's going to record a perfectly high quality local version of your audio and video and then it's going to save those files to your iCloud drive when they're done. They didn't get into specifics Like, can you put in everyone's name who was in that call or email address? So then that's like a shared iCloud driver. Doesn't seem like they have all that stuff worked out yet. I hope they make it easy for somebody at the end of the call to go pick up all the files. But the fact that we do not have to rely on, like browser-based software, that this can happen at OS level, seems very exciting for people who are who have Mac equipment.

Kevin:

I don't think this is going to be a solution for um everybody right away because, again, if you do a guest show, um, it does look like local, like toggling, local capture on and off is going to be pretty easy but it does require that you're on a iPad on both sides. But it's something that we're on a iPad on both sides, but it's something that we're going to experiment with on this show and we'll report back and see how it goes. I'm I think this is kind of the future, but I do think it's kind of like a year or two away maybe. Um, but if we can get it working for this show, I just think it's going to. The reliability level of it is going to be higher and so I'm optimistic that there could be something here I think is a big announcement.

Alban:

Well, it's something I think we should commit to trying it, and let's do it as soon as it's out and, for better or for worse, we'll be the guinea pigs. We'll give you one episode and we'll see how it goes. Following up on something we talked about last episode, podroll, there is now a list of the most recommended shows on PodRolls. You guys want to guess what's at the top of those podcasts.

Kevin:

I know, man, I sent this link to you.

Alban:

I already had it in the outline. Number four, huberman Lab. You know very popular show Number three, podcasting 2.0 by the founder of podcasting. Number two, mission Matters Business Podcast with Adam Torres. And number one, buzzcast. This show is the most recommended on pod roles across the podcasting world. So thank you so much to the 40 of you who recommend Buzzcast. We appreciate it.

Kevin:

Yeah, of the 40, I'm pretty sure like two or three or they didn't look legit and another three or four are just us linking to our own show. But there are a good 30 number of like legitimate shows that are linking to us. But we would like to see that number go up.

Tom:

I would also like to make it the default whenever.

Kevin:

I would also like to go on record and say this is just the first of many lists where buzzcasts will be ranked higher than Huberman lab.

Alban:

I looked through it and there's so many uh podcasts we could actually see the list of all 40 and many of them are people who've written in before. Brian's run pod. Uh, tom Raftery shows. Claire recommends buzzcast. Uh, girl dad nation. Heart to heart with Anna Jaworski. Uh, there's so many on here that if you've listened to this podcast, you've probably to this podcast. You've probably heard them before. So thank you to everybody who recommended us.

Kevin:

Yeah that's super exciting and we need more and more shows recommending other shows. Podroll is a really exciting feature and there's a very popular like we said on a couple episodes ago Pocket Casts. Now, supporting that and using it as the main way from one show to link to other shows Like it's like the primary thing above the algorithm is huge. So if you're a podcaster, especially if you're on Buzzsprout, it's super easy. Please go in, update your pod role, recommend a few podcasts and help this get even more traction.

Alban:

All right, it's time for sound off, where you text the show and we read it on the show. Sometimes I think we need to make a bit of a change. Kevin, you tell me this is going to be live. I, we get a lot of sound off, and what I want to start doing is incorporating sound off more into the episode. So that's why, two weeks ago, I asked you know what are your podcast tips? And I want to start making what people write more of the main section of the show rather than having a big bit at the end, and so I am now releasing myself from the promise of reading all of these. What is your take on that?

Kevin:

Here's the. The thing I'm happy to try it like. We do this show for the the pleasure of the listening audience, and so I think that we should experiment. That's one of the great things that I think that we do with buzzcast is we run experiments from time to time. So I think it's fine for us to say, hey, we're going to experiment, we're going to pick and choose from all the feedback that we get through fan mail every week and we're going to read the top comments in terms of, like, our subjective opinion on what's the top comment. Sometimes that might just be something flattering that you say about us, and sometimes it might be because you bring up an interesting topic for us to talk about. But there's no guarantee just because you hit you know, text the show and send us something that you're going to get a shout out.

Alban:

I think so many of these are really kind comments. They're thoughtful, but they may not lead to an interesting conversation and they may not be of general interest for everybody who listens to the show, right? And so, in the same way that we're saying, maybe there's an interview that isn't worth promoting to all you know 2000 year listeners and sending out. Maybe there's times where someone writes in and is like, oh, great point, I've been, that was really, that was awesome. I don't need to read that on the episode, I can just read that myself. And that's what the person meant when they sent it into, uh, our fan mail, right?

Tom:

Yeah, let's give it a shot. Matt from California writes in and says I noticed that your shows end with a simple quick music cue. Why don't you have a bunch of calls to action or wrap up stuff or even post-roll ads seem normal for many shows. Is there a strategy here? I'm always a little surprised, but also I usually skip that stuff on the other shows. Anyway, if I can get back to my controls in time, Uh, Matt, you answered the question right there, I feel the same way in the question.

Alban:

I feel the same way. There's so many shows that they just go on and on and on at the end, and there's so many calls to action and follow the newsletter and subscribe to the Facebook account, paid whatever. There's just too many things, and so I think years ago Kevin said let's just use like a hang up sound and it's over, and I love it.

Kevin:

Yep, we do our best to create the type of show that we want to listen to, and so if it's not something that we enjoy in other podcasts, we won't do it here. So I agree with you A lot of podcasts do that stuff at the end I don't like it, I don't listen to it, so we're not going to do it on our show and that's why that's the strategy. All right, our next fan mail came from another Kevin not me Kevin, but another Kevin from Tampa, florida. I wish we'd known how to talk about value for value when we asked for support. It took us a while to work that out. Love the question, by the way.

Alban:

So I just got to point out before we go any further the person who wrote this is not Kevin. There is a name, kevin, which indicates for you to be the one to read this question.

Kevin:

So it's not from another Kevin.

Alban:

No, no, it's just from Tampa Florida. I have no other info, but I just put.

Kevin:

Hey, kevin, you read this one the same way that I wrote Tom. You read the one from Matt from California. I guess I thought it was weird that he had my same name and he also had my same emoji right next to it.

Alban:

Anonymous from Tampa, florida wants wish they knew about value for value when they asked for support.

Kevin:

Value for value is a great way to talk about. It's a great way to explain to your audience why they should consider supporting a podcaster show, and so that is hey, I'm hoping that you're receiving some value by listening to this show. It's well. I don't know if this is a good analogy or not. I don't know why I'm stuck on analogies today but it's a little bit like if you've ever seen a street performer, hey, you just stood around and watched me juggle these sharp knives for five minutes. Hopefully you found that entertaining, or else, why would you still be standing here? How about returning a little something now? And they pass the hat around.

Kevin:

That's maybe a terrible analogy, but it's a little bit like. What value for value is is that people are listening to your show. So at some point in your show maybe halfway through, maybe towards the end or whatever now you're talking to people who stuck around and listened to the whole thing and they got to this point. It's okay for you to explain, Explain to them that they just received something, and if they'd like to return some value to you as the podcaster, so you can keep doing it, here's the way to do that, and so that's the value for value pitch.

Tom:

This is on a short list for me of things that I talk about with every podcaster at a conference. When I talk to a podcaster and I'm giving them advice, this is one of the things that I really push is recognizing that you're creating something valuable and you don't have to feel like you're begging when you ask for them to consider supporting a show. This is an opportunity for you to say look, I'm putting my efforts into this, I bought a microphone, I'm doing all this work. I think it's valuable and if you think it's valuable, consider supporting the show. I just think this is a really, really important thing for podcasters to understand.

Alban:

And Anonymous from Tampa. I have to apologize. I now realize this is a really, really important thing for podcasters to understand. And anonymous from Tampa. I have to apologize. I now realize this was you answering the question what do you wish you knew before you started podcasting? I didn't put it into that segment, so that's on me. Next up is Lamar's, iowa. Yes to StreamYard is a remote recording option. We love it.

Kevin:

Yes, I've heard many, many people who are huge fans of StreamYard. Uh, we did experiment with it years and years ago and I'm sure it's matured greatly since then. So, uh, if if you're looking for a remote recording option, maybe StreamYard works for you. It seems to be working good in Iowa, so thanks for the feedback.

Tom:

Steph in Denmark. Jordan, you mentioned using an AI transcript tool for Buzzcast that didn't need any editing. Can you share what it is, please?

Alban:

Jordan is not here, but we can share what it is, and it's Buzzsprout. That's what she was talking about.

Tom:

This is something that we've been working on for a while. We're super excited to be able to provide it to our podcasters the ability to be able to create the transcripts.

Kevin:

Jody from Dork Tales wrote in and said thank you for highlighting our summer listening challenge. All eight of us podcasts are so grateful for the mention and discussion. And yes, I was inspired by your marketing ideas, which helped me brainstorm out of the box ideas for this collaboration.

Alban:

This is like one of the best pieces of fan mail we've ever gotten. We found this cool thing the summer listening challenge that a bunch of podcasters were doing and Jordan said I wonder if we inspired this. And I went there's got to be no chance that we inspired it. And yeah, the episode that we did got them thinking of out of the box ideas and they did this collaboration and it's helping tons of kids listen to new podcast this summer. So thank you so much for listening. Thanks for writing in.

Alban:

And then, last but not least, from Grand Rapids, michigan, they reached out and asked how can I have viewers of my podcast also get subscribed to my weekly free email? I don't know, because how are their viewers of a podcast? Podcasts are audio on this show, but probably that was a typo Listeners to your podcast. How do you get them to subscribe to the weekly free email? I think the best way to do that is to have a call to action and do that in the episode. Tie it in to what the real value is for that email. Why are they subscribing to this email in addition to the podcast? So let them know at an appropriate time in the episode. Hey, I also have an email. Here's the specific values that you'll get from being a subscriber and why it's better or additive to subscribing to the podcast. So that would be my recommendation.

Kevin:

Yeah, and make it easy for them. So put a link to sign up for your newsletter in your episode description so that when you're talking about it you can say you can just go over to the episode description right now and tap the link and sign up for your newsletter in your episode description so that when you're talking about it you can say you can just go over to the episode description right now and tap the link and sign up for this newsletter.

Alban:

Make it simple, well thank you to everybody who wrote in. For next week or two weeks from now, I want to do an episode about podcast guests. We talked a lot about setting up interviews. We talked about what makes a good guest, the expectations that should be around being a guest, about what makes a good guest, the expectations that should be around being a guest. So what tips do you have around podcast guests? And this can be how you find them, how you vet them, your workflows, any piece of that process, how you just show up as a good guest. So we're going to try to collect a few of those ideas together and make an episode. So, to be included, reach out to us via fan mail, click the link in the show notes to send us your thoughts and opinions. Thanks for listening and, as always, keep podcasting.

Kevin:

All right, post show. Yeah, what do you got? I'm out. Come on, you did all that and you didn't. You're not going to. You're not going to push it over the finish line. Come on, you did all that and you didn't. You're not going to. You're not going to push it over the finish line. You drove to the 99 yard line and you're not going to just do the one drive play. Come on, quarterback, sneak up the middle.

Alban:

I love when they have the running back who runs all the way to the one yard line, and then they always let him try one more time and they never could do it.

Kevin:

Whew, all right. Right, so this is um. Not everybody knows this, but everybody who is host. It was on this podcast this week. We're all fathers, right? Yes, we just had father's day, an entire day dedicated to celebrating the creation, like the fact that we, uh, are proliferating the human race, putting more people weird way to say that good what that's.

Alban:

That's not what it's about. Proliferating the human race. That's the celebration.

Tom:

That's what it's about. Isn't that what it's about?

Alban:

Yeah, what about the joy of being a father, the gift of fatherhood? We're celebrating the gift of fatherhood, so how was it?

Kevin:

Let's talk it through. Let's start with Tom. I'll host this segment. Alvin, I got it. Tell them how was your Father's Day. Did you feel loved and celebrated and appreciated and cared for?

Tom:

I did not. Oh what, what this segment's going so bad. No, I'm hoping that when my kids get older, maybe it'll come back around, but I had to remind them that it was Father's Day, maybe it'll come back around, but I had to remind them that it was father's day. Um, and I got, I got one text that said happy father's day from my, my daughter who's traveling.

Kevin:

Well, I'm sure all your kids listen to this show, so yeah after they hear this, they will feel shame and they will, you know, shower you with gifts, I'm sure my youngest.

Tom:

My youngest felt bad because somebody else sent me a text message. Not one of my children, one of my friends sent me a text message that said Happy Father's Day and had a nice little note. And I said, man, that's the nicest text message I got on Father's Day and it wasn't from any of my kids. And my youngest daughter felt bad and she went and she drew a picture of a, of a Mandalorian riding an electric skateboard with the death star blowing up a planet in the background, and it's like happy father's day. It's like, oh, that's sweet, that's sweet.

Alban:

Sorry, that's on brand, for sure that's a. That's a Tom Rossi father's day card.

Kevin:

Really nice text that you got from a friend that wasn't for me, was it no? From a friend that wasn't for me, was it no? I texted you. You sent me a text that said happy father's day, and I responded with a very nice message that said you too. Yeah, that was very warm. All right, next year I'll know to put more thought into it.

Tom:

Well, my kids put more thought into it.

Kevin:

Yeah, I'll remind them for you next year. All right, alvin. But yeah, I'll remind him for you next year.

Alban:

All right, alvin what do you got? My daughter was out of town for the longest she'd ever been out of town and came back on Sunday, so she wasn't here in the morning. And it is so much fun for you know, when you the people you're closest to, to spend a little bit of time away and then get back together is such a gift, because when you're separated you go. Man, I really miss like this friend, or I really miss. I mean I was just on vacation and I missed work and I missed everyone I work with. And then with my daughter, I was like I just missed her so much. And she came home and I was like this is the best thing ever.

Alban:

You know, for three days before I was like man three days, two days, one day until she comes back. Days before I was like man three days, two days, one day until she comes back. And it really is. I mean, uh, absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it does make you really appreciate. You know how much fun you have, uh, with certain people. So I had a great father's day. We didn't do a whole lot, we just went to dinner, uh, cause she got back a little bit later, but we really enjoyed it. That's great.

Kevin:

I do think about you, Kevin.

Alban:

Uh, I feel like the whole segment is coming down to this, I think that this is.

Kevin:

it was a setup for whatever's coming here. No, I had a very nice. I had a very nice father's day. Um, we hung out, we had, we had brunch together, we did a little family workout together, and this was all in preparation for the main event, which was a family golf tournament together. There we go. My wife doesn't play, but she went with us and I teamed up with my middle child and my oldest and youngest teamed up and we played a family golf scramble and it was a lot of fun. We thought we were going to get rained out, but the clouds cleared and we were able to squeeze in nine holes and it was. It was a lot of fun. What happened?

Alban:

I feel like you can't tell us. We had the first, we had a golf tournament and and my team won.

Kevin:

Yeah, we got my team won. We kind of I told him ahead of time, like I don't care if you have to throw it or whatever, but it's father's day, I need to win this thing. I don't think they threw it, I think they played as hard as they could. I also like good competition, but in the end, uh, I was on the winning team and so it was a lot of fun the thing you don't know is that kevin's two kids had like quadruple bogey on the final hole.

Kevin:

He just squeaked instead it was all it was all legit and that was fun. And then we got home in time and I got to watch the end of the U S open and I got to see, uh, more golf on TV. That was fun. Um, yeah, so that was it, but hopefully anybody listening still listening to us just jabber on If you're a father, we wish you have a father and we're able to celebrate them in some way.

Tom:

And consider proliferating the human race. Consider it, you don't have to.

Kevin:

This is the weirdest, too awkward. All right, keep podcasting.

People on this episode

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Alban Brooke

Host
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Jordan Blair

Host
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Kevin Finn

Host
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Tom Rossi

Guest

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