Buzzcast
Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you.
Buzzcast
We Listened To Your Podcasts And Gave Actionable Feedback
In this episode, we turn Buzzcast into a mini help desk: listeners wrote in with their biggest podcasting pain points and bravely submitted their shows for honest, constructive feedback. We dig into things like tightening edits without making conversations feel “too clipped,” keeping loudness consistent across episodes, making dynamic content transitions feel natural, and using your show title and cover art to instantly communicate who your podcast is for.
We also talk strategy: How creators with big audiences (especially on YouTube/IG) can guide casual viewers into becoming true podcast subscribers and getting guests to actually share their episode.
Podcasts we give feedback to:
7:20 Wander Worldschool
16:50 Two Guys on a Plane
27:58 Midlife with Courage
31:56 Confessions of a Recovering Micromanaging Perfectionist Martyr
37:57 How to Start Up
48:33 This Is How You Think
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Answer the Public
- Buzzsprout Name Generator
- Podcasting Q&A: How to Get Guests to Promote Your Podcast with Kate Casey
Question for next episode: What do you wish you knew when you started your podcast or what tool exists today that you wish you had back then? Tap the text link in the show notes and send us your answer.
Contact Buzzcast
- Send us a text message
- Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods
Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!
Jordan, Alban, it got down into the 40s last night in Florida. And Alban and I went to play our our nightly uh Monday night pickleball match.
Jordan:You guys played outside?
Kevin:We did. And it was fine. I thought it was gonna be miserable, but it was totally fine. But here's the thing is that I actually for a moment, I have these moments, just very few of them. But once in a while, I miss that we don't get to live in a like a real cold weather environment. And I had one of these moments last night. I'm gonna expose a little bit on my sensitive side. But I was driving to the pickleball courts and I have to go through this little it's like a cool little downtown area of Jacksonville. It's called San Marco, Jordan. I think you've seen it before.
Jordan:Yeah, it's pretty.
Kevin:There's nice shops and restaurants and stuff. I was at an intersection, and there are people going to what looks like a nice restaurant. They're dressed up kind of nice. And there's a guy and a girl waiting at the stoplight for the light to change leg and cross the street. And the woman uh is dressed like in a long, you know, cold weather coat, and she's holding on to her man's arm and she's like cold, and so she like shivers up next to him, like pulls him tight. And I'm like, oh, what a what a like a Hallmark Christmassy moment, you know? Yeah. And I was like, if the snow was falling and stuff, like it just would have been perfect. But I'm like, gosh, you know, we we have these days here and there, but we don't have them for an extended period of time.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:So today it's like back up into the 60s, it's warm again.
Jordan:Yeah, I don't like when it's super duper cold, but when you have those days where it's snowing and it's like light and frosty and but like still sunny at the same time, and then you know, you're just kind of like bundled up and on a walk downtown. There's just something very it feels like you're in a movie. Like it's just one of those weird moments where you get very like self-aware.
Kevin:Yeah. These short little romantic cold moments that happen, they're very sweet.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:And then after like 24 hours, you're like, I'm done with it. I want to warm up again. This is brutal.
Jordan:Well, especially like it's it's so lovely when you get that like gorgeous, fluffy, white, sparkly snow. And then literally the next morning after everyone's driven through it, it's like brown trudge kind of stuff. Like just like, and it's grows and then it freezes, and so it becomes like rocky ice and you're just like slipping everywhere. It's nice for like two seconds and then it's over.
Alban:I think that's why it's great to go and travel when you go somewhere that you can see snow for a few days. But I don't think I've ever been on day six and gone, man, I'd love one more day of snow. Because I don't know how I would handle four, five, six, seven months of it.
Jordan:Yeah, we had a this one year, it was, I think it was back in like 2017, we had what we called Snowbageddon, and it just snowed and snowed and snowed and wouldn't stop. And it's nothing I've ever seen before here. The snow was like up to my chest. And I remember like every single day you'd have to go out and shovel, and you could not see the top of my lamppost at the end of my walkway. And they would like shovel all the snow out of the roads into piles. And we had like a mountainous pile that was like almost as tall as our house. And our house is like a two-story, but it was just like brown mountains in the middle of the road. It was, it was gross, man. Like it was nasty. Welcome back to BuzzCampus, the podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzz Sprout. A couple episodes ago, we asked you to write in with your pain points, and then maybe we could do like a help desk type episode and you know, problem solve for you. And then Kevin added on that if you wanted to, you could submit your podcast for feedback. And it's really funny because I thought nobody's gonna send in their podcast for feedback. That is ludicrous. And jokes on me.
Kevin:Well, you didn't mention that at the time I dropped the idea.
Jordan:I didn't want to poo-poo your idea, but I was just like, no one's gonna send in their podcast. It's fine. And then literally everybody who wrote in wanted some honest feedback from us, and I was pleasantly surprised.
Alban:Can I share a story about uh getting feedback? I just went to this conference, it was like a marketing conference, and one of the speakers was somebody who does uh YouTube videos, and he was like, Hey, I want to bring some creators up on stage and I'll critique your channels and give you feedback. Submit your show if you want. And I guess two people submitted and he worked on it. And his entire talk is going to be the feedback. So he brought them both up on stage. They had no idea what he was gonna say. The first guy he goes, All right, let's start with you. I'm just imagining the guy's name's Mark, I don't remember the name. He goes, Mark, let's start with you. My first advice to you would be to delete the entire channel and start over.
Jordan:Oh my god, not a joke.
Alban:First comment, and it just kept going. And it was like some guy who was like, I'm the head of marketing for this company, the CEO does this podcast. I'm trying to convince them to change the way they do their video strategy. And the poor guy was up there for 30 minutes getting feedback, like he'd made all these decisions in opposition to what the expert had been telling him the whole time. And afterward, I was like, What's going on? He's like, Yeah, I knew it wasn't gonna be great, but it just kept going. It just not gonna happen today. No, first is not gonna happen is because all of the ones I reviewed, I was so impressed. We got some really good podcasts, so yeah, but even if that wasn't the case, we could find something nice to say. Uh, we just delete the entire channel.
Kevin:That was the first advice.
Jordan:That's so mean, right?
Kevin:I went into this with the uh approach of definitely gonna be nice, but we're also like I'm trying to offer constructive criticism or constructive ideas or feedback or suggestions. So, like they are just that. They are suggestions, they are opinions. And if you don't agree with it, don't feel like you have to take it. This is not a you're doing it wrong. Here's the right way. Yeah, these are just ideas, and if you like the ideas, go for it. And if you don't, no big deal. But I don't know, I've got I've got a list here of of some things, and and I don't want anyone to feel like I'm criticizing it or you're you're not doing a good podcast. Everyone who wrote in and submitted the shows, like Alban said, they are excellent shows. And yeah, I I followed all of them, and I'll tell you, another topic for another day, but I followed them all on Apple Podcasts. I'll tell you what, what an update we just got in 26.2. It is so tempting for me to make that my daily driver with the transcripts and the auto chapter markers and all that kind of stuff.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And the links to the shows that you talk about. So every one of these shows, when we talk about it, is gonna get auto-linked in Apple Podcasts. And I'm sure if we went back and pulled the clip, I'm sure I would have kind of poo-pooed this idea or said, I don't know what that's gonna do. I think you did initially, but after you fully understood it, you're like, oh, wait, this actually might be really good. Well, I am definitely on board with this is actually pretty good now. Yeah, it's just nice. Like Kevin was sending screenshots as soon as the update came out, sending screenshots of our show notes to us. And I was like, Oh, this is really nice being able to see every time we have fan mail, there's people we mentioned their show and now they're all showing up.
Jordan:It looks like a pod roll on the episode page.
Alban:It does. And it might become a nice way for people to connect more with the Buzzcast community. Yeah. If you listen to us talking about the same people who write in every week, now you can go check out their shows and give it a listen and uh maybe you can reach out to them yourself.
Jordan:All right. Well, let's hop in with our first listener submission. We had Susie with Wander World School write in, and she has two pain points that she wanted us to address. Um, the first one is about her podcast title. So she said, I originally named it Wander World School and slow family travel podcast, but that felt too long. Still, shouldn't I be clear about the topic to help with SEO? Should I shorten it or stick with the full name for clarity? I looked at it and her podcast title is Wander World School, a slow and long-term family travel podcast. Yeah. So I think for your podcast title, you could try shortening it just a bit to Wander World School, slow and long-term family travel. And I think that'll take just a couple extra words out, shorten it, tighten it up, and it'll look a little bit better. And I think that it's discoverable and specific, but having the word podcast can hurt the ranking. It's just one of those like SEO tips from like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. When people are using the search engine within the app, if you have the word podcast in the episode title or in the actual podcast title, it does kind of hurt the ranking. The second pain point that Susie wrote in with is I'm recording interviews that run an hour or more, but I want to keep episodes to around 30 or 40 minutes and I may be over-editing them as a result. And so Susie asked us to listen to her podcast, and she mentioned that she listens to podcasts at 2x speed. And so she likes a fast pace, but maybe not everyone else feels the same. And Kevin, I pulled you in for this because I personally do not listen to my podcast at 2x speed. And so I thought maybe it would resonate more with you.
Kevin:Yeah. So I listened to a bunch of episodes and I listened to uh them at 1x, and then I moved up to 1.5, then I hit 1.8. Two was a little fast for me on this one because the editing is tight. So I found the sweet spot for me was right around 1.8. I will say that I do feel like you're asking because I feel like you know there you might be editing a little bit too much, tightening things up a little bit too much, and I have to agree. I think it is a little bit too tight.
Suzy:Maggie emphasizes that early retirement provides the time and financial flexibility, but is sometimes tricky with busy teenagers, yet she values travel as one of the many ways to raise well-adjusted children. Welcome. Please tell me more about you and your family.
Kevin:At 1X, it's not that bad, but when I was up at 1.5, 1.8, it felt pretty comfortable. But then some of the sentences just cut right into each other.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:And I could pick up. Now I was listening for it, so maybe if I wasn't, I wouldn't have noticed it as much. But when I was listening intently for like the editing practices, I was definitely hearing edit points. And so I think maybe you could leave a little bit of extra space in some of those points when you're cutting out words or you're taking a thought from, you know, starts here, and then they ramble a little bit, and so you're just kind of cutting out the rambling. That stuff's great, but just leave an extra little beat in there for people who are listening maybe a little bit faster, like you and I do. And it would just flow a little bit more naturally, I think.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:I will say that I thought you had really great energy. Um, you would ask a question, you'd listen to an answer, you'd recap the answer, and then you'd either follow up or you'd move on. I thought you were doing that so well. Like that was you're so strong at that. Oftentimes people ask a question and then hear an answer and then move on without the recap or the follow-up or the conversation around the answer they just gave, but you did not do that. You really engaged with the answers and summary like gave a good summary of the answer. Anyway, excellent. And kudos on that kind of stuff. The next point that I had though was that as I moved from one episode to another, I was doing my best to mimic like a real listening environment. So I was listening in my car, I was driving around and I'd go from uh one episode to the next episode. And I did notice that I had to adjust my volume a little bit in my car, going from one episode to another. So we're getting some slightly different like loudness settings between episodes.
Jordan:Uh-huh.
Kevin:And also there were some, I don't know if it was dynamic content or just clips that you're baking into the episode themselves, like at the end, it would get louder and then we get softer. And so the easiest way to solve that is with magic mastering. It would level all that stuff out perfectly and make sure that every episode that you publish is set to the exact same loudness and the and the episode itself has the same loudness. But if you don't want to uh pay for magic mastering, then at least look at that in your editing workflow to make sure that you're exporting with the same exact settings every time.
Jordan:Uh, you were talking about how good she is at interacting with the people that she's interviewing. And it was funny because I also listened to an episode just to give feedback. And I got so into the episode that I actually forgot I was listening and I got like 15 minutes into it. And I was like, wait, I have to be listening for edit points.
Kevin:Right. I'm working here.
Jordan:Like but I really enjoyed it. So if I forget that I'm actually listening to something to like give a critique, so I'm just enjoying the episode, then that's a really good thing. What I did notice is that I think where those sentences are getting tight, when someone is is speaking, she's actually leaving a natural cadence and a little bit of like space within the sentence structure. But as soon as they're starting a new sentence, that's where like the train cars kind of like bump up together, if that makes sense. And so what I think is happening is she is like letting them say their sentence. And then she might have like a person that she's interviewing that stops to think for a little bit too long, or they go, um, oh gosh, what else was I gonna say? And then she's like, Oh, I'm just gonna cut that. And then those sentences get a little bit too tight. And so, yeah, definitely think like, okay, where is a natural period in this audio? And then just give it a beat before they start the next one, almost like a slight breath.
Alban:Somebody needs to do the work somewhere. Either the work is a lot of prep, the work is tight editing, or the work is gonna be the slog of getting through the interview, you know, listening to it. And I do appreciate someone who's going, okay, I did a prep, I did a good interview, and I'm going to try to tighten this down to 30, 40 minutes. It makes it really nice for the listener because everything you're hearing is going to be really good. And no matter how good the conversation is, there's always 10, 15% you can cut, even in the best conversations. Oh, yeah. I'm I'm very appreciative of it. That's the way that I like podcasts taking up less time. I don't really want to speed it up. So my preference is, you know, to tighten things up. If there's a segment that's kind of boring, you can clip that segment out, but you can leave a little bit more of the authenticity in segments that you really enjoy.
Jordan:Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what we do because our recordings have sometimes gotten into the threshold of two hours, and then the finished product going out is like 50 minutes. So there's a certain amount of editing that must take place, and sometimes it has to be a little ruthless.
Kevin:All right. Let me uh quickly summarize. I did a bit of a deep dive into one particular episode. It was episode 28, the generosity mindset. And I've got a couple of suggestions, you know, ideas for if I were gonna look at this episode and say, what could we possibly try to make it better? Here's some quick hits. First, in the beginning, you say you're you're talking about listeners in different parts of the world. I think you mentioned Orlando specifically, and you said, Hey, reach, you know, shoot me a text. I'd love to maybe do a meetup or something if you're in that area. But I think you forgot to mention um how they send you a text. Oh I would just say, just remember, if you're gonna say send me a text, say there's a link right in the show notes so you can quickly do that. At the end of the episode, I listened all the way to the end, and at the end you said the same thing again, and then you said there's a link in the show notes to send me a text. So that's great. Just remember to do that in the beginning as well. Uh also you did uh this episode like recap feature in your intro, which was really cool. I love how it teased clips from a bunch of different episodes. I think you you teased like three different episodes in the beginning, but that was after you set up the episode that we I was listening to. So as soon as I started listening, you did a great job setting up the episode, and then you went into this recap of the previous three, and then you set up the episode again, and then you went into the content. So it was like 12 minutes in before we kind of got into the episode. And so I love that section, but I just I probably would have put that at the end. So, like set up the episode really good, um, bring some energy, get me excited, go into today's episode and then say something like if you enjoyed today's episode, I want to, you know, highlight three other current episodes, and then you could do that recap section at the end. I think that might just flow a little bit better and keep me engaged a little bit longer.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:And I I have an example when I talk about like bringing energy after you do a really good job of setting up today's episode. Uh I just think the transition fell a little bit flat for me between the setup and then actually going into the interview itself. Somebody who does this really well is um the decoder podcast. So Neele does a great job of summarizing the episode and then getting into it, but right like between those two things, between the setup and the actual interview, they've got like very energetic music and he's excited. Like the the setting up of the episode, you see it's building excitement in him. And then he says, and so like let's get into it. And he's just like pumped up and then he goes right into the episode. And so that's for better or worse, if you like that or not. I don't know if that's 100% your style, but it felt like you were leading into this awesome intro for what all these things that we're gonna talk about. And then it just like slowly transitioned into hey, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. And then it just kind of felt like, oh, we just sort of lost some of that momentum. So I would maybe think of a way to kind of keep that energy high as you're going right into the interview.
Jordan:Yeah, those are really good tips.
Kevin:Thanks. I hope it helps. And you have a new follower.
Jordan:Next up, we had Rich from Two Guys on a Plane ride in. And Rich was looking for feedback on um how to revisit some of the episode titles for discoverability or maybe even strengthen show notes. And so, Alban, I had you look at this because I actually felt like Two Guys on a Plane has an incredible website. It looks like they have gorgeous branding and great marketing tactics. And I was like, I think this is a little bit above my expertise.
Alban:So Jordan sent me this one, and I immediately uh started feeling insecure that we're the ones giving all the advice. Sometimes you give advice and you think it's good advice, and then I started looking at some of the podcasters, and I was like, wow, we should be learning a lot from uh many of the people who reached out.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:So two guys on a plane, it's a podcast, uh, two flight attendants, uh, both men who are married, and they're just telling some wild stories from being flight attendants. And it seems to me like the audience are probably other flight attendants, people in the travel industry, and they are doing really well with promotion pretty much everywhere, but Instagram in particular seem to be doing extremely well, YouTube doing well, threads doing really well. I guess the first thing they had was um the show name itself could be more SEO friendly, but it's well known on social. So I want to keep the branding consistent across platforms. I completely agree with that.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And so I went and I'm thinking, how big are they on socials? Because sometimes people will say that and they're it hasn't gotten that big. Two guys in a plane, Instagram, I think Jordan sent me the link, 151,000 Instagram followers. Yes, we're well beyond the point of switching the name. You have all the socials, and they're all doing well, and they all have lots of feedback or lots of engagement. Let's keep the name.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:All right, so here's a few things I saw doing very well on social media, lots of good memes, lots of clips of episodes, short form videos doing well both on YouTube and on Instagram. I'd imagine you're probably doing TikTok and it's probably going well there. Overall, 20 episodes since April of the YouTube videos seem really well done. I was actually surprised that they have not gotten more views. They're doing a full video production, at least three different camera angles. You know, they're kind of doing the interview on the couch style. One of the best things is the game they're playing on threads. So this one episode really took off. And it's on YouTube, it's done the best. On Buzz Route, it's done the best. It's the Ask the Audience, passenger pet peeves. And what they did was they went on threads and they asked, what do people do when they're traveling that you know drives you up the wall? What do people need to stop doing? And it got tons of answers. And then they just had content for days where they could just go through and read them and then give their own spin on it because they have stories for everything. Anything people said, they had a story. So it worked really well because they captured the viral moment on social media and then were able to turn it into the podcast. All right, so that's all the things. They're going well, but I found a few ideas. Recommendation number one absolutely keep the name. You're doing really well. You have a strong following. Um, they asked about show notes. So one thing I specifically was looking for even before I knew you wanted quite uh comments about show notes is just links back to the original conversations. Because they're doing this game with threads where they're asking questions, they're getting answers, and then that makes its way into the content. I want there to be a link between those two pieces of content. So I went and listened to this episode about pet peeves, and I'm cracking up listening to it. And then I go to the show notes and I'm like, I gotta see the threads. Yeah, you know, the conversation over there, and there wasn't a link. And so then I had to go back through the threads until I found it. And then I'm trying to kind of link up the comments that they're answering. I'd like to see it go both ways. Like when somebody answered on threads, they said, Hey, we actually put you in the episode. You know, you should check it out. But also in those show notes, say, here's where the conversation happened originally. And I think by connecting them, you're gonna get more people who want to engage because they're gonna go, oh, I've got a good story, but it'll be even more fun if my story might make it its way into the podcast.
Jordan:Yeah, I think that's a really good tip. I mean, that's exactly what we talked about in our turning listener engagement into like an engagement loop last episode.
Alban:Exactly. Yeah, I was thinking of that quite a bit.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:My intuition is the biggest area for opportunity for your podcast is awareness of the podcast itself because they're doing so well on social media that my impression was that a lot of people are not recognizing that beyond just lots of funny memes and good clips, that you're doing a full podcast with the same name. Um, there's lots of clips of the podcast, there's clips on YouTube, lots of people are watching them, and it doesn't seem like maybe they're following the full path. So, one thing I would like to do is at the end of the short form video clips, I'd like to see some podcast logos. You know, maybe we're talking like one, one and a half seconds, listen to the full episode, and then there's just an Apple, Spotify, YouTube, you know, logos there. Uh and people see it, they go, Oh, this is a full podcast episode. They can find it on their own, or you could even put, you know, the handle, because it's the same handle everywhere. You could put that there. I think as soon as people would be are aware this is a podcast, they'd be more likely to go and subscribe.
Kevin:One of the challenges I think that creators that are creating content on and publishing to YouTube will have will be getting their audience to create a habit around consuming their content, not just YouTube content. So what you want to do is you want to make sure that when you're you're talking in these videos and stuff and you're using YouTube as a discovery channel, you want to make sure that people like you're telling people, hey, if you're enjoying this content, remember that you can subscribe to us and we can be a part of your podcasting life as well. You can always find us here on YouTube. If you want to see us and if you enjoy content in that format, fine. But you're kind of at the whims of the algorithm. Like, are they going to serve up your content or not? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But what will always happen if they subscribe in a podcast app is they'll get a notification or you'll be at the top of their queue when they launch that app the next time they're they're going for a road trip or they're driving, commuting to work or whatever, going for a walk with the dog. You will be there not dependent on an algorithm. So remember, YouTube is awesome, but it's really awesome as a discovery channel for people to connect with you, but you have to tell them how to connect and you have to make that a consistent message.
Jordan:You know who does that really well is uh the Wi-Files. He actually has a podcast. It's his YouTube channel, but it's a little bit different. And even in his YouTube channel, when he's doing a video, he'll talk about like a story that like he can't talk about on YouTube. And so you have to go to the podcast on a podcast app to be able to listen to that story. And so I think that there is an opportunity in your YouTube channel to like mention that and maybe create like a little bit of like a bonus tidbit that if they go and listen to the podcast, they'll get another like galley gossip is only available on the podcast or something like that. And with the YouTube shorts, Alban, what you were describing reminds me so much of the New Heights podcast. They do those shorts so stinking well where it has a hook. And then it's like their podcast logo on a locker and like where to listen to the podcast. And I think that they do that so well too.
Alban:Yeah. I mean, Kevin said it many times. Instagram is people are going to Instagram because they just want to burn some time. And so you get to be part of that time every once in a while if you've got the perfect content. But we always want to be moving them over to the podcast where the draw is not Instagram fill the next 10 minutes of my life, but instead, oh, it's Tuesday. I'm so excited for my next episode of my favorite podcast. So we're just moving them down towards being a bigger and bigger fan.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:The last question they had was should we be doing some more SEO work with the titles of the podcasts? And I initially was thinking no, but then I started doing a bit of keyword research and I was looking around um like Ask the Public, which is a website where you can just type in like search terms and it will find you questions with those search terms. So just like what questions are the most common around flight attendance and travel? Are either you not looking at what I wrote down?
Jordan:I'm not.
Alban:What's the most common thing people ask about flight attendants? Um, how do I get them to give me an upgrade?
Jordan:No, oh I think it's asking about like flight attendants like love lives.
Kevin:Not on my radar, but okay.
Jordan:I don't know. That's what I thought would be like a little search.
Alban:We're all nosy. Um but the thing that we all ask, almost about every profession, is how much money do they make? Oh, because like, you know, your brother-in-law, you know, has some job, and you're like, well, how much money is he making? You know, I want to look it up. So the top questions are like, How much do flight attendants make? How much do Delta flight attendants make? How much do flight attendants on Air France make? And it's just like every single one. So, what I would love is to try to pick out some of these questions that have a lot of search volume, but then get people to answer it over on threads where they've got a good following and they're getting a lot of answers, and then just weave in these funny stories that they both have. Um, I'd love to hear, you know, what different comp packages are there? Uh, do airlines pay differently? I'm sure there's tons of funny stories built in here. Yeah. So uh why do flight attendants sit on their hands?
Kim:Oh, yeah.
Alban:Because their chairs don't have armrests.
Jordan:No, that's not why. There's gotta be something. No, there's some sort of like, I don't know.
Alban:See, these are questions that now are burning in your mind. You've got to know. I know.
Jordan:I have to look it up.
Alban:Can flight attendants have tattoos? Yes, I could just this could be a funny episode. I can answer all these questions. I'm not a flight attendant.
Jordan:I think you're confidently wrong on some of them.
Alban:I'm sure flight attendants can have tattoos, probably not visible tattoos, but you know, that just would be a really funny episode of talking about all the you know crews they've been on, all their friends that have dumb tattoos. People are probably could write in with stories, but a lot of people are typing these into Google. So if we're gonna try an SEO game, that might be where I would be experimenting. But uh incredible work on the podcast, 20 episodes in since April. So you're going strong. I'd love to see where we are next year as long as you keep podcasting.
Jordan:Next up, we have Kim from Min Life with Courage asking for any feedback on her podcast.
Kevin:Any. I can handle that. Okay, so as of the time of my review, I want to say you were around 247 episodes. Maybe well, that's the one I listened to.
Jordan:If I look at her Buzzbrow website, it says she's been podcasting since 2021 and has 260 episodes.
Kevin:Amazing. I know, absolutely amazing. So good on you. That's a huge accomplishment and it should be celebrated. Like, I don't know if I I don't have any sound effects that I can cue up quickly, but roaring applause for you. That's amazing. Okay, so I listened to 247. I heard around the 21-minute mark that you had some dynamic content drop in, a promotion for your own, uh like I think a wait list for a course that you were starting up or something like that, which was very cool. Good on you for using the dynamic content tools. It did not have a transition. So when you're using dynamic content in your podcast, dynamic content is just content that you pre-record and then you can insert into episodes at random places. This one came in around minute 21. The transition was good, like it was a didn't sound out of the blue, but uh it was just like the music transition only. So it just plays a little audio cue and then it goes into your voice again, talking about your course. So because I work at Buzz Sprout, I know exactly what that is. I'm concerned that as a listener, you might not. They might hear a little audio cue and they're like, what is that? Is there some background music coming in? But then it's still your voice again, talking about something completely different, and then a little audio cue and it goes back to the interview. So I would just suggest considering either choosing one of our pre-built-in audio cues that say something like we'll be right back, or here's a quick message, well, we'll be right back after this quick message, or you can even record your own. Like, let's take a quick break to hear about a new offer that I have or something like that. You can record your own, you can upload that. But just letting your audience know that this is something a little bit different, I'm talking about something, and then we'll be right back to the interview, might help people not get confused about what's happening.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:The other thing is that there is a little bit of reburb getting captured on your audio. So it's not bad. It definitely is not to the point where I would be dis I I wouldn't not listen to your podcast because of it, but it's there. And so if you're looking for an area to improve, this is one, and I don't know exactly what your setup is. It could be your microphone, it could be you're using a condenser mic or a blue Yeti or something like that. It could be you have a dynamic mic, but you're a little bit too far away from it, and you're in an untreated room, or it could just be the recording software, like you could be using Zoom or something like that, and you don't have the settings optimized, so it's just introducing what sounds to me like a little bit of reverb, but maybe it's more like digital artifacts. But either way, um there's something happening there that you could look into if you want your audio to sound a little bit better. The easiest way to fix this would be magic mastering. I tested it and I'm gonna play a clip for you. I've got a little 10-second clip of just your raw audio, and then I have it, I ran it through Magic Mastering on the Power Clean setting because power clean is what you need to use if you're trying to get rid of reverb. The standard magic mastering won't do that on its own. So I turned on power clean and then I ran it through. Now, it might not play through because Jordan runs all of our episodes through Magic Mastering, so it might actually like clean it multiple times, but we'll try it. So let's take a listen to your before and after.
Kim:Hello and welcome back to Midlife with Courage. I am Kim Benoit, your host. Hello and welcome back to Midlife with Courage. I am Kim Benoit, your host.
Kevin:So that's just a tiny little clip, and I hope it comes through in our final. But yeah, you can definitely hear something sounds a little bit hollow, a little bit echo echoey, like you're kind of like in a it sounds like you're in a large room, but you might not be. And then at the end, it just sounds much more like you're in a treated professional studio. So, like I said, the easiest way, the quickest way is magic mastering, or you could look at your microphone or mic technique.
Jordan:Or also just, you know, prop up some throw pillows around. There's nothing wrong with uh taking some couch cushions off the sofa. Mags from Confessions of a Recovering Micromanaging Perfectionist Martyr wrote in.
Kevin:What a name.
Jordan:That's a mouthful, saying, I love this so much. Holy smokes, I finally listened to an episode of your wonderful podcasts. While so many of your topics piqued my interest, I just haven't worked your show into my listening schedule, but now I'm officially a follower. Thank you so much, Mags. So Mags was looking for guidance. She said that she had been chipping away at this podcast for some time. It's based on her blog. She says she still has no clue really what she's doing, which is interesting because she's been podcasting since 2017 and has 378 episodes. So, Mags, I would say that you do know what you're doing and you're doing a great job at it. And I actually listened to the podcast and I didn't really have any notes on audio quality or anything like that. I thought it sounded really great. She was very energetic, really enthusiastic about the topics, which made me enthusiastic about the topics.
Alban:Yeah, I actually did a deep dive into this podcast. This was one of the two I went deep on. And Max, you're a really good writer. I read a few of the blogs and then I went and listened to some episodes. Just a great job. So there's one, there's sometimes that people write in, they write their own confessions, and she reads them. Those are really good. I was very impressed. Audio quality, just ability to read in a way that's dynamic and doesn't come across as flat was done very well. So I actually had the same advice that see Jordan has here. And I'd be looking at the title of the podcast. Yeah. And I'm looking at the artwork. But to be able to do 300, what did you say it was, Jordan? You had 79?
Jordan:Like 378, I think it's up there. Okay.
Alban:378 episodes. Incredible. That's such uh that's so impressive. Just the name, Confessions of a Recovering, Micromanaging, Perfectionist Martyr, is a mouthful.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And I think we can all hear it and we kind of know how those things tie together, uh, but we still might be missing who this podcast is for. This is me reading it. So you can disagree and tell me that maybe I misunderstood. It seems like it's mostly for type A parents, especially mothers, who feel like they're running the household operating system. They overfunction, they plan, they fix, they anticipate, they kind of carry this mental load, they're very high control, high standards, and they're trying to trade that away for something that's a little bit calmer. And so I all the words that are in the title, recovering, micromanaging, perfectionist martyr, they all kind of hint in that direction. But I was thinking, is there a way to find a title that says it explicitly? If you are a type A person who's dealing with control and you want to find a little bit more joy or just a little bit more space in the process of you know running your home, this podcast is for you. All right. So I ran it through the Buzz Broute Podcast Name Generator just to see do any of these names resonate with you? Here's a few that I liked that are unique, that nobody else is using it. And do they hit the tone that you're trying to hit? Parenting burnout recovery, less perfect, more peace, um, competent yet chill. Um, I kind of like ones that have like a parenting idea. Uh but you could run it through here a few times. You could tweak uh the description. Maybe my description's not perfect, but who's it for? What's the podcast about? And so when your audience sees this uh name of a podcast, they'll know that's for me. I really want to engage with a community of people who are kind of feeling the same way that I am. But really good writing, really good podcast, highly recommend.
Jordan:Absolutely. Yeah, so something that stood out to me, especially when I looked up this podcast on my actual podcast app, is that the cover art thumbnail is super hard to read. And so my advice would be to maybe look at finessing the cover art to where someone who is browsing through the podcast apps will see it, will know that it's for parents, and will know that it's for, like as Alban was saying, like type A parents, because she has this lovely font on there and it's huge letters, confessions, and then the rest of it is really tiny. And I actually can't read it without my glasses on at all. And in podcast apps like uh Apple Podcasts, they actually don't list the name of your podcast when you're browsing through the app. And so all you have to go off of is the cover art. And so Max has this gorgeous photo of herself with the title in there. But as someone who is just coming in cold, like I don't know what the podcast is about. So just something to think about. Alban, you actually did the blog on cover art. Do you have anything to add to that?
Alban:I mean, I would just do these in tandem. Once we have a title that really says who it's for, we're trying to keep the cover art to a few words, one, maybe two fonts. And just remember, while we may edit it at a really large size, 3,000 by 3,000 pixels, it's often gonna be viewed really, really toned down. And so people just can't read it very well, especially thin fonts. So it looks really nice, the confessions, but that main word I'm seeing is confessions, and it's pretty thin. So it's just gonna be kind of lost. But let me just say the hardest part is doing the podcast itself and making good content, and you're doing that part exceptionally well. Yeah. So I love the opportunity to come in and say, hey, maybe we tweak the title and update the artwork, which is about the easiest thing to do. And that's our biggest feedback. So great work. Congratulations on everything you've accomplished.
Jordan:All right. Juliet Fallowfield from How to Start Up wrote in, said she loved to hear our recommendations on how she can improve episodes of how to start up. And then she also has a note that on growth, her team is feeling really discouraged because they are wanting guests to share the show on platforms. And they've had some guests with big following, but they don't actually share the show. And so I want to touch on the growth part real quick. So she mentioned that, you know, they confirm with the guests that they're open to sharing it. They do the interview, everything turns out fine. And then she has her team put together a Google Drive folder and it has like audio and it has all these different assets for the guests to share. And she says that they're happy with it, yet when they roll out the content over a week and tag them in their business, nothing happens. It's just crickets. So her team's feeling like really frustrated about it, which is totally understandable. And my feedback for that, I actually did um an interview with Kate Casey. She has a show about reality TV shows and she has a lot of celebrities on her podcast. And so I asked her, like, okay, the hardest people to get to share your podcast is celebrities. And so she went through step-by-step tips on how to make it as easy as humanly possible for guests to share your podcast. And so um, I recommend listening to that episode. I will put a link to that in the show notes. But a quick fix immediately, just right off the bat, I would swap your assets folder that you put into Google Drive that has all these different uh things in it. Um, people are gonna get like paralysis trying to choose what things to post. Um, you probably send it early because you're on top of it and your team's on top of it, and you're making sure that everyone has everything weeks in advance. So it's all set in place. But I recommend that you just send a single email on the day you want them to share it. And you know what? If they share it a day or two. Later, that's fine. They're still sharing it with their audience because something that you mentioned is that you just need them to share one Instagram story. Like just one Instagram story would make such a huge difference to your podcast. Well, then just send them that one Instagram story. Just send them one reel, give them a caption, give them the link to the episode so that they can tag it and you're done. That's it.
Kevin:Wait, wait, wait. But there's more.
Jordan:But there's more.
Kevin:So, so I think this is perfect advice. I would simplify it down to the one thing, the most important thing that you want them to do. Make that super dead simple and ask that one thing of them immediately after you publish or immediately when you want them to do that one thing. And don't let up on that one thing until it's done. So you send it to them 24 hours later, follow up, 24 hours after that, follow up again. And like keep hammering that thing thing. There's nothing wrong. If you agreed up front, and it sounds like you have that as part of your screening process and your onboarding, that they are agreeing that if we do this interview, if we do all this work, that you're going to share it, then there's nothing wrong with you pressing for them to uphold their end of the obligation. So guilt and shame and nagging, these are all completely legitimate tools at your disposal once somebody agreed to do something to hold them accountable to do that thing.
Jordan:Right. But no one's above a little nagging.
Kevin:Right. You said if we did this, then you would do this. Now it's time to do this thing and just keep hammering that thing until it's done. Now, once that one thing is done, I would then move on to number two. Unless it was awful painful to get number one done. If you had to email them every day for two weeks to get number one done, then you can say, fine, now you're off the hook, whatever. But if you email them the day after and you say, hey, here's one great thing. Your episode just went live. I'd love you to share it. And then they share it and they write back and they say, Great, you could follow up in a couple days. Say, hey, your episode is doing great. It's getting a lot of engagement. I'd love to take this a little bit further. Would you mind cross-posting over here to LinkedIn with another task and see if you can take it further? But I love Jordan's advice of one thing at a time and then some encouragement. It's working. Let's bring this thing even further. And then here's the next thing.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:This was something I remembered from that Kate Casey episode, Jordan. It's your job to remind the guest of how well they did.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:Because in their mind, they went on and they did an interview and they felt insecure and they don't really remember what they said, and they're a little bit nervous that it wasn't that great. They have no clue. And then you say, Here's a Google Drive. Will you find stuff and post it? And they go, I don't know. I don't remember what I said. I don't know if I sounded smart. And it's just easy to archive the email and move on. And I know I've been guilty of that. When I share stuff, is when somebody else puts the video together and sometimes they'll just post it themselves and then they'll say, Hey, I just shared this. Will you retweet it or will you share it on LinkedIn or will you comment on it? And the job is to remind them what the episode's about and gas them up. Tell them, like, oh my gosh, it was so good. I loved the edit. We were able to tighten it up. It was so valuable. Here's something I really enjoyed, and we're so excited to launch it. We're gonna post this video. Will you share it? Like Kevin said. And following up, you're not the one making it weird. They're the one making it weird by not by not doing the thing they said they were going to do. It's not weird to hold someone accountable for a thing they promised.
Jordan:You're weird.
Alban:I have that feeling. I feel like if a situation's weird that maybe I'm the one who's making it weird. But sometimes, no, the awkward thing here is that you said you would do it and you're not doing it now. Yeah. That's what's awkward. It's not that I'm asking you and reminding you of the thing you told me you were gonna do.
Kevin:I totally agree. Now, Juliet, I've got some advice that you didn't ask for, but I'm gonna give it to you for absolutely nothing. And that might be exactly what it's worth. It might not be worth anything. But I listened to your episode and I enjoyed it, but I did make a small note of something that, again, if it were my podcast, if I were a producer on the show, if I were involved with it, I would make this slight change. And it's very minor, but it's how you're introing your episodes. And so you're doing a good job of setting up the discussion that you're about to have, and you're using clips from the episode, sometimes, sometimes one clip, but more often it seemed like multiple clips from the episode. And they're all kind of a little bit out of context from each other, just my experience as a listener. Like I was having trouble kind of connecting the larger context from each little clip that was taken. Uh, and then it goes into the episode. Behind that, there's a background track of like a bass line, but it's a little bit, in my opinion, a little bit busy, a little bit like um, there's too much going on in there.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:And it was a little bit hard for me to track the context of multiple different clips with some music. Even though it's soft, it was still just a little bit busy. And I think it was it's sort of muddled together for me. So it was just that beginning part, and then it kind of fades off as you go into the interview, and then the audio quality was was great from there on out. So it reminded me of uh how I built this, which they also use a baseline background thing, but they just take one clip from the episode and it's sort of a suspenseful baseline and it's very clean and simple. And then they set up a like usually like a little bit of a question and the beginning of an answer with this sort of suspenseful bass line music behind it. And then I'm kind of hooked. Like I have to listen to the episode now to see how that resolves.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:And I feel like that play is similar to what you're doing, but it's it's not quite, in my opinion, you haven't nailed it yet. Yeah. And so I would just revisit that with whoever is editing your podcast. And if you want, I have a couple quick clip examples of sort of where you are today and like where you could be with how I built this. So I'll play those for you now and see if you can get a better sense of what I'm talking about.
Juliet:Thank you, Amy, for coming on how to start up this morning. Before we get going into everything about bootstrapping the business, I'd love it if you could introduce a little bit about yourself and the business that you started.
Kevin:Okay, so there we just hear the background music, which is just there's just sort of a lot going on there. It's mostly this bass line, but it's also a like there, there's kind of a lot.
Jordan:Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of funky. Like I was grooving to it, but I don't know if that's what she was going for.
Kevin:I do like the music, but it's not really building anything for me. And so I want to con like contrast that with uh the how I built this up intro. Like, listen to this.
Nilay:How much do you guys did you guys have to put in, the three of you, to get this off the ground?
Nilay Guest:I remember, do you remember this, Slava? I remember each of us committing $30,000.
Kevin:Okay.
Nilay Guest:The tone was so different.
Kevin:Yeah, it's not a true crime podcast, but it they are still using the music to build suspense around just a business question, really. Like, where is this gonna go? Where is this? And that to me is a little bit more engaging and a little bit more of a hook for me to listen to the episode. And it's also a lot simpler. It's just doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. It's not like I'm not dancing, but I am getting sucked in.
Jordan:It's almost like a it's almost like a BPM issue. Like, I'm sure that she wants something that feels upbeat and positive, but if we were to just kind of like dial back the like beats per minute a little bit, it might just like mellow out a little bit. It's not spooky, you know. Like the the how I built this one is like a little spooky to me, but she could do something that's just a little bit more chill and sort of has that same vibe that she's going for, but not as distracting. Interesting.
Alban:All right. I knew she looked familiar.
Jordan:Do you know Juliet?
Alban:Yeah, you see her photo in the artwork, and I was like, she just reminds me of somebody, and I couldn't figure it out. She looks a lot like this woman. That is that woman. That is Juliet. I met her in London in 2022. I've met her in London. No way. We went to the podcast show, and I think this is at a pub. Maybe we went with James Cridlin. It might have been the Sher Party, but we took a photo together, and that's just funny that I saw the photo and I was like, man, she looks so familiar.
Jordan:Where have I seen her before?
Alban:Where have I seen her before in real life? Anyway, that's uh that's so funny to see some of these podcasts again.
Jordan:Our final feedback is for Jewel Kim from This Is How You Think. And Jewel wrote in saying that she just started her solo podcast this year. She's been looking for any feedback that might help to make the show more engaging or compelling to listeners. And so far, the only response I've gotten, even when I've asked, is just keep going. To which I say, to be fair, Jewel, you were only seven episodes in, and actually your podcast is really good. So I somewhat agree with that, but I'm willing to step in and give you actual feedback on your podcast. So, what Jewel says that she's struggling with the most is the recording session itself. So she's hitting these roadblocks where she's struggling with like mic technique and stumbling over words and also finding the right energy to match the topics that she's discussing. This resonated with me so much. This is this was me when I first started my podcast. She said, I usually end up recording two to three versions of an episode just so I can piece together the best parts when it's time to edit. And I too was a perfectionist when I first started and I would re-record things and it would get to the point where my energy would actually drain just from the recording session itself. And I would just feel the sense of like defeat the second I flubbed something or I said something wrong, and I was just like, I have to record this again. Can't believe it. And then you'd just kind of like Frankenstein together an episode. And that takes so much energy. And so I think that what Jules running into is this need to be perfect in her podcasting. And that probably comes from a sense of like insecurity about like being judged by other people, feeling, I mean, I could be completely wrong, but this is my interpretation of what's going on is that she's she's feeling the pressure of putting out content and putting herself out there and being vulnerable and you know, giving advice. And then she's opening herself up to the threat of judgment from others. And so I think that over time you're gonna let that go. So, my feedback for the recording fix is I think that stumbling usually happens when you're trying to sound written or perfect. So, to get over this, I recommend that you play with different outlining techniques. And so some people feel so confident and they feel a lot better when they've scripted everything out and they just read it out and it sounds natural and it's totally fine. And then you have other people like Kevin who just show up and there's like a couple bullet points on the outline, and he's like, great, let's go. I feel great. And then you have people in between, like me, who maybe just script out the segues into different segments until I start feeling like more confident. So just play with it, figure out what works best for you. And then on energy, what I thought was really interesting, looking at Jules about her podcast, if you read her podcast description, she has a very sassy photo, a very sassy description. And it's almost like this different approach to mental health and like setting healthy boundaries. And she's she's very cheeky in her description. And then when I listen to the actual episode, she seems very soft and sweet and sensitive.
Jule:He's talking to his friend who just broke up with his girlfriend. And his friend is so emotionally invested that he just can't let go. And my client is questioning why is it so hard for his friend to cut off that attachment? Like just make a decision and do it.
Jordan:And so I'm wondering if there's some sort of like disconnect going on between what she actually wants this podcast to be, and then when she gets into the actual episode, she starts feeling that imposter syndrome, maybe, and then kind of pulls in.
Kevin:Jordan, I think that's really, really good advice. We forget this all the time, but it's so different when you're on in front of the microphone versus when you're in the earphones, like listening.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:It's such a big difference. On one hand, when you're behind the microphone, you feel like you're sending this message out, like you're presenting or something like that. But that's never how I consume it. I never fire up a podcast and consume it as as if I'm feeling like I'm an audience in an audience of thousands around me. I don't, I just feel like I'm one person listening to one other person.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:And so I think we have to remind ourselves when I listen to Jewel record and her voice, it feels so personal to me. First of all, her voice is absolutely lovely and the audio quality is super pure. And I just feel like I'm in a quiet room listening to her speak to me, just me.
Jordan:It's very severance.
Kevin:Yeah, it really is. Yeah. It's it's wonderful.
Jordan:Oh, yeah. Also think about how would you talk to your friend or family member if they came to you with this problem? So I think what she's running into is she's feeling like she wants to approach some sensitive topics with sensitivity. But I would encourage you to maybe think like, how would I tell my friend about this? How would I talk to my family member? Would I just be like, I get it, I understand where you're coming from, but here's why this is not good for you. And I don't know, just be more casual with it, perhaps.
Kevin:When you're giving that advice, I love it. Just make it a little bit more like you're talking to your friend, just like Jordan is recommending, and less like you're presenting to an audience. It feels very personal to me when I'm listening, except for some of the words that you're using feels a little bit more like a presentation instead of just a one-on-one conversation. And I'm on the listener side, I'm just like, Jewel, it's just me and you. Like, chill out. Like, just don't be so formal because your advice is beautiful. It sounds great.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:But like there's not a bunch of people here. It's just me and you. And so as an audience member, I would just want a little bit more of the casualness to the conversation, to the vibe.
Jordan:Yeah. Jewel could be a professional like audiobook reader. She just, I could feel the empathy coming through her voice. I could feel that she cares so deeply. But yeah, I think that there is like a little bit of chill that needs to happen, especially given, you know, what her branding is appearing to be, you know.
Alban:I kept hearing something that I hear myself, which is you want this to be perfect. And so you're going quite a bit slower. And you kind of need to get, it's not like get out of your own head. It's just like don't watch what you're saying because that's what the edit's for. And so you can just kind of let it rip a little bit. You can just say what you're feeling, not really think through it, and trust when I come to the edit, that's when I can make any of these changes that I want to make later.
Jordan:Absolutely.
Kevin:But one of the things you mentioned though was mic technique, and you're nailing that. It sounds incredible. Don't like check that box off. You're nailing that. No notes. Yeah, it sounds really good.
Jordan:All right. Well, thank you to everyone who sent in your podcast for feedback. I know that that can be a really scary thing. I hope that our feedback was constructive and good, and it helps other people who might be struggling with some of the same issues because we're all in the same boat. Okay, let's get into fan mail. Um, our first message was sent in by Jerry Barber from Gleaning Mustard Seeds. And Jerry sent his recording checklist over in response to our podcasting workflow episode. And Kevin, I wanted to take a note on his checklist, he has printer off. So it goes transcript, voice warm-up, printer off. And I laughed so hard.
Kevin:Yes, I've got a printer right behind me that goes, it goes, it does go off all the time, right in the middle of our recordings.
Jordan:Yeah, your kids will just send something to the printer right while we're recording. And I think that is a very understated tip.
Kevin:Yeah, that's a good one. I like that checklist. Maybe you can throw it in as some chapter artwork so people can look. I would add, oh, oh, computer focus. Good. I was gonna say phone focus, but yeah, focus mode. Yeah.
Alban:Printer for me is in a different room, but it's on the same circuit breaker as the light in this office. And there's something about laser printers that is a pretty heavy draw right when it starts. And so the lights will just kind of get a little flicker in there. So printer off. I'm on board with that, even if it's not the same room. Yeah, it's just distracting.
Jordan:All right. And then we also had Dave Jackson from School of Podcasting Ride Ends say, you guys might try the road connection service, as you all have roadcasters. I had someone connect me to roadcaster to roadcaster, and it was like they were in the room with me. I actually didn't know that road had a like remote recording service.
Kevin:Yes, they do. And I have um fought with it to the point of which I never want to consider using it again.
Jordan:Sorry, Dave.
Kevin:Unfortunately.
Jordan:Welp.
Kevin:Yeah, I think it's called Road Call Me or something like that. And like to be fair to Rode, I think I might have tried it like the week they launched it, and so maybe they were still working the bugs out or something like that. But there is a way to configure your Rodecaster, and you say whether you're a host or a guest, and if you're a host, it gives you a code, you can give that to somebody else, and then they can put in the code and it's supposed to connect you and yada yada yada. Didn't work, fought with it forever, kept saying it wasn't connecting to the internet. It's clearly connected to the internet. I mean, whatever. But unfortunately, I got to the point that sometimes you reach with technology where you're just like, I am so frustrated with this, I never want to consider even trying it again. Yeah. Like I, you know, an hour in and it was for something so simple it would just wouldn't work. I was like, I'm out. So I won't ever be trying that. But I'm glad it worked for you.
Jordan:I was gonna say maybe one of our listeners can test it out and let us know how it goes. All right. And for our next episode, we want to talk about how to start a podcast in 2026. So, from our listeners, we want to know what do you wish you knew when starting your podcast, or what tool exists today that you wish you had when you were first starting your podcast, you know, however long ago, because things are moving fast. So be sure to tap the text show link in the show notes to send in your response. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
Alban:One of my favorite things that we do at work is every Monday morning you get this question, what did you do over the weekend? And it can't be work related. Probably shouldn't be working on the weekend anyway. We get two days off spending with your family. But right now, near Christmas, everybody is posting stuff that are like their Christmas traditions. And it's really fun just to see how different other people's Christmas traditions are, but they're just so fun. Like Jordan, you posted one where you took your girls shopping and then you took them to get boba tea.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And some people go skiing. And, you know, I posted that we watch some old Christmas movies and then other people in the company. So anyway, I was just it's something I've enjoyed. What are some of the traditions you guys like?
Jordan:You know, it's hard because a lot of our family has like moved away, or a lot of our family of friends. And so it's kind of starting to just be us. And I'm in this weird limbo stage where a lot of my traditions aren't really working for just like a small family like ours. And so I'm actually kind of in the I'm window shopping right now for family traditions because my kids have asked me like what we're gonna do on like Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and stuff like that. And I'm just like, man, I don't know.
Kevin:Oh, well, you've come to the right place. I'm dialed, I'm locked on that.
Jordan:Okay.
Kevin:Okay. Starting on Christmas Eve, right? Christmas Eve tradition is Christmas Eve service. And then on the way home, stop and get Chinese food. I don't know why. I don't know when this started, but sometime around the first year or two of us having kids, we're like, we're not cooking when we get home after church, and we've got to wrap presents after we get the baby down. And we're not, you know, like what's open, and the only thing open is Chinese, and we're like, oh, cool. New tradition, Chinese food, Christmas Eve.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:Done. So that still carries forward to our two of our children are, I think, legally, well, one will be a legal adult the two days after Christmas, the other one is an adult, and then we only have one teenager. So but we're still doing it. So 20 years in, doing it. The next tradition is this one started seven, eight years ago. And we take one gift for each of the kids and withhold it from under the Christmas tree, and we hide them somewhere around the house. And then once they get done with Christmas, there is always an envelope tucked in the tree somewhere, and they pretend like they still don't know it's there, which is very sweet of them. And I say, Oh, what's that envelope in the tree? And they go and they look, and that is the first clue for the Christmas scavenger hunt of that year.
Jule:Oh, yeah.
Kevin:And so they open up the clue, they solve the puzzle, which then reveals where the next clue is hidden. They run over to that place, they find the next clue, solve the puzzle, and they go to whatever, to like, I don't know, five or six different clues till finally it leads them to whatever the garage, and that's where there's three more gifts hiding, and then they bring them in. Okay.
Jordan:I'm stealing that one a thousand percent.
Alban:We've always done scavenger hunts in my family, but we just do them randomly in the gift giving. It's so much of a better idea for it to be the final gift, and it's like, oh, it's all done. Yeah. Oh, what's that one in the tree? And then you send them on the wild goose chase.
Jordan:I am an only child, and like my parents never took the time to do a scavenger hunt. And so that didn't even like occur to me. Like, I feel like just I don't know, a light turned on and I can like finally see. I'm just like, what? That's an option.
Kevin:Yeah. A couple years ago, I took like clue number three and I put them in Ziploc baggies and tied them to rocks and threw them in the bottom of the freezing cold pool. And then I said, like, you cannot use like the pool net or anything. You have to jump in and swim down to get the next clue.
Jordan:I don't think I'll be doing that. It's like 20 degrees here.
Kevin:I know. And then last year I made them um like run across the street to a neighbor's house and sing a Christmas carol to get the next clue.
Jordan:Oh my god.
Kevin:So the neighbor had the clue. So I get more creative every day.
Jordan:See, I could do I could send the kids to the cigar lounge across the street.
Kevin:Cigar lounge on Christmas morning.
Jordan:No, this is such a good idea. I had like because they were asking me, like, Mom, can we play white elephant? But it's just us. And I'm like, uh, I don't want to like just give out a bunch of Roblox gift cards again and a white elephant gift. You know what I mean?
Kevin:Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that leads me to tradition three, which is family game night.
Jordan:That's my favorite.
Kevin:So after Christmas dinner, um, my wife and I dress up in reindeer costumes and music starts playing, and we come out and we play reindeer games.
Jordan:Cute.
Kevin:And so it can be things from like um last year we did Christmas trivia where they could win prizes. Um, so we put a bunch of stuff out. So it's sort of a mix between Christmas trivia and uh like uh uh like a Yankee swap steal game. So you um if you get your trivia question right, you can choose a present and unwrap it, or you can steal somebody else's gift type thing. So if you get it wrong, you just keep going. Um this year we're gonna do um, we're gonna borrow something that we did from a company retreat a couple years ago. We're gonna do holiday family feud. So, yep, those are the three main things Chinese food, scavenger hunt, and reindeer games.
Jordan:You are not kidding. You do have this locked in, jeez. You take it very seriously.
Kevin:I love I just love the idea of tradition. Like whether it's fun or not, like we're all gonna we're either gonna look forward to this thing because it's awesome, or we're just gonna put our nose down and do it because it's tradition.
Alban:Yeah. Whatever. I I'm all with you, Kevin. Like, the nice thing about having kids is you only have to do something like two or three years for it to be a tradition. That's right. And then it's pretty much locked in. And we did a lot when I was a kid. We always had a Christmas Eve party. My parents always threw one at their house. It was pretty much the one party they threw every year, and they're doing it again this year. And they'll have like they don't have a very big house, but they'll have a hundred and something people over the course of the night come by. Yeah, it's like almost their entire church will show up at some point. Everyone in the neighborhood, all their friends, everyone knows they do it, and they show up and everyone eats Chinese food because that's the only thing you can get. And so they'll buy a ton of Chinese food and just have it out. It's the same place we went to when we were. I mean, I when I was nine years old, we would go to this place. So 30 years later, it's still the same place. We're still ordering Chinese food from there. It's still just as good as it always was. Uh, so we'll go there for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. We now set aside for the, you know, the three of us until it's into the afternoon, and then we'll go spend it with my wife's family because we pretty much have given up having Christmas with my family. Instead, we try to do Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with her family so that you kind of build the traditions in with each family. And so it's funny, both of my brothers, when they got married, they've kind of done the same thing where they're like, Christmas is your family, and most people, Christmas is more important for them. But so for the family I grew up in, we've really gone all in on Thanksgiving traditions.
Jordan:Yeah. Well, awesome. Thanks, guys. Calvin, I know that you're the one that introduced this, but I think I got more out of it.
Alban:Good. Well, I I enjoy it. I I've enjoyed seeing the ones that you've posted. I know you're you're probably experimenting with some, but it's just fun to see what other people are doing. And it's a good reminder that even with all the shopping and all the obligations and all the wrapping and all the Christmas card to send and the people to you know thank and everything to do, the main thing is you want to spend some time with your family and just celebrate the season. So I love seeing both of you doing that.
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