Shownotes
I had two people ask me about the "Behind the Scenes" operations of the School of Podcasting. I was nervous about doing this episode. If you're new to the show, I normally don't talk about myself for 47 minutes. As I had two people ask similar questions, I thought I'd share information about:
Where I Started (start ugly - great book)
My first podcast setup
My first "business office"
Why and how I upgraded (and why you probably don't need to).
What I'm using now for the podcast and the business.
I also mention the Podcaster Happy Hour (check out this new networking and education event).
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Question of the Month
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Mentioned In This Episode
Join the School of Podcasting Community
Ask Ralph Christian Finance Show
Wave Business Software (you might check out Moxie as well)
Ray Edwards ClarityScribe
Mentioned in this episode:
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Question of the Month: Promoting Interviews
How do you approach a podcast host if you are the guest about having them promote the episode, and likewise when you are the host, how do you like to be approached. I need your answer by October 25, 2024 at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/question Thanks to Kim Newlove from the Pharmacist's Voice
Live Appearances
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Transcripts
Ever wonder what it's like to be a podcast consultant or ever
Speaker:wonder what it's like to be Dave Jackson? Well, I had 2 members of the
Speaker:school of podcasting throw questions at me. And so today, I'm gonna kinda peel
Speaker:back the curtain and talk about how much it costs for me to
Speaker:run The School of Podcasting. Let's start the show.
Speaker:Podcasting since 2 1,005. I am your
Speaker:award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson, thanking you
Speaker:so much for tuning in. If you are new to the show,
Speaker:this is how I help you plan, launch, grow, and if
Speaker:you want to monetize your podcast, my website
Speaker:is school of podcasting.com. Use the coupon code
Speaker:listener when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription
Speaker:and that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. And I
Speaker:gotta tell you I am really, like, not
Speaker:comfortable right now and I've actually had to pull myself off
Speaker:the couch because I'm going to talk about me
Speaker:today. And, a, if you're brand new to
Speaker:the show, go listen to any other one, but but this one. I'm gonna kinda
Speaker:bring in some some insights, but
Speaker:I had 2 people, Stephanie Graham. You might remember her.
Speaker:She was in the hot seat a couple weeks ago, nosyaf.com,
Speaker:and Kim Newlove from The Pharmacist's Voice. Both
Speaker:asked questions about kind of behind the
Speaker:scenes of Dave Jackson, I guess, we could call this title.
Speaker:And so I wanna bring up some things first because here's
Speaker:why Stephanie kinda brought it up. Stephanie and I were
Speaker:doing some coaching, and she said, wow. Your background looks
Speaker:cool. What all is going on there? And I said, well, realize
Speaker:I started in 2,005. So what
Speaker:you're seeing right now is, you know,
Speaker:19 years later, I did not start where I
Speaker:am. And so that can really
Speaker:kill your mentality because you look at where
Speaker:you are, and you look at somebody who's been doing it for a while and
Speaker:you're like, I can't compete with that. And I
Speaker:understand that, but it's one of those things where
Speaker:I don't want to what's the word?
Speaker:I don't want to fertilize that thought that, oh, I can't compete.
Speaker:Look. You start ugly. You start where you are, and you move on from
Speaker:there. And then over the years, I'll talk about how I
Speaker:added new things and such as we go along. But
Speaker:I'm I'm really worried that when you hear where I'm at,
Speaker:that, like, you think, oh, that's where you need to start. And, no, you
Speaker:start where you are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker:so before we jump into the details, I thought I'd stare stare. I
Speaker:thought I would share some just facts I found
Speaker:about Michael Jordan because he's considered
Speaker:the best basketball player ever. There are those that might argue
Speaker:LeBron James. But the thing about Michael is,
Speaker:if you talk to anybody, was his work ethic. But here's the thing.
Speaker:Michael Jordan did not make his high school varsity basketball
Speaker:team, talk about starting ugly, until his junior year
Speaker:after he finally hit a growth spurt. So if you're like, oh, I
Speaker:can't do this because I'm not well, you know, you keep going at
Speaker:it. And so many people have just
Speaker:said, you can't outwork Michael Jordan.
Speaker:James Worthy, who later played for the Lakers, said after
Speaker:about 2 and a half hours of hard practice, I'm walking off the floor
Speaker:because he played with Michael in college. And he said, I'm drenched
Speaker:in sweat. I'm tired. And here comes Michael pushing me back on the
Speaker:floor, wanting to play a little 1 on 1, wanting to see where
Speaker:his game was. He says, I don't do things half heartedly
Speaker:because I know if I do, then I can expect half hearted
Speaker:results. That is Michael's quote. Another famous
Speaker:athlete, Tiger Woods, said, people don't understand
Speaker:that when I grew up, I was never the most talented. I was never
Speaker:the biggest. I was never the fastest. I was never the
Speaker:strongest. The only thing I had was my work ethic, and that has
Speaker:been what has got me so far. If we look at LeBron
Speaker:James, someone I'm a fan of being from Akron, Ohio, he
Speaker:said, he would get a special 4 page scattering report
Speaker:before every game. His teammates got the 2 page report
Speaker:because, you know, LeBron wanted the full report. He could run
Speaker:when he played for the Miami Heat. He could run every play in the playbook
Speaker:from all 5 positions. And he's
Speaker:improved his field goal percentage 7 years in
Speaker:a row. He keeps a strict diet, refusing to eat red meat or
Speaker:pork, and he eats all sorts of healthy food.
Speaker:So constant improvement and a work ethic
Speaker:is kind of the things that ran through those three people.
Speaker:And my first job out of college, I was a copier
Speaker:technician, and the place I worked for had giant
Speaker:signs everywhere that just said constant improvement. And
Speaker:that's where I eventually went from being a copier
Speaker:technician to training people on how to run their equipment,
Speaker:which led to computer training, which led to all sorts of other things.
Speaker:But I learned when you're in education, if
Speaker:you're not learning, you're going backwards. That's just the
Speaker:way life is. And so with that,
Speaker:I started in my brother's basement. And you've probably heard me say that
Speaker:a 1000000 times, but I say that because it was not pretty.
Speaker:It was not fancy. I had a a pipe behind me
Speaker:praying that no one would flush the toilet. I had a water heater
Speaker:to the right of me and a water bed
Speaker:behind me because I needed a bed. At the time, I'd just
Speaker:gone through bankruptcy and a divorce, and they had a bed. And I'm like, I
Speaker:don't care if it's a water bed. We'll just pretend it's 1976.
Speaker:And then way over on the other side of the room was a furnace. So
Speaker:not exactly your best, you know, studio
Speaker:type situation, but it worked.
Speaker:I am a musician at the time. I was playing in bands, so I had
Speaker:a really old beat up Shure SM 58.
Speaker:There's nothing more fun when you play in a band and you're singing back up
Speaker:and some drunk comes and hits the microphone and hits you
Speaker:in the face with a microphone or tips it over. Or I remember
Speaker:one time, I was playing, and this guy had knocked
Speaker:over the the microphone down at the the cover. Alright.
Speaker:Great. And then he came up. He was, like, 64, 65. He's a huge person,
Speaker:and he's drinking with a pitcher of beer. He kept saying, I'm a big man.
Speaker:I have a big beer. And then later spilled it all over me and my
Speaker:guitar. And, I started to take off my guitar and go after him because it's
Speaker:one thing to, you know, knock me in the teeth of the microphone or whatever.
Speaker:It's another thing when you spill beer on my baby, on my guitar.
Speaker:And luckily, the lead singer, stopped me from doing thumb something
Speaker:stupid. But, nonetheless, I had a microphone.
Speaker:I had a little baby mixer, and I figured out that I could plug
Speaker:the microphone into the mixer and then take the RCA,
Speaker:output of the mixer into the line input of the computer,
Speaker:and I could record. Not pretty, not great, not the best
Speaker:equipment, but it worked, and I sounded like this.
Speaker:To, you know, keep the cycle going that your first podcast is usually
Speaker:pretty awful. What I'm just gonna do first is explain to you who the heck
Speaker:you're talking about and and why I've done this. So again, my name is Dave
Speaker:Jackson. I I live in Ohio, and I'm currently a,
Speaker:I teach software and I do tech support. I've been doing
Speaker:training for many, many, many moons. I've been
Speaker:the head of a training department for a $40,000,000 company here
Speaker:in Ohio, but I took my strengths, which is basically training.
Speaker:And I think I have a I've been told told I have a a good
Speaker:skill. I don't have a master of the English language. That's one thing.
Speaker:And so, eventually, I got married, moved to Cleveland, had a
Speaker:horrific marriage, got divorced, inherited a
Speaker:lot of debt, and moved back to
Speaker:Akron. And along the way, I have lived I had
Speaker:my own business above a deli
Speaker:in Cleveland, Ohio when I lived there. So I would come home with smelling like
Speaker:rotisserie chicken because I was above the deli that was right beneath
Speaker:me. I had another business office. And for the record, if
Speaker:you ever decide to, like, hey. I'm gonna get an office.
Speaker:The Internet does not come at the same price
Speaker:that you pay at home. When it's home, it's x amount of money. And I'm
Speaker:like, yeah. I I need the Internet. And they're like, it's x amount of money.
Speaker:I'm like, what? And they're like, yeah. It's for a business. I'm like, well,
Speaker:yeah. A business, but, really, this is just a spare bedroom about 12 blocks
Speaker:down the street. They're like, we don't care. So Internet went went way,
Speaker:way up. So there is some things that
Speaker:you can benefit by staying at home. And if you wanna
Speaker:save on your taxes, go see my buddy Ralph over at Ask Ralph
Speaker:podcast. But Stephanie had asked, what do you
Speaker:pay for the School of Podcasting? And she's not
Speaker:trying to get in my wallet. She's just curious, like, what does it take to
Speaker:be Dave Jackson? And it's really hard because I have so many shows
Speaker:about podcasts to just separate the expenses for the school
Speaker:of podcasting because there are some things I do because I have many shows
Speaker:about podcasting. But the first one, I paid $20 for a
Speaker:media host. Now for many, many, many, many years,
Speaker:19, I was on Libsyn. And as I said last week,
Speaker:nothing wrong with Libsyn. Absolutely not. And, but I
Speaker:recently moved to Captivate because I
Speaker:left Lipson. I was the head of podcaster education there. You'll
Speaker:hear where I'm going next week, by the way. And I have moved
Speaker:that show to Captivate. And so because Captivate has a really
Speaker:cool dynamic tool, and Libsyn does have a dynamic tool,
Speaker:but it's much more expensive made for giant networks
Speaker:with lots of details that I just didn't need. So $20 a month for hosting.
Speaker:My web host is podpage. And so for
Speaker:me, if you're just starting out, choose the $29
Speaker:plan as the middle option. If you want the cool, like, the really fun
Speaker:tools, go with the elite program. And you may be thinking,
Speaker:$29. I mean, I can get a media host for
Speaker:18. Right? If you're using something like SiteGround or
Speaker:$25 if you're using site or, not site engine,
Speaker:WP Engine. But for me, when I've used
Speaker:WordPress, I then had to spend a $119 a year on
Speaker:Wordfence and then x amount of money on this plugin and
Speaker:x amount of money on that plugin. And I was like, you know what? I'd
Speaker:rather just have a $29 PodPage account
Speaker:and not have to worry about backups and all this
Speaker:other stuff. So I love PodPage. Another example
Speaker:of I moved, The School of Podcasting is now in Captivate.
Speaker:And, again, because I'm using dynamic tools, I moved my other show,
Speaker:Ask the Podcast Coach, to Buzzsprout.
Speaker:And by using PodPage for
Speaker:Ask the Podcast Coach, I don't have to do anything. I literally I
Speaker:I redirected my feed, and everything just updated.
Speaker:On The School of Podcasting, I'm using WordPress where
Speaker:I manually would grab the direct link to the MP 3 file on
Speaker:Libsyn and then put it into PowerPress, which is a WordPress
Speaker:plugin. And, yeah, guess what? I have to change
Speaker:930 some episodes now. So I'm
Speaker:actually keeping my Libsyn account open at the smallest
Speaker:value as I slowly manually update
Speaker:that. So that's when I was like, oh, I shoulda used PodPage for that.
Speaker:So $29 for web hosting. Now I have an email
Speaker:list, and I cannot I echo everything
Speaker:that I've ever heard from every other entrepreneur. I should have started an
Speaker:email list sooner. And so what I do is
Speaker:there's a website called AppSumo, and I'll have links to
Speaker:these out in the show notes. AppSumo has a lot of really
Speaker:cool tools. And usually what it is, it's brand new
Speaker:software that wants to get a lot of people on their
Speaker:platform so that they kinda build up a bunch of buzz.
Speaker:And some of their products, they actually build their own. And so for my
Speaker:email list, I use SendFox. It's a single
Speaker:payment, $50 for life.
Speaker:That's it. And I've done that for years now. If you want to, you can
Speaker:upgrade for a whopping $10 a month, and your email will get delivered a
Speaker:little faster. But there's that. And then I have
Speaker:that's for kind of my if you sign up, if you go to school of
Speaker:podcasting.com/daily, that is that.
Speaker:If you go to podcasterhappyhour.com
Speaker:and you should sign up for that because we've got some really cool things coming
Speaker:up at the end of the month, some demos. And if you are
Speaker:kind of a person that really likes the networking that happens at
Speaker:trade shows, that's kinda what this is, and that's gonna be a monthly
Speaker:thing. So that is through SendFox. When you go over there, you'll see a SendFox
Speaker:landing page. Now for me, just communicating with my audience, not
Speaker:really a ton of marketing, I use Substack
Speaker:because it's free. Normally, I'm not a big fan of free stuff because it tends
Speaker:to go out of business, but I use Substack for
Speaker:that. Now for my scheduling, because if you're gonna be doing
Speaker:guest interviews, we talked about that a couple episodes ago
Speaker:about the pros and cons and how to do interviews right. I
Speaker:use TidyCal. It is a one time fee, $29.
Speaker:Now when it first came out, it was a little wonky. And so I quit
Speaker:using it, but since then, they have fixed it, and it's been
Speaker:pretty rock solid ever since. And if you're a coach, you can
Speaker:actually have people schedule your time
Speaker:and pay for it at the same time. It's pretty cool. $29
Speaker:onetime fee through AppSumo for
Speaker:$13 a month. Now that is a yearly one. I think
Speaker:it's maybe 15, 20 a month, but I use Hindenburg.
Speaker:And you could say, well, Dave, you could edit in Audacity.
Speaker:And I could, but I like to do narrative style interviews from
Speaker:time to time. I just like it's a cleaner look.
Speaker:It's, for me, less stressful in a way to edit in
Speaker:Hindenburg than Audacity. But I do know people that make a living
Speaker:editing, you know, podcasts in Audacity. There's nothing wrong with that
Speaker:one being free. They just added some new features where now there's a master
Speaker:track, which I love the master track in Hindenburg. It's cool to hear that it
Speaker:came to Audacity. But I'm a big Hindenburg fan. And in the
Speaker:end, anything that makes the process easier, saves
Speaker:me time, or saves me money, I will do it. And you're
Speaker:like, but, Dave, you just said you pay $13 a month. It's not saving
Speaker:you money. Yeah. But it's saving me headaches. And that is worth $13
Speaker:a month. For interviews, I use SquadCast,
Speaker:which is part of Descript, which is a bonus, and I'm paying the
Speaker:monthly fee on that. I believe they're the public fee right now is
Speaker:35, but I bought it back when it was 30. So I think
Speaker:I'm paying 30 a month for that. And I used that to record
Speaker:the future of podcasting with Daniel j Lewis and any interviews like that.
Speaker:And then I used Descript for Ask
Speaker:the Podcast Coach. So, technically, I do use it for the school of
Speaker:podcasting when I do interviews, but that's that is something that I
Speaker:need. And then I use Ecamm. And
Speaker:this is one where I was like, I don't really use Ecamm much for the
Speaker:School of Podcasting when I thought about it. I have done interviews
Speaker:with it for that. But in theory, if I have SquadCast,
Speaker:I don't really need Ecamm. So that one's kind of a question
Speaker:mark. And Ecamm is $40 a month. If that's
Speaker:too much, I I just started using a tool on Ask the
Speaker:Podcast Coach called Evmux. It's $25 a month, and
Speaker:that's great for live streaming as well as recording interviews. So that's something
Speaker:I'm playing with. And you'll notice here as we go along
Speaker:that I like to play with stuff. And,
Speaker:again, if I'm not moving forward in education, I am
Speaker:going backwards. So if we look at that and add that
Speaker:up, I am paying a $132
Speaker:a month. So that's media host, web host,
Speaker:Hindenburg, Descript, and Ecamm. Now, again,
Speaker:if I ditched Ecamm, that's a minus 40. If I
Speaker:ditch SquadCast and just use cleanfeed.net,
Speaker:by the way, that is a free audio only tool,
Speaker:and that will give you one file. Won't give you separate tracks. But if
Speaker:you're just starting out and you wanna do interviews,
Speaker:that's a way to start. And then I paid $78 a one
Speaker:time fee. And so Kim had asked me, what do you consider
Speaker:luxury items? Well, that's the basics right there. And, again, I would probably
Speaker:lose you you know, I could if I was on the cheap, I would
Speaker:lose Descript and SquadCast. I would lose Ecamm,
Speaker:and I would probably use Evmux for live streaming.
Speaker:And then I would use Cleanfeed for interviews because that's free, or
Speaker:Zoom. You could always use Zoom. Not my favorite. But, again, you
Speaker:start where you are, you start ugly, and then later, you move on. I
Speaker:mean, in the early days, I was using Skype for interviews.
Speaker:In fact, in the very early days, I had gone
Speaker:to RadioShack. Yeah. That that doesn't make you sound old
Speaker:at all. I went to RadioShack and bought a suction
Speaker:cup that you stuck on your actual rotary
Speaker:phone and then plugged that into your computer.
Speaker:And it was absolutely horrendous audio quality.
Speaker:But, hey, I was recording the phone call, and I got to interview some,
Speaker:kinda quasi celebrities at the time, which was cool.
Speaker:But what is a luxury podcast item?
Speaker:And so thank you, Kim, for the question. And so here are some things that
Speaker:you don't need but make things maybe a little easier.
Speaker:So one is that I use now. And when I say use,
Speaker:can we put up quotation marks about that? I use
Speaker:Castmagic. And Castmagic is one of the many,
Speaker:many AI tools where you upload the
Speaker:file, It transcribes it, and then it basically
Speaker:it slices it, dices it, even julienne's. And
Speaker:I rarely use any of the stuff it spits out. I on
Speaker:occasion, I'll use the opening paragraph if it's not too hey, everybody.
Speaker:Look at me. Blah blah blah. You know? Even though it's supposed to be
Speaker:writing in my voice, it rarely does. But that is something and you'll
Speaker:hear me mention I've mentioned AppSumo before with ZenFox and
Speaker:TidyCal. I got a lifetime deal for Cast Magic.
Speaker:And so I'm not paying $23 a month. But if you got it now,
Speaker:you would be. And so I keep my eye on
Speaker:AppSumo, but that is a scary place because you end up
Speaker:buying lots of stuff that you don't need. You have to be very disciplined around
Speaker:AppSumo. Right now, I am testing
Speaker:a tool by Ray Edwards. I'm a big fan
Speaker:of It's a basically, an AI tool
Speaker:that helps you write copywriting stuff because Ray is a world
Speaker:famous copywriter. It's called ClarityScribe. Right now, that's
Speaker:a $100. Now my book, that's not a little bit of money.
Speaker:That's that grabs my attention. But I love Ray,
Speaker:and I like AI tools, so I'm playing with it right now. And once I'm
Speaker:done playing with it, unless it's worth a $100, I'm probably gonna turn
Speaker:that off. I have an 11 Labs account.
Speaker:That is a whopping $5 a month. And I use that on occasion
Speaker:if I need some sort of AI voice, or I know they
Speaker:just introduced a noise removal tool. And so
Speaker:11 Labs is kinda fun. I cloned the voice of my
Speaker:grandfather, which was interesting. But just because you can do
Speaker:something, doesn't mean you should. And, I can now
Speaker:make any member of my family cry just by typing in, what do we
Speaker:want grandpa to say? And then send it to them, and they all cry. So
Speaker:it's a really weird tool, but I consider those
Speaker:luxury AI tools. I I am I'm not
Speaker:anti AI. I just to me, it's assisted intelligence,
Speaker:and I can type, and I can think. And I do have
Speaker:an episode coming up that I will explain how AI did save
Speaker:me a lot of time and money. But some of these tools, I'm like, yeah.
Speaker:Look at it. It's got AI. And I'm like, okay.
Speaker:Plus, in the time I've recorded this episode, I mean, we're what
Speaker:about, so I look up. We're 22 minutes in. I'm sure at least 4
Speaker:new services that will help you with AI have already launched.
Speaker:Now some other things, again, we look at luxury, but this
Speaker:isn't really for me. I've bought 4 plugins over the
Speaker:years. Actually, 5. One is dRoom. That's
Speaker:from a a company called Accentize. That was $50.
Speaker:Then I got d Revive Pro from Accentize. That was
Speaker:$300. But I started
Speaker:doing audio editing for people, which I do a little bit
Speaker:of but not a ton. And if you do audio editing,
Speaker:half the fun is cleaning up really bad audio. I mean, even the question of
Speaker:the month, I get some audio that I'm like, you're a podcaster? Not you, of
Speaker:course. But there are other people that I'm like, wow.
Speaker:They're recording from a, you know, standing next to a jet engine
Speaker:apparently. So D Revive to, Pro is
Speaker:$300, but it saves me so much time. So much time. And it
Speaker:was worth the $300. I then used Shep's omnichannel.
Speaker:That replaced a piece of hardware that used to sit on my desk. That's a
Speaker:$50 plug in. Well, I'll have links to these out in the show notes. And
Speaker:then I use dialogue enhance, which is a cool tool
Speaker:that basically can adjust the tone
Speaker:of a track. So I use that a lot on the question of the
Speaker:month because some people are super bassy, some people are kind of a
Speaker:little harsh. It's a little harsh. And so that kinda dials
Speaker:the tone knobs automatically, and that, again, saved me a
Speaker:ton of time. All those saved me a ton of time. Now the
Speaker:other tool that I bought at the time is
Speaker:called iZotope RX. And it was, I wanna say,
Speaker:$800. And I'm slowly finding
Speaker:a plug in here and a plug in there because I think I
Speaker:use the De plosive part of
Speaker:iZotope. I used to use the noise reduction, and that's now been reduced
Speaker:by other ones. And I found a Debreath
Speaker:plugin that might do because that's really all I use it for. Debreath,
Speaker:de plosive, and removing some noise. But there
Speaker:are other tools now that remove noise that are just amazing.
Speaker:So, those are some tools that I've done that, again,
Speaker:if you're not editing audio, you don't need.
Speaker:But if you're interviewing people who have horrible audio,
Speaker:I'm here to tell you they can save you a lot of time. My
Speaker:favorite out of all those well, I have 2. I I will
Speaker:if I don't have my Shep's omnichannel plug in, I
Speaker:I'm I fall into that trick of, oh, I hate the sound of my
Speaker:voice. I love it. And then D Revive Pro saves
Speaker:me, I mean, mountains of time because some of the people I edit for
Speaker:send me they're brilliant people. They're brilliant people. They're
Speaker:actual, like, brain surgeons, but the audio they send me is horrendous.
Speaker:So that's, you know, another if we put all those together
Speaker:now those are one time fees. Those are
Speaker:$466, but I have definitely got my money back from
Speaker:those by doing audio editing. So you don't need those.
Speaker:But if you're doing audio editing, what did it do? It saved me headaches.
Speaker:It saved me time. And so I put the money out
Speaker:there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now as we move on
Speaker:to coaching, this is where I set out to be
Speaker:the guy. I wanted to be the podcast coach. If you wanna
Speaker:know it, that guy knows it. And so I
Speaker:have podcasts. Some of them are just test shows
Speaker:on many, many services. So I still spend $7 a month with Libsyn.
Speaker:I spend $18 a month on buzzsprout. I spend $12 a month on
Speaker:blueberry. And blueberry is the one I need to circle back on
Speaker:blueberry. They've added so much stuff over there. And I
Speaker:was I used to have a class on Blueberry, and the course
Speaker:would go over everything. And they added so much stuff, it became outdated. And I
Speaker:need to circle back and add my blueberry course back. I spent a
Speaker:$180 for the year on Red Circle.
Speaker:And Red Circle is a media host that not many people talk
Speaker:about. I only have them on my radar because if you really,
Speaker:really, really need free, to which I go, you don't need
Speaker:what you need is a job. But instead of Spotify,
Speaker:I would recommend Red Circle. And they've made their free service kinda hard
Speaker:to find now because they figured out, free is not a good
Speaker:business model. Yeah. I know a lot of people that have gone out of business
Speaker:about that. Now some other things for me,
Speaker:now this I guess, we would call these luxury. But to me,
Speaker:again, my goal as a consultant is to stay up
Speaker:on what's going on. And so I have I spend
Speaker:$40 a month on a mastermind that's all about
Speaker:building community. I spend $99 a month
Speaker:in Capt Show. Now Capt Show is a really cool AI
Speaker:tool. And compared to the other ones, it's a
Speaker:little pricey. But I actually don't use CapShow that
Speaker:much. I should. It's a great product. But I like
Speaker:their training that they do. They have a lot of experts come in and
Speaker:talk, and that's where I was kinda like, So I'm not so much that
Speaker:kind of stuff, but I I do like podcast or happy hour. And that is
Speaker:actually a holdover from the days of
Speaker:COVID, and I wanna bring that back. So, again, links to that in the show
Speaker:notes. But that's $99. I kinda consider that a luxury, but kinda
Speaker:not. Then I have already mentioned ClarityScribe.
Speaker:I'm using that now. That is a tool that if you ask me in 3
Speaker:months, I'm probably not gonna use unless it's amazing. But I'm doing it just to
Speaker:stay up to date on what is out there. I use a coaching tool
Speaker:that I spend $60 a year to kind of talk back and forth with
Speaker:people. I use a CRM that's $15 a month. I
Speaker:use another tool for processing invoices and such. That
Speaker:is $16 a month. That's called WAVE. I use
Speaker:Camtasia to do tutorials. Now I realized there are
Speaker:cheaper things than Camtasia. It's a $180 a year. But here's the
Speaker:thing, I've been using Camtasia for at least 30
Speaker:years. Yeah. That's about right. 30. And, like, right
Speaker:now, Buzzsprout just redid their whole back end, so I've gotta
Speaker:redo my Buzzsprout course. And I know
Speaker:Camtasia like the back of my hand. And so I can rip through these
Speaker:tutorials because I know the tool, and that's worth
Speaker:you know, what's what's more, painful? Spending a
Speaker:$180 or going through yet another learning curve? Because I know there's things like
Speaker:DaVinci Resolve and all these other tools. And I'm like, you know what? I know
Speaker:this. And, yeah, a $180 is a lot of money. But
Speaker:for the year, it's a little over, what, $10, something like
Speaker:that. I still spend $69 a year
Speaker:on Microsoft Office, which, again, I could probably lose because I just
Speaker:use Google Docs and Google Sheets now. For my community
Speaker:for The School of Podcasting, there are 2 tools I use. I use
Speaker:Zendler for my courses. So when you look at
Speaker:the if you go to learn.schoolapodcast.com, that is
Speaker:Zendler. It makes my front page for that, handles all the video hosting, all
Speaker:that stuff. That's Zenler. That's 67 a month. And then for the
Speaker:community, I use heartbeat. And I love heartbeat.
Speaker:It's amazing. It's $49 a month, but
Speaker:you guessed it. When I got heartbeat, it was on AppSumo. I got a
Speaker:lifetime deal, and so I'm really not spending any money on
Speaker:heartbeat. And you might say, but, Dave, why don't you just use
Speaker:Facebook? And I realized it's free, and there are people. My
Speaker:buddy, Mark, over at practicalprepping.info has 31,000
Speaker:people in his Facebook group. And I get that.
Speaker:The thing that always makes me worried about Facebook is they can change
Speaker:what you can and can't do in your group. Like, I'm pretty
Speaker:sure I'm, like, 99% sure you can no longer stream
Speaker:live video into your Facebook group. So if you're on Ecamm
Speaker:or Evmooks or whatever, you're doing some sort of thing, I you
Speaker:they blocked it. Because why? Because it's Facebook. And for me, when
Speaker:I went, not gonna use that, I was
Speaker:locked out of my own community. Yeah. So I went into the
Speaker:school of podcasting, and I said, hey. Lunch with Dave starts in 10 minutes,
Speaker:which is a thing I do every Friday. And we all kinda gather together
Speaker:and share and, talk about what's working and what's not.
Speaker:And Facebook labeled that as spam,
Speaker:and I was kicked out. And I literally had to come
Speaker:here onto this microphone and say, does anybody know someone at
Speaker:Facebook? Because I had gone through all the steps to contact
Speaker:Facebook and wasn't getting anywhere, and I had been cut off from
Speaker:my community. And I just went, yeah. Never happening again. So
Speaker:when a heartbeat came up on AppSumo, I was like, yeah.
Speaker:Let's use this. And it's something that, a, is not free, so
Speaker:I have some say in it. Now it's free for me be well, it was
Speaker:it was a one time deal, but I am not, I
Speaker:I know people that have tremendous success on Facebook.
Speaker:I don't trust them. You know, they they they did me wrong. And
Speaker:they did my buddy, Mark Johansen. He got, I think he got
Speaker:suspended for 5 days or something. The like, he got a
Speaker:detention because and what was interesting, Mark shared a link to
Speaker:something on Facebook Marketplace. So he was promoting another
Speaker:Facebook product, and they're like, hey. Stop doing that. It's it's
Speaker:real. So that's why I use heartbeat for that. So if we put
Speaker:those all together on a, let's let's see if I
Speaker:can add these all together.
Speaker:Monthly, I'm paying $422 for
Speaker:that. And yearly, I am paying
Speaker:$489. So if you can buy
Speaker:yearly, I typically especially, like, right now, I'm paying monthly for
Speaker:Zenler, and that's kinda dumb because I'm not moving from Zenler. I know there are
Speaker:cheaper places. There's a really interesting website called Penn
Speaker:site, and it's so cheap. It makes you think, oh, that can't be any good.
Speaker:It's $29 a month. So if you wanna do courses and such,
Speaker:I I would if I was starting today, I'd kick the tires on that.
Speaker:I'd have to check a couple other things, but it is so cheap that you're
Speaker:like, yeah, that can't be any good. So I do spend a fair amount
Speaker:of money. If I put all these together now, for
Speaker:monthly,
Speaker:it is, drum roll, $813. So I have to
Speaker:sell a few members to cover that. And then
Speaker:yearly, I am spending, the
Speaker:survey says, $489. So it's if you ever
Speaker:wonder why is the School of Podcasting, how much do I
Speaker:charge, and I have multiple people that still
Speaker:say you're not charging enough, especially when I added the unlimited consulting.
Speaker:People are like that. No. No. No. You need to charge more. And so that
Speaker:might be something I do in the future. But that is behind the
Speaker:scenes. Now let's get to Kim's question right
Speaker:after this. Let's talk about gear. Shall
Speaker:we? So I said I started off with a very dented Shure
Speaker:SM 58. By the way, you can just buy the little ball that goes on
Speaker:to the top of the microphone to fix that. And I did that,
Speaker:and then I heard Scott Fletcher who just sounded amazing. You
Speaker:may have heard Scott if you ever listen to Building A Better Dave. He sounds
Speaker:like this. Hi. Hi there. Hi, Dave.
Speaker:Hi, Dave. Hi, Dave. Hello,
Speaker:Dave. Dave Jackson. Dave Jackson.
Speaker:Dave Jackson. Alright. Enough of that shenanigans. But I
Speaker:asked Scott, what microphone are you using? And it was some
Speaker:AKG thing, and I ended up
Speaker:buying it. And it turns out it didn't make me sound like Scott
Speaker:Fletcher. And then I bought somebody else had a microphone. It was green
Speaker:and yellow, and it said MXL on it. And it was expensive,
Speaker:and it was a condenser. And I, again, was in the basement next to the
Speaker:water heater. Like, not a good place for a condenser microphone, so it's
Speaker:not the gear. I got an ElectroVoice
Speaker:RE 3 20, and I got that through a
Speaker:barter. I actually got a sponsor for my show for ElectroVoice
Speaker:microphones, and they sent me one. And this here's a
Speaker:fun learning thing. They sent me the bullet points. It was like, oh, they
Speaker:use biunium magnets blah blah blah. It was all
Speaker:this like the the total nerd engineer had written the bullet points, and
Speaker:I was like, and my even my audience wrote in and said, why don't you
Speaker:just tell us about the microphone, Dave? And I was like, hey, it looks
Speaker:cool, It sounds great. And there's no plosives, and
Speaker:there's no proximity effect, which means you can get close to it without it just
Speaker:being giant, you know, balls of bass. And, that made much
Speaker:more sense. But in the end, I went to ship the microphone back, and they're
Speaker:like, well, what if you just, you know, talk about it for a couple
Speaker:months? And I was like, okay. So I got that microphone
Speaker:for kind of free, but I didn't pay any money for it. I paid
Speaker:for it with sponsorship. And then I used
Speaker:that forever. And then the SM 7 B, the you
Speaker:know, everybody knows that as the Joe Rogan microphone. And I used
Speaker:that for years. And then when the
Speaker:RODE PodMic came out, I used to have a rep at RODE, and I would
Speaker:get free stuff. And you always, always, always have to
Speaker:disclose when you get free stuff. And I must have said something. I
Speaker:remember when the Rode caster came out, the first one. And I said, here's
Speaker:what I like about it, and here's what I don't. And I don't think I
Speaker:don't know what happened, but I don't get free stuff from RODE anymore. So all
Speaker:the microphones I use now, I pay for. So I'm talking right now into the
Speaker:RODE PodMic USB, and I like it. I just I don't know.
Speaker:I put on the SM 7 B because, you know, it's the Joe Rogan microphone,
Speaker:and then my ears went, I kinda like that other one
Speaker:better. And that's really what's the best microphone? The one that
Speaker:works for you as long as it's not a Blue Yeti.
Speaker:Blue Yetis are not a bad microphone. You just there's so much. You have to
Speaker:do this. Don't talk into the top. Make sure the gain is right. I'm just
Speaker:here to tell you it's overpriced. Get yourself a Samsung q 2u is a great
Speaker:place to start. But, 1, here's a quick side
Speaker:tangent about how it's not the gear. Nuno
Speaker:Bettencourt is the lead guitar player of the band
Speaker:Extreme, and he actually was lucky enough to go to Eddie Van
Speaker:Halen's house. And Edward was there
Speaker:sounding like Edward with his guitar and his rig, and it was, wow,
Speaker:there's Eddie. And they took a break, and Ed looked
Speaker:at Nuno and said, yeah. Go ahead and play my rig. I wanna kinda tweak
Speaker:some knobs while it and the Nuno was like, I'm
Speaker:finally all these years that I've been trying to play the guitar,
Speaker:I've been trying to sound like Eddie Van Halen. I'm using his
Speaker:gear. I'm going to finally achieve my dream
Speaker:and sound like Eddie Van Halen. But when he was asked about it,
Speaker:well, it crushed. It sound like, though, when you're playing through his riff? It sounded
Speaker:about just like you. It sounded just like me. It's I'm telling you. I I
Speaker:I was literally like you could've it sounded like me. Were you disappointed?
Speaker:Super disappointed. I was like I was I was like, I'm never gonna sound like
Speaker:Edward ever. Ever. You know what that that kind of awakening is? Like,
Speaker:that you're never gonna get there? And, but then it made me realize that was
Speaker:the big bitch slap of all times where you realize, holy
Speaker:shit. Shit. It's all about you. It's all about your fingers.
Speaker:So as we talk about gear, realize
Speaker:that in 99.9% of the situations,
Speaker:different gear isn't going to result
Speaker:in a bigger audience, unless your audio is horrendous,
Speaker:unless your video looks like it was done in crayon,
Speaker:that's when equipment really can help.
Speaker:But I thought I would talk about that. So I started off with a $99
Speaker:microphone, eventually switched to a $300 microphone,
Speaker:eventually switched to a 400 or whatever a SM7b is these
Speaker:days. And, really, the only reason I bought that microphone,
Speaker:the s m 7 b, is because it was on sale, and I've always wondered
Speaker:what I would sound like on them. Now here's the
Speaker:thing. The the reason you pull out money is
Speaker:because you're trying to typically solve a problem. Again, it's gonna make you
Speaker:more confident, sound better, save you time, save you
Speaker:money. So when I finally started doing video, I
Speaker:bought these, kind of key lights that I put on
Speaker:stands. And because I had them where they were very, very tall and at the
Speaker:time when I did this, I was actually in an office. I had an
Speaker:office for the school of podcasting, and these
Speaker:stands had to be very wide because the
Speaker:the height of these lights. And they were fine, and
Speaker:it worked, and they were cheap, and I you know, you could see me. Yay.
Speaker:And for a video camera, I used the
Speaker:Logitech C920 because everybody did. And
Speaker:it was a great camera for the time, and I used that for many,
Speaker:many years. Now I moved from Cleveland,
Speaker:and I go into an apartment, and these
Speaker:giant stands are taking up half my office. And so
Speaker:every time I want to go open the window or
Speaker:anytime I'm literally tiptoeing around the desk,
Speaker:and those lights got almost knocked over so many times. And I was like,
Speaker:okay. This this is annoying. And so
Speaker:I got into the El Gato system. And if you've
Speaker:ever heard people talk about the Apple tax, Elgato
Speaker:is a cool system. They have a Stream Deck, and that is oh, look
Speaker:at all the buttons. Holy cow. And if you're doing video, you can have it
Speaker:buttons. Holy cow. And if you're doing video, you can have it change scenes. Like,
Speaker:I can I, right now, can turn off my Elgato key lights with a button?
Speaker:And you feel like, you know, look at I, I'm
Speaker:with a button, and you feel like, you know, look at I
Speaker:I I said, let there be light. Push the button, and there it
Speaker:is. I am the keeper of light. And I can also dim
Speaker:them. You know, you get the idea. And so I got those. Now they're a
Speaker:little more expensive, and I got them with these poles that
Speaker:clamp onto my desk. And as I look right now,
Speaker:those poles are still on my desk, but the lights aren't on there. And it
Speaker:was just one of those things where I saw something and went,
Speaker:oh, that looks cool because
Speaker:I got a RodeCaster, the original one, then I had the
Speaker:RodeCaster 2, and those things take up half my desk.
Speaker:And so then I got the RodeCaster Duo, and I thought I could get
Speaker:these lights off my desk if I bought what's called a
Speaker:Varipole. And a Varipol is
Speaker:kind of this pole that you stick up, and you can also go vertical.
Speaker:You could go from the ground to the ceiling, but I went from wall to
Speaker:wall, and you basically push it out, and then you
Speaker:clamp this thing, and it's it's pressure. It's like a really if you ever seen
Speaker:a pressure rod for, like, your shower, it's kinda like that only it's made for
Speaker:lighting. And I was able to put some clamps.
Speaker:So my lamps are now almost in the ceiling, my in my lights.
Speaker:And I don't have to tiptoe around poles. I've got
Speaker:more room on my desk, and that is a luxury item. I
Speaker:wanna say it was a 150 dollars. Now, why would you spend a
Speaker:$150 on it when the pain of marching around these
Speaker:stands drives you so much nut you know, just so nuts.
Speaker:They're like, man, I would do anything if I could just not have to
Speaker:tiptoe and knock these over for the 8 millionth time. Really? Would you spend
Speaker:a $150? Yes. Yes. I would. That's when you do
Speaker:it. You don't need these things. It's a luxury
Speaker:item. The other day, I was on the way to church,
Speaker:and I'd hit McDonald's. So I had Mcmouthed, you know, not the best
Speaker:smell and breath in the world no matter how when you brushed your teeth. And
Speaker:I was like, oh, wait a minute. There's a drug store up here, but it's
Speaker:a drugstore that's going out of business. And I was like, I just need a
Speaker:little thing of mints. And they didn't have many, and the
Speaker:ones that were there were $4 for this little thing of
Speaker:mints. They weren't even curiously strong, not those mints. It was, like,
Speaker:whatever. And I was, like, but I needed my breath to
Speaker:not smell like, I didn't wanna be like a dragon, right, and just be melting
Speaker:people's faces with my breath. So I spent $4 on
Speaker:a tin of mince. Why? Because the pain and the embarrassment of
Speaker:having bad breath was greater than the pain of
Speaker:taking $4 out of my wallet. That is often what
Speaker:I kinda say a luxury item. Something you don't need, it's
Speaker:something you want. Could I still produce videos with those
Speaker:stands? Absolutely. Could I still produce videos with those? I think they
Speaker:were newer lights or something like that. Yeah. They worked. You could see
Speaker:me. So a lot of this stuff is not something
Speaker:you need, but it's something you want. And almost all of those things,
Speaker:I usually save up for. Before we get out of video,
Speaker:I do recommend the Elgato cameras. There are a couple. And the
Speaker:reason I like them is there's no microphone. Because when you
Speaker:get a camera that has a microphone, it never fails. The more important
Speaker:the interview, that's the time that the microphone that was
Speaker:used to record your side of the conversation was the crappy one
Speaker:on the camera. So that's why I like the Elgato cameras.
Speaker:And if what you have is working for what you're doing,
Speaker:there's no need to upgrade to anything. I'll give you an
Speaker:example. On Saturday morning, my cohost, Jim
Speaker:Collison, uses a Samson q two u microphone. It
Speaker:is probably 10 years old, if not older. And you know
Speaker:what? He sounds amazing. It's probably $60
Speaker:for the microphone. He's never really had gear envy where it's
Speaker:like, oh, I need to I need the Joe Rogan microphone. For
Speaker:years, Leo Laporte was the first big
Speaker:guy that got the Heil PR 40 microphone, and Lee Leo
Speaker:was super popular. So if I just get Leo's microphone, I'll be super
Speaker:popular. And, again, that's not the way it works. But
Speaker:for a while, everybody and their brother was using a Heil PR 40 microphone. And
Speaker:then Joe Rogan came on the scene, and everybody's like, well, I gotta get the
Speaker:microphone that Joe's using. It's not the gear.
Speaker:So how do you know which is the best mic? The one that when you
Speaker:put your headphones on and you start talking into it, you go, hey, I like
Speaker:the way my voice sounds with this. That's when you know you have the right
Speaker:microphone. Yaggy, yaggy, yeah. Yaggy, yeah,
Speaker:yeah. And so, you can start off. Remember, we
Speaker:said start ugly and you don't have to be ugly. You could start off with
Speaker:a Samson q 2u microphone. You could do just
Speaker:audio only. Use Audacity to edit it and use
Speaker:whoever, Captivate, to host your your podcast. You're out
Speaker:$69 one time for your, microphone
Speaker:and $20 a month. Now every media host has a website.
Speaker:I typically don't recommend them because they're very basic. But when
Speaker:you first start off, what do you need? I need a place for people to
Speaker:find me. I need a place for people to follow the show. That's
Speaker:really all you need when you first start off. And I would get I'd spend,
Speaker:whatever, $20 on a domain name. Those are the bare minimums
Speaker:when you first start off. And, again, I would start off with that email list.
Speaker:That would get you going. And then, eventually, the first thing I
Speaker:would update in that scenario would be the website. I'd move the pod page, make
Speaker:it look good, integrate your email with that. It would work great. And
Speaker:then from there, depending on what you're doing,
Speaker:you know, do what can I stay with Audacity? Again, there are lots of people
Speaker:that edit their podcast in Audacity. I would probably move to Hindenburg.
Speaker:But if it's not a pain for you, if you're like, no, I learned Audacity.
Speaker:I love it. Then stay there. Just realize that
Speaker:most of that gear, that envy, comes from
Speaker:comparing yourself to others. And that's always a bad
Speaker:idea. I got stuck in that this week, had a little
Speaker:snarky comment on my Facebook, and I was like, wait a minute.
Speaker:Hold on. You're looking at somebody else. That's not your
Speaker:customer. That's not your listener. It's not your audience. Like, let's
Speaker:go back to looking at the audience and seeing what they want. And Stephanie and
Speaker:Kim threw on those questions, and I'm like, alright. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but I'm
Speaker:gonna talk about me for 47 minutes. Have I really been talking that
Speaker:long? Holy cow. I've got my notes here in front of me. And
Speaker:so with that, I will say thank you so much for tuning
Speaker:in. Just a couple quick reminders. If you haven't gone to
Speaker:podcaster happy hour.com, you wanna sign up for that. Next
Speaker:week, I still you know, we're still doing question of the month,
Speaker:and so that deadline is still there, but we're not doing question of the month
Speaker:next week. Normally, we do that the last Monday of the month, but I
Speaker:will be redoing the big reveal of where I'm working. And I might
Speaker:do kind of a similar to this one, kind of a because of my podcast
Speaker:story to then say, and the last part of this piece is this.
Speaker:Like, that's what's going on in my head. We'll figure that out by next Monday.
Speaker:But thank you so much for listening. If you have any
Speaker:questions, feel free to go to school of podcasting.com/contact.
Speaker:And if you're listening to this on your phone or if you're on the website,
Speaker:there's a link right there in the episode. I would love to get your feedback
Speaker:on this because there was a I like I said, I was just like, oh,
Speaker:talk about me. So, hopefully, you found this useful,
Speaker:got some insights. If not, let me know what what how you would have
Speaker:made it better. And, I'm always open to suggestions.
Speaker:Again, constant improvement is my mantra.
Speaker:I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do, and
Speaker:I'd love to see what we could do together. So until next
Speaker:week, take care. God bless. Class is dismissed.
