Boosting Listener Engagement with AI Voice Cloning

This is an unedited transcript from Castmagic

Dave Jackson [00:00:00]:
Ask the podcast coach for September 21, 2024.

Mark Des Cotes [00:00:04]:
Let's get ready to podcast.

Dave Jackson [00:00:08]:
There it is. It's that music that means it's Saturday. It's time for ask the podcast coach where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting.com, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Collison from the average guy dot tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

Jim Collison [00:00:27]:
Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. We are here a little bit late this morning. Sorry about that. My fault. I came in, was telling Dave my woes. We got distracted. And so, anyways, welcome to Ask the Pod, Jessica.

Dave Jackson [00:00:42]:
Yeah. It's funny. I actually got up earlier than usual and felt like I had all day. And all of a sudden, Jim's like, hey. You never updated the live link. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. That was kind of fun.

Dave Jackson [00:00:53]:
But, you know, it's sometimes you go left to center, you try something new, and then sometimes you just want those things the way they always have been, like starting off your day with a hot cup of java. Do you not have the pot this morning?

Jim Collison [00:01:05]:
No, I do. There it is. I'm like sorry. I'm so distracted.

Dave Jackson [00:01:10]:
Welcome to Ask the Podcast Coach ADHD edition today. And of course, that that steaming hot cup of java is brought to you by our good friend Mark over at yay, this worked, podcast branding. If you need now we talk a lot about artwork because Mark makes really pretty artwork. He's done all of my shows, pretty much the last 5 at least. And but I also wanna remind you that if you need a website or if you need to update your website or if you need anything that and I'm it's just one of those days that, you know, Mark can help you with pretty much everything, whether it's business cards, whether it's a lead magnet. If it's something you want to look good and it's gonna be facing your audience, then you gotta go talk to Mark. And he's gonna sit down with you 1 on 1 to make sure that whatever he makes is in alignment with your brand. And if you're like, Dave, I don't even know what my brand is.

Dave Jackson [00:02:01]:
Well, Mark can help with that. He's the marketing brain. You're the podcaster. When you get together with Mark, you're gonna get your message in alignment so that you can get maximum impact whether it's via audio, video, PDFs, whatever you need. It's all there at podcast branding

Jim Collison [00:02:28]:
dotco. And, of course, big thanks to our good friend Dan LeFebvre over there, based on a true story at basedonatruestorypodcast that's his podcast this week. It's called alright, and it's called Based on True Story podcasts. But this group through this week, Freda, Chaplain, TOKIN there we go. You know, the guy who wrote Lord of the Rings. Yeah, and good fellas is out there.

Dave Jackson [00:02:51]:
TOKIN. TOKIN.

Jim Collison [00:02:53]:
I don't know how they pronounce it. It's available.

Dave Jackson [00:02:55]:
It's It must be a podcast. I'm talking TOKIN.

Jim Collison [00:02:59]:
This could be a super interesting podcast. Dan, thanks. Check it out today: based on a true story podcast.com. Dan, thanks for your sponsorship. This could be an interesting show today. We're both a little rattled, I think. We've had some, you and I have been working on some technology backup. I mentioned on my show on Thursday.

Jim Collison [00:03:18]:
We won't go in, we'll go into this maybe a little bit later.

Dave Jackson [00:03:20]:
But if

Jim Collison [00:03:21]:
it seems like we're a little distracted, it's just because we've been trying to

Dave Jackson [00:03:25]:
because we are. Things working. But I saw this, and I was like, oh, I wanna use this for the beginning today. It says no interaction. I'm podcasting into the void. And he says, the good news, I've been podcasting consistently for almost 3 years. I have recently had 6 great guests that have given me very positive feedback and increased listeners a bit. I always get a 100 or more downloads per episode with the 1st week or so.

Dave Jackson [00:03:49]:
Not bad, but I get no feedback. No comments, no interactions, no corrections. Even when I specifically ask, which is interesting because I told him you got to ask specific questions. But anyway, he says according to analytics, more than 50% of my audience listens to the entire episode. I'm not sure I'm proud of 50%. I'm an old teacher. I'm looking for 80, 90%. Those are b's and a's.

Dave Jackson [00:04:10]:
But anyway, but then he goes No. That No. No. No. Therefore, I'm getting kind of burnout. I've planned episodes for the rest of 2024, but unsure about 2025 and beyond. I'm even developing resentment issues when I'm trying to control, which I'm trying to control. I see.

Dave Jackson [00:04:29]:
This happens when I see other podcasts at my level getting feedback, letters, words or praises to where he then thinks, what about me and my podcast? I know it's pathetic, but it's true. This is merely a venting session. And so there are a couple of things, although I missed it when he said even when I asked specifically because I know a lot of people like, I love to hear your feedback on the show. And I'm like, okay, when you ask a generic question, you're going to get a generic answer. Like, it's good, you know, nothing. But he says he's asking specifically. But when I saw he's getting burnout, followed by I'm looking at my, competition. I was like, yeah, don't do that.

Dave Jackson [00:05:08]:
That really I've seen that just suck the life out of people when they'll be like, I can't believe I'm getting a 100 downloads. That's like 5 classrooms. That's amazing. And they're thrilled to death. And then somebody will go into, you know, some sort of Facebook group and like, hey, we just went over 5,000,000 and they're like, and I don't like it. Don't compare yourself to I now have my new saying podcasting is like darts because if you think about it, your dart game is dependent on one thing. You like, that's it. If you're if you throw a little left, it's your fault.

Dave Jackson [00:05:38]:
If you throw a little right, it's your it's like if you wanna get better at throwing bulls dies, do more of it and find out what you're doing wrong and do less of that. Find out what you're right doing. You know, it's really that. Now granted, you can play darts against somebody and see how you stack up to them. And sometimes that's good. It lets you see maybe you could be better, things like that. But I just, I saw that. And so you were saying, when I say, though, judging that 50% is not a good ratio, you're like, No.

Jim Collison [00:06:05]:
No, it's always lower than you think. And even, even established podcasters who get a lot of feedback, who have a lot of audience engagement, some of those kinds of things, they don't get as, they don't get as much as they'd want either. This is one of those kinds of things that, you know, you get 10 you want 11 you get 12 you want 13. It's, the, the human psyche is built to just continue to want more. I'm not saying you shouldn't that's bad. Use that more as a desire to continue to reach out and reach people. I'm always intrigued, Dave, when we get comments like this or when you read comments like this, and they're like, I'm doing this, and I get 0 feedback. And I, you know, it kind of, you got to have the, have to ask the question, What are you doing? And the statement, Maybe it's you, is probably true.

Jim Collison [00:06:59]:
I don't, listen, I don't mean to be mean in this case. But people who are good at attracting people, it's talent. It's one of those kinds of things that just, some people can do it and others just can't. And so you may, you may not be doing the right things. I, for me, let me just talk personally for me. I don't get a lot of interaction, but I realized my writing interaction is terrible. Like I'm short, I short sentences. I'm kind of grumpy when I'm writing.

Jim Collison [00:07:28]:
I don't write a lot. I don't sometimes I want to respond. Well, yeah, you know what? You have a history of those kinds of things. And people are like, Well, I don't want to, I don't want to send that guy a message. He's gonna bite my head off. So because I, you know, because I am short that way, I'm not encouraging people to send me notes. Now, get me on a call I'll talk to you all day. I mean, I had a 3rd minute call yesterday that went for an hour 10 minutes.

Jim Collison [00:07:54]:
That's a whole different experience. And so the feedback, you might, you might have to think through your feedback and just kind of say, Hey, what is my public persona? And maybe I can, if I can ask some people who would be honest with me, right, because you're listen, your mom's gonna say you're great. But

Dave Jackson [00:08:12]:
if

Jim Collison [00:08:12]:
I could ask some people, Hey, how do I come off publicly? It wasn't until someone told me that honestly one day, they're like, Hey, your written communication and your verbal communication are 2 completely different things. I needed a little self awareness. And I still struggle with the day. It's not like I've over magically overcome that. I just don't like writing. I hate writing. So it comes across as few words. I never say, I hope your day is great, And then start the, you know, or, you know, Hope you're doing well today.

Jim Collison [00:08:44]:
I just start with, I need this from you right now. Kind of thing. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:08:52]:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know with Ralph says it's all about finding contentment. Yep. And I, that's what I said. I said go back and ask yourself why am I doing this? Because if the one thing that leads to burnout is when you don't get your why, you're like, well then why am I doing this? And the answer is I don't know. And then you quit. So think that out. And but I know just moving from Libsyn to PodPage, Libsyn had a lot more tickets.

Dave Jackson [00:09:15]:
And so it was very much do your research, answer the question, get them going, you know, blah blah blah. And at PodPage, we get far less tickets. And so I have the opportunity now. And there are times when when Brandon will say, like, hey, you could have been a little more like you don't have to be so, like you said, short. And I'm just trying to get to the point. And he's like, you know, he's like mixing a little Dave Jackson in there. And I'm like, oh, okay. So I'm just used to, like, getting to the point.

Dave Jackson [00:09:41]:
Here's your answer. Thank you. Goodbye. You know, see you. So that's always kind of fun. We do have a question from the chat room. This is from Mark. He says, what would be the best setup for 3 podcast hosts in the same room to record each host simultaneously on separate tracks? You got 2.

Dave Jackson [00:09:59]:
Well, you got a couple options. The cheap one, $150 right now, the Zoom PodTrak P4 is my favorite piece of equipment because a it's $150. You can record up to 4 people in the same room or 3 people in the same room and somebody on Zoom or 2 people in the same room. 1 person on Zoom and somebody on the phone, and they all hear each other. It's got a built in headphone amplifier. If you want to play a little jingles, like, you can do that on that. And this is why I like it more than any other Zoom product and I wish they would it's a recorder and an interface at the same time. And I'm dying for the new like the new version of this and 32 bit float.

Dave Jackson [00:10:40]:
That would be awesome. But everything they keep coming out is, you know, the new version of the H1 and the new version of this and that. And then if you got the budget and you're going to be doing live streaming, then you can go up to a RODECaster DUO or a RODECaster Pro, things like that. I don't know. Jim, any thoughts?

Jim Collison [00:10:57]:
Well, he said for separate tracks. And that's always, that's the term for me, that is always the key. Yes, you'll get separate tracks. You'll also have bleed over. So if you're hoping to have super clean, if you're all in the same room, and you're hoping to have super clean separate tracks because you want to do some things, oh, some of it'll be Okay. If they talk over each other, you're gonna have, you're gonna, you're gonna struggle. If somebody sneezes, even if they hit the mute button on their own, you're gonna hear it. So you want that room as flat, if you have to do it that way.

Jim Collison [00:11:29]:
I always say, Listen, if you want clean separate tracks, you need clean separate rooms. That's just the way it works. You gotta separate people out, right?

Dave Jackson [00:11:37]:
And when you notice people like on YouTube doing this, a lot of times they're at a round table. And that's actually good because you don't want people sitting side by side because you're gonna get more bleed, Things like that. Like Joe Rogan has one guest and they're across the table from them, not sitting next to it and just realize you're gonna get bleed. When I did a show with my now ex wife, I was in this tiny little office And at one point she was in one corner of the office and I was in the other pointing directly. You know, the microphones were pointing the direct opposite direction. And now the fun thing was I was sitting in a quiet office with my headphones on going. Yeah, I can still hear your you know, when I'm listening to the playback, there's still a little bit of bleed. Then at DawnDummy, nobody sits in a quiet office pressing their headphones into their head.

Dave Jackson [00:12:23]:
Like, that's not how people listen. No. You know, but I would that's where the RODECaster comes in handy. Why is my thing paused? Okay. Well, I guess we're using the audio from YouTube. I went to make a chapter and hit pause instead.

Jim Collison [00:12:36]:
Then Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:12:37]:
But that's where the RODECaster comes in handy because it has noise gates. So it can kind of turn off your mic when you're not talking kind of thing. And those are go ahead.

Jim Collison [00:12:46]:
Go ahead. No, I say you could treat that room a little bit too to make sure the flatter, softer you can get that room, the less the other vocals will be bouncing around in there. Just a lot of people, when you're doing that kind of scenario, a lot of people don't want to treat the room, you know. And you're like, Yeah, you should probably throw some blankets up. Test it. If it's the first time you're doing something, test it. Listen, you can do it. It sounds Okay if you're going to do a single track recording.

Jim Collison [00:13:14]:
You could even do multiple tracks just know you're gonna have bleed in those tracks. And it's, what you think you're getting may not be exactly what you're looking for. So just make sure you know what you're doing when you get into it. If it, if none of the bleed matters, like if you're like, Oh, I want a separate track just so I could do some edits. Well, you, probably 85 or 90% of the separate tracks you're going to get there are going to be just fine. It's going to be 1 person talking at a time on that track. If you're good at that, if you're good at separating them, you could throw some gates and some things at this, but that just complicates it even more in the process. You could do some audio lev or editing on the backside to take some of that out.

Jim Collison [00:13:56]:
It's gonna wash out some of the sound of some of the people, you know, the bleed over will wash out some of the sound of the others. So just know you, Yes, you can do this. Just know what you're getting when you get into it.

Dave Jackson [00:14:08]:
You're gonna have bleed, and you have to be okay with it as long as it's not, you know, crazy bleed. You know, Randy Black points out the RODECaster Pro 2 and DUO. I have a beta firmware out there and this was kind of made towards streamers. So you basically make this when I watched it, I was okay. I think I get it where you create this virtual input. So you can say, hey, assign the sound of my Spotify that I'm listening to while I'm playing games to this channel. Assign this sound to so that was kinda neato. I just don't know if I'll ever use that because I can't stream Spotify while I'm streaming live because I'm like, that's a red flag right on YouTube.

Dave Jackson [00:14:48]:
So it was interesting. And I I got it was to me. I just I'm like, I don't see where a podcaster is gonna use that. But, you know, somebody's gonna see that and go, oh, I could do this with it. But for me, I wasn't like, oh, yippee, because I'm not a gamer. And, you know, it just wasn't that. Here's a fun one. Daily Sports History says, what is the best way to batch record episodes? I'm not sure I understand the question because the answer is, well, when you get done with the first one, press record again and do the second one.

Dave Jackson [00:15:16]:
But I think if I think what you mean, how do you I use notejoy to any time I get an idea and I'm thinking, oh, I'll remember this later. Well, I'm not. I've learned that. So I write it down in Notejoy and you can use whatever you want. I used to use Evernote until they tripled the price. And this week, right now, I do not know what I'm talking about tomorrow for the school of podcasting. Now, am I worried? No. Because I know I've got billions of ideas in Notejoy that I've forgotten about that I was like, oh, I should talk about this in the future.

Dave Jackson [00:15:46]:
And so I'll open it up because I go like, I got nothing. I'm like, oh, actually, I have, like, 13 ideas here. So maybe that's what you mean? I don't know. What do you, Jim, any thoughts? Or can you expand on that?

Jim Collison [00:15:56]:
Yeah, lots of meth, just to keep you awake.

Dave Jackson [00:15:58]:
Yeah, there you go. Cocaine. Sure. Yeah, I

Jim Collison [00:16:00]:
love cocaine. It gets listen, if you're batch processing, the technology is the least of your concerns. The stamina to do this is a much bigger deal. You think, Oh, I love podcasting. I'm a podcaster. I love podcasting. I could batch, you know, I'll sit down. I think John Lee Dumas, you know, used to do 6 or 7 hours of record he would rerecord them all in one day.

Jim Collison [00:16:25]:
I tried doing that with, I've actually tried doing that a couple times with folks at Gallup. And, boy, you get about an hour or 2 in, and you get on especially when you try to repeat things over and over again or create quick episodes, it, the fatigue sets in pretty quick. And you're like, Woah. Like, Yeah, you can sit down with a group of people where it's, you know, but not you all the time, and maybe go for 3 or 4 hours. I mean, I know, everybody's like, Oh, yeah, I could create a 4 hour, 4 hour podcast. Yeah, you could do that. Like that's, you, but usually, generally, you've got somebody else with you you're doing some things like that. So just be aware of your stamina, and your quality starts dropping pretty fast.

Jim Collison [00:17:09]:
Because you're going, I mean, I do Home Gadget Geeks, and it's a fun show. But at the, at the hour 30 mark, I start slurring my words. I mean, that might be the old fashioned too, but I start slurring my words a little bit, and I kind of begin to dip. So just be aware of your stamina in that kind of scenario.

Dave Jackson [00:17:30]:
Yeah. And Ask Ralph says, I took a week off and didn't wanna miss any of my daily episodes while I was gone. So I had to do 2 a day for a week and it was grueling. Yeah. If you're doing interviews, because I think that's what John does, he has a day where he just does back to back to back to back interviews. And by the time you get to the 4th one, you know, it's I know this just from teaching and any time. Well, even on this show, when I get done with the show after being kind of up for 90 minutes and going, hey, here we now, like, I'm not putting on a persona, but I am I've got a lot going on and I'm like paying attention. I will go make whatever lunch I have and it's not a big lunch and I will sit down and take a nap whether I want to or not because there's just this coming from all this adrenaline for 90 minutes and now you're like, ah.

Dave Jackson [00:18:19]:
And so I think that would be the the toughest. But now it's great and I know some people with businesses, they will have someone like Mike Wilkerson or Chris Stone or whoever, and they'll go and record a bunch. They'll just go in and talk. And that's the easy part. If it's a solo show, right? They'll just go in and do that again. Still by episode 4, you're, you know, you're a little wired, but then they'll hand it off to somebody. And that's the best way to batch is just you walk in and talk. But it is your it is a performance in a way.

Dave Jackson [00:18:52]:
And Jim hit the nail on the head in my book. It's a matter of keeping that energy up and that whole 9 yards. Craig says, I batch record 3 episodes back to back with my co host. We record in the same room, so it saves him 2 trips to my studio. Yep. There you go. And it's just I think a lot of it is just planning. It really is.

Dave Jackson [00:19:10]:
That's half the reason for me and time. You know, I Jim and I were both talking earlier about is something worth your time. And so it's funny because when you ever see something new and it's bright and shiny, for me, I moved from Evernote to Notejoy. Seamless integration. Awesome. Clicked a button imported. Done. Right? And then forgot to cancel my Evernote, and they charged me anyway.

Dave Jackson [00:19:36]:
And so I had to go through this whole thing of getting a refund. But anyway, and I moved to PodPage recently. That's my job now. And I he really is into Notion and the more I play with Notion and where I'm like, oh, this could replace Todoist is my to do list tool. It could replace this. It could replace this. And the one thing you need to remember, which is kind of what I'm doing now, is if I actually switch to Notejoy or from Notejoy to Notion, a it's not a seamless like while Notion imports a lot of stuff, Notejoy only exports and I need to double check on this to Google Docs and then I have to import the Google Docs and it doesn't really say I'm not sure how it works. But the thing I saw there was, oh, if I want to move to Notion, that's going to take a lot of time and it would it actually be 2 more dollars a month.

Dave Jackson [00:20:30]:
But that's where you start doing math like, yeah, but if I use Notion, I could cancel my to do list and I could cancel notejoy and that's actually saving me money. And it's a matter of the saving whatever $13 a month. Is that worth the probably 6 hours it's gonna take to import, export, import, export, import, export. Move this over here. Like, I just imported something and it was just a mess. And that's where it dawns on you that, like, oh, you know what? This was a mess in Evernote and the mess from Evernote moved into notejoy in the same very messy thing. And I'm like, eventually, you have to clean things up. And so that's where you have to think about the time.

Dave Jackson [00:21:11]:
And, Jim, you were doing some stuff with file cleanup this week, and that gets you thinking.

Jim Collison [00:21:18]:
Yeah. Well, you start going through your folders and you're like, Do I need this? No. And, you know, you do I Yeah, I should probably hold on to this. But then you get to some like, I really have a hard time detaching from files that I don't need. I just have a hard time with it. And that, that too requires some stamina, right? You're going into, you know, I have 623 episodes just of Home Gadget Geeks. And I keep raw and I keep edited. And I'm like, Do I need this? And is it gonna you know, you start doing that for about 30 minutes.

Jim Collison [00:21:53]:
I get tired. And so you kind of almost need a plan this is where I'm at. I need a better plan for some of those things. Because you get in, and then you're like, Oh, this was exhausting. And then I don't want to go back to it. So I let it sit for 6 months. And then when I come back to it 6 months later, it's twice as bad. And I never really get to the bottom of it.

Jim Collison [00:22:14]:
So I think I need to do some better planning around that, some thinking through, figure out, How do I do this in a way that's sustainable? Because otherwise, I just say, I'll just say to myself, I'm just gonna delete it all. And I feel so guilty when I do that. I mean, I could easily I'm dealing with a B2 Backblaze backup. Marv and I talked about this on Thursday, that I'm gonna have to go to and download these files out of. And here's the, here's the conflicting things. I'm sure nobody else is this way. But here's my conflict: I got all these valuable stuff to me emotionally on B2 that I backed up. I, it costs me money to pull it off of B2 with Egress, and I'm super cheap.

Jim Collison [00:22:56]:
So I have this emotional conflict where I have meaningful things to me I don't want to pay to get them back. Right? And I, to be honest, I don't have to pay. I've been, they've been sitting there for $20 a month they can continue to sit there for $20 a month. It's a conflict. And listen, you guys, I'm sure everybody else listening, you guys are perfect you got this all figured out. It's, you're, you know, like, Ah, don't worry about this, Jim. But it's, emotionally, it's one of those things. And then, so what do I do? I get in, I do it for a few minutes.

Jim Collison [00:23:26]:
And then I'm like, I'm not gonna do this anymore. I walk, I walk away. And it's, now I have 7 years' worth of a problem out there that, you know, I'm gonna have to clean up eventually. Have to trick myself, go in, do some things, just to get those, just to get that stuff moved around. It's exhausting. I am just now getting comfortable.

Dave Jackson [00:23:49]:
Because the way I have it, I have a folder called podcasts. And in the podcast folder, I have, you guessed it, a folder called Ask the Podcast Coach. And in that folder, I have another folder called production, which is everything I need, the intro music and all that stuff. I have a folder called episodes, and I have a folder called finished. And I what was that? Oh, Ralph is here. Or, no, Mark is here. We'll see in just a second, Mark. Because I'm like, I have that now make a noise.

Dave Jackson [00:24:14]:
Put it it freaked me out. I was like, what magic fairy has entered the room? I was like, what the heck? But anyway, I'm now comfortable, like, once I make sure the finished file is there and I'm not gonna lose it going into deleting the episode folder. Because the way Hindenburg works, when you save a Hindenburg project, and this is not a huge deal, but it saves all the files again. So I open it up. I have a template. There's all my intro music and stuff. And when I click save, it saves all those. So I have, like, the intro music of The School of Podcasting saved 949 times on my show.

Dave Jackson [00:24:48]:
And I was like, I don't really need that. I need it once. And so it is weird because there are shows like the customer service show, which had all of 7 episodes. And I'm like, yeah, I could probably delete that one. But there's a weird thing in your head that goes, yeah, but you spent hours, like, working on that. And I'm like, is this for the Dave Jackson Museum? Like, why am I saving files? That, like, have I listened to an episode from School of Podcasting episode 200 to 300?

Jim Collison [00:25:18]:
No, not at all. So it's Dave, before, before we move on, let me just say one more thing. I'm thinking of doing File Amnesty where I just delete everything, to be honest. Like, when I get a new phone, I don't customize it at all. When I get a new computer, I just use it. Yeah, I've got stuff on YouTube and stuff hanging around. My host provider's got files. I'm kind of thinking, I don't need to keep any of those things, just to be honest.

Jim Collison [00:25:43]:
Because you, you said this to me. When was the last time you went back and pulled from those data files to get something for your podcast? The answer for me is 0. I have never gone back to anything that I've kept for anything. I used to think it was a big deal. I'm kind of thinking I may go Inbox 0 on this thing. And I know some of you are dying inside at the moment for me saying that and wiping out all back episodes. Maybe keep 10. Like, just keep the most current 10 things there and wipe everything else out.

Jim Collison [00:26:18]:
Why wouldn't I?

Dave Jackson [00:26:19]:
Because I know, like, there are, like, you know, maybe out of the almost a 1000 episodes I've done in the school podcasting. Like, when I used to do the 100 episodes, I'd go pull a bunch of clips. I don't do that anymore. It's like

Jim Collison [00:26:33]:
I've never done that.

Dave Jackson [00:26:33]:
Yeah. And when you start when you start saving and you've got and haven't helped you if you're doing video and I know hard drive space is cheap. Storage is cheap. But there just comes a time when you're like, it's I kind of regret it now, but I can live with it. My ex wife, her hobby was moving. So every year we would move to a different house. We rented houses when I was married. And I eventually kept moving boxes of actual vinyl that I never even unboxed from the last three moves.

Dave Jackson [00:27:07]:
And just was like, why am I moving these vinyl? And I actually just put all my vinyl records on the curb because I had them on CD. I had Spotify. What was the point? And so I just got rid of it. So I think that's again part of it. You have to be okay with that. So but, theory, this should work. When I hit this button, we should have the one and only Mark Decote from podcastbranding.co. Is that true in theory? No.

Dave Jackson [00:27:31]:
It's this button. It says I know I have a button here that says 3 people. That's this one. There he is. The one and only. How are you, Mark?

Mark Des Cotes [00:27:41]:
Hey. Great. Just feel sorry for you putting that vinyl on the road. I mean, today with people collectors and all, that would be worth a fortune.

Dave Jackson [00:27:48]:
Yeah. It was and a lot of it was just childhood memories and original Beatles Abbey Road that was worn from, you know, just, you know, Sergeant Pepper and like, yeah, but I just I moved it enough. Even just moving CDs. I used to have bookcases. I had all my cases and I eventually took all the cases, threw them away and got this giant binder of CDs where I just have the book and the the actual CD. And I don't touch that at all even.

Mark Des Cotes [00:28:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. But I'm coming to you today not as podcastbranding.co. I wanna come to you as solotalkmedia.com. And many of your listeners may not know that I got into podcasting in 2013 as a TV fan podcaster. I've been doing TV fan podcasts since 2013, still doing them, currently doing the show Rings of Power, the Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power. I've got another podcast for the show, The Last of Us. Anyways, that's not what I wanna talk about.

Mark Des Cotes [00:28:40]:
What I wanna talk about is how I'm using AI to help me with that show in a way that you you haven't really talked about before. And that is when I first got started, and I'm a solo podcaster. I don't have a co host. So when I talk about a TV show, I don't have somebody to say, hey, what do you think? Or I talk about it, but I rely on my audience. It's a feedback driven show. So I need people to submit stuff, what they thought of the episode. And that's what my whole podcast is about. And my community loves it cause they get to hear so many different voices.

Mark Des Cotes [00:29:09]:
So when I first started, I set up Google Voice, I set up SpeakPipe, and of course, email where they can send me stuff. And at the beginning, I would accept anything. If somebody sent me an email, I would read it on air. And, you know, it's very easy to read something that you wrote. It's not easy to read something somebody else wrote. And I hated reading the emails, especially some of them sent long emails and that. So after, when things started picking up and I was getting dozens of feedback submissions per episode, I eventually, I just said, you know what, I'm no longer gonna read email. If you wanna submit feedback, it has to be an audio format.

Mark Des Cotes [00:29:47]:
This is a podcast after all. I started accepting just the Google Voice speak pipe and just email me the audio. And that went well for a number of years. But earlier this year when I was doing, I did the show Orphan Black, which is what originally got me into podcasting, they had a new show, Orphan Black Echoes, that came out, but AMC just canceled a couple of days ago after season 1. But anyways, what I started doing is I signed up for 11 Labs. And you're familiar, you've got an affiliate for 11 Labs. And I started telling my audience that if you wanna send me a written email, you could write your email in, and I will put it through 11 Labs, and it will read it, it'll read the thing in a very human like voice. And I know the first time I did this, I got my very first email came in from somebody named Aaron, like r o n, And I, in my mind, that was a guy.

Mark Des Cotes [00:30:45]:
So I put a guy's voice,

Dave Jackson [00:30:46]:
and the next week they

Mark Des Cotes [00:30:47]:
said, yo, I'm a woman, could use a woman's voice. So since that time now I say, if you wanna submit a written email, do but let me know if you want a female or a male voice to read it. And I don't hide the fact. I say it on the podcast. I'll say, here's, you know, here's Monica's feedback. It is read by the voice of, you know, Nancy from 11 Labs. And now let's hear what Monica had to say. And I can tell you that I've had a whole bunch of people reach out to me that say, Mark, I've been following you for a long time.

Mark Des Cotes [00:31:21]:
I've always wanted to send something into your show. I don't like the sound of my voice, and that was what was holding me back. I didn't wanna record. I didn't wanna submit my voice. But now that you are allowing this, I feel like I can be part of your community. I can now participate because, you know and some of them are funny. Like, some of them, it's like, please, could you give me a British accent or something like that? You know, just I wanna sound cool. Like but, yeah, so now I've been using that.

Mark Des Cotes [00:31:45]:
And so I signed up for a subscription to 11 Labs, and I'm loving it. I've opened up a whole bunch of people that now had always wanted to but never could are now participating with my podcast. And I'm getting tons and tons of submission from feedback. And so I just thought, your listeners, if anybody has a show that has feedback and that, and I know a lot of people will read emails on air, but it got to the point when I was getting 40 submissions, and 10 or 12 of them were emails, it was enough. This is a podcast, give me audio, but now I've opened it up.

Dave Jackson [00:32:18]:
That's a great idea because if you think about it, I always do this thing where I'll show somebody's question on the screen. I could have easily copied and pasted that into 11 Labs and just played the question. That's interesting. So Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:32:31]:
Mark, I had that same idea. So I did I subscribed early in the week, and then I've been messing around with it. And I had that same idea. I was like, You know, I should have listener feedback just played through these voices. That's great. And the Speech to Speech, which I just changed the label on, like yesterday, it's, I think it's called Voice Impersonator or something now. They, you can have, you can put a voice in and have it redo that voice in another voice. Or you can train, you know, on the free plan, or I think on the $5 plan, you get minimal training on your own voice.

Jim Collison [00:33:08]:
And on the $11 plan, you get, that you can, I mean, you can submit a ton of audio and have it build a model for you? And so what I did this week is I recorded a intro for a podcast we were doing. I was too far away from the mic when I recorded it, but the take was really good. So I put the take in, had it read it, had it reread it in my own voice. And that, that AI voice, whatever we're going to call it, is perfect audio. Like it's really good. So it took a substandard recording of me, rerecorded it as me, kept the inflections. In fact, at one point, I even chuckled in it, and it chuckled for me in the audio, right? I thought, Holy moly! Like, what a, like, what a next step in cleaning up bad audio. You know, we get this question all the time, like, Hey, I got a piece of bad audio.

Jim Collison [00:34:04]:
How do I fix it? Well, this is how you fix it. Now you make sure you have a good AI version of your own voice. Run that thing through. In theory, with 11 Labs, you could also, like your cohost, you have slots for more voices that you can make there. So you could get a couple hours of your cohost you don't have one, but just say you did, Mark, for a second. Couple hours of your cohost, train them. You're gonna need to get them to talk to the model before it starts, because they want to verify that the person's you're not impersonating the person, you know, you're not making a, without their permission. But you could do your cohost that way, and you could fix bad audio with 11 Labs clones, basically.

Jim Collison [00:34:48]:
It's slick. It's, once you start doing this I wasn't a believer in this until I started doing it. Dave put the link to his affiliate out there and to make sure you use that as you go through. But, yeah, it and I did the $5 plan. I was so impressed, I immediately upgraded to the $11 plan to get that, that model marked. Have you done your own clone?

Mark Des Cotes [00:35:07]:
I haven't bothered because I don't need my voice done. Like, I've never run into I may at some point, but for now, I'm just on the $5 plan. Yeah. They have I I don't even know how many voices they have. There's so many. Like, you know, I start off and they're kind of alphabetical. I think I've gotten down to, like, you know, the b's or the c's because there's so many. My issue is I have to now keep track of, okay, Monica, I used the voice of Nancy to read Monica, so now I have to keep track that every week I use the same voice for her or for somebody else.

Mark Des Cotes [00:35:39]:
Like, when,

Jim Collison [00:35:40]:
when, what do you have to do though? Do Do you think listeners will remember?

Mark Des Cotes [00:35:43]:
My listeners will because my listeners get to know each other, like people call in and they, like, they listen to the podcast for me, but a lot of them say, like, I love hearing from Jeff, I love hearing from Fred, I love hearing from AJ, I love hearing from Aaron and Denise and all these people. So they get to know these people. So I wanna use the same voice so that even though somebody's writing in, if it was a different voice every week, they wouldn't associate like this is the same person every week. But if I'm using the exact same voice and I only use that voice for that person. But with 11 Labs, I don't even know how many voices there are. As I said, you can just scroll and scroll and

Jim Collison [00:36:19]:
Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot.

Mark Des Cotes [00:36:20]:
There's some different ones. You can go by gender. There's nationalities. There's even, they can tell you, like, here's a voice if it's for entertainment. Here's a voice for technical stuff and all sorts of really cool things. Yeah, so I have to keep track of, I use this voice, and then so if that person ever submits something in the future, I'll know that voice was used for that person or not to use that voice for a different person. But yeah, it's really helped out. And as I said, a lot of people have reached out and said, thank you so much for letting me do this, because now I could be a part of your community.

Mark Des Cotes [00:36:49]:
I've always wanted to be, but I never felt comfortable with my voice. I didn't wanna submit my voice. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:36:55]:
Very cool.

Jim Collison [00:36:57]:
Yeah. And

Dave Jackson [00:36:57]:
and and in now in Mark's case, his audience is all over it. Ralph says, I did the same with 11 Labs, but I've had listeners tell me that they can tell it's AI, and I've moved away from it. Well, Mark is being upfront, though. I think that's the difference. I think if you're trying to pull it off as this is a real caller, that you're putting your integrity on the line.

Jim Collison [00:37:18]:
Well, okay, but I put some text in. I did text to speech in, on some models that I trained. Didn't sound great on some models that they trained sounded a lot better. So you have to, I mean, it's not just a slam dunk read it. Like I, when I had it read it in my immediately train, that, the cheap $20 one, or the cheap 20 minute one, it was slow, and it sounded like this. And it, you know, you're like, Oh, okay, that's not great. But if you get one of the really good voices, it will add the inflections and do all the necessary. So make sure, yeah, some of the AI stuff that we're doing is, it's not as good.

Jim Collison [00:37:59]:
So you got to kind of work and train the model. I played it for my wife. She came down here, and I'm like, You got to hear, this is me, but not me. And I played it. She goes, That is the creepiest thing I've ever heard. Right? And so yeah, it's uncanny.

Dave Jackson [00:38:13]:
And it used to be you had to spend a lot of time and I guess if you wanted to be really close, you know, the more info you give it. But I had a cassette deck of my grandpa reading the Christmas story. I cleaned it up, and I was like, wow, I can't believe from this hissy crappy recording, this sounds really good. And then the bell went off. Wait a minute. Can I clone grandpa? And I did. And I ended up I made a message for my brother said, hey, Doug. Love what you're doing with your girl.

Dave Jackson [00:38:41]:
So proud of you. Keep up the good work. Love Po po and sent it to him. And he sent me a text. He's like, I am crying like a baby because it sounded like my grandpa. And then he said, you know, what voodoo are you playing with now? And I said, I just cloned grandpa. It's no big deal. But it is kind of where my aunt when she was in town.

Dave Jackson [00:38:57]:
That's her dad was, yeah, I don't want to hear it. Like, I'm I want to hear it, but it's kind of like giving a crack addict a little bit of crack. Just a little bit. Just this one little bite. She's like, yeah, because I'm just gonna wanna hear, but that's cool, though. But, yeah, I think you've just helped it. Mark has now helped me. I think my next episode, I'm finally gonna pull the trigger on using AI in your podcast because there are a couple things I've done.

Dave Jackson [00:39:18]:
Because at first, I was like, I'm still not a fan of using AI for content, but there are some things that I think it's funny that I'm going to be a thought leader by using regurgitated thoughts. And I'm like, yeah. That's not thought leading unless you have somehow Oh,

Jim Collison [00:39:31]:
I see. I

Dave Jackson [00:39:32]:
see. You know? Yeah. But that's really cool. But So

Mark Des Cotes [00:39:34]:
I thought, anyways, if anybody is that you yeah. Yeah. If your audience has a feedback driven show, then

Jim Collison [00:39:39]:
Yeah.

Mark Des Cotes [00:39:40]:
This is just great for them. It opens up a new venue. If you don't feel like reading, because I got sick and tired of reading emails and stumbling over words and stuff, especially the poorly written ones. And it's funny because the AI voice will read the poorly written ones just as well. I mean, they're still poorly written, but the AI voice does a great job reading them. So

Dave Jackson [00:39:57]:
Nice. Excellent.

Mark Des Cotes [00:39:59]:
Anyway. Alright.

Jim Collison [00:39:59]:
Thanks, Mark. Thanks for coming in.

Dave Jackson [00:40:01]:
We'll see you.

Mark Des Cotes [00:40:02]:
Guys for

Jim Collison [00:40:02]:
coming in. See you.

Mark Des Cotes [00:40:03]:
Oh, by the way, solotalkmedia.com. Nope.

Dave Jackson [00:40:05]:
There you go. Solotalkmedia.com is where you can find that.

Jim Collison [00:40:09]:
Sorry about that, Mark.

Mark Des Cotes [00:40:10]:
On the way

Jim Collison [00:40:11]:
out, it's, I spent a couple hours on 11 Labs this week. And so, Mark, thanks for bringing that up. It's a good topic. I think there's a lot of, a lot of voiceover for yourself opportunities with this. And I'm going to continue to work on my model. The, whatever I gave it about 2 hours' worth of stuff. Whatever I gave it when I ran the model against just regular text, it didn't, it was very deliberative and slow. And I thought, Do I talk do I normally talk that slow? Is it so I got some work to do there.

Jim Collison [00:40:42]:
The voice to voice is amazing. Like that is the most incredible. And then I'm hoping I think Mark alluded to this the endgame here is I can replicate my voice in different languages. That's the end game. It's that I can pick stuff I've already done and convert it into different languages.

Dave Jackson [00:40:59]:
I, Gary said he sent some video on a green screen to Hey, Jenn, as in hey, g e n, and it made him talk some other language. I know I have a video that Libsyn did of me talking about some feature in German, and it sounds it's definitely my voice. It's interesting because that video, this was a couple years ago, the video didn't sync with my mouth. So it looked like I was in a bad Godzilla movie. But from what I understand now, they can make it to where it syncs with your mouth and that's just creepy. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to talk about. Ralph brought this up.

Dave Jackson [00:41:37]:
Ralph, if you want to jump in, you can. But I think it was last week or maybe the week before, and we were talking probably about Patreon or I use Supercast now and things like that. And he said, you got to be really careful with the word donation because the last time I checked, we are not a what is it? 10:30, 10 something c? I forget the actual.

Jim Collison [00:42:01]:
Yeah. We're not a 503503c.

Dave Jackson [00:42:04]:
Yeah. We're not a 503c. And when you start using words like I'm

Jim Collison [00:42:07]:
not a lawyer and I didn't stay even at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Dave Jackson [00:42:11]:
Yeah. And so it's one of those where you have to be careful throwing out. Hey, thanks for the donation. I think a better phrase might be thank you for the support would be because when you say donation, it's one of the things because the FTC has kind of, you know, for 20 years of podcasting, kind of been sleeping because they're like, oh, podcasting. That's just, you know, weirdos in a closet trying to think they're on the radio. And now that people are actually making money at it, you know, a couple years ago, it wasn't the FTC. There he goes. The one and only Ralph.

Dave Jackson [00:42:43]:
Let me I love the fact that I could assign him to guest 2 and just click on this button. There he is. But, yeah, the SEC, which is kind of a government thing about money, find Kim Kardashian. I think it was $25100 or 25,000. It was a lot of money. Whatever it was unless you're Kim Kardashian to where she goes. $25. Oh, I got that here in the couch cushions.

Dave Jackson [00:43:06]:
But she had promoted a brand that she part owned and did not disclose that she kind of part owned the same thing. The guy from Diary of a CEO has been promoting some sort of protein drink that he owns like lots of stock in and they're yeah, you need to disclose that when you're saying this is the best thing ever that I'm going to profit when you buy my yeah. So you have to do that. So, Ralph, thanks for coming on. The donations are item, not a 5013 c. What's how is that gonna what's gonna happen if I just make that a habit of saying donation?

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:43:43]:
Well, the problem you're gonna run to I'm trying to get the right camera on here. Bear with me one second.

Dave Jackson [00:43:47]:
Alright. Idiot. But it is it is that

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:43:49]:
you're gonna run it. It's it's really full of the problem. Okay? The the problem technically is that if you hold yourself out that you're taking on a donation, then the IRS could effectively say that, you know, you don't have that 501c3, so you can't take that donation. That's issue number 1. Issue number 2 is if you don't have that quote for profit motive, then when you go to do a tax return at the end of the year for your podcast and you wanna take the expenses, you you wanna take a loss on your podcast as a side business, the IRS will disallow that loss and call it a hobby. So it's really twofold. Number 1, you're putting yourself out there in basically saying that you are a nonprofit because you're using the word contribution, you're using the word donation, all that kind of stuff. And the second thing is just that whole for profit motive.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:44:47]:
So that was my main concern, Dave.

Dave Jackson [00:44:49]:
Got it. And so what is a oh, like I said, maybe I should use the word support. Is that more does that keep me?

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:44:56]:
So here because Stephanie asked the same thing in, like, the school podcasting group. And I'm even worried about using the word support unless somehow you disclose on there. This is a for profit venture. You know, you could say something like, thanks for helping me out in my business, thanks for I just think even the word support, I think can be dangerous. Now like I said, I'm not the world's policeman, but I just feel like there is a question. Why create the question in the first place if you can avoid it? But, you know, a lot of people use Doerage support, so I'm not gonna move against it other than to say that, you know, you might wanna say this is not a tax deductible contribution, this is not x, y, or z. If you're using one of the 3rd parties, I'm less concerned about it because then I think the liability falls on them, like the Patreon or the Super Chat or something like that. But if you're but if you've got a website that's saying, you know, like donations or contributions or, you know, I'm just concerned about that.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:45:53]:
Like I said, I'm not the world's policeman, so I'm not trying to make it this complicated discussion, but I just feel like it's somewhat dangerous.

Dave Jackson [00:46:00]:
So if we are accepting money, we need to somehow disclose. And it's funny because I could say this is a for profit podcast, but I probably lose money. Well, actually, I don't. We have enough patrons that I'm not. But if I was paying myself, we would be, you know, is there any is that the key? It's not a matter of what word to use. It's a matter I have to disclose that I'm not a nonprofit.

Mark Des Cotes [00:46:26]:
I think that no. I I think it is a function of the word because I think if you use the word support, donation, contribute, then I think that it leads the let me say it this way. It's the perception. What is the perception of the person who is reading that term? What is the perception of the per because, you know, when we like I do audit work. You know, one of the things about our audit is you could have something completely right, but what is the person's perception of it? So if their perception is they're supporting your show from the standpoint of they're not going to take a deduction for it, then I think you're fine. But if the if I see the word contribute, if I see the word donate, if I see the word and support is one of those ones I think it's very gray.

Dave Jackson [00:47:11]:
Yeah.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:47:12]:
So I would say that, you know, if you can get over if you can get away from using the word support, I think you're better off. And I don't know what the wordsmith word to use for that is. Help? Even help worries me. Yeah, but help worries me too. Because help could be like I go to church on Sunday, you know, we have a benevolence fund where we help people. So I just think that all of those things Now, I think you can use one of those words if they hit your page and it says something along, you know, thank you for your support of the show as a, you know or so you can say it this way. Thank you for your support of the show. This is not a nonprofit organization, and there's no expectation that you will be able to take a deduction for this.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:47:57]:
This is you know what I'm saying? As as long as you say that, I wouldn't use the word donate. I wouldn't use the word contribute. Support the show, I think, is fine with that with that, you know, that mark that says, hey, this is not a donation. Because, like, even at my church, like, if we do, like, if we sell a t shirt or if we have a trip or something like that, and people pay for those things, we have to disclose to them that the cost of this t shirt or the cost of going to this dinner or something that is not charitably is not a charitable contribution. So I think you just have to be cautious in how you do that. And I'm Dave, here's my big concern. Right? A lot and and it's gonna come out the wrong way. But a lot of people are, like, podcasting from their basement.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:48:39]:
And that's not a bad thing. But the problem is it's those people that'll end up getting tied up in knots by the Federal Trade Commission, and from the IRS, and from some stupid person that wants to sue them because they don't have a team of lawyers. They don't have these people that surround them. So that's why I think it's more important. If you were one of the big podcasting platforms, use whatever term you want because you got a team of lawyers that can fight those things. But if you're this person that's just doing it, you know, as a side gig or doing it for fun or something like things, why set yourself up for a problem in the first place?

Dave Jackson [00:49:10]:
Yeah. Craig asked because he's in he's not in the states. He says, do Patreon donations count as nonprofit in the states? I don't think so. I

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:49:18]:
would argue no. Absolutely not. Because see, when it comes down to let me back up a step. To become a 501c3 or one of those one of those ilk, you've got I'm doing one right now for a church. You've got to make an application with the IRS, and that application is, like, ridiculous. It's like a 100 pages. They have a short easy form, but then they have the the big form. And if you don't have that letter or you don't have that notification from the IRS that says, yes, you are a 501c3.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:49:48]:
Technically, well, I shouldn't say technically, you are not. So it's like this is a funny thing, Dave and Jim. Like a lot of people think they go out and they give money to GoFundMe. Well, GoFundMe isn't a 501c3. Technically, those GoFundMe quote donations or help or contributions are not tax deductible. I know I've lost this in the tax deductible weeds. But like I said, I say these things only because I hate to see these sideline, podcast people get themselves tied up in knots when they can avoid it. That that's my big concern.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:50:20]:
You know, do I think the guy the the guys from the IRS with the gold badges and guns are gonna come take you out of your basement and and take you away through the clink? No. But if you can prevent that from being because here's where it'll be an issue. It'll be an issue when somebody gets audited who made a contribution to your show. And the IRS is going through their records and saying, oh, well every week I send Dave and Jim $20 because you know, I support their show, it's a contribution and I put it on my tax return. That's when you're gonna get yourself in trouble because then the IRS is gonna say, well, let me go find Dave and Jim. Yeah. It's not so much that, you know, that they're gonna just pick on Joe who's making a contribution, they're gonna say, well, where are those contributions going to?

Dave Jackson [00:51:01]:
Interesting. Yeah. Maybe I'll have to put a disclaimer somewhere on maybe on your about page or if you have a don't like, I know pod page has a page where you can put buy me a coffee, and PayPal, and Supercast, and Patreon all in one page. Maybe we need a disclaimer there to say.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:51:19]:
I think it's I think if you say buy me a coffee, you're not asking for a contribution. You're buying a coffee. There's something tangible. That's what I'm saying. I think that one doesn't worry me. That one doesn't worry me at all. Patreon, in fact, that one doesn't worry me as much unless the funnel is somehow saying, you know, contribute to the show, donate to the show. As long as it's saying I I think the word like I said, I'm gonna go back with what I said a little bit.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:51:44]:
If you use the word support, then I think you have some kind of, you know, wording or something that says that this is not a contribution. If you're using the word buy, dude, if you wanna sell something, there's no question mark there at all. You know, buy me a coffee if you're buying something. You know, support the show by buying a, you know, I love Dave t shirt or, you know Right. Whatever those things. I think you're fine. But it's when we use the word contribute, when you use the word donate, those things make me nervous.

Dave Jackson [00:52:13]:
So if I said, thank you for helping me pay off my window loan, that would be

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:52:19]:
Actually, I think that's fine because at that point but but, again, like I said, I don't wanna get so legalistic that we use ourselves in crazy town. I just think that some podcasters don't think about the legal ramifications of the things they're doing. And, unfortunately, we live in a time where now there is regulation upon regulation, and there's regulations of regulations. And it's what you don't know that ends up biting you in the long run.

Dave Jackson [00:52:44]:
Yeah. Well, I know I claim them as income, so I'm paying income tax on those things. I that's the thing.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:52:49]:
Right. And and that's what I'm saying. You're doing your part, Dave. That's not what I'm concerned about. It's that person that tunes into your show once a year because there was a particular topic that you wanted to cover. And you go, oh, I really learned a lot from that. Oh, you know, I'm gonna make a donation. And then they come into someone like me to get their taxes done and said, okay.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:53:08]:
Well, what did you make for donation? Well, I gave $1500. I'm not really gonna dig into what they gave it to, I'm gonna assume that what they said was accurate. I might ask them to give me some receipts so I can scan it into their file. But you're still claiming income, I get it. I'm not worried about that side of the transaction. I'm worried about the perception of the person who is making that payment. That's what I'm concerned about.

Dave Jackson [00:53:31]:
Alright. Give him a stuff to think about. I have to figure out how to word this and put anything on a website, things like that. But, Jim, any other questions before we let Ralph go?

Jim Collison [00:53:41]:
No, I think that's good. I wanted to say a few things. But then I'm like, You know, I'm not a lawyer. Because it's, listen, the burden of proof. This is a burden of proof. Who is responsible say, I give to you you say it's a donation I take a tax write off the IRS comes back to me. Is it, whose problem is it? Is it my problem for trying to take it as that? Or do you, is it your problem because I gave it to you? I'd love to say, Well, it's obviously my problem, but this is legal stuff, and you never really know. So I'm just really hesitant to give any kind of tax or legal advice to folks.

Jim Collison [00:54:16]:
And disclosures and disclaimers don't always cover you. So just gotta be I think, like Ralph said, just gotta be really careful

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:54:24]:
on that. And Jim, let me address that. I am not an attorney either. But here's the deal, and I'll talk to you from both parties. So from the standpoint of the person making the contribution, the IRS code says that it is incumbent upon that person to go confirm that this organization is a 501c3. So there's a confirmation bias at the front end of that. I can say that as a tax expert. Now from the other side, my point, Jim, was just if you're using the word donation, contribution, or something like that, are you holding yourself out to be something that you are not, and could that be seen as misleading? That's my big concern.

Dave Jackson [00:55:04]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Collison [00:55:04]:
No, it makes sense. Makes sense. I don't take a strict, I don't, I am not as strict on donation as you are in this case. I think we do use that word in a way where it's not tax, you know, it's not a tax event when a donation is made. So I think I'm a little more liberal on that word than I think you're approaching it to. I think you could say it because of that burden of proof concept written again, we're very U. S. Centric right now.

Jim Collison [00:55:34]:
Everybody, all other countries, consult your tax advisor in the country that you're living in. But I'd be a little more open. I do, it's a good thought. And I don't think it's the best word. And so I love Support. I love Support. That doesn't have any implications of tax, where donation kind of does. And, and especially if you're, if you've been in the 503, 503 no, 50 C3 is the, I think, the right way to say it.

Jim Collison [00:56:03]:
If 501C3. There we go. I think if you're in that space where you've given to those organizations in the past, and maybe you've done it a lot, you're kind of used to that concept for folks who haven't given to charitable, you know, made charitable contributions before, may not even think of the word, to think of that word donation any differently. Hey, I donate my clothes, although you could donate your clothes and get a write off on that too. So it's good stuff. It's good to think about, for sure.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:56:31]:
Yeah. And like I said, the other side of that, though, is if you're that side hustler podcaster, and you're spending more than you're bringing in, and at the end of the year, you go to your tax person, and you want to take a loss, right? That's when it becomes an issue for you, the podcaster. Because if the IRS code says that in order to take that loss, you've gotta have a quote for profit motive. If they go look at your site, and they go look at your podcast, and you're using the word donate, contribute, support, they're gonna say, this clearly is not a for profit thing. And I know we're getting down to the small level of people who that affects, but I'm just saying, like, that's why I say it's got multiple porcupine things sticking out of it. That's my only point.

Dave Jackson [00:57:11]:
Yep. Yeah. And you can get stuck on them. So excellent. Alright, my friend. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. Oh, it's a gonna be hard to because some of those are built into my vocabulary.

Dave Jackson [00:57:23]:
I have to pay attention. But thank you so much, everybody. If and Ralph's got 30 plus years, probably more than that in tax preparer.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:57:31]:
30 years 30 yes. 30 years this year, but now that's when I that's when I finished college and started. But listen, the truth is I started doing this when I was 8 because my dad has an accounting practice. And like, I'm at the photocopier when I was 8, you know, making copies of tax return. And, you know, kitchen table discussion with us was debits and credits and capital gains and yeah. Yeah. I lived a warped life. You can tune in to my podcast to hear all about Ralph's crazy life.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:57:58]:
Anyways, thank you very much.

Dave Jackson [00:58:00]:
Find him at askralphpodcast.com. Thanks, buddy.

Ralph Estep from AskRalph.com [00:58:03]:
Thank you. You're welcome.

Jim Collison [00:58:06]:
Dave, another word that may fit into that is give. That it's a giving is a pretty common, you know, especially in the religious sector, like, Hey, give

Dave Jackson [00:58:17]:
See, but when you go religious, that's a nonprofit. That's where I'm like,

Jim Collison [00:58:21]:
Well, but, well, but that may imply, that may be another word that I made, may imply that this is a tax deductible, right? I've been saying, Just join my Patreon team. I don't use Support. I don't use, I just say, Hey, you know, if you want to join the Patreon, if you want to join our Patreon team, we have plans that are as little as $5 a month, and you can join for 1 month or as many as you want. But appreciate it if you want to support the so if you want to support this show. See, I do say support. So I have to think, I have to think through that.

Dave Jackson [00:58:55]:
See, she says if I send money to someone this is Doctor, by the way. Doctor, thank you so much. Oh, that's not the right button. I wanted this one. There we are. Doctor sent us a $10 super chat. Thank you so much for that. And she says, I just had it, doggone it.

Dave Jackson [00:59:09]:
If I send money to someone who is a coach, and I categorize it as education.

Jim Collison [00:59:15]:
Consult your tax adviser. Yeah.

Dave Jackson [00:59:16]:
I'm gonna say, you know what you need to do? You need to ask Ralph, at askgrafpodcast.com. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, that's

Jim Collison [00:59:26]:
Yeah, all those questions are really, it depends. And we're not going to give you advice on that. You have, it depends on how you categorize yourself. It depends upon what the education was. It kind of depends upon the status of the education institution in itself. So you've got to, you can, you got to consult your tax advisor.

Dave Jackson [00:59:43]:
Yeah. Ralph says, I like the word join because they're getting something, not giving. That's interesting.

Jim Collison [00:59:49]:
Yeah, join, join our Patreon. I'd love to have you join our Patreon team. I think I'll just work on striking out the so I say at the end of that spiel, so if you want to support the show, and so maybe I'll, maybe I'll say, If you want to just join our team, just because I say that in the beginning. Why wouldn't I just say that at the end? If you want to join our team, join us: the averageguy. Tvpatreon. That's kind of the spiel I give. By the way, I like having that memorized so that I say it the same every time. You're not making up different, you're not making up different things that may go awry on you when words matter.

Jim Collison [01:00:24]:
You might want to memorize something. So now I gotta change that.

Dave Jackson [01:00:28]:
There you go. And then to tie it in, Dan says, maybe the AI voices can generate a legal disclaimer to automatically check and update for the best verbiage and then use DAI to keep the automatically updated. There you go. And, yeah, Ralph's read

Jim Collison [01:00:41]:
it really fast, like, in the car commercials. Again. 8 8 yard. I don't know what I'm gonna put it on.

Dave Jackson [01:00:48]:
Well, speaking of

Jim Collison [01:00:50]:
I'll tell you.

Dave Jackson [01:00:50]:
Because we do call them awesome supporters, are awesome givers that have joined our community. Yeah.

Jim Collison [01:00:58]:
No. Not give.

Dave Jackson [01:00:59]:
Yeah. They don't give. They so thank you to everyone who is doing that. And for some reason, this is not letting me go to the here. Can I use my arrow keys? What is going on? Alright, kids. I cannot advance my slides and Ecamm will not let me move this. There it is to another here we go. Team.

Dave Jackson [01:01:17]:
Yes. You can be an awesome supporter by going to ask the podcast coach.com/support or help pay the bills, something like that. Yeah. And the show is brought to you by the school of podcasting.com. You can be a you can join the school of podcast coach.com. No. Go to school of podcasting.com/coach. I think we'll get you there, and that'll use the coupon code coach.

Dave Jackson [01:01:44]:
You can join with a 30 day money back guarantee. So if it's not for you, you can quit on day number 29, and I'll give you your money back. Ask the podcast coach. If you go to ask the podcast coach.com, that runs on PodPage, and you can learn PodPage at learn podpage.com, or you can try PodPage. That's my affiliate link at try podpage.com. And we are using right now ECAM, which in a second I'll be switching screens and we'll be doing the wheel of names, which we have figured out is illegal. So that's fun. We're rebels and, you know, we run with scissors.

Dave Jackson [01:02:16]:
But if you want to check out ECAM, go to ask the podcast coach.com/ecam. I don't know why. There we go. If you need more Jim Collison and who the heck doesn't need more Jim Collison, you can find him over at the average guy dot tv. Check out his show Home Gadget Geeks. And again, it's time for the wheel o names. So who will it who will it be? Will it be, Chris at castahead.net, Ed, at, Sonic Cupcake, Ross Brand. They're all there.

Dave Jackson [01:02:46]:
Craig at AI Goes TO College. We spin the wheel and the winner is this week the one and only maybe because I said his name. Is he like Beetlejuice? Chris Stone over at castahead.net, which I think is the current one. I know I've made a thing because what I do is at the beginning of the episode, my pre roll now, is whoever the featured supporters. So thank you, Chris, for enlightening my wallet in a positive way. How's that? That that'll work. And if you would like to be an awesome supporter, this is so weird. This is the part that always is a crash and burn because I end up what it is.

Dave Jackson [01:03:27]:
There's a preview window of Ecamm and then there's the actual Ecamm window and I keep clicking on the preview window. But hey, if this show saved you time, save you money, saved you headaches or it keeps you educated. You can be an awesome supporter by going to ask the podcast coach.com/awesome and join our community. Is that Yeah. See, he's got me thinking now. That's kind of tricky.

Jim Collison [01:03:49]:
No. I like I like join our community. That's Yeah. I like that.

Dave Jackson [01:03:52]:
Yeah. So you never know.

Jim Collison [01:03:55]:
And Join our team, join maybe so the word join is really the unique word there, right? You could say join our fill in the blank of what, you know, join our Yeah. Yeah. I like it.

Dave Jackson [01:04:08]:
And you also now get if you're an awesome supporter, you get the show advertise I should say advertising free. I have Buzzsprout putting in little baby ads that I have like, hey, join my newsletter. It's a, you know, ask the podcast coach.com/newsletter. And it puts those in. And then I have I'm gonna be speaking at Pod Indie on November 9th. Use the coupon code Dave. And so that also gets inserted in there. And so if you're tired of hearing about PodIndy, and that's not nice because Brad's a great guy.

Dave Jackson [01:04:38]:
It's gonna be a great event. But, you know, you can an awesome supporter now doesn't get the dynamically you get to because I uploaded directly from the computer there. So you'll hear me talk about the awesome supporters and such, but you won't get those dynamic ads thrown in. Yeah. I'm gonna close this preview window. That's true. It's nice to see what's going on, but I don't need that. But here's the Ace, since we're on a go ahead, Jim, you had

Jim Collison [01:05:02]:
I do what, just one more thought on that words. Subscriber may be what pulls like, you, we used to say awesome subscribers. And then we changed it kind of supporters. And subscribers has got that kind of implication that you're paying for this, right? There's no free subscribing. Or maybe there is. There isn't. Well, follow and subscribe are the two words, right? All of the, many of the podcasts app, both Spotify and Apple Podcasts, when you now follow, you don't subscribe. We used to say subscribe.

Jim Collison [01:05:37]:
Now you follow on those 2 platforms. And so follow I like subscribe. I'll just be, I'll just be honest. I think if there was one word that I would needed to use in that, besides join, I'd say subscribe. That's pretty clean. Yeah. You know?

Dave Jackson [01:05:52]:
Well, holy cow. We got another super chat. And normally, I would make it rain here with the little money falling down. And this is what got us on the subject of cleaning up files. I cleaned up a bunch of files, and when I click on the make it rain button, nothing's happening because yeah. There you go. Jim Jim's got Jim has his what are those called reactions going? Can we get some balloons? Can we can you do a little double peace sign and it is it double peace sign? Your microphone's in the way.

Jim Collison [01:06:25]:
There we go.

Dave Jackson [01:06:26]:
Riveting audio. There we go. Excellent. But, thank you Ralph for the awesome super chat. Again, check him out. Ask Ralph podcast.com. And as much as Doctor gives us $10 a week, thank you so much for that. Mowthy Broad Media is her company.

Dave Jackson [01:06:41]:
So if you need help with your podcast, look for Mowthy Broad Media. I'm 90% sure that's the right name. I know it's Mowthy Broad something. So I just remember it like if I say it, I'm like, am I gonna get in trouble because they said the word broad and I'm a middle aged white guy? That could be you never know. But I saw this one since we're in the the category of let's talk about legal things that we don't have the legal expertise to talk about. But this one, I was like, oh, get a lawyer. And that is the this was out of Reddit. And the person said, my friend is a TV writer and asked if he could adapt my podcast into a series.

Dave Jackson [01:07:14]:
I think it's fine. It could potentially be very good for the podcast, right? Has anyone else been through something like this? Are there things I should be considering before giving permission? Yes. Contact a lawyer, because if this person writes it and it gets picked up now, there's a lot of, you know, this might happen, that might happen, but you better get that in writing that, you know, any sale of this, like what percent it and this is where I don't know what I'm talking about. But I would get a lawyer involved because, I mean, we've heard of all these bands and Van Halen was on a horrible contract because they're just like, look, boys, it's a record contract and they're like, woo hoo. And they signed it and it was like, I own your soul, you know, and it's like, so know what you're getting into because on one hand, it could be great for the podcast. But if the podcast isn't, you know, okay, I always say congratulations. I've waived my magic wand. Voila.

Dave Jackson [01:08:16]:
You have 25,000 downloads. What are you gonna do with that? Like ads? Great. So you have 25 times 20, you know, you're like a couple $100, whatever it is, 1,000 maybe like. But, you know, that's one of those. I think it was Sylvester Stallone on the first Rocky movie took all sorts of stuff because he kept insisting I'm going to I'm the actor, I'm the superhero, I'm the rage guy. And they said, okay, but then we're not paying you for this and that. And you have to give up the rights to this and that. But he got the 1st Rocky made.

Dave Jackson [01:08:48]:
But and then he made money on, you know, the second, the third, the 12th, the 27th version of Rocky. And so I would just when I saw that I was like, oh, yeah, don't tread in waters that could have legal issues later. And you go, oh, I didn't know that there was a something fee and I could have made this or that. And so I know the Beetlejuice movie. I just saw the sequel. And it is

Jim Collison [01:09:12]:
that's that's once. Don't say it.

Dave Jackson [01:09:14]:
Yeah. More times. And it's one of those where it's like you can wait till that comes to streaming. Wasn't a bad movie. It was cute. But at the beginning, it said based on characters from such and such, which is probably the guy that, you know, the screenplay from the first one was made on that. But I'm like, well, that guy's probably getting paid because you're still using his characters. But if he said, well, it'll be good for the book and didn't get anything, that would be a problem.

Dave Jackson [01:09:39]:
So anything like that, you got to be careful with This one is just a great please don't do this is someone who who still kind of works in podcaster tech support. Does anyone produce 2 podcasts on 1 feed? And I always used to say, well, do you watch everything on Netflix? And they'd be like, no. And I'm like, well, so you're assuming your audience wants to listen to everything that you do because that usually was it. Now Captivate, I believe, does have a network feed. So if you want to have a like, hey, if you want all things Dave, subscribe to this feed. But what happens is people try to save, you know, $12 a month. So instead of having 2 separate podcasts with 2 separate feeds and of course with Captivate, it doesn't cost you extra to start a second show. But let's say you're on Libsyn or Buzzsprout or somebody like that different business model.

Dave Jackson [01:10:33]:
They're trying to save $12 and what inevitably happens months later is their audience is like is there any way I can just get show a and not show b and then they come to the support people like how do I separate these And it's a mess. It's a giant mess. And you don't want to do it. But, yeah, don't do that because it's just, you know, like I say, if there's something that that I captivate where they give you a network feed, I think Libsyn Pro has a network feed. But in general, most people don't want everything you do. There's a, you know, there's that fringe of people that just love everything you do, but it's a nightmare to unravel. And you're saving $12 a month. And I'm like, just skip a Starbucks and you should be good to go or use Captivate where it's $19 a month for as many shows as you want.

Dave Jackson [01:11:20]:
Just don't go over 30,000 downloads, which I just checked. I was nowhere near it. And we're, you know, 3 fourths the way through the the month. And I've got probably 12 now granted probably 50% of the shows that I have on Captivate are dead. And that's why they're there because Captivate doesn't charge you anymore for an extra podcast. But, you know, school podcasting is on there, a couple other ones. Do you have anything like that? For I know you do a bunch of shows for Gallop, but is it all separate feeds for everything?

Jim Collison [01:11:48]:
There's 2 that I listen to that have 2 shows in a single feed, and I actually appreciate it. I don't want, I don't want another, I don't want another feed to keep up. I like both shows. They're both very similar. They, one's 2 hours the other's 30 minutes. In both cases, the podcasts, 2 separate podcasts, they have a long form, 2 hours, and a 30 minute short show. They, in, in the case of 1, they added it to the feed, they took it out of the feed, they added it back to the feed, and then they canceled it the short show part of it. And so I, you know, I was like, No, guys, I just want to go.

Jim Collison [01:12:28]:
I like your content. I just want to go there and listen to it. In the other case, the long show actually gets better numbers than the short show does. And so, you know, you kind of wonder, How is that possible in the same feed? It is. It's possible for whatever reason. It's a quandary, Dave. I think there are some who say, Don't do it, like you're saying. I think there's some listeners who say, Do it.

Jim Collison [01:12:50]:
Because I, if the content's very similar, I would say if the content's drastically different, different in style, different in content, different in hosts, different in those kinds of things, yeah, it's probably good to have its own feed. If it's the same, just throw it in the same. Throw it in the same feed. Folks can figure out, if they don't want to listen to it, they can skip it. It's literally a swipe and a delete. Like it's not that hard to not listen to something. Listen, this is a good opportunity to listen to your audience. What did they want? What kind of feedback are you getting? You know, put the thing.

Jim Collison [01:13:25]:
If they're saying, Get rid of it, get it out of the feed. If they're saying, You know, it'd just be a lot easier. The confusing thing is if you get an audience that says a little bit of both. They're like, Get rid of it. The other half of the audience is like, Keep it. And then you have a US Presidential election. You know, you never, you never, you never really know.

Dave Jackson [01:13:45]:
Well, Doctor has a good question here I want to bring up, and I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to this was before Taylor Swift. I did a review of the Kelsey Brothers, the new heights show. And to me, they just it was just a giant pitch fest, and they never really got to the content because she's asked oops. Well, first of all, she said, yes. I am mouthy broad media, and I appreciate middle aged white guys. Thank you for that. But she says, so if Buzzsprout is putting the newsletter blurbs and then there is pod indie blurbs, how many call to actions are in the episode? I'm always worried. Well, number 1, my my these little blurbs are little.

Dave Jackson [01:14:26]:
That, like, the one is well, first of all, you know, buzzsprout will be like, you know, we'll be right back. And then you hear me go, hey. If you enjoy this podcast, you should join my newsletter. That's the podcast coach dotcom/newsletter. It's literally like 15 seconds or less. It's quick and then it's back. It and I am approaching too many calls to action because it does interrupt the flow. And there that's actually a strategy, not one I'm really I'm I'm playing with this right now.

Dave Jackson [01:14:49]:
But actually a strategy, not one I'm really I'm I'm playing with this right now, but there is a strategy of, like, Pocket Cast. Wait a minute. Podcast Addict has this strategy. If you go to their website, you will be swarmed with advertising. And from what I understand, it's in their app as well. And they're, hey, are you sick of all these ads smacking you in the face? Pay us some money and they'll go away. And I remember Kevin Smith in the early days of his podcast, Jay Moore, they all did the I'm going to YouTube is the best for this. It's weird because my Gmail for my personal stuff, I'm on YouTube premium.

Dave Jackson [01:15:32]:
My email at podpage is not. And I'm always amazed when I go to YouTube and I'm logged in as Dave from podpage because I just like ad after ad on YouTube. So how many calls to action are too many calls to action? That's a great question. I think part of it is, and this comes from Tom Webster. People hate ads when they're bad ads. Like, you know what I mean? It's now there's always that extreme person. I loved it. I when I interviewed Tom, you know, there are people like, well, you know, Conan O'Brien does 5 ads at the beginning.

Dave Jackson [01:16:06]:
And he's like, okay. So if you're gonna do a podcast like Conan O'Brien, step 1 is be Conan O'Brien.

Jim Collison [01:16:13]:
Be funny.

Dave Jackson [01:16:14]:
Yeah. And I was like, that's it. But I I think to me too many calls. Number 1, the Kelsey brothers had all their calls to action at the beginning. And I'm like, you know, there's a reason the offering in the church actually, that's funny because the offering is usually before the sermon, at least when I go to church. It'd be interesting if it was after the sermon and you are paid based on the value the sermon gave you.

Jim Collison [01:16:35]:
That'd be a good idea.

Dave Jackson [01:16:36]:
That's fighting words right there. But I guess to me, it drives me nuts. Like, I've noticed when I listen to Jordan Harbinger, who I think does a good job with his ads, and I listen to Feedback Friday. I don't I mean, I'm sorry, Jordan. I don't usually listen to the other episodes unless it's somebody really cool, but I love Feedback Friday. And he will do 2 stories. And these are horrendous stories. Like, well, I found out my stepdad's got a peephole in the bathroom and blah blah.

Dave Jackson [01:17:03]:
And, like, oh, what kind of advice is Jordan gonna give to this person? They're horrible stories. But he'll do 2 stories, and then he'll do 2 ads. And his ads are super this is why I like this. Here's what it is. Go to, you know, I forget. This is funny. I can't oh, jordan harbarger.com/ads. And then it's another one.

Dave Jackson [01:17:21]:
It's quick. It's succinct. It's to the point. Go to jordan harbarger.com/ads. And then he's now back to the show. And and he always kinda has the ads are pre I think they're pre recorded, but he always has a clear break that we're going to it. And I don't mind them because the two stories I just heard were very valuable. It's when you give me crap and then make me listen to ads that are also crap that I'm like, wow, I'm 30% into this show and I've got nothing but crap.

Dave Jackson [01:17:52]:
Then I go and then when they come back from the ads and it's more crap and I get some point I go, okay, I've now wasted 15 minutes on this. Swipe left delete. I'll give you another chance next week. But if next week is the same thing, I think the calls to action is more of a ratio with the value. Jim, you have any shows that have too many calls to action?

Jim Collison [01:18:14]:
No, they all do. But they all don't. I mean, there's, I think everybody's looking for a magic formula, and there isn't one. It kind of depends on you and your audience and what your audience is used to. Listen, if you've been doing your show for, say, you got 100 episodes, you've gathered all the people that like your show. That by 100, most people have left. If they show up and they didn't like it, then they left again. Like they're not there anymore.

Jim Collison [01:18:43]:
So you're probably in a situation where your audience is tolerant of what you're doing. The risk then is change. If you change some things, you know, everybody's, Oh, I did 100. I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna change it up because I'm sick of it. Well, guess what? Your audience isn't they're there because they like you. If you're consistent, they're there because they like you. If you can do 50 Call to Actions, and people keep listening, do 50 Call to Actions. Like it, it works.

Jim Collison [01:19:15]:
Keep doing it. If, you know, now you have to ask yourself the question, Are my 50 CTAs keeping new people from listening? That's a completely different question, right? And so you, but just be cautious. Like, you may have gathered, with the style that you have, you may have gathered some very loyal people, especially if you've been consistent for a while. This, speaking of churches, this happens every time a church changes a pastor, right? They, new guy comes I don't like this guy. He does a massive turnover in the church. But usually, in a lot of cases I shouldn't say it that way sometimes the audience goes down, and then it comes right back up because it attracts a new, you know, new people. Oh, I really like this guy or lady.

Dave Jackson [01:20:01]:
Yeah. The other thing that I just thought of, why I have so many ads? This is a 90 minute show. So I can do an ad every 20 minutes and still have, you know, 5 ads in the show and when they're quick, maybe that's why it doesn't really bother me. But I right now, I'm just playing with it because Buzzsprout and this is for the person there's no right or wrong answer. I love Captivate because I can put the ads where I want. Buzzsprout listens to your content and does a pretty good job as does AI most of the time of putting a spot with the ad and then you just pick what ad. And so I made one for Pod Indie. I made one for the newsletter.

Dave Jackson [01:20:39]:
And then I have a post roll at the end. So after we're done, thanks for coming. See you next week. Another episode of Ask the Podcast Coach. Then there's someone that says, hey. If you're not listening live and you wanna ask a question, go to ask the podcast coach.com/voice mail. And so far, nobody's done that. But I throw that at the end.

Dave Jackson [01:20:56]:
So that's another dynamic tool. But that's, I think, another reason why I can get away with these little baby ads is there every 20 minutes. The guy from Oxford Road, Dan, I love that guy because there are people that are into the advertising bubble of podcasting and there are some people that just want to bring as much money in because they're gonna earn a commission and they could care less what happens to the content. Dan seems to be a guy that is at podcast movement said we need to kind of cap this at about 10%. So if your podcast is 10 minutes long, you know, you shouldn't have more than a minute of ads in your show, 10%. And so we have because radio is 30%. And there are people that came over from radio and they're trying to make podcasting radio. And those are the people that I politely want to and lovingly, you know, punch in the face and go, please don't make podcasting radio.

Dave Jackson [01:21:51]:
And then I forget It's not

Jim Collison [01:21:52]:
your style. But that's not your style, Dave. That's what you let's be clear. That's what you don't prefer. There may be individuals who have nostalgia for radio, and that's, they're used to it. And they come to podcasting and go, Oh, I really like this because it sounds like radio, what I'm comfortable with. So I think we have to be careful the way we say that. Right? I mean, yeah, we don't prefer that.

Jim Collison [01:22:15]:
But that's not our preference. That's not the way we do things. We don't, you and I don't have a radio background. But for folks that do, and maybe for some individuals that want, and maybe there's some folks who've never listened to radio who go, This is format is great. So I think we have to be careful there.

Dave Jackson [01:22:28]:
Yeah. Well, and that's one where, you know, we used to say, Vote with your wallet. Vote with your Play button. You know? Don't like it?

Jim Collison [01:22:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's Well, and listen, still people still vote with their wallets. I mean, you can only do this so long as a hobby. For maybe some people can do it forever. But for most, you need something to give back to you for you to keep doing this. And that's how people, you know, we, both Ralph and Doctor. Today put dollars in Super Chat.

Jim Collison [01:22:58]:
That's a real thing. Right? And that, then you kind of go, Oh, Okay, someone's listening. They're finding value. People just don't throw their money at you. They do it because they want to, and there's value associated with it. How do you know you're doing well when these kinds of things happen on a regular basis? I think people do vote with their money.

Dave Jackson [01:23:19]:
Yeah, absolutely. And thanks, guys, for that. I really appreciate it. Next week, we'll be here. Askthepodcastcoach.com/life. We'll actually be on time. We won't be disheveled and confused and

Jim Collison [01:23:32]:
It was only 1 minute late. We got talking. It's our fault. Sorry.

Dave Jackson [01:23:37]:
But thank you so much. If you are listening later, you can. Now you're gonna hear me see, I shouldn't shave this because I'm gonna say it in about, you know, 49 seconds that, you know, you can go to ask the podcast coach.com/voice mail and leave us a message. I'll have to maybe next week, we'll have AI read some of our questions that I get from Reddit and things like that just to play with. Jim, what's coming up on Home Gadget Geeks?

Jim Collison [01:23:58]:
Uncle Marv, same Uncle Marv that's in the chat room over there, is on. We had, we just spent some great time he's just a great guest, by the way. If you ever want him on your podcast, you should ask. He's a great guest, a great guy, comes on. We did some old home service show chat. He talked about earbuds. Are expensive earbuds worth it? And so that's available for you right now: homegadgetgeeks.com. And Marv, thanks for joining me as you do every other month or so.

Jim Collison [01:24:24]:
Appreciate

Dave Jackson [01:24:25]:
that. There you go. Rich says, such good info today. I'd love to a 2 or a 3 hour show like this. And to that, I'd loving lovingly say, no. Not happening. But I appreciate the feedback. On the school of podcasting, thanks, Mark.

Dave Jackson [01:24:38]:
I'm finally because I've been working on ideas about AI and podcasting and things like that. I think that's what I'm gonna end up talking about. Mark will probably make it to the school of podcasting. I'll probably pull a clip from that because I have been using things. I know well, I'm not gonna tell you. You have to listen at the school of podcasting, but I've got my Saturdays back thanks to some tools that I'm using. But thanks to everyone at the chat room. Thanks to, podcast branding dot co based on a true story podcast dot com, mouthybroadmedia, and ask Ralph at ask Ralph podcast dot com.

Dave Jackson [01:25:07]:
We're ask the podcast coach.com. We're here every Saturday. We will see you next week.