Navigating Podcasting's Evolving Landscape: Feedback, Podcast Newsletters, and AI

Ask the podcast coach for February 15, 2025 let's get ready to podcast. 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, fresh from his trek up a billion stairs at home. Gadget geeks.com. Jim, how's it going? Buddy.

Greetings. Dave, happy Saturday morning to you. Yeah, good to be back. Suffering a little bit. I did the stair challenge with a cold. Not advisable. Mistakes were made. I make I almost gave myself pneumonia. Don't do those things. I know it was important. But anyways, back, still struggling with a little bit big thanks to Glenn, the geek, who filled in for me last week. He wasn't boring. Was he? Was he okay?

He was not boring. Where is Glen I told him, you know. And I said, we have one rule around here, buddy, don't be boring. And he filed his own advice. So that's,

that's that's good, that's good. It's good to be back. Yeah,

I have quite a few people that started back in 2005 and they're all like, Hey, I've been doing this 20 years, and I'm like, me too, but it's kind of fun to connect with those people. And I just interviewed Danny Pena and catching up with Glen and all the stuff he's doing. And it's, you know, I don't think it's a coinky dink that Glenn has a set group of people that critique his show on a weekly basis, and he's doing so well. I'm like, we'll talk about that today. I saw that out in the out in the internets, in Facebook and Reddit, where somebody was like, it's not growing. And I'm like, Did you get any kind of survey or whatever? And you know what goes good with a survey, though? To wash it down, a little coffee. Maybe a little coffee. Maybe. Yeah, there we go. And of course, that coffee pour is brought to you by our good friend Mark, over at podcast branding.co. Look The beautiful thing about Mark, you're gonna get such personalized service because he's gonna sit down with you and he's gonna go check out your website, he's gonna listen to your podcast, he's gonna ask you about kind of like, what the vibe is of the show, because that's the whole point of branding, is you want it to match the show, and you're just not gonna get that from some Guy on Fiverr. And the beautiful thing is, if you're watching the video, I'm showing all this different artwork that marks made over the years. He's done a ton for me, but it's not just artwork that's a large share of what he does, but he'll do the whole website if you need a lead magnet. You know, anything that is audience facing Mark can help you with because you only get one chance to make that first impression. And the beautiful thing of it, when I've had him do arc work, he's given me a few options, and then I just choose the one that I think fits best. And again, you're probably not gonna get that from other people. So when there's only one place to go, go to podcast branding.co, and tell him Dave and Jim sent you. And

of course, big thanks to our good friend there, Dan Lefebvre over there, based on a true story, based on a true story podcast.com while I was out, he has part one and part two of the Pinkertons, if you want to check that out. Of course, you know it's always about how much is this based on a true story? And Dan does a great job. So check those out today. On a snowy day, well, it's snowy here. Anyway, it's snowy here. Yeah, just sit inside and listen to a new podcast. Check it out today, based on a true story podcast.com, Dan, thanks for your sponsorship. Yeah, and

I've got tips at least one here. Stephanie Graham from nosey af.com says Happy one day after Valentine's Day. This is how romantic I am. I went to Walmart and went grocery shopping, you know, because that's that's how I rock my Fridays. But here's the thing, if you haven't celebrated, I know there are times on Valentine's day when I would not go out on Valentine's Day because everybody was out on Valentine's Day, but here's the tip, when you go out with your significant other, leave the phones in the car, like if you're going out on a date night or something like that. That is that will earn you extra points for that. In fact, let me find the one question here. Oh, did I not here we go, feeling low, and I am going to tie this into dating in a very weird way. But if we go to here, they say, you know, and this is kind of normal for the record. If you're new to podcasting, she says, I've been doing this for nine months now, so you know, she's that's enough to make a kid, and I did take a bit of a break. All right, not a good move, but okay, you know sometimes you got to do what you got to do, but I've been working hard the past few months to really push and promote it. I know these take time to grow, but I'm doing twice as much work as before, and have. Added more personal touches, but my numbers are lower than ever. I don't want to stop because it's fun. Well, a you're getting paid in fun. That's you know, but it's discouraging, after all the work I put into it. So I'm every Tuesday, my wife let me know that she loves yellow roses. So for many moons, I would buy a dozen yellow roses on Tuesdays. I don't know why it was Tuesday, but that's what it was. And after a few months of this, and you know, she liked roses and such, but the one day, and I will somewhat clean this up, she just said, if you would like more sex, maybe run the vacuum cleaner, or, I don't know, cook dinner, or, you know, anything like that. She goes, not that I don't love the roses, but, you know, and so it's a help out. Help out around here. Yeah, it's so I was do, I was doing the work, but I wasn't doing the work that resonated with my audience. And so so many times we're like, I want to take my podcast to the next level. So they hire mark to get some artwork done. Maybe they update the website, which, by the way, there are many people listening right now that have never been to ask the podcast coach.com they found me in an app. They subscribe, and they've never been here. And so there are so many times when we are doing the work, but it's not the right work. And for me, the right work is find out what your audience wants and gives it to them. So because if you're you know you're giving them yellow roses, and they're like, You know what? I'd really like it if you did the dishes every now and then, or, I don't know, cook dinner, even if it's just Hamburger Helper, something besides what you're doing. I appreciate the effort, but it's not really what I want. And so, yeah, Jody says couples are partners, and we are partners with our audience. Yeah, you know, it our, our job is to find out what they want and give it to them in a fun and entertaining way of some sort. And so, you know, it's, it's, if it's not working and you're working twice as hard, I would first say, stop what you're doing, because you've already proven a point, it's not working. So what else can you do? And one of the things I'm researching right now, and it's not done yet, but the research I found is, holy cow, is how much better a newsletter works than social media. Just the stats of, you know, looking at that that I was like, oh, wait a minute, I need to be because there are times when I switched. I used to do my newsletter on Fridays, and now I'm moving it to Monday, just because of this research that kind of says, the closer you get to the weekend, the better the chance that nobody's going to read your newsletter. Like, okay, so you know, it's just one of the sayings you gotta if whatever you're doing is not working, then, and a we're assuming you've done that for a couple months, not Oh, I tried it for three days, and it didn't work, you know, I remember I did tick tock for a whopping, I don't know, two weeks. And was like, Yeah, you know, okay, two weeks is not a good test, you know. So

that's got to be kind of fun to you. You know? It's got to be something that fits into your regular patterns. The things that you do, you got to kind of enjoy. You don't, by the way, you don't have to. You can load that, and it could still be really successful. That's, I mean, that does happen to some people, where they fall into success and they're like, Oh, I hate this job. I hate doing this, but it's successful. And then I think as I follow the YouTubers that I follow, and you know, you kind of, you kind of hear them fall into the same the what the successful ones, whatever we're going to deem successful, as we'll just say over 100,000 or over, yeah, we'll say over 100,000 subscribers. So they all go through a similar pattern, where they get they start getting famous, so to speak, popular, whatever you want to say, then they start fighting with their audience. You can hear it in the on the YouTube channel. Yeah, they'll come on and they'll show the they'll show the face, or they'll show the YouTube comment, and then they'll fight with them online, and they'll battle. I'm not going to do this. This isn't me. I know you're saying this. I mean, YouTube is one of the worst places in the world for comments, right? But, yeah, and, and they, so they begin this battle of, like, expectations. And, you know, I was just as listening to a guy. I mean, I've, I've admitted this before. I watch guys who cut wood, right? They cut and stack and deliver. They talk about fires and wood and all those kinds of things. So this guy just this morning, and this, he's really, really successful. And he, he's got, he's got a, I mean, he has pretty big audience. Just this morning, he was like, Yeah, I got this comment from a guy, you're not doing. The comment was, you're not doing. What I want you to do. And he's, well, sorry, I'm gonna do what I want. Right the bat, the battle in this is, you're talking about of it's, it's tough. I mean, we say this all the time. It's, you know, do get feedback, make sure you're doing what your audience wants. Maybe, yes, but you can't if you're chasing the feedback tail all the time, you're whipping your your other audience around. There's folks who are there. They don't want that kind of stuff. Just because one Yahoo jumps in and says, I want you stacking wood all the time doesn't mean you become a wood Stacker, right kind of thing. So I'm a little Dave. I'm just a little hesitant on sometimes, on that, on that feedback advice. Yes, we got to get feedback. Yes, we have to listen. But listen, there's a there's an art, in a in a science to this, both of just making sure you're, you're doing what, what you think is best, and that, by the way that may not be popular, just it may not. You may it may not get there. You got to be ready for that. You got to be ready for maybe it's not the right place, right time, right, right audience, right, whatever, just may not. It just may not do it. So there's a lot, there's a lot to it. There's we, we talk about this all the time, no one. There's no one thing you can do, and you're gonna some, some of us are gonna make a run at this, and it's just, it's gonna be a couple 100. That's all it'll ever be. And you have to make that decision right at that point. You wanna stick with this for the couple 100 that we do, or am I gonna make the best of you? Know, I would ask the question, Are you being the best possible podcaster for the 100 that you have are, if you embrace them, are you doing thing because you you can do things with 100 that you can't do with 100,000 like, it's just a different it's a different dynamic in your podcast. So, yeah, no, no, I the feedback part's hard. I think it

is tough because that's some people like, Hey, I put out a survey. Nobody filled it out. And I'm like, Well, that is, you know, that is an answer. That is, you know, if you can't get them to even fill out a survey, that's where, again, you got to explain it how this is you're going to benefit by giving me what you want, if you don't tell me. But sometimes it's, you know, I had the one show was called weekly web tools, and the only time I ever got any kind of feedback is when I said, I think I'm gonna shut the show down. And they came out of the woodwork. No, we love this show. And Mike, well, then where have you been every every week I go send in what you're using on your website, and we'll spotlight your website. Nothing. Crickets. Free self promotion. Do it here, nothing just, you know, over and over and over. So it's in

chat. They're talking about the hawk to a girl, right? We have to those are, those are such anomalies. And I know this is not what they're talking about in chat, but I want to address that, that phenomena of somebody doing something and it going viral, that's a one in a million. You can it. She wasn't trying to do what she did, and that thing just took off. That's a situation where it's just going to be hot for a while, and then it's going to be gone. And if you're not smart about that quick fame, it'll, it'll go away even faster. And in some cases, you may be able to, you may be able to keep it around. There's some good you know, as an example, Carrie Underwood, right, came from, was it the voice that she came from? Carrier she always, yeah. I think one of those shows, right? If you look at the story of most of those folks that are on those shows. They've gone anywhere, they've had all the opportunity. They've had lots of, you know, they've had success in that area. And you have a few who, for whatever reason, pop out of that thing, you know, and they go crazy, right? And so it's just a, I, you know, we've talked about this with the John Lee Dumas effect, right? Of somebody that's popular, and then you try to, you try to recreate it in your own way. Well, maybe, if I do it, well maybe, but probably not. If you do something similar the huctua girl, whatever that is, is it going to go viral? Probably not. Although it's funny when those things go popular, it's funny to watch the reels of everyone trying to then recreate that success on their own. I watch a YouTuber who she's gotten I think her name is Brooke, and she's gotten kind of famous by taking comedy bits or voiceover stuff that's funny, and she, she lip syncs it and does different camera shots and and she doesn't really had facial expression, does a really nice job of it, and has got, has picked up a big, big audience. Well, in the last couple weeks, all of a sudden, I've seen these copycats pop out of other people trying to do what. Brooke is doing. Brooke was certainly original on that well, maybe not original, but she's, she's been popular so that it doesn't, you know, I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. There you got it. It's more than just doing stuff.

Yeah, I mean, if we go back to the 80s and I'm trying to think, probably more than words or alone again, but all of a sudden, I don't know what the original power ballad was. Probably from warrant or somebody, and then everybody and their brother had to have a power ballad. It was just the thing, you know, some

were successful too, right? Some of the copycats were successful, yeah,

and I'm dying to see it in IMAX. There's a new movie about becoming Led Zeppelin. And man, how many bands have come out over the years. In the 80s, we had kingdom come, and now we I forget the band that's out now. And it's funny, because you hear them like, Oh, they're trying to rip off of Led Zeppelin. And then when you actually listen to Led Zeppelin, and then listen to them there, there's a similarity, but not really that much. You know, the chat room is going crazy here, so they're having a good show up. Yeah? So Jody says, But then how do you get people to subscribe? What do you need to offer something that will solve a problem? Yeah? So like mine, is school of podcasting.com/checklist, now, number one, I reinforced my brand number two. It's something that some people like, I just wish I had a step by step what to do next. Here it is. It's a one sheet School of podcasting.com/checklist, and when they sign now, what I what I'm not doing, I hired a business coach, and man, am I doing some things. And what it is, it's very Dave Jackson, where I'm I'm done with the thing, and I'm on to the next. And it turns out I didn't really do all the stuff I should have done. So I have, you know, 1000s of people on my newsletter, and he's and so it looks like you give them the PDF and never contact them again. I go, Well, I have a daily podcast tips that they can sign up for. And he goes, Yeah, but some of these aren't doing that. And I'm like, yeah, he goes. So you've never thought of sending an email out with an offer. Or Mike, I thought about it. He's got you if 4000 people sitting here that have, you know. So yeah, league magnets are typically short. They don't need an ebook. Like, here's, you know, one, two pages of a a problem that you have. So mine might be, I have, let's see, I have a checklist. I have one, and I don't remember the URL for this, because I don't promote it much, but how to start off your show in a good way, or something like that. 10 tips for starting off your program right? Things like, you know, don't start off with an apology, you know, that kind of whole nine yards, and then you have to promote it. I also have a domain for my one newsletter, if you go to podcasting observations, that's my sub stack. And what's really weird about that is I get, now, I don't know if this is through sub stack or what, but I had somebody yesterday that signed up for it, and all I'm doing is maybe three paragraphs about whatever's going on in my life, and then here's what I've been up to. So here's a link to ask the podcast coach. Here's a link to the school of podcasting. Here's a link to podcast, your podcast consultants, and maybe a better day, whatever, and a link to follow the show. So there's a link to the episode and a link to follow, and then it's, here's what caught my eye. Oh, I saw this YouTube video. I saw, you know, Ray Edwards made a million dollars a year and filed for bankruptcy. That caught my eye. And that's it. There's not really a lot in it. And I've had people, when I first started it, people said, Man, I love your newsletter. I can read it in like, a minute and a half. And I was like, well, it's that short because I don't have that much time to write a newsletter, but it's a lot of times. It's always weird, because you know that, I know that you know that I know that it's just my thoughts, but somehow, because it's stuff that you can't get on the school of podcasting, although you often do weeks later, sometimes I, I kind of incubate ideas over there, you know? But it's like, oh, this is what Dave is thinking. And I'm like, so, you know? But for some people, they're like, they want that extra, that little bit of knowledge, or whatever. So it's, that's what I'm doing so far. But, yeah, lead magnets are, are, how do you get people to sign up? Because Steph had another question. Would love to know what everyone is doing to drive folks from Instagram to your email newsletter, that moving from one platform to the other is a tough thing, but again, something that solves the problem for them, or, I wish you know, you know, yeah, that's basically it, some something that you know they're Googling for, and you've, you've already done the Googling, and you got the answer, and they can easily get it and download it, you know, because Jeff says, Oh, by the way, I was on Jeff show yesterday, talking podcast monetization. And Jeff, I did see the he made an AI of me, and it didn't look that bad. Because, you know, when you start bad, you. It's and it looks bad, it's accurate. Then that's the beauty of it, yeah. But he says, Give a league magnet in terms of getting people from Instagram, and then use a thing called mini chat. And I've heard of many chat I also know Jeff, another Jeff from stampede social, so I'll put a link to that. That's a many chat competitor that I believe is cheaper, if I remember, right? And then let's see. This is Jody again. I'd love to know how you can get people to pay more attention to the email newsletter. I think you have to promote it. And I, once I have the very top of my newsletter is an affiliate disclaimer, because, you know, FTC and all. So I always kind of do that. This, this, you know, newsletter may have links, blah, blah, blah, and then it usually starts off with a story. I was sitting in a thing, and this thing, you know, like today I talked about the story of, of, I wish you'd make dinner. That's a story, the personal story to make a point. And those, I don't know that they unless you're really horrible at getting to the point which sometimes that is my crutch. You know, personal stories always work. Stories in general are always a good thing, but it is tough to get people from one platform to another. I Lipson more than once, probably four or five times, we'd have some big influencer come over from YouTube or Twitter or whatever, with hundreds of 1000s of followers, and then they'd get 10,000 downloads. And we're like, Wow, good job. And they're like, Don't you know who I am? You know I'm so and so I that's, that's a 10th of my audience. We're like, Yeah, and you got them to come to a new platform? And they're like, Yeah, but I wanted 100,000 downloads. You're like, well, that's not gonna happen, because a not everybody on Twitter or blue sky or whatever, you know, maybe they don't listen to podcasts, but it is. It's tough to get people to jump platforms. So

yeah, I think, I think doubt is our worst enemy in Oh, like, in those situations, we tried a couple times, and we look at the numbers, and then we kind of go, I don't know, it's a lot of work for for that little effort. And, you know, the, you know, we know the concepts got some, some Mojo behind it. We know it can, like newsletters. We know they can work. I think you gotta out live the doubt, so to speak, and just keep at it, right? And, and, of course, you have to be interesting, right? I mean, this is the hard part. Is you're not everybody wants tips and tricks like that's just for some people, that's boring. I remember I subscribed to Paul thorat. He's a tech guy. He now he's been doing a long they're almost up to 1000 weekly episodes now, of with this Windows, weekly with with the Old Port. But before all of that started, Paul used to have a weekly newsletter, and he talked about his family. I mean, I knew his son was was hearing impaired, and that he'd had a cochlear implant put in. And he would talk about those things, and then he had some news and some updates in it as well. He's a really good writer in in that's the one of the few newsletters that I listened to. I liked it because he got really personal in there. And I liked it because I found him to be he's a lot like me. He he started in the banking industry. I started in the banking industry, we had some common technology things, right? I I was just interested in him. I was interested in his life, and he wrote really well, and he was consistent as a writer these he he writes two or three pieces for his website. Still today, every day. He's a writer. That's what he does. And and so I think that doubt, I think sometimes we get it. We write one or two or three, we don't get a lot of feedback. We start doubting ourselves, and then we say, Why am I doing this? And then I think that affects the quality of our writing. I mean, imagine if you're in your podcast, you got on, and you're like, Yeah, welcome. Nobody's listening to this because I, I think it's terrible. And why are we even here today? I'm sorry you're listening to this. Well, eventually people start going, Yeah, you know what? You're kind of right, you know, right? I mean, we, we, if we are projecting that doubt, oftentimes, then we cast the doubt on other people. They hear it and they start believing us. And so should you be Pollyannaish and fake? No, I mean, be yourself, but we've got to get, I think sometimes you got to survive that doubt and just keep you know, Jody. I think you just got to keep at it, get better at the craft, keep honing that, maybe commit a certain amount of time to it, and that's not three weeks. I'm not saying that's what you did, by the way, and you maybe you've been doing it for a long time, but for me, that's the hardest part. Every time I've started a newsletter, I get four or five in and then I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore. This. Is terrible. I hate these things. And then let's start showing, start showing them the quality of my

work. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Steph says I'm gonna make an Instagram post that says it all goes down to the newsletter with a manny chat link. I think I posted that before, but anyway, that is and then man the Jeff has some great tips here. Jeff C, by the way, the show creator news. Creator News Live is Jeff show any idea to offer a league magnet that requires a sub for the download as a pre roll. So again, these don't have to be the the thing. When I promote it on the school of podcasting, I have a pre recorded thing and it's 15 seconds and it's want more tips on podcasting. Check out my newsletter. Podcasting observations.com that's podcasting observations.com That's it. And in, you know, it's one of those things where, oh, I do want more stuff on podcasting, but again, it's I get, maybe I don't know, three a week, if I'm lucky, often one, sometimes none, and then I'll get five out of nowhere. And I'm like, What did I do that? I got five people. I don't know. The other thing he said, and I met her at Ecamm Creator Camp, one of the that was a great event. Just for meeting people, got to go check out Liz Wilcox. And he says, yes, that Liz from survivor. And also, I've never heard of Paul gouder, but Liz has templates for newsletters. And they're like, nine bucks. They're nothing crazy. And Liz is one of those people that I said, Why is it nine bucks? And she says, I She totally is. And I'm glad he said that, because I'm working on this newsletter thing. Liz would be the perfect guest for this. I'm like, Duh, Dave, go to Liz. She literally just wants to help people with newsletters. She knows and understands the power of newsletters and just wants to help people. And I think she has a yearly thing that you can sign up for, but that's another one where when you say, I want to add something, that means either A, you've got free time, or b You're going to stop doing something. And so I just don't watch, if I watch TV, and I don't watch much, it's pre recorded, and many times I'm watching it on my computer, not in my TV, because on my computer, I can watch it and fast forward through commercials and things of that nature. So, but it's, it's tricky, you know? And then Jody said, or could I just show, wait a minute, yeah, or I could just show my work on my on occasion, but I don't necessarily want the newsletter to be all about me. It's for them. But when you

but it is about you, Jody, it is there. Listen, they're not coming to the newsletter for them, like they get enough of them every single week, because they're the they know themselves. They are coming for you. That's the thing. I think we missed that. I think we kind of say, yeah, and Jody, I understand what you're saying here. I do. I get it. Oh, it's about my audience. Well, your audience wants it to be about you. That's why they're there. So don't this is, I think sometimes we make this mistake sometimes, especially in the interview shows, where we it is kind of about the guest, but it's really about the interviewer. It's really about the host. People are there for you, the host, interviewing someone, then the relationship isn't with the guests, like you have a guest on, they're there. I in my show, I have rotating reoccurring guests, and yes, people come out for them because I have them on on a regular basis, but for the one offs, they're not, they're they're there to soak up as much information as they can out of that guest and then eject them. They don't, they don't care about them. They care about you. So make sure you are you were being you. I And I understand the selfless mentality in this. Oh no, I want to make about other I get that, but for a second we have to kind of shift and say, You know what? No, they are here for me and Jody. I would encourage you to put personal stuff in there. That's the stuff they want to know. They're following you because they want to hear that stuff. So find the balance that works for you. I get it sometimes that makes it that makes people uncomfortable. I don't want to share those too much about me. No, they're there for you. That's why they're listening to you. Don't miss that point. You're You're the point. Make sure you're doing it in a way and certainly be comfortable with it. But do it in a way that works, that works for them. They're there for you.

Yeah, just an example. I went over to podcasting observations, and it says, the one thing that is stopping you is you and I start off where, hey, I turned 60. And then the next paragraph, hey, you know what I'm doing, the exact same thing I did in my 20s to lose weight, and it's not working. And it said, last month I worked at pod page, and I explained how I went through the learning curve of setting up the booth. And I didn't like it. I was going through the learning curve last night with WordPress. And it's weird because I get frustrated because I know what I want to do. I just want a video here with words to the right of it and tools this. This blocks, right? And I'm like, I just went to the kitchen. I'm like, this is a learning curve. You're gonna figure this out. You figured it out before you can do it, you know? So I'm basically saying that, and then I have a sentence that stands out. Says, Wait, what does this have to do with podcasting? And I'm like, here, so I always tied into podcasting, creating amazing content takes time, dedication, knowledge, insight, and many, many other nouns and adjectives that I don't feel like looking up. Keep this in mind, you know, podcasting is not impossible. It's not as complicated as you think. And then I go through but so it's, you know, I said three paragraphs. Okay, it's Dave. It's not going to be three paragraphs. It looks more like seven, you know. But then it's, Hey, podcaster happy hour, by the way, podcaster Happy hour.com Mike Dell is going to be demoing some of their AI stuff for us this week. It's totally free. And then here's my latest content. And then here's stuff that caught my eye. Hey, Captivate has a sale, and if you buy it right now, you don't have to pay till April. Cap show cut their price in half, Katana, which we talked about on this show, Katana, dot video storytelling secrets from South Park creators that caught my eye. That's a YouTube video and Chapel Rome's Grammy speech, and I pointed out that I'll be interested to see how chapel Rome makes out on her next album, because during her Grammy speech, she basically bit the hand that feeds a lot. She basically said, Hey, record industry, you suck. You know, why don't we have health benefits in 2020 I was dropped from my label, and I didn't even have a working wage. And I was like, is she doing? Wait, what? I'm like, they just voted her best new artist. And she caught up, and it was just like, Yeah, screw this place. And I was like, Okay, let's see how much that album gets promoted in the past, so we shall see. But that's again, it doesn't have to be war and peace. And if you can type, I'm probably, yeah, I like cap show, but cap show solves a problem that I kind of don't have, and that is writing. I basically write, and I've got Grammarly, if I want to, I can throw it into chat GPT. And usually between those two, they stop me from looking stupid. Occasionally, you know, the typo sips through, and I just go, Well, I'm still human. Thank you, you know. So I'm probably going to drop my caps, even though they cut their price in half. I'm probably going to drop that because I'm just not using it. And so, you know, if you have a problem writing, then there are AI tools that you can use be sure that you are still in the voice there. I'm not a big fan of letting AI write this stuff for me, but I'm all about, oh, let me speak. You're ready for this. You'll be the first to hear this, speaking of AI and how to wrap things up. I Daniel and I did an episode of the future of podcasting, and I said, I wonder if you can use chat GPT to critique your show. And so I transcribed the show, threw it into chat GPT and said, What do you think? And at the this is just the end of it. It's a summary. So I was just, I was using it in the audio mode. And so here's what they said.

What you did? Well, one, real world examples. You used relatable analogies, like painting with peanut butter, and referenced early podcasting struggles, which made the discussion feel approachable. Two, conversational style, the back and forth dynamic, kept things engaging and prevented the conversation from feeling overly academic or dry. Three, breaking down AI concepts the way you explained. AI driven editing, auto generated chapters and future AI co hosts was clear and tied to existing tools like descript and rodecaster Four injecting humor light hearted moments like discussing AI praying for you, kept the conversation fun while tackling a deep topic where you could improve one more, step by step explanations, some segments like AI's potential role in podcast production could be broken down further. For example, instead of assuming listeners know how AI driven tools work, walking through an example workflow in simple terms might help. Two, summarizing key takeaways more clearly the episode had great insights, but reinforcing the big ideas at the end would drive home what listeners should walk away with three, less assumed knowledge, some references like cross app comments or dynamic ad insertion could be briefly defined for newer podcasters who may not be familiar with them. Final verdict, yes, you achieved your goal of making complex ideas easier to understand, especially through examples and humor to level up. You could add a structured takeaway section at the end and ensure all technical terms are briefly explained for less experienced listeners. Would you like me to draft a summary or bullet point takeaways for your audience?

And when I listened to that, I went, Okay, I'm out of a job. I mean, everything you're not, I get no, you're not. But there were things in there. I was like, You know what we do, assault. Assume the audience knows what cross but we know our audience, our podcasters that are primarily really interested in the 2.0 stuff, so they kind of know what cross app chapters are. But the summary, like, all those are not bad suggestions, like they're not telling me to tweak my show. But it was just like, all right, it's interesting because I, I still don't quite get Yeah, yeah. Dan says that was very boring to listen to. Yeah, I don't know. I clicked the button in chat, G, P, T, and it went from the very friendly, hey, Dave, what's up to this woman who talked like this? So I don't know. I somehow hit the NPR button and it was like, let me give you some tips. Yeah,

it's a good voice. And listen, all of it is good advice, right? As I listen to it smart, correct? It's good advice. It's not a person, and we know it's we know it's chat, GPT. And listen, there's times when you need just a list of things, and there's times when you, you know, I was writing something this week, and I had, I had one of my co workers come look at it, and she's just paste that thing into chat, G, P, T, and get a summary of it, like it's in it. It made a really more readable summary for me. And I thought, could I have gotten there eventually? Yes, and I think, but it needed the content to get started, right? So no, Dave, I, I don't think that it's, we're, we're on the verge of being we just have to, we just have to capitalize on what humans do best, and that is connect emotionally, right? Yeah, connect emotionally with people like AIs. Can't do that yet.

No, there's, there's no nostalgia button in AI. So if you, if you tell a story and it talks about whatever, some old TV show, they're not going to get that. They're they're not empathy.

Yeah, my co, my co host, we talked about deep seek this week on home, Gadge geeks, and I asked him, you know, what do you what? What are the limitations? What do you see? He's, yeah, these AI, they don't have any empathy. They only struggle with empathy, right? So that we don't, well, some of us do. Maybe that's but, but, you know, humans do that better than AI, yeah. But it

was now, on one hand, that this is very kind of a Facebook thing, because it was very to the point and summarized. And there was a lot of where I'd be, like, one of the first times I did this, it was like, well, there are crutch words. And I said, what were the crutch words? And who had more crutch words, myself or Daniel? And you'd hear this, and then go, I'm trying to analyze the data that, you know. And then basically, okay, and it wouldn't do it, and I'm gonna try that again. No, I'm like, never mind. Let's move on, shall we? So when I asked it real questions, it was like, you know, but

the old Star Trek working, remember that she'd yell at you? Working? Yeah.

And we did the same thing with in, in, well, two things, pod page. We had, we did an audience survey through the CSV file into chat GPT, and had it summarized it, and it did a good job, but it basically said, hey, people like you, except for this one person that I need to go find. But it wasn't super detailed on they were just like, hey, it's easy to use and it's powerful. But it was like, okay, but like, we needed it to dig down a little deeper, and it didn't. But on my survey, which, if you're listening to the school of podcasting, School of podcasting.com/survey, 25 one person said, I kind of liked you more before you found AI. I liked, I forget the word, I think he said disjointed. I kind of like disjointed Dave going on tangents, and the fact that I'm actually a little more because there are times I forget the one episode I did, oh, I had copied all these quotes from a report from YouTube called Why We watch. And there was so much chocolatey goodness in this thing. Hey, you know what? This is what YouTube people want, and it applies to podcasters as well. But once you have clear video with decent audio, check that off and move on. Nobody cares about your blurry background, right? It's now we're down to the content. And so I had all these different things, and I was like, how am I gonna steer this into something that makes sense. And so I took them all and I said, I got these quotes from blah, blah, blah, can you organize these better? And it spit out something. I was like, exactly. It was like, here's the main points and here's the sub points. And from that, I just riffed on those. I didn't read it, but in the process, I was more organized. And that person was, like, we kind of liked it when you're a little more disorganized. That's a really interesting comment. Well, they like to laugh.

Like, yes, like, AI is not funny. Now, if you tell it to be funny, it'd be interesting. If it could be funny. Could you say, Hey, be disjointed and a little a little self defeating, and maybe. Self deprecating and be funny in the process. Maybe, maybe it could. But no, it's, it's Listen, it's intended. AI is intended to be, you know, it's a, it's a word calculator, right? It's a language model. It's supposed to be good at those kinds of things. It predicts that, really, all it does is predict the next most logical word in this, right? So you give it a topic, and then it starts putting words together, right, in ways that make sense. So it lacks a little bit of that human Yeah, we're not, we don't do things perfectly. I mean, I don't finish sentences all the time, and it does, so it's a little predictable, right?

Jody says, so they like more you, yeah, we're kind of back to that thing. And that's what, yeah, and it's funny, because I tell people all the time, lean into the humanness of you, because there's only one you you can't be duplicated, you know, yeah,

that's why I'm here on Saturday mornings, because I want to hang out with you. Yeah, somebody. I mean, there's others who are doing this, there's others who are doing this. In this space. They're doing it better than we're doing it. They might be more interesting than we are. But you like us, like the 30 of you that are here right now, you're here all the time. That's good. That's cool, because if you didn't like us, you wouldn't show up, right and then for those of you listening on the podcast, we get some good, regular numbers on the you like us like so I'm here because I like you, Dave, that's I like hanging out with you. I don't hang out with a bot. That's boring. Yeah,

I've seen people that might try that. Because you could tie your phone into a rodecaster and pull up the voice thing and and I'm like, you know? But it is weird, because if you think about what, what large language models do is they're really good at guessing the next word from what I understand, and it's basically what they do. So when I ask it, like, what it thinks? Well, it doesn't really think it can, you know? So it's, it's kind of, yeah,

they also don't get distracted. They don't get just they don't interrupt each other, and they don't get distracted. That's a huge, I think that's a huge difference. Sometimes you or me, we go on a tangent. We go off and and there's something about the human experience in that we used to all sit around fires and tell each other stories, and, you know, we'd have that guy who'd start the story, and you're like, oh, when's that gonna end? Oh, right, but AI doesn't do that. It's perfectly it creates perfect sentences. It does interrupt itself. Those kinds of things. I

have a family member who doesn't listen to the show, so I'm safe, but I can literally put my coat on and walk towards their door. They will start a story that goes on forever, and I can then pull out my keys, and then I can open the door while I'm still listening to the story, have my hand on the outside door. My body language is I'm leaving. I gotta go. And they just keep going. So Dan says, as a movie guy, I think of CGI. You know, everyone thought CGI would eliminate practical effects, but the more CGI that's used, the more people want the real thing. I think the same thing for AI. People want people. I did see in the theater that they're doing yet another dinosaur movie. There's another Jurassic Park, Park movie. I was like, really? I thought the last one was the final one, and they're like, no, no. It made money, so we haven't quite wrenched all every dime out of that franchise yet. But he also says, go on forever. There's a happy medium, but there's also way too much. People always wait. People always be what reigns in the technology, right? Yeah, it we got to be human. And so I heard Todd and Rob talking about, what if Google created a bunch of AI tools to write stuff that Google would then promote? Because those aren't people. And I'm like, Yeah, but, but that technology is not cheap either. That's the other thing about that. But in the end, it's, it's people that are gonna, you know, work so well,

listen, we're on the verge of information revolution, like, in the way we get information, the way it's displayed and distributed, in the way we get it, the, you know, generative AI will take over the search space for sure, like we're the way We Google things. Now that's, that's in 10 years, completely different, right? We're gonna, it will do that. So those things are, those things are coming. I mean, I think we need to be ready for that, that kind of thing. But, you know, the internet replaced some things and it created some new ones. I mean, this is always the the way this works in in technology, right? It doesn't take away without giving and in all the things we could do when the internet came along that we couldn't do before, this being one of them, like no internet, no podcasting. So you know, this doesn't come along unless the internet comes now, the internet wiped out. Newspaper. Dollars. I really enjoyed as a kid, sitting with a bowl of corn flakes, with the sports page open and or whatever, and reading the newspaper. You know, as a 16 or 17 year old, I enjoyed that doesn't happen anymore. I try to do it on the computer. It's just not the same experience as a big old piece of paper that you you I take up half the table with it, right kind of thing while I was eating cereal in the mornings. It's just a different experience. It ruined that experience like it's gone.

Do you know what really killed newspapers? Because people think, oh, because they can get their news someplace else. What killed newspapers was Craigslist, because newspaper made a ton of money on classifieds, and now I can, you know, and I was like, when I read that, I was like, you know what that's true? Hey, speaking of things that we didn't think about, and then you look back and go, Oh, you know what that's true? You know, who doesn't get any credit for podcasting, but should. And I watched a thing, a documentary on this guy. Did you ever watch Tom Green back in the day on MTV?

He was really. Watched a lot of MTV. He was

weird. He was from, I remember the one time he just kept saying, watering can, watering and I was like, that's so Canadian watering can. Glen, look, I have a watering cat on boring water. Look, it's the watering can. And you know, my bum is on your face, my bum is on the pole. My bum he had, he was just weird, and he got testicular cancer. And as you might imagine, it took a while to overcome with chemo and stuff like that. Married Drew Barrymore, and so when he went off MTV, because, you know, cancer, they replaced him with this thing that never would have made it, except for Tom Green, called jackass, right? Jackass was like, because Tom was doing all this weird stuff, he's, yeah, he'd go out with, like, just meat hanging on his face and interview people just to see what they would do. He would wake his parents up at three in the morning. He basically had remember when airbrushing was really cool. He airbrushed basically pornography on the hood of his parents car. So he was this crazy guy, so that that paved the road for jackass. And then when he really understood what the what the internet was. He lived in Los Angeles, had this beautiful view of La up in the hills where his show was, and he had seven cameras, and he found a way to do automatic switching, and he would just, whenever he felt like it, he would go live on the internet. And people were like, oh, that's kind of cool. And one of his guests was this guy. You may have heard of him, Joe Rogan, yeah. And I went, you know what? No Tom Green. He was the one that put the seed. And this is cool. We don't need a TV show anymore. We don't need it. We can do this from wherever we are. And I was like, Man, that guy gets no love for kind of being a trailblazer. So it's there's a he's now sold his LA stuff and moved to California with his dog. So it'll be interesting. Yeah, going back to the chat GPT discussion, Chris says, From cast ahead.net, we all look back at this year. We'll all look back at this years from now, and AI will get so much better than the stuff we're cranking out now. That's true. Always

does. And worse and worse,

look at clip art. Also, Chris can answer this question for me. I have a question for the audience. Is it just me or his descript stopped the endless updating. They still update, but they're not moving things around where you can't find anything. Because I tried to make a course on descript probably a couple years ago, and it just seemed every time I made a course, they outdated it within weeks. And I was like, so after about, probably the third time of making a descript course and having them completely ruin it in the matter of a month. I just like, all right, I'm not making a descript course, until they calm down. And it seems like they've calmed down a little bit over there, I could be wrong, so we shall see. The other thing, you know, what the other thing we should do is thank our awesome supporters, because they're awesome. And people like Jody Kringle and Chris Stone and many people that are in the chat room. Thank you guys. I appreciate that, and you can be an awesome supporter by going to ask the podcast coach com slash awesome. And we should also let you know that I mentioned the school of podcasting earlier. That's a great place for courses unlimited coaching and an really awesome community. And you can save if you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription by using the coupon code coach. And when you go to ask the podcast coach.com you're looking at pod page. And we just released a new feature where you can now, let's say I don't know, you're in the top 10% per list. Notes you could actually now we call it Yeah. You can have Yeah, but you can now make a badge at the top of your website that says, you know, top 10% podcast, or number one podcast with host name, Dave and Jim, or whatever you want to see. So they're now achievement badges on pod page. And we're also using Ecamm if you want to check out Ecamm for our live streaming needs. And if you're wondering how I'm switching to all these scenes and stuff, that's all Ecamm, check it out at Ask the podcast. Coach, com slash, Ecamm. And Ecamm has two ms because it's good. And if you need more, Jim Collison and who doesn't then go over to the average guy.tv, or, if you wanted something a little different, go to Home gadget geeks.com. Either one will get you for more gym. Goodness, goodness. It's time to pick the featured supporter of the week, and is it going to be Chris? Is it going to be Ralph? Is it going to be ed? I think Ed won last week, if I remember, right? Is it Jody kangle? There she is, the audio branding show. Well, we're gonna click the wheel and what's in her Okay, there is, I was gonna say Glenn is still on here. Glen here was last week. Oh, by the way, Ross brand is on the wheel. And if you want to go off the wheel, no, it's but, yeah, but he's really been digging into other things that sub stack do, like you can do, I think live streaming now to sub stack and you can do they've always had podcasts. And I was like, Yeah, I don't really want a podcast media host that does like podcasting as a side thought, you know, but he's been discovering lots of things you can do on sub stack. So with that, we will, we will click shuffle, and we will, well, that's not what I wanted. That was weird. I clicked on shuffle, and I got this weird bubble that popped up. There we go. We'll click shuffle, we'll click spin. And who will it be? Oh, the tension. Is it going to be Craig? Is it? No, it's Greg at Indie drop in.com if you have a funny show, if you have a scary show, he's got a website over there, and you can easily put your show over there and get it in front of another audience. Check him out at Indie drop in.com and Craig, thanks for being an awesome supporter, and if you found this show, you know, if you're like, hey, this whole ask the podcast coach thing, if you found it to save you time or save you money, or maybe we saved you a headache, maybe we made you laugh, or we kept you educated, then go over to ask the podcast coach.com/awesome and become an awesome supporter today. And by the way, when, when you do that, when you first sign up, we give you a ton of shout outs that first episode. So you could be the next person on, you know. And first of all, you don't have to do $20 a month. That's that'll get you on the wheel, but you could sign up and support the show for as little as $5 a month. So there you go. Here's a fun one. Jeff C says, I don't even use Google anymore. It's perplexity for me now, yeah, I'm gonna say about 80% of the time is perplexity. On occasion, if I just search in the address bar, my default is set to Bing. Yes, it's still around Mike, but be I think I Joe saucy hive stacking Benjamin said he makes $30 a year with just doing, if it's like, I don't really care, I'm just need a quick answer, kind of, I'll go to Bing, because somehow it's paying me whatever point 002, cents a search, or something like that. So it should be interesting to see. Can

I get my nerd on for a second? Can, oh, wait, hold on. I got it. I've got now. Oh, he's been waiting for this. It's time for Jim to get his nerd on.

I love that. Love that. Hey. So not a self, selfless, no, a shameful promotion, whatever we call it, of the Okay, home gadget geeks. This week, Christian is on. We're talking about deep seek, but in the context of AI, I think one of the things I want podcasters to start paying attention to is what I've started calling the modularization of AI. In other words, yes, we have these big, large language models. When you think about what's going on with chatgpt, that's a gigantic learning model, right? It has billions of tokens, and it's kind of what they call it, but it has the ability industry. That's not the right word either, but it's got these, this, these. It's in the billions of points of information for them and then. But there's also what I'm watching in the space I talked about this two weeks ago. I think the LM studio, l the letter L, M Studio, you can actually download and and kind of use AI models locally. You can have your own AI model. It's that this way, you're not having to go to the you know, you're not having to use some other service if there's some things you want to do privately. The more powerful your computer, the bigger the models you can download. But you can download. Pretty small, distilled down models and and still make them work pretty well. It's, it's a good way to kind of keep up with what's going on in the open space with AI, but Dave, I think for podcasters, we're gonna gonna want to start watching this modularization, where a eyes these models get very, very specific, and then we build layers on top of those modules to bring the information up. So instead of having one big, huge model that covers everything, we've got these little, tiny or smaller modules, models that are maybe, say, podcast specific. I have not seen a podcast podcast specific language model. Yet it could be coming. It probably should be coming. And I think this is something we're just going to want to watch out for. So as you're thinking about AI and the use of it, this LM studio would be a great way to kind of keep up on it. Anybody can do it. It's an average guy kind of thing. It's just an application you install, and then you can download the language models and feed queries in and see what they're smart at, some of those kinds of things, but, but we should start watching for this. Because I think I was thinking about for us here in this space, imagine a model that was tuned for podcast help like, you know, it had pulled in all this helpful information to to and then, and then it really was tuned specifically for that. I think that could be, that could be, and will be a very, very helpful thing coming with AI. So think that's the next generation. Again, we talked about this in the show. The next generation, these things will start to modularize, yeah. And then the trick will be, how do I go to one place and invoke a model, so to speak, to get what I want.

Well, that's it, because cap show is, you know, again, AI with a very heavy marketing slant, is kind of it. I was using Ray Edwards tool, and it had a very heavy copywriting slant. So it was made to write copy for, you know, ads and such. What I think we're going to see. Because one of the things I I've been reading the book Profit First from Mike Michalowicz. And it's just fun to say, Michalowicz, go ahead, try it. It's fun, but it's in the process of doing this. I realized, if somebody like, I know the school of podcasting is profitable, because I know how much I made and how much I spent, but in terms of, like, when I look at it at any time, I kind of go, Yeah, I think some of that's taxes, some of this anyway. So I'll be talking about that in probably about a month on the school of podcasting, because it's, it's numbers, and there's nothing more riveting than listening to an audio podcast about numbers like 45% and then 12% 10% people just, oh, please say percent one more time. It's great. But in the process of doing this, you see what you're spending money on. So I right now I'm on a paid version of chat. GPT. Well, that's kind of dumb, because I'm not sure what Magi costs. Magi is this AI tool that has chat, GPT and Claude, and you can use them all like Chris Stone from CAST ahead.net. Took this image, and it was like this old timey black and white image, and it had people crossing the street picture the Beatles on the back of Abbey Road, right? And all of a sudden they just animated themselves. And I was like, and he, he did this cool thing, because Chris is, like, superb with video, and somehow it faded out as it zoomed in, and it was just like, so you couldn't really tell that it was AI, because, you know, it was kind of a distraction, but it was so cool. I'm like, How'd you do that? He's, oh, it's one of the many tools in Magi. And I was like, anything done with chat GPT? Because I can get chat, G, P, T, in Magi, along with seven other tools. Are you paying for Magi? I What? I was so stupid. I got into Magi early, and I was paying a whopping $9 a month. And then I it dawned on me that at the time when, when AI first came out, I was kind of like, yeah, no, thanks. I didn't quite get it. And then it dawned on me, the more I looked into it, I was like, oh, you know what? There were those people like, keep your email. I'm gonna send my letter. And I'm like, I don't want to be that guy. I better, better get into this. And so I know it's more than nine bucks now, and I remember the last time I logged in, he had added so many features that it was kind of like you need to upgrade. You're on the $9 plan. You get to sniff the good stuff, which totally makes sense. I mean, when, when people add more functionality to it, but anytime I see like, Canva added a bunch of AI well, when they add that AI stuff, guys, guess what, your price is going to go up, because that stuff isn't cheap. So keep that in mind. Well,

it could be getting cheaper. I mean, this is the with deep seek coming in a little bit cheaper than that. What's, what cracks me up is deep seek was a $6 million model, and they're like, and that's cheaper. 6 million is cheaper, you know? Anyways, it was, yeah. I mean, we were, we were in the hundreds of millions for some of the other models. But. Your listen your your advice on podcast, on podcast host sites is the same on AI, by the way, right? If you're doing free, if you're on the free plan, anywhere like, it's probably not going to be around very long. Just, yeah, it's probably, you know, even chat GPT will give you, they'll give you four. Oh, if you're not paying anything, they'll give you four, oh, for the first couple queries, and then they downgrade you to three. Oh, after that, ah, you should really pay for this, right? So figure out that I the trick isn't if you're going to pay for it, but when and it's the same deal, you're going to get the best development often times in the areas that you're paying for it. The question is how much can pay for it? So,

yeah, Randy said I'd like to see Dave's list of subscriptions. Here's a problem that I ran into. Oh, boy. Like, why? Why do I have a cap show subscription when I'm not really using it? Because I love Deidre Chen. I think she's awesome. I love that whole I'm friends with these people, and I have to just go, Yeah, I will promote it, you know, but I am not your target audience. Daniel, J Lewis, I love pod engagement. I don't really use it. And I'm like, Oh, can I do that to my co host? Now, it's 15 bucks a month, you know, I mean, but when you do 15 times, 15 times, seven times, you know, eight plus eight and another, Oh, this one is 22 and you know, it's, yeah, so I am cutting down. I need to figure out, you know, I can increase my profit, because the whole Profit First thing is, how much money did you make? Pay yourself? And then what's left is for expenses. And if you go, Wait, I don't have enough to cover my expenses, then you either a don't pay yourself, and that's the whole point of the book. No, you need to pay yourself or you cut your expenses. So it's, it's kind of tricky. Stephanie says canvas, AI is trash. I would totally agree. I've used it three times, and every time I go I think this is user error, because it just is bad. So keep that in mind. Let's, let's check out the legacy right as a question, and it's about hardware, and it's what would be a good digital phantom power converter to use? That's a great question, because most of the stuff I use has it built in, like the rodecaster has phantom power built in. The zoom pod track before has that. I don't know that they make just a phantom power tool. I'm sure they do. If you go to Sweetwater, they've got to have some sort of but almost any mixer, even back in the days of using musician stuff, see now, Randy says canvas, AI, image generation is better than most. And I know there's I need Craig from it goes to college. There's a image something that I'm paying $7 a month for and not using. That seems to be a reoccurring theme with me, because condenser mics need phantom power. So my first thing would be like, Are you sure you want a condenser mic? Because those can pick up a little more noise, just because they pick up a little more high end, in some cases, a little more low end, so you're picking up what might be more hiss and more rumbling. So that's a thought we shall see when they are having their own show over there. Well, it's

listen the Canva thing. Let me, let me talk about that for a second. The the I think we're at a spot, especially with AI, where it's very preference driven. So, so, you know, your, your mileage may vary. I've heard some people say positive and negative thing. Well, we just, we just saw it in our chat room about Canva, right? And you can, you know, I hear people say, Oh, open AI, or Oh, chat GPT, which is right, or the I use Gemini, or, yeah, there's, there's a lot of right now, there's a lot of change, a lot of preference going on. So I would say, Let your mileage area on your experience right now. Like, I don't like it because of these things. When you're given that kind of advice, just saying it's garbage, or just saying it's the best. I don't know if that's good enough right now. I think you need to kind of say why or what, what for you. Or especially if you're giving advice to folks who don't know what, what's going on, it's just, there's a lot. Well, you just mentioned this with with descript, like they, they've, they're going through a whole bunch of changes right now in the way they're doing their update cycle. I was also frustrated with descripts constant updating, and I went to a phonic instead because it was just it was now I'm kind of thinking, Well, now that you said that, okay, maybe next time when my annual auphonic is up, maybe I'll give descript a look before we do it. So anyways, just be careful. We're in that spot now with some of these tools where there's still, there's a lot of changes going on pretty fast.

Yeah, the here's something I was surprised with on Reddit this morning, and it's just one of those things where, again, we throw out. Kind of jargon, and oh, before I'm moving on, and we didn't answer, well, we kind of answered via chat. Randy says there's a sure x5, p1 portable fandom power supply for 50 bucks on Sweetwater. There are a lot more there as well. I've never used one because everything a, I don't use condenser mics and and B, when I do, I'm usually using some sort of interface that you know, trying to remember, nope, the the road NS one that requires phantom power. Almost every condenser microphone needs phantom power. So an SB says, Hey, you keep saying the chat rooms having their own little show. Hey, we're just commenting on what you said. So

there you go. It's true, but yeah, we're just impressed by the chat room that they get. That's it. Yeah,

we're happy that you guys are having fun. Dan says, Jim, I think they're similar to when a listener says, our podcast is bad. Okay, that's very helpful feedback. We can also give better feedback to each other what we like or don't like, yeah,

yeah, yeah. Even, even here, we could do a better job of that, probably, yeah. And we do listen, actually, this chat room does a better job than most of saying I didn't this part of it, or these preamps and this thing weren't very that I did not like the sound that came out of those, or of being specific, this chat room in particular is really good at that. So don't take that as a chastisement on our our part, you guys, you guys are pretty good at it, but it is just a good reminder. You know, was on some of these things. Specifics help, yeah, but

the one thing that I've always known what it is, I always thought it was self explanatory, and doesn't mean this person was dumb, but they had never heard the phrase promo swab. And what this is, is there was a guy that said he's now getting 100,000 downloads a month. And somebody said, Well, how did you do that? He said, I made a good show. Again, going back to what we're talking about, with a niche that wasn't too crowded, I grew steadily year after year. So number one, we're not talking six months no advertising. Promo swaps were the best thing, along with time and patience, to which this one person said, promo swaps. And so if you've never heard of a promo swap, and you can get wrapped up in numbers with this. I remember I had somebody that just started a show so they had no audience, and they wanted to do a promo swap with me. And I was kind of like, I don't want to be a stickler about this, but like, when you mention my show to your audience, both of them will hear about the school of podcasting. When I mention your show on my show, you know you're gonna get considerably more. Not that I have a giant audience, but you know, so you can get a little hung up on that. In theory, I think I should probably do more promo swaps than than I do now. And you basically just say, make a 32nd spot. So it's Hey, this is Jim from home gadget geeks, where we talk about blah, blah blah and yada, yada yada, and blah, blah, blah and robot lawn mowers. Check it out. Home gadget geeks.com and then I play that on my show. Now, the thing is, if I'm doing the death metal show, I may not want the one about raising pigs, right? Because I don't know how many death metal people are into raising pigs. They might because, you know, all the blood and gore and things like that, but you want something, and that's where some people won't do it, because they're like, well, that's my competition. Then that's where I go. Well, there's, you know, they can listen to you on Monday. They can listen to the other show on Tuesday, but that's a promo swap, and that's just where, you know, you explain what your show is, and the benefit you're answering the question, why should I listen to your show, which can be a hard one to do, Randy, because I said the word rodecaster. Randy brings up a good question. Have you dug into the latest firmware update for the rodecaster Pro two? I did it. Have no idea what it added. I have. I need to go to YouTube and do that. Speaking of that, though, about a month and a half ago, while the rodecaster was on, I took the SD card out of it and went to put it in the computer, and it worked fine. But ever since then, like I am recording right now on the rodecaster, but if I go into the rodecaster software and try to download the file through that which takes forever, by the way, still it doesn't recognize anything past February 7. And I was like, Oh, wait, I've been recording all this stuff. Where's my files? So I took the SD card out, put it into the little converter thing. He stuck it in my computer, and they're there. But for some reason, the rodecaster can't see it. And I think it might have been when I took the SD card out, maybe things got a little maybe it was trying to write something, or who knows what, but I just know one of the things I have on my to do list for the weekend is get anything of value off that SD card and then reformat it. And it was like, oh, oopsie. Probably should have paid a little more attention to that. Yeah,

can you attach that thing to the network and just move those files that way? I I am not an SD card fan. I don't I hate the fact that they still exist like it's some of the worst form of storage ever because of all the reasons that you're Yeah, you're mentioning you blowing it the wrong way, or you drop it on the ground and the data somehow falls off of it, or the thing cracks because it's difficult to pull it out of the the device does this, is there no, is there a network interface on that thing that you could see that seemed, would seem pretty logical to me, that there is. It would have solid state storage. And you would, I think that's such a would be, let's be such a better way of doing it, solid state storage. I

do feel a, what I would just call an interject, like I could tie this right into a router, apparently. Okay,

yeah, okay, so it's got an ethernet jack on. Yes, thank you. Okay, good, yeah. If it were me, I would plug it into the network, and then I would move files across the network, as opposed to pulling that that card in such a such a failure point, well,

and it's one of those things where, even though now, like right now, I'm I need two tracks, three tracks, one for actually, I used all four tracks today because I have me on channel one, you on channel two, sound effects on Channel Four, and channel three is my other computer. So we wouldn't have been able to hear that awesome robot voice earlier, had I not had my other computer tied so I get four tracks. But if it's only if it was just me and I still export the file. It seems to take forever using their tool. I don't know why, but it's not as bad as the rodecaster one, which used to take 10 minutes. But audio,

audio, guys who don't understand the importance of file movement, Hey, we should probably put a really good network interface on this thing. Plus you should have lightning now that would, it would drive the price up. But, right? I mean, if you had, if you had, you know, if you had faster storage on there, you could move that data. It's always slower I get it, but I just, man, just an SD card. Just every time you mention that, my skin crawls a little bit, I'm like, why are we still doing things with SD cards. I'll

have to check this out. SP says you can use a USC, C, external hard drive to record on the rodecaster Pro two and the road

casting USB C. He just typed that wrong USB C, because

I know, yeah, I have that second USB C going to my computer. But if I wasn't doing that, which eventually I will get rid of this PC. I've said that for about three months now, and it's

just audio. I don't understand why it's so slow. It's audio. These are the tiniest files on the planet. Yeah, it's, it's not like we're you're not recording video. Does that? That thing doesn't do video, right? It's just audio.

Just audio. This is why

I'm always like, these are the smallest files on the planet. Yeah, I don't Okay.

I'm sorry. Uncle. Mark says their latest firmware adds more virtual device features and USB microphone integration. Oh, that's interesting. Daniel says you shouldn't have to eject the micro SD card anymore. The rodecaster Pro two, it's USB three, isn't it? Yeah, I always thought that, and it's not as bad as the rodecaster Pro one. But there are times maybe I'm just impatient, but it just seems like I can go, you know, get a snack in the kitchen, come back, and it's still okay. We're 30% done, and that's not now I would expect that this, this is a 90 minute show. So okay, I get but there are other times. Yeah, tiny

file. Tiny file, still, yeah, audio only. Anyways, yeah.

Stephanie says, I use the ATR 2100, and I never have firmware stuff. Yeah, that that's a microphone. It's kind of set the way it is. Do you use your mic with the XLR cable?

I do, yeah. And she asked, Where, what do I use? I use a Motu M, o, t, u m2, that was, I spent some time with Ed Sullivan. Speaking of consultants, I spent some time with Ed Sullivan. This was, I think, a lot of podcasters. If you can get a service like this, you should do this. He has every kind of mic in every kind of interface. And we sat down in an afternoon and recorded a bunch of audio to kind of determine, hey, what's the best microphone for me? So that was, Ed, thanks for doing that. Was years ago now, but, Ed, thanks for doing that. And we like this microphone, like it comes down to he's, yeah, you sound good. I've moved to the SM, 7b at work and and thoughts.

I mean, it's a money. Looks good. Yeah, looks good. Do you think it's a little money? Okay,

I gave it some presents. Yeah, out of the box. It was, for me, out of the box wasn't good. So I added, added some presents to it, flipped some switches, and I think it's okay. Listen, I don't have a choice. They're, they're like, this is your microphone. Like, oh, I liked my, I liked my, yeah, we didn't like it. We like this one. Okay, so, you know, I don't have a, I don't have a choice on that one. I like this one, to be honest, and

it's just my preference. Yeah, it's, it's, it's tricky. I like the road caster, but if I wasn't doing live shows. And even if I, you know where I where I need the sound effects and things like that, I would probably just go USB, out of this thing, into my computer, into Ecamm, you know, and then just let ECAM be my but that would the problem with that is then I only have one record, actually two. I have one locally on Ecamm, and I have one on YouTube. So I too have two recordings. Because who was it? I just had somebody that recorded, and they, they didn't have two things going, and their recording went a little kablooey. And I was like, ah, bummer.

Dan does make a good point in the chat, he says, with my rodecaster First Jen, I recorded about two minutes of uncompressed wave. Yes, that's bigger. That is if you're gonna go wave or flak, or any of those uncompressed formats, yeah, they're bigger, 1.5 gig or so. But listen, it's we should still be able to handle 1.5 gig pretty easily today across the network. So I

think my favorite comment is Chris says, SD is the mini disc of storage. I have a mini I have a mini disc player and a mini disc, which is great because I thought I'd lost it for years. I have a recording of a young 17 year old Dave Jackson playing the Ellet high school alma mater, Allah Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner at when I was a junior in high school, and I thought I lost it, because that was a a great performance, and it's a great memory, and I thought I'd lost it. And the reason I can't find the cassette is I transferred it to mini disc and probably ditched the thing. And I was like, I can't find them going through all these cassettes. And just happened to open up a box and there's a mini disc player. The first thing, first mini disc says talent show. And I'm like, Oh, I gotta get this transferred into digital. So, yes, if the

rodecaster Pro was built by NASA, you would have two hard drives in it. That would always be, you would always be recording redundantly to both of them, and then it would have two network interfaces. So no matter what you did, if one failed, the other one would be available for you, and you would never lose, you'd never lose a backup. I you know, so it's, it's not, this is, I mean, there's a conversation going on about, you know, not recording on equipment, your equipment, or whatever, you're always going to have a single point of failure, no matter, even, even if you take it off your you know. So if you're recording on the girl, cast your pro, that's a single, and I know this is what you meant, Dan, but this that's a single point of failure. I mean, there's, there is no we would need a rodecaster Pro built by NASA to have dual redundancy on those things. Yeah, make it work, and then it's you, then you're the single point of failure.

Yeah, I forgot to press record. That's you can't fix that. Yeah, there you go. But that's with I think, if I was doing video, because that's the problem. If you're doing a video like I do, the future of podcasting, we don't do the video stuff with the actually, this is the only show I do live. And anytime I do it live, I'm live streaming, just because if this one, you know, Ecamm, were to take a crap, which it never has. In fact, back in the days of recorder, that's when I first wanted to have a a Mac, because while everybody I knew on a PC lost a Skype recording. I didn't know a single person that lost a recording if they were using Ecamm, Skype recorder. So it's the same thing with Ecamm, you know, the live streaming tool here. But I think that would be it, because if I was just recording an interview locally, and it went away, I have no you know, I guess on a Mac, you would have the ability to have two recordings going, because I have screen something, recorder, blah, blah, blah, I could do that. I don't know if I want to do that on a computer. Mac Mini could probably handle it. But that's the fun part was, you know, if you're doing video, and Dave always preaches. Have two things, recording, how do you do that? That gets a little tricky. And I guess you just gotta pray on that. The other thing, speaking of video, remember how we say, how there are you have the this is a great software. Everybody loves it, then they add a new feature, and everybody hates it. And then the the developers fix the bug, and it comes back up, and everybody loves it right now. I'm telling you, I've heard probably three different shows this week praising Riverside, like how great it is. It doesn't quite do the same for live streaming, and it's not quite as good as an editor as descript. I. I guess the live streaming has really improved over there. I've heard like three different shows this week, like I'm in love with Riverside, so we're in that state. So it sounds like if you're gonna join Riverside, now, would be the time, because everybody loves it. I'm sure they'll come out with a new feature, and then everyone will hate it. But I was just I was laughing. I was like, Oh, I see where we are in the cycle when it comes to Riverside. We're in the everybody stay.

Everything is awesome. What was that the The Lego Movie? Lego movie. Yes, that was one of those. That song got stuck in your head, whether you wanted it to or not, like a bad Dave Matthews song. Not that there are bad I'm not a huge Dave Matthews fans, but if I hear Dave Matthews speaking of tangents, I will hear Dave Matthews just yesterday. Like, every 10 seconds I hear satellite, ha, you know. And I was like, That was because that song makes my brain hurt. First of all, it's in six bam, bit and bit and deep, and deep. And then on the third time, he stops on the four, which musically makes your brain hurt, and then he sings over that shot. And I'm like, how does he it's crazy. So But with that, we will start to head out the door here. Jim, what is coming up on home gadget geeks? Yeah,

I feel bad because I talked about it a bunch already. Christian Johnson joins me. We talk about deep seek a little bit just kind of like, where are we at today and what's going on with someone? How should we think about this and how has it changed things in AI, so, quick conversation, shorter show, about 50 minutes. Check it out. It's on home gadget geeks.com which is a pod page.

There you go, on the school of podcasting. I think it's going to be one of those stew episodes where I have six topics that are all, like, four minutes long. But one of those is going to be we talked about it today. I've been looking into the power of newsletters, and the more I look into them, I'm like, wow, I've been ignoring this, and I should be using this more, and that whole nine yards so that a little bit on social media. That's all at the School of podcasting thanks to Dan from based on a true story podcast.com and mark over at podcast branding.co. Don't forget, this show is brought to you by the School of podcasting.com. Use the coupon code coach when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription and when you want to check out Jim show again, home gadget geeks.com, and we are here every week. Ask the podcast, coach.com/live and you're going to hear a post roll saying, Hey, if you can't make it live, go to ask the podcast coach com slash voice mail, and we'll answer your question next week on the show. So thanks to all the awesome supporters. We will see you again next week with another episode of Ask the podcast coach you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai