Coffee, Conferences, and Comebacks: The State of Podcasting Today

Dave Jackson: 0:20

Ask the Podcast Coach for August 23rd 2025. Let's get ready to podcast. There it is. It's that music. That means it's Saturday morning. It's time for Ask the Podcast Coach, where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from theschoolofpodcastingcom, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Coulson from TheAverageGuytv.

Jim Collison: 0:47

Jim how's it going? Buddy Greetings, dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. Always good to be with you and welcome back from Podcast Movement. I'm sure we'll talk about it, but you don't have the movement voice.

Dave Jackson: 0:59

I know Usually it's way down here like welcome to the Ask the Podcast Coach. Yeah, it's more of a Peter Brady brady thing where, like I know, uh, wednesday night it was funny because I'm talking to this lovely woman who's all of maybe 26 and I go and I just, every other thing was just, you know, I said, man, I'm, I go, it's not even I go. I got to talk tomorrow and I've got Peter Brady voice and I looked at her and I go. You have no idea who Peter Brady is, do you? And she goes. No, I go, brady Bunch, and she goes.

Marty: 1:30

Oh, I've heard of that and I was like, yeah, so that was fun.

Dave Jackson: 1:34

But yeah, podcast movement was fun. We can talk about that. But the one thing they did have there in plenty for $150 a gallon if you wanted some, I'm not making that up Did you have it delivered to the booth? No just they had these stations everywhere and I forget who was talking to Dan and they said yeah, it's $150 a gallon. Wow For that lovely.

Jim Collison: 1:58

Well, this isn't as expensive.

Dave Jackson: 2:00

No, and that coffee pour is brought to you by my good friend, mark over at if I can get my buttons there we go Mark from podcastbrandingco, because you know they're going to see you before they hear you. And Mark is an experienced graphic artist and he can make artwork. He's made a ton of mine, whether it's a podcast hot School of Podcasting, podcast Rodeo Show, they all look amazing and he's never, ever disappointed me. He's done probably over I don't know 500, 600, maybe even 1,000 different podcast artwork and if you need a whole website, he'll do that too. He's got 30 years in graphic design. He's been podcasting since 2013, which is beautiful because you don't have to explain to him what a podcast is. And the beautiful thing is, yeah, you can get cheaper things on Fiverr, but these people are not going to give you the one-on-one kind of sit down with Mark, find out what your brand is and make sure it matches. So the website again podcastbrandingco. Go tell him, dave.

Marty: 3:08

And Jim sent you.

Jim Collison: 3:20

Thanks to our good friend, dan Lefebvre over there. Based on a true story, based on a truestorypodcastcom this week. Amelia, if you haven't seen that, that's based on the you know Amelia Earhart and the work that she did. If you haven't checked it out in a while. You know, one of the things Dan does that I really like is he takes you know, he does movie reviews right, based on a true story. That's what it's about. That's what it's about. Then he makes a custom art that's similar to the movie art and then makes it look like. You know, he puts the guest name on it and his name on it. It's super cool. If you haven't seen that yet, you know, if you're looking for ideas for your podcast, check it out today. Based on a true story at based on a true story podcastcom. And, as always, dan, thanks for the coffee and your sponsorship.

Dave Jackson: 4:03

Absolutely. Yeah, uncle Marv says pork chops and applesauce All right. So boomers unite. Exactly, stephanie Graham says I recommend podcast hot seat. Yeah, you can hear her when I went over and did the review. So very cool.

Dave Jackson: 4:19

I don't know if somebody is asking about that where they can. You know, everybody always says how can I love the fact that there are two, two things that always come at Podcast Movement, which is how do I grow my show? But my content is fine. That's always hand in hand together. The, you know, the one thing I've never done at Podcast Movement and it was the highlight almost of the week and I got to do it this week, if you remember Cap Show, right, deed Rishen, I believe, is how you pronounce her last name. I just, I always just call her Dee has a three-month-old daughter who is absolutely adorable and it's weird because I look over and she's half asleep and she's in her little, you know, stroller thing.

Dave Jackson: 5:00

And I'm talking to Deed Rishen. She's like do you do cuddles? And I go, do I do cuddles? And she just picks up her kid and hands it to me and I'm like, oh, I love cuddles. And then she smelled like a baby, acted like a baby and in, in, in true female fashion, instantly cried and wanted nothing to do with me. And I'm like well, that's that's my start pushing back.

Dave Jackson: 5:26

Yeah, you know they start pushing against you. You're like they do not want to be close to you. I love that age, yeah. And then the other thing that they're doing is they have let me see if I can find this they, they still have cap show, but and I put the wrong button they started something called tuli and I believe it is tulicom. But you know, as it is, yeah, let, yeah, let me. Oh, it's fun, I got to. The fun thing is my stream deck is not working this morning, so switching screens is not as fun as usual, but that should. You should see Thule, t-u-u-l-i-e.

Dave Jackson: 5:59

And what they've done is you know they have CapShow, which is an all-in-one, and they've basically said you know they have CapShow, which is an all-in-one, and they've basically said you know, people will use one thing in CapShow and then they quit because CapShow's not the cheapest thing on the planet and they're like I'm really just using one thing in it. So they've now taken it and taken AI tools and broken them into like well, what do you need? Well, I was just using it for image, or I was just using it for transcripts, and so you can kind of a la carte your AI stuff, and I was like very to me. I just thought it was cool because it was a different. What would you call it a different strategy? They still have, you know, the other one. But I was like, well, that's kind of different, so that was new. I'm trying to think if there was anything.

Dave Jackson: 6:47

There were many things that we thought were missing, and this is not a podcast movement bash. But no Spotify, no Descript, no iHeart booth there was an iHeart party. There were a bunch of other kind of big sponsors that weren't there and we're like, well, that's kind of different. B&h was there and I don't remember B&H being at other podcast events so they had a ginormous booth with tons of gear. So if you wanted to get your gear on, they, they. That was. I had. A few people are like.

Dave Jackson: 7:22

They were asking me about the Rode video switcher. They're like, is that good? I go go talk to Todd, because Todd has one and I know, as far as I know, he loves it. But got to see Daniel's in the chat room, got to see Daniel a little bit and got a quick demo of a tool he's coming out with Daniel, are we allowed to say what it is? Yet? I know he's been teasing it for quite some time, but that's going to be pretty cool. And yeah, uh, there was races. There was no around the layout podcast booth nope, there was none of that. But I'm trying to think if there's anything new that I'd not.

Jim Collison: 7:59

Dogs, dogs, beer there were no dogs, just.

Dave Jackson: 8:03

Just lots of walking and lots of talking. And even the I Heart the party was not quite so, because they took us to a place that had these outdoor pickleball courts, and I don't know if you've ever heard of Texas, but it's not the coolest place on the planet Not last week either, yeah, and so I had a suit jacket. You've ever heard of Texas?

Marty: 8:25

but it's not the coolest place on the planet, not last week either, yeah, and so.

Dave Jackson: 8:27

I had a suit jacket on over a T-shirt and I'm like, yeah, I'm not playing pickleball. And luckily there was a thing on the inside, because nothing tastes better than free I heart shrimp. I'm here to tell you I was like, oh, there's food here. I'm like so, but that was fun, and it was actually a place where you could you you had to talk over the people, because it's weird, because I heard people say that they reported 3 500 people there and everybody there was like I don't know, I don't think so, because it's a giant, a ginormous hotel. It's like a city unto itself. So, unless unless you've got 10,000 people there, it's going to be looking kind of half full. But when we got them to the I heart party, like oh, there are a lot of people here, because it was a much smaller venue.

Dave Jackson: 9:15

So, yes, daniel is working on an app for chapters. I did get to see it, watched a quick demo, and so if your host doesn't do anything with chapters, then you know this would be a great tool. Or it also his chapters work for podcasting 2.0 and 1.0. And the fact that they actually inject the chapters into the MP3. So Coach Dave says my stream deck has started acting out too. Wonder if anyone else has a similar experience. It might be an update.

Dave Jackson: 9:47

Yeah, I rebooted my computer and then checked and it was like, oh, stream Deck needs a new update. So I did that and then none of my buttons worked. And the problem is I added a bunch of new buttons and then did not back up my Stream Deck, because normally you just go oh'll just restore the backup. Well, my backup isn't up to date, so I will probably do that anyway and just redo the new buttons rather than redoing. But yeah, some of it works. I can. I can turn my lights on and off, but anything that chooses a scene it's like I don't know what you mean. So I like Ecamm. It's great for live streaming, but there are times when the combo of Stream Deck and Ecamm is kind of what's the word? Frustrating.

Jim Collison: 10:34

I have an equation right Options, equal confusion, and so I learned that from some guys long ago and it's kind of true. You know, you get, get you know what's the open source one I was freaking forgetting right now yeah, yeah, it's that one why is it?

Marty: 10:51

you know, everybody knows we're talking about right.

Jim Collison: 10:53

I know it's been a long week. It'll come to us in a second, doesn't matter, it's got. So I know, isn't that crazy that neither one of us they'll throw it in the chat room here in just a second? I want to say like blue cam or no, it's some whizzy whizzy blue. I don't, I can't remember that for what?

Jim Collison: 11:09

it doesn't, doesn't matter, the chat room will throw it in here in a second. But the point I think the point of that is is you, you know, we, we sometimes we build software. Or this is what happens to software companies that listen to every bit of feedback that they get from their customers and they create these more and more and more complex systems because they try to be everything for everybody. This is CapShow right. And so then they like what we need is something that's a little bit easier for our users, and so they start backing some of those out, or they create a scaled down version or they do some of those kinds of things. So it's just, you know, you've got to.

Jim Collison: 11:48

From that perspective, when you try to be everything for all people in everyone, then you're like then you're I don't want to say you're good for no one, because there's folks that figure it out, but it is, you know, in the maturity cycle of software, if you try to be all things, you're absolutely nothing, and a lot of folks are like I don't know, and you got to charge for it. So then folks say to the question, like is it worth the whatever? Obs? Yeah, thank you, rich, rich got it. Obs.

Dave Jackson: 12:19

Tell him what he's won yeah.

Jim Collison: 12:20

I don't know why, I couldn't remember that. But so, anyways, I think, dave, I think we got to be this is the, I think you know back to your podcast movement. I think this is we're in the cycle of, we're in the trough of disillusionment for most podcasters. You know there's a whole bunch that are doing. There's a few that are doing really, really well. That's great, but most of the podcasters they're just doing okay.

Jim Collison: 12:42

Right In the Gartner hype cycle, right there's this on the backside of this peak and we probably peaked a couple years ago there's this trough of disillusionment where people struggle. They ask questions like is podcast movement worth it? Should I? You know, this is why Spotify wasn't there. I mean, they've got good marketing folks that are like, yeah, we're at the bottom of the cycle. It almost never means that in the bottom, in the trough, the thing goes away. Sometimes it does, but in the trough there's lots of questions being asked and I actually think this is the best opportunity for independent podcasters right now to think how do I retool for the future?

Jim Collison: 13:25

Like if you were ever thinking about I want to stay around, but I need to do something. Right now is the time to try a whole bunch of things, or to figure some things out, or to double down because everybody else is getting out, they're like, oh, whatever. And in business and I think, and in podcasting, you got to be counter to what the culture is doing. So, when everybody's getting out, you got to be getting in. When everybody's because you, and it's frustrating because you're like nobody's here anymore, yeah, that's actually a great opportunity. As people are leaving the door, you should be the one staying, saying, yeah, you know what I'm going to double down on this thing. Staying saying, yeah, you know what I'm going to double down on this thing, because I mean, I remember, you know, a couple years ago, bitcoin backed its way up and everybody's like, oh, this is over. Well, it's not over now. And a lot of people jumped off the train back when it was 30,000 and it's 120 now. And you know, I think podcast has these cycles.

Jim Collison: 14:22

Friends, I want to tell you like, don't be discouraged. There's some. I've been reading some real negativity coming out of podcast movement, from podcasters. Oh, nobody was there, you know, it was too big Vendor halls, blah, blah, blah. I think this is the green light for independent podcasters to say, okay, we're at the bottom, what do we do now? How do we retool? How do we start reaching people? How do we do things? I think now is the time to start. If you're ready to go on this, now is the time to double down and say, okay, what's the next version of this? Look like Whether that's podcasting 2.0 or whatever we're doing. If you're in, double down, now's not the time. You're welcome to get out. But if you want to stay in, don't be frustrated with it. Figure out where we're going with this thing, figure out what the next thing is for you and then do it, double down as you do it. Do we have a guest?

Dave Jackson: 15:19

We do have a guest, the one and only Marty. I'm going to guess Sobo S-O-B-O and yeah, and so Steph and everybody else talking about podcast movement. We'll get to that in a second. I want to hear what Marty has to say, so in theory I have assigned him to okay.

Jim Collison: 15:37

Can you hear me.

Dave Jackson: 15:38

Yeah, we can hear you. Great, excellent, how are you?

Marty: 15:41

I am good. Thank you, how are you First time here? But I love your show and what you do, and so I wanted to check this out and see what you guys were all about with the live show on Saturdays. Yeah, so do you have a podcast? I do. Actually, I'm actually blind.

Dave Jackson: 15:55

I lost my vision 10 years ago and we specialize in technology for people who are low vision and blind community. So that's where we're at. Oh, there we go. Excellent, well, do you have any questions? That's basically what we do, is we? We kind of talk about what's going on and then when somebody has a question, you can come on in. Or Stephanie added one in the chat room and I've got 20 years in podcasting. Jim, you've got 18, 15, 15, 15.

Marty: 16:23

Okay, I've been out there kind of searching around, looking to see what's out there, and you were very intriguing, dave, because we grew up listening to very much the same kind of music. I'm very into music and so that was kind of the thing for me to go oh, let me start listening to your stuff. And so I did, and what you guys do is great. I really enjoyed a lot.

Dave Jackson: 16:43

Excellent, but yeah, that's uh, we've been doing this over 10 years now, and something like that.

Jim Collison: 16:48

Yeah, let me ask, let me ask you a question. I mean, you're in a niche, right, Uh, with your podcasting, what, what kind of? When you think about what works best for you in the, in the community that you serve, and that you work with what, what, what's working best for you in your niche as far as podcasting goes?

Marty: 17:08

I would say the first thing is that I love podcasting and I do not look at podcasting as a way to depend on making money. A lot of people who have lost their vision I help with their technology, like, for example, using their iPhone. For example, they don't know what the accessibility features are, like voiceover, zoom and stuff like that, and a lot of people aren't even techie and they now have to live with a slab of glass that they have no real interest in and they're not techie people. So it's getting over that little bit of emotion that they've lost their vision and they're going through that whole thing while also having to do something they have no interest in. But once they realize that they have someone that they can relate to like for myself, I lost my vision and I'm now helping them then they come down a few notches and they're able to sort of saturate what they're doing. And I don't charge really anybody any money to help them out and stuff like that. I try to just pay it forward.

Jim Collison: 18:10

Do you? What kind of tools do you use? Obviously, you know you're going to have to use some. You know tools for for vision, that that you can't see what. What are you using that's helping you make all this stuff work. This, this is at work. We get asked all the time about tools to help people. We have people take an assessment and, of course, it's got to read to them. So what kind of tools do you use that helps?

Marty: 18:34

you out. So I'm all a Mac person, so everything that Mac does, they build in the accessibility feature. So I use what's called voiceover, which is across the Mac platform as well as the iOS platform, and you turn that on. And once you turn that on and you adjust it to whatever your needs are for example how fast it talks, things like that then it reads to you everything on the screen. So you know, like mail, it'll say mail, and then you can click that and open it. Or you can say messages It'll click that and open it. So that's pretty cool.

Marty: 19:08

Once you get into the third party kind of situation, it starts to get a little sketchy, because not everybody develops for the accessibility features. It took me a while to sort of figure out what I was going to do and how I was going to do it with like all the podcasting stuff that I do. So ultimately, if you're someone who's new getting into podcasting, I would probably recommend like an Audio-Technica ATR2100X, because that has XLR and USB-C and so you don't need an interface. You can plug it directly into your computer and it's really easy. You just kind of go for it. Plug it directly into your computer and it's really easy. You just kind of go for it. But if you like, for my setup I have an interface that's all analog, so that I don't need to worry about the inaccessible software.

Marty: 19:55

Yeah very cool, I can control everything.

Jim Collison: 19:58

What kind of feedback do you get from your audience, like, what's your audience size, do you think, and what kind of feedback do you get from them?

Marty: 20:05

We don't have a huge giant audience, but on our average we get about three to 400 downloads every few days, something like that.

Dave Jackson: 20:14

So it's not huge but we're very niche-y.

Marty: 20:17

I mean, what am I going to? You know?

Jim Collison: 20:18

Yeah, it doesn't need to be huge. One of the one of the you just you, just you know kind of confirmed a point I was making before you came on is that we're I think we're in a space where it's the hyper niche is going to be the place to be for most podcasters. Yeah, and you're in that now. I mean you're serving a community. It's not. It's not a giant community to begin with, but there are people who have those needs right. They need to be able to hear from you and be supported by you and give, be encouraged by you. And I want to get, I want us to stop. I think we need to stop thinking that huge is the goal. I actually think engagement is the goal and I bet you have really good engagement with your, with the folks that are listening. Right, are you getting some feedback? Are you able to have conversations kind of beyond the podcast, where you have some individual conversations with them, and are you getting that kind of engagement?

Marty: 21:13

Yeah, absolutely. We're not currently doing it right now, but we used to do a live show, similar to this, of what you guys are doing right now, and we would have people come in and they would ask their tech questions, and all of them were mostly basic stuff, but with accessibility how do I handle this situation? Or this broke, how do I fix that, or what app is going to do this or solve that problem? So we used to do that an hour a week and that's you know.

Dave Jackson: 21:41

Well, we have a question right now from Coach Dave Well we have a question right now from Coach Dave.

Marty: 21:55

He says I want to know how Marty can take or keep notes when you're doing your research and assembling you know kind of the episodes. What tools are you using for that kind of stuff type as well? People love mechanical keyboards and things like that, but you don't want that to be heard in the background and as I save stuff. There's some good tools out there that are really good. There's one called oh my gosh, what's it called?

Marty: 22:16

It's a links program. It's like a read it later program and it's called good links actually is what it's called, and the reason why I like that app so much is because it does have a cost to it Not much a couple dollars a month. But it works on all my platforms so phone, mac, computer as well as iPad, and when I save information to it it strips out everything, so that I'm not dealing with pop-ups and everything else. It just gives me straight the content and it works great with voiceover. So a lot of times I'll go to a website and the website has all kinds of pop-ups and this and that and the other, and you're pretty much dead in the water, you know. So yeah.

Jim Collison: 22:55

Yeah, so you need to block those in a lot of cases, right, just for usability, so you don't have things showing up on your screen.

Marty: 23:02

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of Safari plugins that block pop-ups and things like that, but they always seem to break or be problematic. So I decided to just kind of get an app that does it for you and do it that way. So if there's something that's really intriguing, then I will save it and throw it in there and go back and read it without any hassle. It just is the text and it's really straightforward. I guess the other thing I do is also use an RSS reader as well.

Jim Collison: 23:31

Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. Marty, do you find folks with sight listen to you as well, who maybe work with those that don't? Is that you know? Sometimes we think, well, it would. Just it's that niche, that maybe it would only be those who've lost their sight. But you have folks that that still have it listening to your podcast.

Marty: 23:55

Yeah, and I say that at the end of the day, we really all the information works for anybody really. So you know, say like you're not sure how to do something, it works the same. But if you add the voiceover to it, it's just walking somebody through how to do it with the voiceover turned on. But once somebody learns how to use voiceover, it kind of is the same information. Once somebody knows voiceover, I don't need to say you know, do a two-figure swipe to here and then double-click that and click in here.

Marty: 24:17

Once you've learned voiceover, you don't need to keep explaining it. With voiceover you can do the same, like if you're finding, say, you want to turn up your screen brightness, right, you would still go into settings, go into screen brightness, turn up your screen brightness to whatever you are happy with or whatever works for you. If you're talking to someone that needs to use an accessibility feature like voiceover, you just add in the beginning you know, go to settings, double click that you know and you add those swipes and clicks for voiceover. But once you know, go to settings, double click that you know and you add those swipes and and clicks for voiceover. But once you know it, you don't need to keep saying it. That's just how you kind of use your, your device, once you know it yeah, cool.

Jim Collison: 24:55

Last question for me, dave, and then we'll let him go. But, marty, or is ai being helpful to you at all in, you know, in the last year, as it's gotten, you know, is it a help for you? Absolutely.

Marty: 25:08

I would. I'm a chat GPT user and I would say that I write my own stuff, but it's definitely great for some research. You know, it's kind of spices up your you know research some of the time. If you want to just put a little bit of polish on something, then those are kind of the things that I use it for cool very cool.

Dave Jackson: 25:29

Well, hey, man, thanks for stopping by, we appreciate it yeah, thanks for having me.

Marty: 25:33

It's uh awesome to hear you guys and I'm a fan, so I'll be hanging around all, right, yeah thanks for jumping in.

Jim Collison: 25:39

We'll see you.

Dave Jackson: 25:39

Yeah, yep bye, yep, bye. That's very cool. Meanwhile, the chat room had a bunch of questions and so, oh crap, we forgot to ask Marty what his website was.

Jim Collison: 25:54

We did. We're bad. We're bad hosts, sorry.

Dave Jackson: 25:56

Sorry, Marty.

Jim Collison: 25:57

If you can throw it in chat, if you can in our YouTube chat.

Dave Jackson: 26:01

Or the name of the show. Yeah, put the name in there, that'd be great. Wait, hold on, is he?

Jim Collison: 26:07

still can I have him back if I go here.

Dave Jackson: 26:11

Add to placeholder. He's still here, I think. Marty, can you hear us? Or can we hear you because I removed him from the cameras? I've added him back back. He might be muted, all right. Well, never mind, remove from cameras.

Dave Jackson: 26:28

Okay, the question we have from Stephanie is what do you think about Captivate getting into editing, into the editing game? Well, she's getting it, they're getting into the recording game and Riverside getting into hosting, which I thought it was interesting. James was walking around the floor talking to people, thinking he was using his handheld little microphone and he was using the built-in laptop microphone. And Buzzsprout has wow, what's the thing that cleans up everything Auphonic built into it. They call it magic mastering. It actually didn't sound that bad. So kudos to Auphonic Magic Mastering. It actually didn't sound that bad. So kudos to Auphonic.

Dave Jackson: 27:10

For me, number one, if I'm going to get into anything I don't know that I would get into recording. I need to double check. I know Libsyn did have Libsyn Connect for a while, but I haven't heard them talk about it in a very long time and I'm like did they undo that? Because it's one thing to help edit the recording, it's another thing to get the recording. And if you mess that up like it's like a wedding photographer, you can't go. Hey, everybody, can we go back inside and pretend that they're not married? Like that would be. So that's my only worry. I'm like, because I know, when I was at Lipson and they added Lipson Connect, I was like, oh, as a support person, I'm like please, never, ever, ever, have a mistake, because you know somebody interviews the biggest person in their space and then that's the one that you know. So kudos for them for having the I don't know courage to do that Riverside into hosting. I did email them and said, hey, like, can you shed some light on that? Like, are you going to be IAB certified? Are you going to have dynamic content, are you?

Dave Jackson: 28:25

You know, there's also the other one is like we've seen people like Kajabi when they first jumped into being a podcast host that they didn't have a 301 redirect, so if you moved over there and they were awful, you couldn't move back. And now they have since fixed that. But I was just like, oh, here's another company kind of jumping into hosting, but Riverside got a boat ton of money, vc money and they've been adding new features ever since. So I'm like I know. I mean Stephen knows me, I know him. I'm like, oh look, it's the guy from the Riverside videos.

Dave Jackson: 29:02

So I talked to them a little bit and James was talking to them and asked them about the hosting and they're like, yeah, we're just, we just announced it. At this point Details are coming. So I know, I know it works because there are people on pod page that put in the feed from Riverside. So you know not a lot of details on that, but my thing is I'm kind of like Dan. He says he's not a big fan of all-in-one software. It ends up being able to do everything and not be great at a ton of it. And that's my whole thought.

Dave Jackson: 29:39

I'm like hmm, so I know Captivate is getting into the advertising game where you'll be able to get those awesome you know point zero, zero, five cent ads per download. You know the five dollar CPM. Those are coming your way and captivate, which will be in a way, captivate, you'll be able to record your episode. You'll be able to do your own dynamic stuff and get dynamic ads if you want them think that was a the the things they announced. So we, we shall see. But I, I just to me, I guess I've always wondered if some podcasters feel having ads validates their show. Like I'm a real podcaster now because I got ads and I'm like, yeah, but you make, like I made three dollars and forty seven cents last month on Red Circle on a show that is dead so but nonetheless. But I paid them nine dollars to get three dollars and forty seven cents. So you know, if I added a new episode, that might be different because it's just that's just my back catalog. But that's where I, when I say it's five5 CPM, it's because I did the math it's $5 CPM. So I mean I'm excited that there's new things. That just, you know, I remember the days when you would actually we still say hey, roll up your window and you don't really roll anymore. You push a button up your window and to me, the more you add, the more you can break. You push a button up your window and to me, the more you add, the more you can break. As a guy that's worked for software companies, I know that when you add stuff you break stuff as well. So I'll be interested to see. I did hear that they're merging Randy Blackass thoughts on the podcast movement sounds profitable merger. So I saw Brian Barletta, who I've known for years, and I said, brian, look man, you are the ad guy I go. When I look at you, you're one of those. I go. You live and breathe in the advertising space and I go my knee. Jerk. Reaction is next year it's just going to be ads, ads and more ads. And oh, here's another presentation about ads. And he's like no, no, no, he goes. We are all about the creator, he goes. Now, if that creator wants to make money from ads, absolutely I can help them with that and I'd help a lot of people that he's like but we're all about the creator. And I was like okay. And then I heard you know that, hey, they're not going to be at the Gaylord, which I was like hallelujah, when the discounted rate is $249, you're passively aggressively telling independent podcasters we don't want you because nobody can afford that crap. Everybody I talked to that I knew there was not staying at the Gaylord. They're like 250 and I no, thank you. And so John Jemango says podcast movement is in NYC next year. I might attend. But the thing that got me I heard the phrase hey, they're not going to be at the Gaylord. I was like, yes, now we're going to move someplace affordable. And then they said New York City. And I'm like not top of my list when I hear the phrase affordable.

Dave Jackson: 32:48

But I will say the people I met in the podcast movement that didn't have a show, that were like, yeah, I'm thinking of starting one. We're all from Dallas. They were all local people. Everybody that was I've known, for you know our people that come on up to the booth. They've been podcasting for a couple of years. So you know Dan says yeah, much, much, go ahead. No, no, go ahead, finish it. Dan says he much rather prefer software that's great at what it does in the overall production pipeline. Yeah, I don't ever. I'm with dan, I would rather have the software for making chapters and the software for, like I hear that like descript has studio sound, pretty amazing tool for cleaning things up. I haven haven't played with Riverside's tool but like, if that's not as good as studio sound, you're going to end up going well, I use Riverside because, like I will say, it's impressive.

Dave Jackson: 33:38

I've been interviewed and I've been, you know, on Riverside as a guest and when it gets done it's like oh, here's a clip you can share now. And I'm like wait, I just literally now. Usually what happens is the interview's over and they hit stop and so the files have uploaded. But the minute the files are uploaded, that thing's making clips and it's like, hey, you, just you know your interview is over. If you want to share that, you were on the show here's and I was like, well, this is going to be crap. And I hit play and I was like that's actually a really good clip. So it's going to be interesting to see.

Dave Jackson: 34:11

But I am a I'm of the Dan persuasion. I don't have a problem going like I will take, I will take something from. Oh, what am I using now? Squadcast, I'll take that. If it's an interview, run it through resoundfm, I think it is. I forget the name of it, but it will do a much better job.

Dave Jackson: 34:34

I like I have a little more control over removing ums. I know Descript does that, but I love the fact that I can hear the say yes, get rid of it. And then listen to the edit, like that. And so I'll blow through a 40-minute thing that used to take me an hour and a half in about 20 minutes, if not less than that. And so I'll blow through a 40 minute thing that used to take me an hour and a half in about 20 minutes, if not less than that. So, but that's what that feature does it removes ums and lets you hear them. You know, and does Descript do that? Sure, Does RiverDisc do that? Yeah, but I like that tool and when it's done I export it. So, yeah, I do have to wait for it to export the new version of it. You know, and go from there. Jim, I cut you off.

Jim Collison: 35:10

Yeah, going back to the podcast movement, you know I feel sorry for those guys that organized that. You were talking about New York City and if you don't pick a decent location, then there's half the people are like, well, I'm not going to go. Like, hey, a podcast movement Oklahoma City or Oklahoma, or podcast movement Omaha Both cities, large, host, great, have facilities that could handle and in fact Omaha would be a great place to have podcast movement. We have a facility that would fit that perfectly. 3,500 would be, would feel right. You know, it'd be like man, this thing is right.

Jim Collison: 35:50

But then the other half of the audience goes, goes, I don't want to go to omaha. Like why would I go to omaha? That's like I don't want to go there. So we we're such hypocrites on this, on this, on these events, that you know we're like, oh, they're so expensive. And so they go to a destination, they go to orlando, and then everybody's like it's so expensive here, right, you know, like they can't. I feel sorry for those guys. They can't win. They went to an affordable place. They get laughed out of the. You know, if they announced podcast movement omaha, even though we host, you know, ncaa tournaments, we host the swimming hello cleveland, you know cleveland, yeah, cleveland, no, right on, we're better than cleveland, but the just say it, I'm just, it's probably true.

Jim Collison: 36:35

Yes, but so, friends, I guess I'm I'm gonna just speak to the greater podcasting community. Don't don't like, we we've got it. If we want, if we want it to be more affordable and more accessible or more those kinds of things, we got to give them that feedback. And then when they do that, like I mean dallas is not new york, so it's a little, but it's not, it's not the cheapest place in the world. I mean you can go eight hours north into oklahoma city and get a lot better rates.

Jim Collison: 37:05

But then people are like so when you, when you have folks that do this and they host them in affordable cities, if that's your gig, affordability is your gig go, you have to go. You have to support them for those kinds of decisions, otherwise we're going to end up in New York or LA or you know whatever, and you're like, oh my gosh. So anyways, I just I felt like that's my you, that's my PSA for the morning. Let's not be hypocrites on this thing. If you're going to do that with price when they do it, you got to go. Dave, you don't have any choice. That's your job, you have to go.

Dave Jackson: 37:40

So you don't get choices. Well, and if you want affordable empoweredpodcasting. com, the Empowered Podcasting Conference conference happening next month, September 26th through the 28th, at the lovely Charlotte, North Carolina, where I'll be speaking and looking forward to that, and my buddy Marty is back. Marty, if you could unmute yourself, I will add you.

Jim Collison: 38:02

Sorry, we didn't. Sorry, we didn't ask you. We really want to know where we can find your podcast. Folks were asking.

Dave Jackson: 38:09

Yeah, I got it. Let me see if I can hear me. Yeah, we can hear you. Great, excellent. Where can we find your podcast?

Marty: 38:15

You can go to unmuteshow and you'll find everything there. It's under the unmute podcast network.

Jim Collison: 38:20

Oh, there we go, unmuteshow. Why unmute?

Marty: 38:29

What's the story behind that? The story behind that is in 2000, when the world was changing and everybody was trying to figure out how to use Zoom and all of those tools. It was kind of a joke. Everyone was trying to figure out how you unmute yourself, how do you unmute yourself, and it turned into a joke. And then one night I woke up in the middle of the night and I went oh wow, unmute. Unmute is how do you unmute yourself? Ask your question, advocate for yourself, get your voice heard, be out there, be heard. That's kind of where that came from.

Jim Collison: 38:55

Love it. I love it. That's awesome. Sorry, we missed you on getting that. No, no, no.

Marty: 38:59

No problem. I do actually have a question, since you're talking about the podcast conferences, two questions. Question number one is is there one on the West Coast, because I'm actually on the West Coast and everyone seems to be on the other side of the country. And two, like you were saying, to make them more affordable or more accessible to more people, they should offer a ticket price that can be virtual as well, so that if you can't afford to fly to hotels and do all those things, you can still get the information virtually through Zoom or whatever tool.

Dave Jackson: 39:31

That's the good news is podcast movement. The new president, brian Barletta, of Sounds Profitable, because Sounds Profitable and podcast movement have merged and so Dan is still running podcast movement and Brian is now the president of and that's where he kind of explained if you go to sounds profitablecom, there are a couple articles about it, but brian was like hey when first of all, he said every session is now recorded audio and video and when, as soon as they're done, edited, they're going to be on youtube.

Dave Jackson: 40:02

He's like I do not want to put any friction on a growing industry that needs people to be educated like he's so he's like as soon as they're ready, they're going to be out, and they typically used to be east coast, chicago, west coast, chicago east coast. And what we don't know is we know next year they went to new york city because they were supposed to go to San Diego next year, oh yeah.

Dave Jackson: 40:30

And they went to New York City. And what we're all kind of wondering is is it going to stay in New York City? Like Podfest is almost always in Tampa or Orlando, it's always in Florida. So because I heard somebody say something like it's moving to New York City, and I'm like, ok, they didn't say next year, they made it sound like it was a permanent home. I hope that's not the case, but we'll see. But yeah, it does move. And the thing that makes these events so like why don't we have more of them is they were giving away tickets towards the end, because you buy a giant block of hotel rooms and when you're at the Gaylord that's $2.50 a night and if somebody doesn't buy that, you are on the hook. Because somebody said they were giving away packages for $1,000, and that included the hotel. Well, that really is just the hotel, and then you're getting a free ticket.

Marty: 41:32

I'm sure they charge a crazy amount of money for food and everything else.

Dave Jackson: 41:35

Oh yeah, it was, $250 was the discounted rate for the hotel and it was basically I was there three days. If I had come the first day that would have been $4. So yeah, that would have been $1,000. And the gay lord's neat and you know flashing lights and you know, but I don't, I'd have to go back and look and see what the burger that I ate usually a burger's 20 bucks, you know.

Jim Collison: 41:58

So marty, what? What part of the country are you in where we're?

Marty: 42:01

california, exactly southern california. Yeah, no, oh perfect.

Jim Collison: 42:05

Yeah, and you would think I mean they've been out there before. I don't. As I look ahead, I don't see any. I think this is as I was talking earlier. I think, again, the industry is changing and we're in this trough of disillusionment at the moment and the big folks are paring back right and the economy is in weird shape right, especially here in the US. I think shape right here, especially here in the us. I think this is an opportunity for someone like you not saying you should do this, I'm just saying someone like you to organize smaller, local, more personal, like especially if you're in southern california, like you got a gajillion people there you have access to, to say, oh hey, let's do a meetup or let's do a weekend event somewhere, or find someone who has space where you can get 50 people together or whatever. Right, or that might work with those kinds of things. I think we got to get small again.

Marty: 42:57

What about just having a total virtual one? That would be awesome.

Jim Collison: 43:00

Yeah, no, for sure you could organize, you could get some folks together. You could have your site sponsor the thing Put some things together. You could, you know, have your site sponsor the thing put some things together, throw it out there. I think people are hungry for those kinds of things and you know you can make it reasonable and, you know, do some things around it. I just think the space is open for disruption there and I think we can get small again. We were small when things started and then there were all these startups. I remember when podcast movement first came out and it was such a big deal like, oh, we're all going to get together, but all those things had started small.

Dave Jackson: 43:35

And I think there's a chance to.

Jim Collison: 43:36

I think there's a chance to do that again.

Dave Jackson: 43:38

Steve Stewart had video from the first one, the very first podcast movement, and it was cool because I totally forgot it was on a weekend. The whole thing was on a weekend. It was in a smaller you know something like a Hampton Inn or you know one of those kind of venues, so A it's on the weekend, so if you work you don't have to take a vacation day, or maybe you take Friday. So there was that. It was really geared towards, you know, creators, because the big industry hadn't come in yet. And now it's like yeah, yeah, we got to have a big hotel, otherwise, you know, spotify won't show up and ignore us. So it's like you know. But if you like the Empowered Podcasting Conference, the tickets are 230 bucks. And then, if I book my stay, let's see if I go here.

Marty: 44:29

Is this the one you're talking about next month?

Dave Jackson: 44:30

Yeah, I'm trying to see what the room rate is.

Marty: 44:35

Do they have a virtual component as well?

Dave Jackson: 44:37

I don't know. Virtual, this is the other thing. When you add cameras and audio and live streaming from a hotel that has hotel Wi-Fi, it's a nightmare.

Marty: 44:50

Yeah, forget it.

Dave Jackson: 44:51

Yeah, the rooms are around $200 for the Hyatt-centric ones. So I would say you're going to sneeze $1,000 away If it's a couple days by the time you get a flight, pay for your luggage, buy your ticket and then have a couple nights at a hotel. Pay for your luggage, you know, buy your ticket and then have a couple nights at a hotel. You're looking at a thousand bucks. But, like I'm pretty sure I'm going to get a sponsor out of, out of my trip there. I've met my, you know, I have people I might interview, you know, and it's fun. That's. That's the other thing. There are a lot of fun. It ruins your voice and you get no sleep and so far I'm not sick, so that's the one thing I've missed you didn't get the podcast movement.

Dave Jackson: 45:35

Flu.

Jim Collison: 45:36

Flu. Yeah, listen, at the beginning of the pandemic we had done at Gallup, we had done events only in person for three or four or five years up to it, and then, when the pandemic hit, we did 100% virtual for three years and then we brought an in-person event back and added a virtual ticket to it. And what we learned through the process is you know, you got to keep that virtual ticket, the expectations for people coming virtually they're not paying more than $100 in most cases. Right, it's just not going to happen. So you got to sell a ton of those to recoup, dave, like you were saying, the cost of and then the expectations are super high to on the content and the production of those virtual rooms that we were doing to make that back up. Then if it's going to be a hundred percent virtual and you're just going to do it on Zoom, the price starts to drop pretty quick on what people will pay if it's Zoom only Again it's just expectations of people in what they'll pay, you know, anything over 50 bucks.

Jim Collison: 46:39

And people are like, oh, I don't know, you know, it's just a Zoom call, like I could get this, I could watch a YouTube video. So there's, on the backside of this, there are also, you know, listener or audience expectations on price, and then, pulling these things together, the dollars and cents of it, you know, are tough, marty, I think, user group concepts where you, you know, you create a community, so to speak, and then that community gets together. That lowers the expectation. You can probably charge a little bit, and it's because it's not going to be as costly.

Jim Collison: 47:12

Yeah, you know, so I think there's some options there.

Dave Jackson: 47:14

Somebody told me there was a GitHub meetup, like all things GitHub meetup, and they said they did it differently, where they picked a big venue for the you know convention center or whatever and then they didn't buy hotels. It was like BYOH, like you want an Airbnb? Now you're going to miss out, kind of, on that community, because I mean, wednesday night the bar was hopping Like just lots of people had some really interesting, shall we say. Nothing more fun than having a woman just spew hatred for men with twigs and berries, like she was like, and then they have three men on the stage. I don't want to learn from a man and I'm like hello, I am standing right here, but I think that was the bottle of wine talking. I thought that was interesting.

Dave Jackson: 48:05

Another thing I didn't think about step Stephanie said politically, a lot of people don't mess with Texas. You know what I mean. You're like oh, I didn't even think about that. When you start going into states that are really red or really blue, which is sad in a way, because, like you're inside a hotel, trust me, we're not talking politics. If we're smart, we're not talking politics.

Marty: 48:29

Yeah, I did go to CS csun, which was a tech conference for accessibility in march, and it's always in anaheim at like those disneyland hotels over there. There's a whole big group of them and, yeah, nobody's talking politics, everyone's into talking technology, but it's insanely huge and expensive.

Jim Collison: 48:43

Though, yeah for sure how much is a ticket for that?

Marty: 48:48

They start at, I think, $500 or $600. And then you got to buy rooms and the hotel is super nice, so the rooms are not cheap, they're really expensive. And of course, one of the nights we went and tried to get away just to grab something to eat and we went down to the hotel restaurant and it cost us $90 for two burgers and fries and a drink like you know, insane. It was like the most expensive burger I ever had in my life, I think yeah, it's crazy.

Jim Collison: 49:14

Hey, regular prices are that way now I took my wife and daughter out last night for wings and we spent 80 bucks, you know. And you're like, yeah, wings, are you kidding me?

Marty: 49:24

yeah, these things, yeah, there's no more there's no more 99 cent menu at McDonald's or Taco Bell anymore. That's long gone, those days have changed Well.

Jim Collison: 49:32

Marty, thanks for coming back in and thanks for chatting with us this morning. Appreciate it.

Marty: 49:35

Yeah, this is great. Thanks, you guys have a great one, yeah appreciate you coming in you bet.

Dave Jackson: 49:38

Thank you, we'll see you. Yeah, randy says, will be held in New York City for the first time in September of 2026, while its podcast movement evolutions will continue with South by Southwest, because, you know, when I think affordability, I think Austin, texas at, you know.

Jim Collison: 49:58

But on the other hand, no, that's it yeah.

Dave Jackson: 50:02

So that's where you know and that's you know. The flip side of that is, yeah, there are a lot of people, lot of people there. So you know, those who want to go will go. But I, you know, for me I've never been a huge fan of evolutions because I'm not the target audience for that. Right, you know. So it's. Yeah, uncle marv says only the podest pod tour is going around the country. Chris has not considered moving the actual. Yeah, he does do a lot of that. I know they just did VidFest in Atlanta yesterday or Friday and I couldn't go to that because it was still a podcast movement. But you know what are you going to do? Yeah, let's see what else the chat room is saying here. Dave, don't you do some smaller podcast shows? I love smaller podcast shows, yeah.

Dave Jackson: 50:52

So when I saw Empowered Podcasting I was like, ooh, this smells, if I get a whiff of that, that smells like early PodFest and the kind of the I don't know the life of a show is. I remember the very first PodFest Including the vendors. We're all in one room, it was single track, maybe 100 people and we went. This was amazing. And then next year we're like we've got to make it bigger. And then the vendors moved out because we needed those room for chairs. And then it got bigger. And then it got bigger and it was like hey, it's getting. Really, we've got a thousand people now we gotta keep the smallness of it. And it got bigger and it got bigger.

Dave Jackson: 51:36

And I remember a couple of years ago when a guy we're at this really nice hotel for PodFest and the guy's like I'm paying for a resort fee and I never saw the resort Because that's the thing, you know, the only thing the podcaster is going to use, unless they brought their family, is the bed. Like I really don't need a fancy room, I need Wi-Fi and a bed and preferably a hamburger. That's not going to cost me. You know me to remortgage my house, you know. Yeah, daniel says I'm happy to report. He also did not catch a cold this year, so you know. And then Stephanie says she's more liking the Omaha podcast movement.

Jim Collison: 52:13

Yeah, but yeah, I'm thinking of starting one now, not really. Yeah, no, I might, but I'm not going to.

Dave Jackson: 52:20

Yeah, it's possible. Well, daniel brings up a point If PM continued to be smaller that it was like this week, they could easily fit in a lot of places. That's the problem you run into. Okay, now we've got 4,000 people. I remember it was almost 5,000 people. And there were a couple things I remember about that. One was I saw Glenn at the beginning as we passed each other in the hallway and we're like, hey, I'll have to catch up later. We're like, yeah, and I never saw him again. It was just there were so many people there. So that's, that is the advantage of being smaller. Then you don't need a hotel that can, you know, seat 5,000 people and that whole. You just need a little baby holiday in. You know, and Randy says maybe Peyton Manning can get involved in advertising a podcast event. Manning can get involved in advertising a podcast event.

Jim Collison: 53:08

So he can scream.

Dave Jackson: 53:08

Omaha, omaha, omaha. He used to say Tim brings up PodMatch does quarterly virtual events that are pretty good. Yeah, that's true, I did get to hang out with Alex a little bit and Alicia from PodMatch Do they have events that aren't centered around alcohol? That's a rough order, unfortunately, but they should.

Jim Collison: 53:28

Well, I wouldn't say podcast movements ordered or centered on alcohol, right. I mean there's the evening events, right, where people get together and do those kinds of things. I don't think they become centered around them.

Dave Jackson: 53:42

The thing. It's just a thing that, okay, it's just a thing that okay, sessions are over, we all go back to our rooms for 20 minutes to check voicemail and then we all just go to. It's just a thing. It's like where's the bar? Because that's where everybody goes, not because we're dying to go get hammered, but it's usually the central location with lots of chairs you can sit down. Dan says virtual conferences can be very quickly just. They can become just live streams or webinar type events, so that can reduce the perceived value. Yeah, to me you can't reproduce the hallway very well at a virtual event. They try, I'll give them credit, but it's hard to create that thing. And and it's that's, to me one of the best parts of these things it's it's the hallway and part of that is they're not being recorded.

Dave Jackson: 54:39

You know, you think about it like oh, I can talk to you in the hallway you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, daniel says the I heart party had free drinks, but it was a pickleball place. Yeah, I got a Coke there, coke and water, cause my voice was toast. So, yeah, I got a Coke there, coke and water, because my voice was toast. So yeah, they're saying yes, the days of the 25-cent wing is no longer, and everything that's on the dollar menu is $2.49.

Jim Collison: 55:04

Yeah, I noticed, I got six wings last night 12 bucks. They're $2 a wing For a wing. For a wing Now they were pretty good, let's just be clear. They're some of the best wings in Omaha. Where was this at? This is funny. It's at a restaurant called Sickies, maybe the worst chosen name for a restaurant, sickies. It's like a garage-themed restaurant, right, race cars and sports and some of those kinds of things. But they do make they do. The food is really good there, but $2 a week.

Dave Jackson: 55:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Tim Bryan says the holiday in at MapCon was great and John chimes in yeah, I love the Joe Pardo two day weekend conference in New Jersey and it was great. The only thing that happened with that one is Joe didn't want to do. Yeah, I love the Joe Pardo two-day weekend conference in New Jersey and it was great. The only thing that happened with that one is Joe didn't want to do it. I think the last two years and it showed the last one especially was like there were only like 20 people there. It was more of a meetup and it just you know, joe's kids are older he didn't really promote it. Like, if you want to have people at your event, you know you have to promote like six, nine months in advance, if not a year. Usually, like they did at Podcast Movement, they're like, hey, next year is here, and a lot of times they'll give you a big discount. Because the other thing is, if you're running an event, people are going to buy their tickets. The last week I don't know why that is, but there are a couple people. Harry Duran was there. I mean, he bought his ticket. Like last week, there are a lot of people that weren't going to go. And then fear of missing out kicks in and they go yeah, okay, I'm going. Yeah, daniel says you're tempting me to host a conference in Cincinnati. I better go lie down and let the feeling Daniel did a phenomenal.

Dave Jackson: 56:57

Number one is Daniel J Lewis. He doesn't make crap and so, but it almost killed him. I remember he had like no sleep and he partnered with some local university. You know, mr Jive says so. Pay $1,000 to travel to the middle of nowhere, or $3,000 to attend in a major city. The point is $1,000 is still about 800 more than most people want to spend. Yeah, we're talking about podcasters. Most of us don't even want to pay a dollar for hosting. That is true, and that's the problem. And maybe you know you need a lot of. Yeah, spreaker had a booth, that's true. I always forget Spreaker's owned by High Heart. So thanks for that, you know. And then Dollar Tree, according to Randy Black, is now charging $1.75 for things. Yeah, liars.

Jim Collison: 57:43

It's going to have to be $2.00 tree here. In a few They'll have to change their names. We're now $2.00 tree.

Dave Jackson: 57:49

Yeah, daniel says I'm suddenly feeling serious about having something in Cincinnati. Yeah, I would go.

Jim Collison: 57:56

Listen, I think you can. I don't think these don't start them as a conference. Like, do a meetup in your area, like go to the local junior college or, yeah, community college, and say, hey, do you have a community space that we can use? Many of them do right, you have a community space. I'd love to partner with you. I'm going to bring 50 people in. I just made that number up. Whatever works for you.

Dave Jackson: 58:18

Yeah, it's, it's hard.

Jim Collison: 58:20

Yeah, I'm going to bring 50 people in and and just get together like do a half day of two topics, a couple speakers, find some people to do some stuff, just come in, don't charge anything. Maybe charge five bucks, just so you get some incentive to do it and see what you get. Right, I see if there's an appetite for some folks to help See if there's a start, small. You know, just do a, just do a podcast meetup in your area and see if it works.

Jim Collison: 58:52

Again, I think this is it's time for us to get our small game on again and start thinking about what does it mean to get local and what does it mean to start because it is expensive to fly over the country, it is expensive to do some of these kinds of things. You know you can, you know, charge 15 bucks and and get, you know, get a Chipotle to cater, it's something like that. So you may I think this is a time. I got a website in mind. After the show I'm going to pitch an idea to you. I've got an idea for this. So after the show I don't want to say it because I don't want anybody to buy my domain, but I got an idea.

Dave Jackson: 59:30

And you're going to say it to me Really? Yeah, but I got an idea and you're gonna say it to me really yeah, because if anybody's gonna buy the domain, I probably already have it.

Jim Collison: 59:35

Yeah, you well, no, I checked it, it's it's available, okay yeah, meetups are not even easy.

Dave Jackson: 59:41

I did a meetup in cleveland when I lived in cleveland and we had about 10 to 12 people. That was cool. And then I moved it to akron, because I moved to akron and I could not get the cleveland people to drive 40 minutes south and I promoted it. But it is something where you get out of it what you put into it, and I did not have the time to plan, I was often just pulling something out of my butt and you get out of it what you put into it. That was podcaster, happy hours, and I opened it to everybody.

Dave Jackson: 1:00:11

But in the end, if you don't have the time to do it right and that's why I quit doing it but in the end, if you don't have the time to do it right and that's why I quit doing it I was like, well, this sucks, this is not good. And I was like I'm putting my name on this and I was like, because it was cool, because Randy would come, but it was. You know, I had maybe five people and I tried to get companies to come and do demos and I had somebody signed up and then they kind of bailed at the last minute. It was just. It was just one of those where I'm like and it's not a bad idea, you just need somebody who's not running a website and five podcasts and you know all that fun stuff. I just had too much stuff going. I'm like if I can't do it right, I'm not going to do it.

Jim Collison: 1:00:47

So I might bring you.

Jim Collison: 1:00:48

You got to have some bandwidth, like you have to have some extra bandwidth If you're already going 100% or 110%. Don't start meetups. Don't do things locally, like if you don't have the time. These things are a giant time suck and they get once like the first one will be fun, it's the second one that's the hardest. Like you get through the first one and you're like man, that was great, we should do this again. And then you look back and you're like that was a ton of work that nobody paid me for. And you start. You know you're like I don't know if I want to do that again. And then, of course, you always have been better if we kind of I couldn't hear the speakers or you know I had to sit too long.

Dave Jackson: 1:01:46

You know you're like you came for free or whatever, right? Yeah, I just I boot those people. I just remembered we've got a question from Ralph and we will get to that right after we say thank you to our awesome supporters. You can be an awesome supporter by going to askthepodcastcoachcom slash awesome. And also I always like to remind you that this show is brought to you by the school of podcastingcom, where you get step-by-step courses. You've got an amazing community and unlimited coaching. I was doing a lot of coaching. I use an app where people can send me text, video, audio or screen share, and so I was still coaching from the floor of Podcast Movement. I use the coupon code COACH when you sign up and there we go. If you go to Ask the Podcast Coach, we're using PodPage. If you want to try PodPage, go over to trypodpagecom and start your 14-day free trial, and if you need more, jim Collison and who doesn't go over? I'm not going to switch screens. I can't do it, I'm sorry.

Jim Collison: 1:02:38

Come on, dave, I have to wave. Just pretend I'm waving. There we go, there we go.

Dave Jackson: 1:02:44

It's like wait, I've got to find the right button. Go check him out at TheAverageGuytv and his great show, home Gadget Geeks home gadget geeks. And it's time for the wheel of names which, when I do that, we go to here. Who will it be? Will it be castaheadnet? Will it be John Muntz? Will it be our buddy Ralph over at Financially Confident Christian? Or the Indian Drop-In Network? Well, we're going to find out when we hit spin and survey says is it Craig or is it going to be Glenn? It's going to be Craig.

Dave Jackson: 1:03:19

Ai goes to college. If you're a fan of AI and you're a teacher of some sort, you might want to check out. Ai goes to college, where they are trying to answer the question hey, should we just teach kids how to use AI and so they can use it better, or how are we going to stop them from you know using, having, you know, ai do all their homework? And Craig is very knowledgeable when it comes to AI stuff. So check it out. Ai goes to college. And meanwhile, back at this again, if you'd like to support the show, because there are lots of people over there doing it, it doesn't have to be $20 to get on the wheel of names. You can be like theflameoflifepodcom or I Am Salt Lake podcast, who just celebrated 13 years. You can go say hi to Ed at soniccupcakecom they're all there. At askthepodcastcoachcom, slash support. But if you thought about it, you're like you know what? They saved me time and they saved me money. Maybe we saved you some headaches or we keep you educated. Just go to askthepodcastcoachcom slash awesome and become an awesome supporter today. And yeah, ralph threw this up a bit ago and I was like, oh, I'll get to that in a second and it dawned on me I had not gotten to this. And this is Ralph from the Financially Confident Christian show.

Dave Jackson: 1:04:39

I'm hiring a new admin assistant and I want her to help me with my shows. What would you recommend for a training routine I could share with her to bring up her speed with best practices? I, too, am hiring an assistant because I still have shows on Libsyn. I still have a bunch of just weird little stuff, and it's one of the first times somebody spammed me and I was like, hey, I could actually use your stuff, and so what I'm going to do is just make a Loom video and go this is what I want you to do.

Dave Jackson: 1:05:09

Here's step one Click here, you know, log in via my one password. You know where you can share stuff without actually sharing stuff and then go to this. I'm going to need you to copy this and then log in over here, blah, blah, blah and paste. I would just make a loom video and then loom, I believe, transcribes it, so you can take the transcript, throw that into chat, gpt and go make this into a training manual. I know there are tools specifically designed to make like step-by-step training videos that you can then give to people, but that's how I would do it. Just show them how to do it, then they go. Now do that 99 more times. And, jim, any insights on how you would train an assistant?

Jim Collison: 1:05:51

Well, that's the, that's I. I have nightmares about that. To be honest with you, I have opportunities at work to have one and I'm like not good, I don't want anybody screwing with my calendar yeah or yeah, it's a problem, I have a problem with it.

Jim Collison: 1:06:04

I. I could be better at it. Oftentimes I'll just say, nah, it's easier for me to do it. I don't want to have to explain it to somebody and have to walk them through it. Then they won't do it the way I want them to do it. I don't want to have to explain it to somebody and have to walk them through it, and then they won't do it the way I want them to do it. And you know some of those kinds of things. It's a problem. I would have a. I would have a hard time letting someone else do it, you know. So good on you. Good on you, ralph, if you can actually get it done and pass some of those things off and then pay for them.

Dave Jackson: 1:06:29

Yeah, you. Stephanie asked can you do this in Canva? Canva does do video. It's talk about something that does everything, yeah.

Marty: 1:06:37

Like I was just going to say that yeah.

Dave Jackson: 1:06:38

Like their. Their video is okay, you know it's it'll it'll work. You know so that will be. You know that's something you could do. Also, dan had asked does ReSound work with video yet? Also, dan had asked does ReSound work with video yet? Not that I know of, it's still audio, and I think that's all the questions from the chat room we did have.

Dave Jackson: 1:07:01

Let me jump over here. Somebody had asked this question on Reddit and they said has anyone used a rental podcast studio before? I have to do more research, but they're kind of popping up all over and seem pretty affordable. I guess affordable is in the eye of the beholder. So far I've done my episodes remote, but I have some local interviewees coming up. I thought it'd be cool to use one of these things, I guess in that case yeah, of course I'm also not making any money at this point either. From what I can tell, you get a cool studio feel. Wait, you get a cool studio feeling setting to record and film in, and I think some of the offer audio video editing equipment and support.

Dave Jackson: 1:07:44

Does anyone have any experience with these or using one of these places? Did you use it just for location and bring your own stuff, or did you get all the bells and whistles, what was your experience? How much did it cost, et cetera, et cetera. Was it worth the content? And if you're in the East Bay area, any recommend? So they're on the West Coast and so I have seen people do this.

Dave Jackson: 1:08:05

I know people that have tried this in terms of the podcaster that wants to open up and have kind of a studio and they're charging anywhere. Usually they do the editing and so you're looking at anywhere from $100 to $200 per episode and that's where most people go. Oh, or I could just have the person come over and we could record this on the kitchen table and then you use something like Auphonic. I see them talk about Auphonic in the chat room. It's a lot of money, you know, for that and the only people I've seen try to run. One of those that worked is they did it in a downtown of a big city where companies that didn't want to set up a room for a studio, they didn't want to invest in the equipment and they could just kind of write off some of the money as the marketing budget. They, you know, and I've seen them do that. So yeah, and then Rich says, yeah, I got a studio right here in Walmart. Yeah, if you're in Franklin Tennessee, just go to the Walmart. I think theirs were 60 bucks an hour but I don't think they were doing any editing. So it's an interesting thing. But I think most people there you go, david says Mike Wilkerson, friend of the show, has a studio in St Louis.

Dave Jackson: 1:09:20

He's been here a number of times. He's very good. Yeah, mike has a whole and he has a whole network of shows that he runs. I need to have Mike back on the School of Podcasting.

Dave Jackson: 1:09:32

It dawned on me when I was at Podcast Movement. We kind of get stuck on what new stuff can I talk about? And like Rue, who is Rue Lou Mangiello has so many because of my podcast stories and he does WDW Radio. Like he just got back from Germany where they launched the latest Disney cruise. He got to go into, like you know where they do all the creation stuff, like the inner, inner, inner circle of Disney. He got to not only go in but film it and I was like that's amazing. And so that's something that dawned on me. I'm like sometimes if you're struggling for content and you had a really good guest, maybe have them come back on the show.

Dave Jackson: 1:10:16

I realize Effie Parks does a show called Once Upon a Gene and talk about a niche. It's a niche about parents who have children with extremely rare disease, hence Once Upon a Gene. And what's weird is I met somebody at Podcast Movement and I went over to her website and she has a video on the front and she explains how her son was born with this rare genetic disease and I instantly was like, oh, you need to go see my buddy, effie, and I went over there and the last time I'd seen her show she had won like her first award. Well, now she's got multiple awards. She's on Megaphone and usually you're not on Megaphone unless you're Dan. Right, you're running a really good show with lots of audience and you want to throw in some ads and I was like that's interesting. And so if you are struggling for content and you do interviews, jim, you have people back all the time right? Oh regulars.

Jim Collison: 1:11:16

It's it's yeah, it's, it's money, like I. I don't know why people don't do it more often. There's this idea oh, I had you as a guest and now I can never have you again. And like, if they're good, right, you know, even johnny carson would invite the comedians. You know, if you were good, you got invited over to the couch right, right comes, right, come sit with me. Or was that Letterman? Maybe it's both. No, it was.

Dave Jackson: 1:11:35

Johnny, that was the whole thing. If he gave you the okay and you didn't get asked over, you were a pariah, you're done. But if he was like, come on over to the couch. And it was weird because sometimes just coming over to the couch you go, that was really good stuff, really that stuff, really that was funny stuff, and then they'd go to a commercial. But the fact that you were asked to go to the couch was kind of the signal that johnny has given you, and the next day that's back when there were four channels the next day you'd walk down the street and your life had changed.

Jim Collison: 1:12:04

So yeah, yeah, I have. I have about 15 reoccurring hosts that come on home gadget geeks. It's a, it's a ton easier. Everybody's you get invited back. If you have a good microphone, like you know, it makes it super easy. They know, they know the expectations, they know what, they know why they're coming and I have a great relationship with them, all you know. So I, I, I absolutely uncle marv who's in chat, he's one of them. Yeah, he comes on, you know, a couple times a year and it's great, I mean, and they're good friends. So why wouldn't you, I, if you're, if you're stuck in that rut of like, oh, I can only have a guest on once, stop it. Yeah, have if they're good, have them back often. Yeah, why?

Dave Jackson: 1:12:46

wouldn't you? Yeah, I think glenn's been back on the school of podcasting like five times, I think. Yeah, and he's, he's got a thing now he doesn't even really have to ask. He'll just like, hey, I got a thing and I'm like, okay, here's the scheduling. I don't even ask him. I'm like, cause he knows who my audience is, he knows what I'm trying to do, you know. And so if you're going to give me a strategy to help grow my show or you have some sort of because of my podcast story that will bring on or your gear or whatever, I'm like there are certain things I talk about. And then, yeah, dan says I love having guests back on and Jive says reoccurring guests are better than, yeah, you don't have to. You know, get like. Ralph was talking about ramping up a new person. Well, if it's a guest that's already been on the show, they already know what to expect, who the audience is, that whole nine yards. So keep that in mind.

Dave Jackson: 1:13:40

I saw this question talking about podcasting frequency. They said I've been baffled, baffled, wow, I can't read or talk today. I've waffled between posting bi-weekly to posting monthly. My episodes are much better when I post monthly because I have more time for post-production. I'd love to know what they do there. They say, but I fear not posting as frequent is one of the reasons I don't have as many listeners.

Dave Jackson: 1:14:08

I've tried doing many episodes to bridge the gap. Have you had any success on a monthly basis? Monthly would be. The more you post good content, the quicker you're going to to grow. Monthly is tough.

Dave Jackson: 1:14:23

I listened to a few shows that are biweekly but I'm pretty sure monthly they have forgotten about you. Like I listened to the feed, I'm trying to think of some other ones that are biweekly about you. Like I listened to the feed, I'm trying to think of some other ones that are biweekly but on the other hand. So I would love to know what are you doing that makes the post-production? You know cause that's two weeks. But if you've got a really busy life, I always say you know, do your episode and then you know if it took you 20 hours. Okay, do you have 20 hours a week? No, do you have 20 hours every two weeks? No, well, then guess what You're doing monthly or you're going to make the show shorter. One of the two, but I would rather get a really good show on time than a show that was every other week. Look at Dan Carlin. Dan Carlin does like four shows a year, more or less. They're four hours long and he releases them when they're done. Now he is the, you know so.

Jim Collison: 1:15:21

But they're good.

Jim Collison: 1:15:23

But they're really good. If they were garbage, no, he wouldn't, he would have stopped already. Right, right, they're good, people love them. He can. You can listen no-transcript hit play and I listen to it. Right, it's so it. If listen, if you, if you're weekly and you go monthly and you lose your half your subscribers, you should check your your content. Like that's, that's a really good indicator, like, okay, I've got some improving to do, right, so if you're good, I don't think, I don't think it's detrimental if you're, if you're and when I say good, I mean you're meeting your audience expectation. That's why they listen. They're coming to you because they enjoy you. Good doesn't mean tens of thousands. It can be that way, you know. It means you have a really engaged audience and they'll wait for you.

Dave Jackson: 1:16:43

Well, ray, at the beginning of the show, ray Arnott from Around the Layout does a show about model trains. His audience is insanely engaged, like nobody. Like you know, it's crazy. Dan says I'm not sure I could tell you the schedule for any of the podcasts I listened to. There's a new episode in my podcast app. Oh, I guess I'll listen to it. Yeah, that's me. There's only one I listened to and I expected to be there on Friday and that's podcasting 2.0.

Dave Jackson: 1:17:10

Cause I go to Walmart and do grocery shopping and I listen to podcasting 2.0. So when there's not a new episode, I'm like, oh, what Joe or Stephanie says weekly is really hard. I would love tips to make that easier.

Jim Collison: 1:17:23

Always.

Dave Jackson: 1:17:24

Yeah, shorter, and always be looking for content, jody says. I split my hour long interview into two 30 minute episodes.

Marty: 1:17:33

Yeah, jody Krangel's show, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jackson: 1:17:35

And so for me, I'm always looking for content. Like if I'm watching a TV show, when it's over I'm like anything there for a podcast or nope. But if I watch something, or like Taylor Swift we talked about it last week I'm like, oh, that's a great example of how to use a short. All right, that goes in my note, joy, you know that's, I'm always any. When I'm at podcast movement I'm like, oh, okay, that's. You know, sometimes podcasting is therapy. There's a woman I met that's had a horrendous life. Just anything that can happen bad to women has happened to her and she was able to pull herself around and she now wants to talk about her story and I was like you should do that, just for the therapeutic aspect of getting it out there.

Dave Jackson: 1:18:21

You know so but yeah, so I for me, I have no joy and I have done it enough to where I never do. If I have a thing in my head that says you should write that down, I do not argue. I write it down because the whole like oh, I remember this later, this is a great idea. How could you forget this great idea? Until later You're like wait, was it? And then it dawns on you that you forgot the great idea. So always write it down, and it doesn't have to be note joy, it could be Apple notes, could be pad and pencil, whatever you're doing. But for me there are times when I'm like, ooh, what am I going to talk about? I'll give you an example. This morning I was making breakfast and I thought, ooh, that might be a potential I'm remembering. Now I was overwhelmed, but I didn't write it down and I almost forgot it, because a lot of people at Podcast Movement and really this is any event, when you learn for three days straight, your brain's going to be like okay, I guess enough. And I thought I might.

Dave Jackson: 1:19:22

The next episode of the School of Podcasting might be called Now what? And just like okay, I've got all the like. Okay, now what? Like, well, okay, pick one thing and do it. Don't try to do all 15 at one time, you know. Pick the next thing. What's the next thing you're going to do to improve your show? Okay, do that. Test it for a few weeks and see if it moves a needle and go from there. Let's see. If you got questions. Now's the time, because we got about eight minutes left. Oh, I wanted to share this. I think I talked about this last week, but if not, it's worth repeating. I did a presentation on different ways to make money and this one gets overlooked. Did we talk about Marc Maron last week?

Jim Collison: 1:20:00

We did, yes, we did.

Dave Jackson: 1:20:02

Yeah, it was selling your back catalog. If you're using Buzzsprout or Captivate, they make this really easy where you can just go into your episodes and say this is now premium, and Mark Maron was making $215,000 a month with his back catalog Now, normally, and his stuff is fairly evergreen, so you can do that. So what was that? Tully is T-U-U-L-I-Ecom, I believe, and that is AI tools a la carte versus it's the. It's the direct opposite of what we're talking about, where everybody else is like for one low price you get everything and it's mediocre. Then you have Tuli, where it's like oh, what do you need? Oh, you just need, you know AI image generation. Here you go for whatever it is. I'm going to guess $7 a month or whatever it is. Also another way.

Dave Jackson: 1:20:57

John Jemango says Twitter bookmarks are a great way to book things. If you're using Captivate and you see a website or something, you can add an extension in Captivate and say remember this link and you can add notes about it. Captivate and say remember this link and you can add notes about it, and then when you do your episode, you're like oh, add this link, that link, this link and this link to that episode and that's a fun time saver and organizer as well. David says if you start monthly, maybe down the road you'll be able to slowly move it to three weeks or less as you go. But being consistent is really what stands out, yeah.

Jim Collison: 1:21:36

Yeah, there may not be enough content for weekly. Yeah, In some cases for some people you know you're like do I have? Is there really enough changing? Sometimes this happens in spaces where you have it gets real popular really fast or it's just real popular for a while and then it kind of you know like, like wow, podcasting is kind of this way for us. Like we, we have to be very creative about the topics we're talking about, because there's just not a lot of things or changes going on in the podcast space, yeah, and so you know we have to get. We kind of have to get super creative and dig in other areas to make sure we have content for the show. So you might be in a space that was real popular for a while, but now there's just like, if you're making up stuff to talk about, maybe every other week.

Dave Jackson: 1:22:24

Yeah, well, and speaking of other topics, and now, oh, he's been waiting for this. It's time for Jim to get his nerd on waiting for this, it's time for jim to get his nerd on.

Jim Collison: 1:22:41

Jim, you've been. You've been playing with new toys.

Jim Collison: 1:22:43

I'm always encouraged by the kids that say, yay, yeah, that just makes me happy just to hear those kids go, yay, yeah, just maybe as we wrap it up today, a little little, some tech gadgetry that's going on. I I've been working on seeing if I can replace all the power that I use in the studio. About 500 Watts is what I constantly kind of run at. Now it's just not, that's not just podcasting. I have some cryptocurrency stuff going and about 500 Watts, and so I I worked on buying some solar panels, one I wanted to teach myself like what's this world of solar? I hear about this all the time. You know solar, the credits for solar power are going to end here at the end of the year, at least for now, and you're like, ok, what's this all about? So, rather than just talking about it, I wanted to actually do it. So I bought a couple of solar panels and then I plugged them into. I have a BlueEddy AC180 that I use as the UPS. That's the power supply that's in case the power goes down. I use that as my UPS device and it's worked great. But when I brought the solar in, it didn't work great with the solar because it wouldn't charge. It didn't have solar priority built into the MPPT controller, so it was either grid or solar. And then it's Bluetooth only, so I can only use it on my phone and I wanted it to work with Home Assistant and it wouldn't work that way. So I recently purchased an EcoFlow they're also a big player in that space an EcoFlow Delta 3, 1024 watt hour battery. Again, I'm going to use it as a UPS device, has the same functionality of it, but it does have they're saying, I got a test that I just got it yesterday, so it just came in, ordered. It came in yesterday, so I'll be working on it this weekend, but it does say it has solar priority. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to give it a test. I'm going to give it a try. We're going to see if I can bring the solar power in and use the solar power live to power the devices as well as it being kind of attached to the grid.

Jim Collison: 1:24:38

These devices listen, if you are in the space of thinking about backing up your equipment, this area and just because it's a solar generator sometimes they call them doesn't mean you have to use solar. I think for most people, for a couple hundred bucks, probably 300 bucks, they're a little more expensive than a lead acid battery ups, but those things are junk now. So don't buy those things. Don't buy apc, don't buy those things. They're kind of junk.

Jim Collison: 1:25:06

The the new, the new era, and I think we're also in an era where this, all this solar stuff because the credits are ending, less people are going to buy them, which means there'll be a lot of stock. And what happens when there's a lot of stock and not a lot of demand? That's right. Prices go down. So you may want to keep your eye. I wouldn't say go out and buy it today, but you might want to keep your eye. Eco flow is a great one. I've liked the blue eddy some a little bit of limitations. That Jackery is another one that's in that space. I don't review them on my show like formal reviews, because there's plenty of reviews on YouTube for those things. So I just let the guys that are good at it do it.

Jim Collison: 1:25:45

But maybe your studio needs a good backup solution. So if the power goes down, I just had another limb fall off of my tree last night and it's still laying on the power thing right now. Now I own a generator, so that guaranteed that power line is never going to go down. So it's. It's holding fast because I have a battery right and I have a generator. That's why it's still. Any other human it would have ripped that power right out of the wall and we'd be powerless at the moment.

Jim Collison: 1:26:15

But if you're thinking about doing that, I think now is the time. You know, look at a few batteries, put a few in your Amazon or Walmart or whatever. You use the app that you use to track things and you might see some really good pricing between now and the end of the year or first part of the year, those incentives here in the United States and at the end of this year we may have a glut in the space and the pricing may be good. I don't do reviews, but if you want to talk about it, you can always email me, jim at theaverageguytv, and I'd love to talk to you about it. I'm doing less reviews and more one-on-one stuff, so if you want to talk about the chat, shoot me an email.

Dave Jackson: 1:26:56

Yeah, I was getting worried. Dan says a Blue Eddie to power the Blue Yeti. Yeah, there you go.

Jim Collison: 1:27:01

I like it Way too much I don't have a Blue Yeti anymore. Say that 10 times fast. Exactly the Blue Eddie. Yeah, those can get Blue Eddie, and he spelled those correctly. The Blue Eddie one is hard to put.

Dave Jackson: 1:27:14

Yes, for sure, nice. Well, what's coming up on Home Gadget Geeks?

Jim Collison: 1:27:20

Yeah, we're kind of back at it and you know, as I'm looking at this, jay Franzi joins me from jayfranzicom. Jay just wrote a book which Jay's been on the show here. We've talked to him before. Yeah, jay just wrote a book which Jay's been on the show here. We've talked to him before, yeah, but he wrote a book about doing production in Nashville. He's a Nashville guy, so anyways, he comes on. He's looking to upgrade to a Mac. So we talked about that, an upgrade, more detailed upgrade, on my solar stuff. If you want more information on that, posted right now. Home gadget geekscom.

Dave Jackson: 1:28:00

And, yeah, on the school of podcasting, as, as I was sitting here, I'm like, oh yeah, that was the idea. So I'm going to do a show. Um, like what to do when you get home from an event. I spent a lot of day yesterday, uh, following up with all the people that I wanted to follow up with, because you think you are and then you know you got the big stack of business guys, like just one thing at a time. Um, uh, mr jive says jay franzy is a lovely dude. There you go.

Jim Collison: 1:28:25

He is a lovely guy. He's a great friend another one I have on the show very often, yeah, and dan says another fantastic show.

Dave Jackson: 1:28:31

Guys, Thanks, yeah, I thought of Dan. Last night I watched a show on Netflix. It was like Mr So-and-so's war. It was a congressman that ended up funding a war Charlie Wilson's war and it started off with based on a true story. And instantly I was like it's a Dan thing, so he owns that phrase now he does In our minds anyways, he owns it in our mind.

Jim Collison: 1:28:57

That's the power of advertising, right and so.

Dave Jackson: 1:29:00

Yeah, next week I'll be back from the Content Creator Expo, so we'll be here next Saturday. Askthepodcastcoachcom slash live. We'll see you.