Hobbies Cost Money - Quit Wasting Your Time

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Ask the podcast coach for 09/05/2026.

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Let's get ready to podcast. There

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it is. It's that music that means it is Saturday morning. It is time for ask the podcast coach where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from the schoolofpodcasting.com, and joining me right over there is the 1 and only Jim Collison from theaverageguy.tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

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Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. Happy Labor Day weekend here in The United States. Woo hoo. Monday's off. Hopefully, you get Monday off. If you don't, hopefully, get a floating holiday. If not, I'm sorry.

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That's it. And, you know, sheets are on sale, all sorts of things.

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You know? Beds. Yeah. Horse? Is it a car is it a car weekend?

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It actually, like, came about, like, an '18 something something by Grover Cleveland, and it was basically because the working force worked like, back then, they worked 12 hour days and working conditions were awful, and they were like, let's give them a day off. I guess. I I was trying to find, like, how is this different than and it's just like, no. It's for the labor force, which is funny because many moons ago, my cousin had a child on Labor Day, which we all thought was quite humorous, because, you know, labor, kids, Labor Day. So but, yeah, that's kinda what I found is it had something to do to celebrate the working man, America. I don't know what the deal is, but, you know, there will be people. There will be food. I know on Sunday, we're going over to to say goodbye to corn on the cob for the summer and, you know, sit hang out with my brother for a little bit, and we we will raise a a glass to, corn on the cob. And

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hot as it's just hot as snot here. I'm I'm gonna green side. Yeah.

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So we probably will too, but, we could raise a glass. In fact, Jim is going to raise his mug, and that, that coffee pour is brought to you by our good friend, Mark, over at as soon as I share my screen, and I have to do this. See, this is we were talking beforehand. We weren't doing our show prep. By Mark from, podcastbranding.co. Look. If it's time to elevate your podcast brand, you can see this in Spotify. You can see how many times your show was on somebody's screen, and then you can see how many times somebody clicked on it. And maybe the reason they didn't click on it is because your artwork looks like it was done by 0.333 grader with a crayon. So if you wanna look good, Mark does logos. He does artwork. He does a whole website, PDFs, whatever you need to build authority with your brand. Mark can definitely help you with that. He's gonna sit down with you. It's 3 easy steps. You place your order. You schedule a call. He's gonna sit down with you 1 on 1 and find out really what your vibe is about in your show. You're gonna receive your designs and, you know, if there's anything you want tweaked, Mark is happy to do that. He's been doing this for over 35 years, and the even it's like a such a added bonus. Mark is a podcaster, so you don't have to explain to him anything. It's all there. Check out the website, podcastbranding.co.

Speaker 1: 3:41

And big thanks to our good friend, Dan LeFebb, over there based on a true story based on a true storypodcast.com. You've been waiting for this top gun. Not the not the new garbage. This is the 19 eighties pop gun, the original, the 1 that started it all. Available now. Dan, this has got to be a good 1. So check it out. Top Gun, if you were at all a movie fan in the '80s, you'll want to know, Hey, does the Navy really do it that way? Is it This is 1 of the movies that influenced me. You know, I went and it came out, I think it's an '84 movie. No, no, no, '86. Came out '86, early 86. I went into the military in '86. And you listen, when he threw those dog tags into the ocean at the very end spoiler alert. Sorry. It's been 40 years. That meant something to me. Anyways, check it out today based on a true story. Top Gun, based on true story, based on truestory.podcast.com. Dan, thanks for your sponsorship.

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I was trying to figure out what angle he's interviewing captain Michael Makatura. So my guess is that guy's a real, like, Top Gun guy.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Top Gun guy?

Speaker 0: 4:47

Yeah. You know? So that's great fun. So He's

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a former air force captain, where he breaks down the historical accuracy of Top Gun from 1986. So check it out.

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Excellent. Well, Jim, I I I hate to do this right off the gun, but, I I have to do it.

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And now it's time for a power rant.

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I'm I'm kinda grumpy, Dave, this this weekend. I don't know why, but this came up, and I was just like, oh, seriously? And he says, hey. Are there any recommendations for podcast transcripts? Because I'm launching my podcast this week via rss.com, the free version. He goes, I'd like to include a transcript in each show's notes. I know that Apple transcribes episodes for free, but I believe none of the other platforms do. RSS provides transcriptions with the paid plans, but I'm going with free for now. Can anyone recommend a good transcript app or service, preferably free, that have been that you've been satisfied with? Because, you know, it has to be good. I'm not paying anything for it, but it has to be good. Any and all information is greatly appreciated. And, which is funny. I just did that whole thing while I was reading that. But trust me, that's what it said. And here's the thing. I went out last week to ride my bike. Now for the record, I have never made a dime riding my bike, but I like to ride my bike. I get out. I I touch some grass. I see some natures. I occasionally see a turtle, or a snake hanging from a tree. That was a fun 1. But I got out, and I had filled my back tire with air, and I must have messed up the stem or whatever. And I get there. My tire's completely flat. Like, okay. We're not bike riding today. So I rode to the bike store, spent $30 on a back tire. Great. Went out, rode my bike, had great fun, so much fun that I decided to ride it the next day, but it turns out when I got off my bike from the 1st night, I broke my water bottle holder because I took 1 of the big giant you know, we're Americans. We can't just have 20 ounce, bottles anymore. We have these big huge things. And I was like, it's plastic. It'll it'll kind of expand to hold this thing, and I broke it. Well, there's another $18. So, you know, within the span of 2 days, I spent $50 on my bike that I never make any money with, and yet I did not blink. I didn't even think about it. I was like, oh, this needs fixed now. And the bottom line is hobbies cost money. And for me, what people don't realize, my sister used to know a guy, and he worked so hard to find jobs where he could work under the table. And he actually wasn't a bad worker, but I was like, if you would only use your powers for good. And we waste a lot of time trying to find something for free when you're actually spending your most valuable asset, which is your time. And I get it. Sometimes you have 0 money, and that's why I always go, well, then then if you're really hard up for cash, why are you starting a podcast? Go deliver some pizzas. To quote the almighty Dave Ramsey, go deliver pizzas or whatever you're doing. You know? So I just sometimes, I just when I I I get it. Look. I've I've, you know, I've been bankrupt. I was on welfare as a kid. I understand there's a difference between broke and poor, but there are times when you're like, come on. You can't do everything. You you could maybe, but it's it's not gonna be perfect if you wanna do it for free. Yeah.

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Yeah. It gets harder to do it that way. You might wanna check like, you might have a service already that you're paying for that does transcriptions. That also could be like Zoom. You know, we, a lot of us have a Zoom account in some form or fashion, and that that paid Zoom account may, not may, does well. Okay, I'm not guaranteeing it does, but could include a transcription service. Many of them are Zoom's getting really aggressive about transcriptions to

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be They're like, you will transcribe this now. And I was like, okay. Sorry.

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I just wanted a phone I just wanted to have a call. Yeah. It's like, you wanna transcribe? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do

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you? You? Come on, man. All the cool kids are doing it. The 1st transcription's free.

Speaker 1: 9:11

Oh my gosh. They're crazy. Don't forget, Authonic has transcriptions that come with it. So if you're if you're getting them to if you're getting them done that way, Descript well, has transcriptions as a part of their

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Yep.

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Their their service audio or Adobe Podcast. Podcast test transcriptions associated with them. So You know?

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But it's like this guy's gonna waste hours looking for a free transcription service and then complain when it doesn't do exactly what he wants.

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I think Otter offers some free out of the gate. Now it's you don't get it forever, but I think it's Yeah.

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I'm still on their grandfathered plan. Remember when they're like, we're gonna raise your price, and then everybody

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And they brought it back.

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Yeah. And they're like, no. No. We're not. And then they're like, but we're gonna raise your price next year. And then they went, okay. No. We're not. Because I like like Otter. I that's 1 of my go to train if I just need a train because there's that. There's Cast Magic. But I love the fact that they have ChatGPT now built into Otter. So I can go, here's my transcript. And instead of copying and pasting it into something, I can say, hey. Give me 10 titles for this or, you know, whatever. I what I've been doing, my next episode that's coming out on Monday for the school of podcasting, I just literally, in my phone, just did a brain dump. Just hit the voice memo and then sent the voice memo to my computer and then uploaded it to Otter. And then so here it was. It transcribed my and, I mean, I'm a perp like, just talking. So I'm all over the place. And, I was like, hey. Okay. Great. Take this now. Make an outline of just the the main points because I wanna make sure I knew I had I knew the points because they just came out of my head. And if you have any insights on how to make these flow better, you know, rearrange them. And it did exactly that. And I looked at it and was like, yeah. Okay. Because I know 1 of them, Ralph, gave a tip at the Empowered Podcasting Conference that's gonna save me a $100 a month. And I was like, but I had it in a really weird place because it just came out of my mouth. So that's 1 way I use AI. What I'm I'm seeing people do is where they use AI, come up with the idea, and then they write the script and then they say it. They try to make AI sound like them because it's coming out of their mouth. And I'm not sure that's always my favorite way of doing that. But nonetheless, it's I don't know how I got from free transcripts into Oh, how yeah. How I use Yeah. That's how I use AI.

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You drifted there for a 2nd. I was like, are we drifting? I almost I would send you a note. Are we drifting now, Dave? You know? Because after I tell my AI that all the time Yeah. Get into some processes with it, and all of a sudden, you know, it's asking for all these things, and I'm like, hey. Are we are we drifting here? Oh, maybe a little. It's funny how fast it'll come back after I've caught it drifting and be like, oh, no. No. We're we're gonna keep this tight now. And I'm like, why didn't you keep it tight from the beginning?

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Do I Please.

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Yeah. Why do I have to ask you to come back? Like you want and it's they think they can do anything. Right? And so they're just off off to the races. And sure enough, I think, you know, they're designed to do 2

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spend tokens, make you feel good about it. Like, that's that's the 2 things they're designed to do for sure.

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Yeah. Ralph makes a point, but Dave, why should I have to pay someone for providing me service, saving me time, or making me money? Well, that's 1. If it's if if it is saving you time or money, you should be paying for it. But, it's funny how many people want that kind of stuff for free because I remember when I I've because what I do with streaming services, I will have 1, maybe 2. And so, like, right now, I have Hulu and Apple. And I think somehow I ended up with what's the NBC 1? Peacock.

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Peacock. Yeah.

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Through some other thing. Like, I have a Walmart Plus account, and they're, like, throwing Peacock for fun. But, anyway, usually, I have 1 or 2. But I the 1st time I I used Hulu, I went for the cheap plan, which means they're gonna put in ads occasionally. And by occasionally, I mean a lot. And it dawned on me that I even had a thing because most of the the TV I watch, I'm watching on a computer. And I had a a Chrome extension that I could go in and like, I would watch commercials at, like, 4 x. It's just blowing through it, but it was still kind of a, okay. Here's another. And because there were so many commercials, I was like, wait a minute. How much more is the paid version if I don't have ads? And it was something like $3. And I was like, okay. I watch a lot of TV on my computer. That's a lot of ads. That's a lot of time. Is my time that I'm going to save, and is the experience gonna be that much better by paying $3? And I was like, yeah. Absolutely. And I've never looked back. So, you know, there are times when well, that's like, you know, Ralph this tip is Ralph said so here's a preview of Monday's episode. Ralph said go into your business checking account because, you know, you have a separate checking account for your podcast, right, if you're running it as a business. And if not, step 1, you know, get yourself a checking account for your podcast. And I found and I remember it. There is an SEO mastermind that I'm part of that I pay $57 a month. And I'm here to tell you, I haven't logged in in 3 months. Totally forgot I had it. And I was like, well, there's $57. And then there was $10 for a an email address that I don't use anymore and a bunch of other stuff. And I was just like, okay. So just we kind of we complain about and it's true. We we get nickeled and dimed to death. And so you should go in and look, but it also reminded me like, oh, yeah. I did you know? So I'm gonna if I can get some time this weekend, I plan on going into that mastermind and seeing, is this worth the $57 that I'm paying? But chances are you're paying for a bunch of stuff that you're you're not. Uncle Marv says, I moved my transcription and editing to Authonic. Expensive? Yep. But has it saved me an average an hour per show? I, I'm using pod chapters. Ask the podcast coach, we'll break any AI tool I've ever put it up against because it's not like any we we we start a topic, and then we think it's done. And then, of course, because of the delay, the chat room will chime in. And so then we go back to it after we went to topic 2. We we and then we do, I don't know, 7 topics every episode, and I've never been able to find 1 that that made it close. Buzzsprout was close, but and so I started using pod chapters, Daniel's tool. And it does it's the closest 1 ever. It is it perfect? No. Occasionally, I'd be like, no. That's not what that is. But it's pretty doggone close. And he added a thing now where if you use the same images over and over, like, I don't know, podcastbranding.co based on a 2storypodcast.com, all those things that I use every week, there's now a library. And I used to be, I had a folder on my computer just called pod chapters, and it was things that I use all the time. And now it's in podchapters.com. I here's the thing. I have no idea what I'm paying for pod chapters, and I'm not I don't wanna give Daniel any ideas, but, like, it it literally it used to take me, I don't know, 4 to 5 hours to do ask the podcast coach because I was I'm adding chapters and doing this. Yeah. All I do now is I download the thing from StreamYard, and there's usually because of StreamYard, there'll be, like, a weird 2 2nd amount of empty space where I'm waiting for the live button to come on, and it turns out it's been on. It's just not on the screen yet. And then I cut out the end, and then the 1 week we had a bit of a train wreck, I edited that out. But most of the time, I just cut off the beginning empty and the end empty, export it. I uploaded the pod chapters. I let pod chapters transcribe it. I then go, hey. Make my chapters based on the transcript that you just made for me. I then go and say, I wanna download the file separately. So it gives me my m p 3 file. I copy and paste the outline that it just made into YouTube, which makes all the chapters in YouTube, and it's formatted for you. I mean, it's just 1 of those things that just it's like maybe an hour and 0.5 if that now because of 1 tool, and it's just it's it just saves me. That's 1 where I'm like, I don't have a problem paying for that. Do you have any kind of tool that that's like your go to? Like, man, if I didn't have that, I'd be sunk.

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Well, yeah, I don't know about sunk, but ChatGPT has certainly know, I I'm on the paid $20 a month plan for that. And it is certainly, I mean, when the show is over on Thursday, I start downloading the audio Thursday nights. And then Friday afternoon sometime, I'll go to ChatGPT and say, Hey, let's start the creation process of as of Home Gadget Geeks. It's going to be, you know, HGG 6, this was 6 88 this week. And it's Okay. So it builds a list. Here's all the things I need, right? Because I've kind of trained it, it can remember some of these things. And then so I dump in the transcripts, and I give it some information that the, the, you know, the transcript providers have given me. And then I'm off to the races. I start just, it's like, Okay, I need this. I need that. Here's the YouTube link. Here's that. And it puts together for me the kind of the show notes, what I call our gold standard show notes. And I sent it over to Claude to, I have the free version of Claude. I sent it over to Claude for editing. Claude, what do you think? It comes back with some suggestions. ChatGPT might say Claude was wrong here or it was right. Sometimes it has more information than Claude does. And then post that over to WordPress through OpenClaw, And I've got some checks and balances kind of set in there. So for me, did it save me a lot of time? No. It's actually about the same amount of time to do all those things as before. Did it make it more accurate and get me better, more and better information? 100%. Like I, my show notes are infinitely better now than they were a year ago or 2 years ago, if you go back and check. And now that I've got that process built, it'll scale. And if I wanted to, I could go back, I could start going to back episodes and saying, Okay, let's start fixing these going backwards, right? And it gives me a scalable process to be able to do that in a way that, that kind of makes sense. Now, have I gone all the way back? No, not really. I went back about 2 years and fixed a lot of stuff, especially on YouTube. It helped me. It was fast on YouTube. Mean, it kind of helped me fix some stuff there. So that's listen, that works for me. Your mileage may vary. You do your own thing. But that, boy, I tell you what, that $20 plan on ChatGPT has been the best. I'll pay that any day of the week.

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Yeah.

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Any day of the week.

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And even if it's like, for me, it's with Daniel's tool, it's not that it was hard. Right? I'm not digging a ditch, but it made the process just flow. Like, oh, and here's this to that. And I I'm not even a guy like, you know, how everybody's like, well, I like these, you know, all in 1 packages like Riverside. I'm like, look. I don't have a problem logging into 5 different things to do something, but it just everything just moves along. And the next thing I know, I'm like because I used to I forget in the middle. I remember for a while I was using Buzzsprouts, just used all their automated stuff. I'd go get lunch and come back and like, oh, okay. It's finally done. So it saved me time, but not really because I I was off doing lunch kind of thing. You know? So it's it's fun. Where did John's message go? He says, yeah. He says, I I find myself debating my my AI over topics because I tell it to fact check me, but in the end, it it makes each segment stronger, kinda like what you were talking about. I know for me, when I I did an episode about 12 things you can learn from Dolly Parton. And so I knew the 12 things because I'd watched a boatload of video on Dolly, and I I gave I'm like, hey. I know this is true. I know she did this. I know please go find me sources. So when people say, da da da da da. And so it's like, here, she talked about Elvis on the Howard Stern show. Great. And then so that way I had if anybody said, she never did this, I can go check the show notes. There's a super right wing guy that says things that I just go, did he say that out loud? His name is Steven Crowder. It's Louder with Crowder. And he he has opinions, but he also says in every show, check the show notes. We've got links to everything we're basing our opinions on. They also make a good point on his show when he goes into a comment, it says, this is a comment. Yeah. And then other 1, it's like, this is a fact kind of thing. Randy says, sources on chat GPT for projects is great. I have an episode planning template that it uses each week when I'm working on building episode outlines based on that template. I'm just now I I'm I've known of them, but I'm now going to that's on my list of things to do this weekend. Captivate has a great template tool. And, like, for my Akron podcast, there's a, extension, a Chrome extension that when I'm on a a link from the Accom Beacon Journal and I'm gonna talk about this, I can say, oh, add this to the show notes. And 1 of the things you have to do is in your episode, you have to say, add the research links to this, you know, up to my show notes at this point. And I'm like, oh, always I forget to do that. And so I need to make a template, and that template could have the thing for click here to support the show. And and so, Captivate templates are pretty cool. I just I've always been like, oh, yeah. I need to I need to do that, and then I never do that. John wants to know, has anyone tried Grockbot yet? Grockbot. I don't know what that word sounds like, but it's it's it's on the verge of something you would scream when you you when you stub your toe. Right? You're like, oh, Grock bot, or something from Mark and Mark and Midney. You know? Shahzbot and Grock bot, his distant cousin. I have not tried Grock bot. Jeff c, the 1 and only Jeff c. Claude runs everything pre and post. Yeah. Now, Jeff, I don't know if you can come in. What is it? Ask the podcastcoach.com slash question. Jeff said he had Claude editing his video, and I was like, what? I saw that I saw that headline in a newsletter. We, were actually editing Guy's video. There he goes. From his show. Now completely with AI. What are you talking about, Willis? Are you kidding me? That's crazy. It's cool. I gotta play with that now. Have you done that yet, Jim?

Speaker 1: 24:25

No. I haven't done the video side of things yet. I I need to. So, yeah, it'd be good to hear, Jeff, how you're doing it. It it listen. We're we're seeing this all over the place in in YouTube now, and whole video is being created. And it it's it's weird. At 1st, you start watching it and you're like, this is kinda cool. And then you realize this guy is AI, completely AI. Right? And, and I started seeing some of the same, you know, you can kind of see it because 1, he sits, it's a he in this case. He sits perfectly still the whole time, not a flinch, just talking, you know, and then every once in a while, they'll have him looking up into the side and then coming back. Just too professional. Right? It's just you're kinda like, this is creepy professional. And, and so, Jeff, I'd be, I'd, I'd love to see, send me the link to 1 of those. I'd love to see what they look like as far as those those edits go. I think the, the value in AI editing for people is real people being edited and it filling in some of the, some of the stuff. Although that being said, you know, I used 11 to do some audio fill in for some, some voice stuff. And it's still not there for me. I still kind of like, No, I don't like this. I'm still, still not to that spot where I'm ready to use it as a complete replacement for, for my audio.

Speaker 0: 25:54

Yes. Stephanie says, wait. You can make a prompt to add research links in your show notes. What I did was I went to Claude, and I said, I know Dolly Parton has started a a library where she gives out books to kids. I know Dolly Parton was offered money to sell the song I will always love you to Elvis. I know Dolly Parton, you know, refused to talk about politics. I and I just went down all my main points that I'd covered. I said, please find references to this on the Internet. And it and I said, I need those links. And it was like, here you go. And so I had to click on everyone because I didn't wanna sign

Speaker 1: 26:36

check everyone. Right? Sometimes it'll make them up.

Speaker 0: 26:39

Yeah. I didn't want I didn't want an AI, you know, I didn't want my AI to go find an AI source. Right. But I checked, and they were all, there was the the 1 guy from I think it was ABC. Both, if I remember right, Barbara Walters back in the day was on ABC. She was someone that I would lovingly and compassionately punch in the face because she was just like, you don't have to look like that. How do you get off like Barbara Wawa? You know? You don't have to look like that. So I thought that was rather rude. And then this other mainstream guy tried to get her talk about politics, and she was like, no. I don't I learned. You know, if you wanna have a career in entertainment, you don't talk about politics. And I got an I got an opinion about everyone and everything, and I talk about it with my husband. That's basically it. And then he's like, well, you are a role model. And I'm like, total douchebag. Gonna ask the same question a different way. And she said, you can keep asking, and I'm gonna keep not answering, or I might tell you where you can stick your question and then giggled. And I was like, yeah. So it was funny. Always fun. Let's see. Let's see. Jeff or no. This is, Ralph talking to Jeff. We are using Claude a ton with our new show to help us with the daily rundown, show prep, some post productions. We had to spend a ton of time training it because it has many issues. But in the long run right? And that's 1 of those situations, again, where you'll it'll work probably, what, 9 times in a row, and then it'll have that thing. You know? John Jarmango says, yeah. We need to learn how to edit video with Claudia. So there you go, Jeff. There's your next course. How to use Claude. You know? Yeah. He says Jeff says, AI ending with 3 different tracks has been my holy grail. I'm not do you know what he means by that? 3 different tracks? Interesting.

Speaker 1: 28:32

I did this this week. I was working well, it was yesterday. I was working with ChatGPT on my show notes, and I today, I have ChatGPT give me information to give OpenClaw. OpenClaw has the relationship to my WordPress site. So it's, I have some divisions of labor there. So OpenClaw can see and has the API access to my WordPress site, so I can instructions, and it'll go do things in WordPress, which is kind of cool, right? For me, that was super helpful. But this week or yesterday, I'm working in ChatGPT, and I'm doing some things, and all of a sudden, it suggests an app for me. It's like, Hey, you know, I could connect directly to your WordPress site, use this app. And I was like, Oh, really? So I did some looking to make sure I wasn't being bamboozled in the thing. But WPVibe is what it suggested. And it said, Hey, if you'd like to install this, we can get connected. And instead of going through OpenCloud, we can just do it right here. And was like, Oh, that's kind of interesting. So listen, that's not earth shattering or, you know, the, the thing that was interesting about it is Chatuchibi team making the recommendation to me in the middle of a workflow. Like that was something new I hadn't seen yet. And so it was, it was kind of interesting to, yeah, Okay. It, you know, I think it needs to be, it needs to be checked out. You need to do some things. You don't just want to be accepting everything that comes in there. Now I did. I took it on, WPVibe again is the name of it, and started and connected ChatGPT right to it. Then began. And it did. It cut out some steps for me. It was kind of super cool. So that was a new, that's kept for me, that was kind of a new thing. Not that you can install an app in AI to do these things, but that the, that the AI was suggesting, Hey, you might want to use this. I'm seeing what we're doing here. You might want to use this and make this connection. This would make it easier.

Speaker 0: 30:27

That's interesting.

Speaker 1: 30:28

That was super cool. Yeah, it was super cool. I'm still testing it to see. I still want to run things through listen, ChatGPT and Claude have terrible memories, right? We all know they can't remember things. They're getting better, but they don't remember as much as you think they can. The, 1 of the powers of Hermes and OpenClaw is it writes local files for you. You, it's local. You get to keep, you get to create as much memory as you want, right, for it. And so I still want to run some of those processes through those local AI clients to make it work. But sometimes it's nice when I'm working in ChatGPT, I could just go to my WordPress site and do what it's suggesting. Perfect. Right? That's perfect for me. So there are moments, as I was working with it, and it made an update, it said back to me, We might want to let OpenClaw know we've done this, because I know it's tracking it. That was spooky. Like you're like, Oh, it remembers that we've done this or so. No, I shouldn't say spooky. It was fine. But, certainly lots of options and lots of opportunities there. 1st time I've been suggested an app inside of AI.

Speaker 0: 31:32

Yeah. That's that's different. Randy brings up a point. A huge number when we talk about AI hallucinations, you know, in making up sources have, subsided in the newest models of the LLMSs. Craig Van Slyke, an awesome supporter, talked about on a recent episode of AI goes to college. So, yeah, it is getting better, which is always good. You know, Ralph says we're actually moving away from AI in the content development side, and we're finding that our brains are just better, and our audience is reacting to us. There is a point. That's why, like, I now talk my show notes. I use WhisperFlow. And you said it earlier. Is it saving me any time? Not really. Because a lot of the times, I've already typed out a blog post or something just to know what I was gonna say ahead of time. And so I find I can talk my show notes, go in, make a couple headings and subheadings, and it doesn't sound like me. It is me. And it for me, it's just as much time as having something, take a transcript, write show notes, and then go, oh, this is close, but I wouldn't say this. Or in some cases, I I just need to go, can you kinda simmer down a little bit? Like, I don't need war and peace. I just did show notes. It doesn't have to, you know, go crazy. Yeah. So that's always, fun. Rich Graham says I had Claude help me convert from QuickBooks to Xero. Now it's bringing in PDF invoices, alerting me for tons of money stuff I've missed in the past. Yeah. Definitely has its moments. Yeah. This and Dan hit the the head the head on the the nail on the head. Yeah. Coming soon. ChatGPT recommending things from paid

Speaker 1: 33:20

Thousand percent. Thousand percent. Yeah. This is why I'm a little cautious. Like, did, you know, did WP Vibe pay ChatGPT or OpenAI, to get their app recommended. Because certainly the plan they gave me, they have a free plan, and I'm using that now. It gives me, you know, 300 calls, every 24 hours. Eventually, that'll go down to 100 calls. I used 79 calls yesterday, so I'm just fine in that, like from the last 24 hours. So even on their free plan, I'm gonna be fine. At least I think so, for now. I went through a whole cycle. But Dave, absolutely. Like the days of it well, I mean, it's never really been completely ad free, but the days of that are coming to an end. Right? We saw this in Google.

Speaker 0: 34:10

Well, that's it.

Speaker 1: 34:11

Right? We saw that happen. It's gonna happen.

Speaker 0: 34:12

Yeah. Now that they've stolen Google's traffic, they're gonna use the same business model.

Speaker 1: 34:18

For

Speaker 0: 34:18

sure. Like, when people search for things, we're going to accidentally recommend things. And I already see it in different things where it's at the bottom. It's like Yeah. This search is brought to you by so and so.

Speaker 1: 34:28

It's gonna be AEO extortion. Right? They're gonna be like, hey. Do you wanna rank higher in AEO search results? I mean, that we all know SEO was extortion. Right? They were Okay, they called it, they, you know, it was an ad. It was bidding. Right? They called it ad bidding. Oh, yeah, you can, you can bid on the most popular words, you know, and you can, you can debate on whether that was real or not. I mean, they're getting sued for it right now. So, you know

Speaker 0: 34:56

Oh, nice. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:57

I mean, we'll we'll have to see how

Speaker 0: 34:58

it goes. And Facebook I I like Facebook. They settled, I wanna say, for 9,000,000,000, and they're gonna pay 70% of it, but there's another 30% they will pay. Like, all of the payments are contingent on 1. And, like, 30% of this huge settlement is when Apple and TikTok do the same thing. Like, we'll tone down our stuff for teens when they do. And I was like, well, that's a nice way of saying we're never gonna pay that. Right.

Speaker 1: 35:31

And I

Speaker 0: 35:31

and I forget what the other 1 was because it's like this monumentous settlement against Facebook, and then it's like, oh, yeah. But this has to happen. This has to happen, and that has to happen to pay. And I'm like, oh, and they're not paying anything. Yeah. So that's kind of interesting. Randy had a quick question before we thank our awesome supporters. Has anyone downloaded and tried Audacity 4 that dropped this week? Pretty sick changes in there. I saw the video, and it doesn't really look it's all a lot of it is cosmetic and things like, thank god you can now split a track because that was always hidden, and it wasn't under the menu labeled track, which used to make my brain explode. I'm like, wait. If I wanna split a track and I go to track, there's no split option. I forget where it was. So they've kind of, enhanced the interface to be a little more user friendly. The big whoop dee doo that I saw was things are now in color. So instead of being gray against purple, you can add colors. You can select multiple files and make edits. It looks like they added a lot of really cool stuff to it. I still don't understand besides the fact that you can store your files. I wanna say it's sound.com, some website that they've associated with it because they're in the video, they're like, here's our 10 people that are the Audacity team. And I'm like, how are you paying these people if we're not paying for your software? I'm like, that's always the 1 that makes me kinda scratch my head, but it looked pretty cool. And I'm trying to think if there's anything new, more just, again, just the interface for supporting, what if it is, VST effects and AKM and BHB and, you know, all those all the letters are supported in effects and things like that. So it looked like, okay. This is this is cool. And that's when I was like, oh, because I I start I looked at it about a month and 0.5 ago, and I was like, oh, this this looks pretty cool. And I was getting ready to make videos because I knew it was coming, and then I didn't. And I was like, oh, I I know what Dave is doing on Monday. If he's not doing anything for the holiday, Dave will be be making Audacity videos because all of mine are now outdated. And I was like, yay. So, with that, you know what's not outdated is our awesome supporters. You can be an awesome supporter by going over to askthepodcastcoach.com/awesome. And I still Ralph's gonna be like, you didn't update the slide yet? No. Becomingfinanciallyconfident.com is Ralph's new show along with Sonic Cupcake from Ed and, horseradionetwork.com from, Glenn. And we already mentioned aigoestocollege.com. There are many if you go over to askthepodcastcoach.comslash,uh,awesome. And, the show is brought to you by the schoolofpodcasting.com. If you want some courses or coaching or community, use the coupon code coach. And remember, that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. And if you go over to askthe podcast coach or schoolofpodcasting.com or podcastconsultant.com or pitchapodcast.com, Those are all using PodPage. If you wanna try PodPage, go over to try podpage.com and start a 14 day trial. And if you need more Jim Collison, and, hey, who doesn't, go over to theaverageguy.tv. Check out his show, Home Gadget Geeks. And November 7, I will be in Indianapolis, Indiana at podindy.com. Use the coupon code SOP, and that will save you off the already insanely low ticket price. This is a 1 day event. It's from 9 to 4. It's single track, and the 1 and only podcast answer man, Cliff Ravenscraf, will be talking about he's doing a next level workshop. So for more information, go to podindie.com. And it's time for the featured speaker of the week or the, supporter of the week. And so to that, we will go to the wheel o names. And who will it be? Will it be Ralph? Will it be, Shane from Spybrary or Jeff from Creator News Live? Well, we're gonna spin the wheel and see who it is. And well, it may be Craig. It's going to be Craig, the 1 and only doctor Craig Van Slyke from aigoestocollege.com. And while it's primarily like, the target audience are people like professors and such that are teaching, and how are they gonna handle when their students use AI? You get a lot of AI news. And like Randy was talking earlier, you kinda find out what's new and exciting in the world of AI. And so check it out. AI goes to college. Craig, thank you so much for your awesome support. We deeply appreciate that. And if you would like to be an awesome supporter, it's super simple. Just go over to askthepodcastcoach.com/awesome, because, you know, maybe we saved you some time or money or a headache or maybe you learned something today or maybe we just made you smile. You can give back by going over to askthepodcastcoach.com/awesome. So with that, let me check the chat room, and we will go to another fun filled question from well, the fun thing no. We're not gonna do that. As he scrolls to the top, here's a fun question. That I always say you need to know your why. Right? You have to know your why because otherwise, how do you know if your show is successful or not? And so this guy came up, and he says, look. I'm getting tired, and I feel like giving up, which we've all been there. Today, I released the 89th episode of my podcast. I had so many people who, listen, tell me that they enjoy the conversations. But in 2 years of posting every week, we had no material success. And that's the phrase I'm not quite sure unless he just means good old fashioned money. He says, want to give you 1,053 subscribers on YouTube, which kinda doesn't matter anymore, 4,000 download across podcast platforms, but I've but it feels nothing. Okay. When should I stop? When should I give up? And we kinda talked about this a couple weeks ago. But to me, what's what I asked him, like, what's your why? Why did you do this? Why did you bring a podcast into your life, and are you getting that? And it's I I still I still think sometimes, and I I think it's, in a way, sad that people don't think their show is real unless they have a sponsor. And I'm like, but for me, we I did this answer. I did this question. You know, what's the minimum amount of downloads you would do your show for? And for me, it's when the show stops being fun is when I go, yeah. It's enough. I mean, I had a a weight loss show that was about, you know, weight loss, And I'd done it for years, and I really wasn't losing any weight. And I felt like a failure, and it wasn't fun. And I'd been doing it for probably 6 or 7 years. And it was making money, but it wasn't fun anymore. And I was like, yeah. I life is too short to do things that are not funny. But we have a question coming in from Ralph. He says, hey. Have have you or any way else or any way else I found any value is paying social media influencers to oh, So have you in theory so what he's asking about is you find somebody to go, hey. You know, I really love this water bottle from name I can't see, Awala, I guess. I love the Awala because, you know, when you snap it, it's it's not going I look. I can do this, and I'm not pouring tea on my genitals right now. So, you know, it's great. But the other thing is you saw how hard it took me to close this thing. That's why it doesn't leak. So now every time I take a sip, I have to lock this. Otherwise, when you move your TV tray and this thing spills, it's gonna spill like nobody's business. So if I got paid for this like, Kim Kardashian got in a lot of trouble because she kept holding up things like, oh, I just love my blah blah blah. And then that's where a lot if you run into anybody saying, the way you make money with a podcast is you charge your your guest to come on the show. Yes. And you have to you have to upfront via the FTC, say at the beginning, oh, by the way, today's guest is, doctor Jim Cullison. And just just up, front, we have to say that doctor Jim paid to be on the show today, but I love doctor Jim, and he's gonna tell us how to whatever. You have to disclose that up front. The FTC made a page. It's ftc.org/influencer. And that's when I was like, oh, they're coming after us. So, now does it work? 1 of the things I'm trying we're we're doing classes now at the school of podcasting on growth. And 1 of the strategies is go find somebody who has who shares an audience. So for me, that might be a podcast about podcasting. For for Jim, it might be somebody else that talks about, you know, gadgets in the home. You know, go out and see if you can cross promote with them. And because that's free. You know? You don't have to pay anybody. So and for me, if I heard Daniel J. Lewis or if I heard David Hooper or if I heard Ray Ortega or Courtney Elmer or, you know, say something about a product unless it's Riverside. And and the reason for that is I've I I have my my thoughts on Riverside, and I also know they have a very, very high paying affiliate program. And I wonder sometimes that's actually kind of a good litmus test. If if I hear somebody promoting Riverside about being the best thing ever, I'm like, not not quite sure that's accurate. But, you know, that's 1 way. Jim, do you I mean, I I I know it's a strategy. I'm just like, before because in I know we've somebody had, approached PodPage, and they wanted $400 to make 1 video saying how much they love PodPage. And we're like, we have an affiliate program. You know, feel free to make the video and use your affiliate link. And they're like, no. No. We get paid upfront. And we're like, not for $400. And I forget how many followers he had. But you have to remember, even if somebody says they like it and they have, you know, 10,000 followers, doesn't mean you're gonna get 10,000 customers. You know, you might have 3,000 people if you're lucky. Look at that. Have you ever dabbled in this space? Or you know?

Speaker 1: 46:20

Well, the question is, is it worth it?

Speaker 0: 46:22

Right? Right.

Speaker 1: 46:22

That's really at the end of the day. Is it worth it? You don't really know. There's so many factors involved in getting an influencer or getting a this is just basically an advertising channel. Right? Whether you buy commercials or you put ads on things or you have a, you know, you've, you've got an ad on somebody's website or you got an Influencer saying things, you're buying an ad, right? You know, the folks that you mentioned during the Supporters section, you know, you've kind of turned that into, Hey, for your support, you'll get an ad. Sometimes I'll mention your name, right? And so you have to, you got to kind of test those things, right? Because what works for me may not work for you. And your show is different than mine. And so we could be using the same advertiser and getting totally separate results. So when you think about advertising, you got to test it. You just got to try it. There is no, know, there, there's the initial question of, Do you think? Yeah, I'd give it a try, Ralph. I'd give, I'd give Influencers a try. If you got 1 that's out there that's yet a reasonable price and that you think you got an opportunity for it, give it a shot. Get out there and see. You never know, right? You never know if that audience is going to pick up, then you test it, right? This is the you can't buy advertising without a way to test it. That's the mistake that gets made is people throw money at things, and then it's like, Well, was it successful? Well, I don't know. Well, that doesn't really work. Like, gotta have, you gotta have, you have to have a way of testing that value that's associated with it, whether it's a UTM or some kind of code or some kind of code that they use or whatever. But I mean, certain influencers, you know, you have to be, I've got a, I've got a great Gallup example of this. So years ago now, this would be 10 or 12 years ago, maybe 10, we had a couple big influencers, Rhett and Link. You remember those guys? You ever remember hearing those? Yeah. Huge for a while, right? Mythical, happy mythical, whatever. Anyways, was a mythical show in some way. And super popular, and they mentioned the CliftonStrengths Assessment, or StrengthsFinder, as we sometimes call it. And so they mentioned it, and we said, we saw this big spike in sales, right, for that day. And then it went back down. And then it just went back to where it was before. Now, we acquired a whole bunch of customers that day. Would we have liked to have had something ready there for that? You bet. You can't always guarantee we didn't pay them. They just did it. It was something that showed up on their show. If you're looking for long term, you know, stuff, typically, when you go with these big Influencers, you're gonna get a spike. You better be ready to capture those folks in some way, right? You got to bring them it's great top of the funnel activity for your marketing, you know, when you think of marketing as a funnel. Those kinds of things are great top of the funnel. But you better be ready to pull those folks down into your funnel. Otherwise, why are you doing it?

Speaker 0: 49:24

Right. That's it.

Speaker 1: 49:25

You know?

Speaker 0: 49:26

It's like you got a bunch of eyeballs. Yeah. Now what are you gonna do with it?

Speaker 1: 49:29

Better be ready. And by the way, your way to pull them down better be tested. Right? Better be like, Okay, I know that these things work, and we're going to pull them down. You got to have, you got to be ready to do that. So I think you have to test some of those. And some of them last for a long time. Like you can, like, Hey, this method of whatever, internet marketing via email, this thing works for me. I'm just gonna keep doing it, because you're testing it. So you know, you know it's working for you. Other times, you're like, You know what, this worked for a while, and then it's not working, you know, it's not working anymore. The other, the other method on this, friends, when you're thinking about advertising is what our friends at like GEICO did, right, where they got everywhere at once. They bought ads in every single channel they could, all at the same time for a length of time. And so all that anybody heard, whether they were watching a football game or listening to radio or on podcasts or whatever, was the GEICO ads, right? Or fill in the blank, who, you know, if you think about some of these other AG, whatever it is, and, you know, the, the various ads that are showing up on YouTube, right? Their methodology is to be everywhere at once. That costs a lot of money. So you better be ready, right, to do, to do that kind of marketing. You better be ready. But there is a method to that where you flood the channels with your name. That's all you're doing. Make sure everyone's hearing you. If you dabble in advertising, you're going to get dabbled results in advertising. If you go all in and you do it the right way, generally, it works for you.

Speaker 0: 51:07

Yeah. Ralph says, Do you have to say this is an affiliate deal each time you mentioned such a link in the show? Any ideas? I've been saying it each time, but it gets tired to say each time. I my newsletter, that I put out at podcasting observations, the 1st line is this newsletter may include affiliate links, blah blah blah. I may get paid, yada yada yada. Uncle Marv says, I just looked this up. The FTC's endorsement guidelines, 16 CFR part 2 55, required that any material connection include affiliate including affiliate discussion yeah. Easy for me to say. Including affiliate commissions be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. So I don't know if you have to say it every time. I usually I know, I forget oh, here. I can type it into something.

Speaker 1: 51:56

I have Remember, get these are guidelines, and they're Yeah. It's not ever specific until they want it to be. Like, I mean, they leave, terms are left vague on purpose so that there's legal ways to, to, you know, this is gonna be justified somewhere. If you're worried about that, I would error on the side of all the time. Yeah. If you're if you're not worried about it, I think you could probably, you know, leave it out from time to time. But how I mean, I I what I would do is get a phrase that you're comfortable with and just say it in the phrase all the time.

Speaker 0: 52:26

Yeah. I I have if I type in, I use text expander. So when I type in hashtag affiliate, it types, this content may contain affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission if you purchase through these links at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products or services I trust and believe, will provide value to you. Thank you for your support. So that's where if you wanted to, you could say, oh, by the way, you know, if you're using TextExpander at supporttheshow.com/textexpander, that's an affiliate link. And for more information, see the show notes. You might be able to get away with that. I'm not a lawyer, of course. So

Speaker 1: 53:02

Nor nor do we play 1 on TV or on the podcast.

Speaker 0: 53:04

Yeah. Yeah. So but I know affiliate links, when you find the right product for the right people, like for Ralph, being a financial guy, Monarch Money has an affiliate program, and so does Acorns. I love Acorns. It's my bank now. And they have no physical locations, but yet I can go to my local Circle K and pull money out of an ATM. I actually had to pay when did I get that I had to do something with cash. And it was so weird that I had to actually go get cash. And I was like, it's been forever.

Speaker 1: 53:38

When I touch money now, I'm like, it's dirty. You know, you're just kinda where's this bin? You know? It just you you think about it now. It's just like, oh, I just touch it so

Speaker 0: 53:50

Oh, I know what it was. Somebody when I was at Empowered Podcasting, Tim, Kim O'Brien bought my book, and he gave me cash. And I was like, oh, wow. I I kinda forgot what this looked like. So, you can also on pod page, you can list them as sponsors, and I think you can put a link there at the top. Again, these are affiliates. Blah blah blah. I know. Uncle Marv Cash. Yeah. You old. I know.

Speaker 1: 54:14

Know. But every once in a while, you need it. You know? It it's getting less and less. Remember when we used to pay to park, and you would have to have Oh, yeah. Know, 0.25? The I would keep a roll of 0.25 in my car just to just for that reason.

Speaker 0: 54:28

The beauty of Downtown Akron is you go through, and they expect you to pay with cash for parking. And I'm like, don't have any cash. Can I pay with a card? And they're like, you can pay with a card on the way out. Well, the cool thing is when you leave later, I don't know when they stop having a person in the booth, but they just leave the door open. And so you end up parking for free because there's nobody there to take your card. And I was like, alright. This is this is how you get people to come downtown. You quit charging them insane amounts of money to

Speaker 1: 54:58

Omaha's pretty reasonable. We have a, this is crazy, but we have a lot of parking, and it's actually reasonable.

Speaker 0: 55:03

See, there you go.

Speaker 1: 55:03

You know, you think, I'll pay a buck or 2. I mean, it's not a big deal. Right? And so the the good news is you can get close to where you want to go. That's a plus. And then it's it's reasonable. And you it's amazing when you make things reasonable for people, they'll pay for them.

Speaker 0: 55:20

It's a novel idea.

Speaker 1: 55:21

Imagine that. Good brings value. Right?

Speaker 0: 55:23

Yeah. Dan says it reminds me of the kids playing the arcade game back in the future. You know? You you mean you have to use your hands? Yeah. Exactly. Actually opened an arcade. There's a a strip mall in Akron that's been at 1 point, it was almost condemned because everything moved out to you know, it was near the mall, but blah blah blah. And they're actually they kind of they're rebuilding it, and 1 of the things that moved in is an arcade.

And it's only open from, like, 03: 55:49

30 to, like, 7. It's specifically made to give kids something to do. And I was like, great. Make sure they walk through a metal detector when they come in because, you know, kids today like to play with guns. So that was something that

Speaker 1: 56:05

Man, that got dark fast.

Speaker 0: 56:06

It got dark really quick.

Speaker 1: 56:08

These days. We have a bad problem

Speaker 0: 56:09

in Akron, Ohio where where most of the shootings are done by teenagers.

Speaker 1: 56:13

I was super happy. I mean, you just bought it right to right to the bottom.

Speaker 0: 56:18

Let's go back to let me see if I missed anything here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. FTC. Yep. You know what? We we we're we're gonna leave 3 minutes early. Nice. Oh. Summer hours. Yeah. Summer hours. Exactly. Yeah. Jim, what is coming up on, the average guy. T v?

Speaker 1: 56:40

Yeah. Jay Franzey back on the show. We talk he's he's gotten into kind of the the, he goes to to, like, concerts, like live concerts and takes photos, and he's writing those up. And he's got his own magazine.

Speaker 0: 56:52

Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 1: 56:53

A magazine. Well, it's really a it's really a website that has print on demand. But, a very interesting discussion, a little bit about cameras, a little bit about AI, a little bit about the musical space. He's a big music guy. It's posted right now, the averageguy.te.

Speaker 0: 57:08

And on the school of podcasting, I am hearing what I learned at Empowered Podcasting Conference, both from the conference and what I learned doing research for my talk about how to make a better podcast. And the the thing that's really interesting, we kinda talked about AI today. 1 of the things I'm gonna mention is there's a strategy you can use, especially on YouTube. The bad news is it kinda works some of the time, but it also has some fairly negative consequences in some ways. And 1 of the things that I I love when somebody says something better than I can, and so there's this, YouTube strategist named April Lynn, and she does deep dives and she bring receipts. And she finally said it. She goes, I'm worried about everyone's intuition because your intuition is your gut instinct. And if everything you're doing is coming from AI and it's not in your brain, how are you gonna have a gut instinct when your brain is empty, when you cheated off the smart kid in class? So that's 1 of the things we'll be talking on the school of podcasting. We are here next week, but I don't think the week after that. I'll have to double check with podcast movement. We'll talk about that next week when we do another episode of ask the podcast coach. Thanks for listening, and, we'll see you again next week. Take care, everybody. Enjoy your holiday.