458. If You Had $5,000, What Would You Fix First?

0:04 Well, good morning podcasting morning chat. Today is Friday, February 20th, 2026, and today we're going into the mailbag again. He pulled some real questions from Reddit and Facebook. Questions about spending a $5000 windfall interview prep without spending hours, YouTube promotions, Do you need a pro setup? And then we're going to talk about our wins of the week. So today is going to be super interactive. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share hover. Clubhouse lets you. And if you're watching us via podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, etcetera, please share this episode with a Pillow podcaster. And now give me about 30 seconds and we'll get things going. Thank you so much for joining us today. Well, good morning again, podcasting morning chat. I am your host Ralph Estep Junior filling in for Mark Ronick.

1:30 Now Mark had a successful procedure yesterday, so that's great to hear. And currently on stage with me right now is producer Ashley, Dr. Faye, Jonathan Howard, Sid, Alex, BC Babbles, Jinnade and Nikki. So thank you so much for joining me today here. Thanks for being here. And if you wanna check out the live version of today's show and fingers crossed, we're coming across live. And everybody is hearing me today. As of yesterday, we didn't, but you can go to podcastingmorningchat.com/join us again, that's Podcasting Morning chat.com/join us and that'll give you quick access to all of the platforms we're on. So let's get started with today's first question.

2:11 I've been teasing this one for a couple days, and this one comes to us from Chris from Facebook. And Chris said this. He said if someone handed you $5000 to improve your podcast tomorrow, where would you invest it? What you do in production, distribution, branding or paid growth? And then he follows it up with and why? So I will open it up to anybody who wants to participate and jump right in with go ahead BCI, see that you've asked or you want to make a comment. Yeah. So even though being in the field for like 5-6 years now, I think one of my biggest issues personally is that I tend to fluctuate a lot and I never really know is my current direction with my podcast the right direction? Am I hitting the audience where I want to hit them right where I envision hitting them?

3:01 So I think a portion of that would have to go to meeting up with a development team that can help me focus in and 0 in on making sure the direction I'm taking is accurate. I know the production stuff, I handle the production stuff. All the creative left I'm I know how to handle myself. But I need to make sure for me that my current format, the current set up, the current content focus is on topic. So that's my big thing. I like that BC So what you've just said is the first thing you're going to do is go find some, some people to help you. So you're going to spend some money to go find somebody that can assist you in building what you're working. Because you're saying what? I've been doing this myself for a while.

3:41 There are some things that I probably don't know. So I think that's a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant answer. Tripping over my words today but brilliant answer. I see that Sid wanted to talk and then I'm going to go to Ashley. I would actually, given where I am right now with all the work that I've put in in the last several months to get this show kind of set up for Season 7, I would actually spend part of that money in advertising and running print ads in industry specific magazines. There are several of them maybe running digital ads on Facebook or Instagram, something like that. But I would I would lean into a promotional budget to drive listeners to the show that would reach my audience. So I would be very specific and honed in with how it's been that money. I would invest the money in a physical space. I would try to find a, we'll call it a glorified shed, and I would insulate it and make somewhat of a podcast studio in there.

4:38 Because where I'm living now, I really don't have a good place to record as much as I would want and make it work. But it's really not ideal. So if I could have some sort of a small building out in my yard that was dedicated for creativity and podcasting, that would really move the needle for me. Great point, Ashley. Ashley, would it have to be like 5 or 6 nine feet up just in case for the storms? I don't know. That's a great question. I want to. Go in hurricane season. That's why you're right, Ox. I want to go to Nikki and then I want to go to Janae. Go ahead, Nikki. I would probably invest in the production support, just, you know, having people help me with getting videos out and clips and things of that nature because it's difficult as a one person show.

5:23 And I would also likely invest in going to conferences like, you know, podcasting, morning chat stuff because I've never actually been to a podcasting conference. I think it would be really helpful to meet up with people and to take sessions and learn. And then the third thing, I would probably invest in some kind of like media training because I don't have. That. And then my speaking skills and my interview skills, that would be something I would invest in. Tech would probably be last or one of the last things on my list. And then ads would be directly last for now because I would want to grow organically first. Janae, I'm a go to you in one second, but I want to read a comment that Tim put in the chat and he said he would call his CPA and figure out how to take a tax advantage. And Tim, I love that because as the resident financial person here, great call.

6:08 I love it when a client calls me before they spend money so we can talk about how best to do that. But Janae, go ahead. You're next on stage here, my friend. Great examples here. And what I would spend that 5K is to get data. So what does that mean? I want to know who's listening to my content, who's going to come in and really get value from the podcast that I'm creating. Data is the number one decider for literally anything. The massive companies, they spend a ton of money on ads so they can get data back. If you all watched the Super Bowl, we saw hymns and hers put a commercial out, $10 million commercial. Do you know what they did for the past five years? They spent a ton of money on ads. And for every single ad, they get ton of data back. So they know exactly who is purchasing their products. So spend some money in getting data back on where your people are coming from.

7:09 And if you spend on ads for your podcast, guess what you're going to get? You're going to get a ton of data back and you know exactly where to work on for your content strategy. Janae, I think that's brilliant. So let me ask you a question, Jay, let's follow up on that. What would be where would you go to get that data? Janae, what are some, some top of the line things you're thinking? OK, here's what I would do right away because I think that would be very valuable for everybody to understand where where you're going with that because I love the idea. I think you're right. I think if you start off with let me see where this, let me get some data so I'll know where to spend resources. Because that's the thing, I see a lot of content creators in this. They don't do a great job of measuring what's working. Is this working? Is that working? So go ahead, Janae, I mean to interrupt you, but I think that that would be really useful.

7:51 Yeah, I think these #1 places to find providers that will run ads against your podcast. For example, number one is Mopod. They can spend. They can take your money and run your podcast to different ad providers. You can run YouTube ads or Facebook ads to bring traffic back to your podcast. Another place is Pod Corn where you can spend money to run your podcast on other podcast ads. So those are some of the places that will give you some more data back. Because when I go to iTunes and I look at the data, it doesn't show me anything because I'm not getting that many downloads.

8:35 So maybe Spotify. So again, look at those providers that are gonna get your message out there as fast as can. Yeah, I'll just address that personally and then I'll go to anybody else that's interested. But I actually made a strategic advantage or decision back about a year and a half ago to really heavily invest in Overcast and other promotional platforms. And it has grown my my audio side of my podcast immensely. You know, I saw 10X growth in that. And, and it's kind of interesting because then when I go look at my, my download data, I don't have a ton from Apple, but I've got a ton from the other platforms where I actually advertised. And I've got a question later about YouTube because I'm doing the same thing on YouTube and that's really working to grow my channel as far as subscribers go, but we'll talk about that as well. Did anybody else want to comment if I? Have a follow up question for you. You said that you joined Overcast. I think that's what you said.

9:28 And Overcast has helped you grow your audio listeners. Can you explain that just a little bit? What, what did you do and why Overcast? What's it giving you? And I don't even know what Overcast is to be honest. Sure, absolutely. So Overcast is a platform, a podcast app and basically what you do is they have different categories of the type of show you have and you can buy 30 day blocks of promotion. So for example, in my daily Christian faith one, I go into religion and faith and they have a certain number of blocks that they offer to promote your stuff. Now it's, it's not a audio ad. It's like down in the bottom of the app. But basically what it's doing is it's whoever is listening to that type of content on Overcast is going to see a video rendition of an ad and you can put your, your, your podcast artwork there.

10:20 And I don't hold me to the number of letters, but you can put a certain number of letters in there. And then basically what it does, Sid, is it prompts people to click on that. And then when they click on that, you know, they can subscribe. So the other thing that Overcast gives you, and I'm not promoting Overcast. There's other places to do it. I'm doing another one right now. I, I can't remember what it's called. It might be podcast addict. I don't remember. I'm doing the same thing there. But what it does is it gives you data how many views and then it gives you how many clicks and then it gives you how many subscribers you got from it. So as Janae was talking about, it gives me data because then I can go see, OK, is this show resonating? Is this show getting somewhere? Now? I will tell you, Sid, the, the, the, the disappointing part for me is it doesn't give you, you know, a good idea about completion or any of that stuff.

11:07 It's just saying people are knowing I'm out there now. As an example, when I started doing this, my Daily Show had about, I'm going to say about 3035 downloads a day. I'm consistently over 200 now. So that was just a focus. Now I've spent quite a bit of money on it. I'm going to be honest with you because I bought month after month and you can buy multiple. They have so many in each block and depending upon what you're trying to go into, they could cost more. They have one that's all podcast. That one is more expensive. They have others like leisure and fitness. They have a business 1. The Business 1 tends to be a little bit more expensive, but they set a certain number of advertisers in each of those blocks. If you're interested, you go to overcast.com, you set up an account with them, and then they'll send you an e-mail.

11:51 Hey, in your genre, there's an ad available. If you don't move on that in about 30 minutes, it's probably going to be gone because it is real quick. Now I, and I am, I'm guilty of that. I go buy 5 or 6 of them at a time. So I like steal the market, which is intentional, right? It's because I'm thinking if somebody wants to go see a business show, my, my, my, my month, a weekly business show, I bought like 4 business slots. So if they're on overcast and they want to hear a business show, they're going to see my pretty face at the bottom and I'm going to be promoting that. So I hope that answers your question, Sid. Yeah, I went to overcast while you were talking to it's overcast dot FM. I'm sorry, the podcast. Player at the bottom of it they run ads and you know my niche is really really specific so the only category of this that I'm looking at that would fit into would be business and right see right now there's like 2 spots available and it's $600 to I guess that runs one ad for it doesn't say how long you just give me the. Price and actually to be honest with you, yeah, it's 30 days and that's a really good number because that business block, and let me explain this Part 2 Sid.

12:51 The way that it works on the backside is as the blocks remain available, they reduce the price so that usually that business block runs $1500. To be honest with you, I've seen them anywhere from 600 to 1500. So if I'm not trying to promote their product, but this is a really good time to jump in. But then what happens is once somebody buys one, then it goes up another increment. Usually it's like 20 or $40 because I bought four or five of them at a time and you buy the first one at the lowest number and then it increments up. But it overcast dot FM Yeah, it's a player. That was the best way to explain that. Yeah, thank you for diving down that. I'm going down that rabbit hole with me. Thank you very much. Oh, absolutely. I put this question today because what came to mind for me and and I'll and I'll move on to the next question in a second, unless we have somebody else wants to talk about this was all of us dream about hitting that lottery, right?

13:37 We're like, oh, you know, if I hit that lottery, what would I do? And I just thought, you know, this is a pretty cool question. This guy Chris asked on Facebook, you know, we could all do we could all do something with this. So did anybody else want to comment before I move on to the next question? I think this is a great question for the simple reason, you know, laying out your podcast. Just because you don't have the 5000 right now does not mean you can't have the nice things. I know you deal with this all the time. It probably with the listeners that you have Ralph, but you know, we all want the best of the best right away, but we don't need the best of the best to have the a great podcast. But when you're making a recipe, get a couple things here, a couple things there and then all of a sudden it turns out to be something great. That's why when you're laying at your podcast, you know, having those podcast goals are so important. And it's just a fun question, though. I mean who doesn't want to have multiple my multiple cameras like Jade?

14:33 And, and Alex, I want to speak to that actually, because I, I want to share some of that everybody. I had a different approach. And my approach was I'm going to build it first. I'm going to get the studio, I'm going to get all the recording stuff. And the interesting part of that is that wasn't the best approach because it wasn't until about 3 weeks ago that I actually hired a speaking coach. I should have done that first. When I look back at it now, yeah, the tech is cool. I've got a cool background. I've got great, you know, software and all that stuff. But you can have all those things. But if your content is not great, if your delivery is not great, and that was a hard thing because it's almost easier to go buy the gear, it's easier to go buy the tech. It's easier to do all those things. But the hard part is putting yourself out there. And I'm going to come to you in a second, Janae. The hard part is putting yourself out there and accepting feedback and and you know, I, I go back and I think I mentioned on the show before I go back and listen to the stuff I did at the beginning, I sounded like an air traffic controller. I mean, that's what I sound like. I had the crazy headset and all this kind of stuff and it, it took me.

15:38 So in other words, Alex, to get back what you're saying. Had I started differently from the beginning, I would have worked on the content, the delivery, the me stuff. But go ahead, Janae. I don't want to take over what you're going to say there. No, you're absolutely right. Because the important thing and the hardest thing to build is the skill. When you say, hey, you want to run for a marathon, you don't just go start running the marathon. You have to train for you got to put in the reps, right? So when I started my podcast, I recorded on the smartphone in my car for one year. The studio came about 8 years later, like 8 years in the running, right? So it, it all takes time into what you want to build. We're going to find the audience and who's resonating with that stuff.

16:23 It just takes time. Everybody's going to go at a different direction. But the beautiful part is we all get to learn the same thing over the long term. No time. Thanks. Well said my friend. Well let's move on to our second question. This one comes to us from Reddit and this says how do you actually prep for interviews without spending hours? I've been paying attention to my own interviews lately and I noticed something uncomfortable. If I don't prep, the conversation stays surface level. If I over prep it sounds like a script reading contest. I'm trying to find a middle ground where I still feel natural but I'm not asking basic bio questions everyone's already heard 20 times. What's your prep process? What What's your prep process look like right now? Do you research deeply or just follow your curiosity? I would say put a limit on the time that you've researched. There is a study method that works perfect for this. It's called the Pomodoro method, and the idea is that you dedicate 25 minute blocks to the task, take a 5 minute break and then go into another block.

17:26 So what I do is I set a timer for 25 minutes and I research the person. I check out their bio. If they've got an electronic press kit, I check that out because I interview a lot of musicians. I check over any other recent interviews they might have done, any press releases, and then I take a break and then I do it again for another 25 minutes. That way you kind of get that balance of organic conversation and also being well prepared for the things that the person you're interviewing is doing. Well said, but if you don't hear anything else we say today, stop reading someone's bio at the beginning of your episode. I'm sorry, but I'm done when I hear that.

18:07 Just stop doing it. You know, if if you're, you're, you're, you're going to lose a listener. That's Ralph's personal opinion. I don't speak for the whole crew here, but stop doing that. Because as soon as I hear that, I'm like, I could have gone done that myself. Tell me something interesting. Tell me something that I need to know. Tell me how this connects to the audience, because that's a thing. You might land a great interview person, but how does that benefit your audience? How does that benefit your listener? Stop giving me their bio if you want to do that at the end or send a link of, hey, here's how great this person is. You know you can do that. Jonathan, I'm going to go to you and then I'm going to go to BC and Alex. Go ahead, Jonathan. Oh I was just going to say I prepped for my interview. Now granted I'm a little bit crazy but I take 10 minutes to look at their bio and I pick out what questions like 2 questions that I want to ask them about the topic.

18:57 Now I have a very short show, but two questions that I want to ask him about the topic that they really were pushing. That works for my audience. I find those two questions, I get them, you know, ready to go. I review their bio and and I'm good to go. I actually don't introduce. I said I was going to record intros after. I don't, I don't even do that anymore. We just get into the conversation. It just makes more sense to actually give the things that benefit the audience. So find 2 questions how I do it? Jonathan, I just want to interject something. I was on Jonathan's show a couple weeks ago and that's exactly what you did and I thought it was super effective. Jonathan, you know, you didn't read a bio, you just went right to it. Here's the value for my my listeners, but go ahead BC you're up.

19:38 This is why I hold or discuss holding discovery calls and pre interviews for this exact reason. I like getting past the surface level. What's your favorite color questions? You know, I want to figure out how to take this persons background and figure out the great actionable topics we can use to create a conversation that provides in that moment ready to use insights for the audience. Also, this also goes back to when we talked about how listening intently to a guest. During the interview is a developed skill that can really pay off once you hone it down. If you ask them the right open-ended questions, get them to start rattling off a longer answer, and you listen intently to what they're saying, you'll find innumerable opportunities to pivot into different directions and really expand and take one question that provides A20 plus minute answer segment.

20:31 And so that's a lot of great content for the show. So I think balancing those two things can really help you out. Go ahead, Nikki. I was just going to say that for me, I used, since my company is called TIDE, like TIDE tutoring. One thing that I did is I went to ChatGPT and I said ChatGPT. Can you develop a framework for my podcast? It'll benefit listeners with the acronym TIDE. And right now I can't remember what all the letters stood for, but basically the idea that ChatGPT gave me was start with the theme and then move into the insight. And the DI believe was distillation. So once you get the insight, then go, then distill it a little bit more, break it down a little bit more.

21:12 And then I forget what the E was, but it was something like emotional resonance or something like that where you're connecting directly with the listeners. So I kind of follow that. I try to, I don't do it, I don't do it perfectly, but I try to follow that format. And then as far as preparation for the interview, one thing that I will do is of course look at the BIOS and stuff and I'll ask ChatGPT to generate 100 different questions for different themes that I want to explore with the person. So I may have like 400 to 500 questions that I'm pulling from and then in preparation for the interview. So it only takes like a minute or two to generate those questions and I'll copy and paste them, you know, put them in a Google doc, whatever. So it doesn't take me long at all. But when I get to the the portion where we're not recording yet, but I'm with the guest via Zoom, I will talk to them and say, OK, this is kind of the theme or the plan of what I'm going the direction that I'm thinking about going in. So if we're talking about the evolution of a mother or the evolution of a woman or something like that, I'll break it down into 4 themes and then have some of those questions ready.

22:11 And I also do send the questions to the guests so that they can anchor their answers and stuff. Doesn't take me anything more than 10 to 15 minutes to do all of that. Cuz shot GBT is amazing, but I try to keep it within that framework of tide. And it may be a good idea to look at your own business, look at your own podcast name, and see if Chat GPD can develop a framework that breaks it down for you so that you can kind of stay on track in your interviews and make sure that your podcast doesn't stay surface level. On my show, my guest, I researched them. I mean I seek them out. 99% of them I invite them to be against my show means I have found their content somewhere. I've heard them speak in person, I've met them so I'm seeking them out or I know about them, I'm seeking them out.

22:54 I do a pre call with them and after I have my Otter AI assistant take notes in the pre call. And then I started doing this like 2 weeks ago and as a test and I just love this part. I worked with chat TPT to develop a show framework and I had put into it a couple of examples of what I had created as kind of a run of show if you will. And then I did a test and I uploaded the Otter summary and told it to take the summary of this conversation with this guest and make me a run of show or a yeah, a run of show for this episode with this guest.

23:36 And it did. It took a couple of tries for it to remember it and it actually, and I did another one and it didn't do it the same way. And so I said, hey, you're not doing this the same way you did before. Here's the link. And it came back to me and said, I can't read the link, but tell me to do it like I did #172 because I had mentioned that in my chat with it. And so now when I do that, say make a framework for this podcast episode based on this Otter summary, This is the guest based on what you did for episode 172 within, I don't know, a minute. I get the doc, I get the information, I copy it to a Google Doc, and then I go in and read it and change a few things. It gives me 10 questions, which is what I ask it to do. It gives me a little header that I read at the beginning. It gives me a sentence and a half about the guest. So no bio route, but it gives me a sentence and a half about the guest.

24:29 It puts in my canned intro like, hey, I'm your host, Sid Meadows, welcome to the trend report puts my canned outro. So it took me a little bit of work to get it to do it that way. It saves me hours now because I would take the Otter, I would read it, I would write the questions out. I would create all this and what was taking me hours now takes maybe 15 minutes from beginning to end. Oh, that's great. And Dave put in the chat. I wanted to read some of that. I'm going to go to Janae if I can keep my phone from falling over. Dave says I don't script my questions. I just see an, I just said an intent and a goal for the conversation. And I think that is very well said, Dave, because that's where you can get yourself in trouble. If you've got this scripted, this set of questions that's going to remain surface level because you're not going to listen.

25:12 You have to be active in listening to the person you're interviewing and move with them. But go ahead, Janae, I know you want to make a comment here. Yeah, it really helps to have a structure for how you want to do your show. And I love what Sid shared is, you know, he worked with Chad. He worked with the tools that he already was using to create that format so that it makes sense for him and how he wants the outcome to be. Again, having that end in mind is super, super more, you know, hey, this is what the ending that you want it to look like. And you don't have to skip. You do have to stick to that script either. You don't have to stick to those questions. You want to go deeper into that conversation and that's where you you started shine and not the the question.

25:56 So that's what I've been doing for the past 300 episodes, taking that bio from the guest that has shared or, you know, taking that intro call that I did with him and feeding all of that to chat based on the template that I created. Now initially I was doing 45 minute episodes and I was like, you know, let's break it up after I saw somebody else doing that. So now I have two different episode parts and they they're both templated. But then I always do my best to keep listening and go deeper into the questions or go a totally different route that's not even in the script. So it keeps that conversation natural and still brings that value out. Thank you. Go ahead, Alex.

26:37 When it comes to scripting, I script all my interviews and the reason being is I have a different set of constraints. When we're doing these junkets we have 7 minutes and every minute counts. And you're also, yes, you want to do what BC says, which is give them an open-ended question that they can go and run on but they can't run too fast. I might have 7 questions in and we're lucky to get 3 in at the same time. You know, you want to see where the conversation goes and we do a lot of research when we do those because it might take us a week just because we're reviewing their previous podcast, I mean their previous interviews. Plus we're looking towards the new season. When I did the podcast, we went week to week. So we really don't know what happens except for maybe one week's worth of episodes that they've done in their show. So I'm not doing any spoilers.

27:34 And then we always try to give him a interesting stump question. Not when I say stump, not stump in the sense of something a little deeper. So. For. Seven or five questions. It does take a long time. I probably could use more tools, but that's just what we did. Thank you, Alex. I'm going to go on to our next question because I want to leave enough time for some wins of the week. And there's our next question, this one's coming to us from Joseph from Facebook. And Joseph asked this, is there really significant value in having and what he called a positional setup when all you need is a microphone and a recording device, is the quality gained by a pro setup worth the money? Do any of y'all think that's really the difference between what you're doing and what's professional full time podcasters are doing? And I thought that was a really good question, but what does everyone think about that?

28:21 There are a couple of questions within that question. I think the first one is about just the the aesthetic. It sounds like, and I think that's based totally on with or not you're going to start off doing audio or video first. If it's audio first, podcast doesn't matter, you just need the microphone. But kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier with comparing mine and Alex's background to Janae's, who has the multiple cameras, the really nice lighting, all the good things. But I think when you do have a set up that you're proud of for like a video podcaster, it can help kind of subconsciously prompt you to perform better in the recording, which I think is always very helpful. Little tricks like that. I think the other question here is regarding quality of the equipment. I'm a big believer and I have been for for years now, that if you know what you're doing, especially on the post production side of it, you don't need a $300 sure microphone. They're nice.

29:20 I love it. It also causes me kind of a headache every now and then. If you know what you're doing on the post production side of it, then you can have a OK quality microphone and still produce a really good quality content. And I learned this first person coming to my undergrad when I had nothing more than a Marantha recorder and I had to create a whole new segment and I was able to impress my then audio production teacher. And this guy is professional network includes the sound designer for Game of Thrones. So that's not a low bar in any way, shape or form. So that's my that's my Ted Talk on that all. Right. I want to go to Sid and then Jonathan. So go ahead, Sid.

30:00 I just recently did this in 175 episodes. I have no real background other than my office, no set up, no nothing on screen or anything. And so when I started my new series Tend to Win and I did my first one, I realized that there are some things about it I needed to do differently. So invested in Ecamm. I created the scene for it and got four different scenes for it so I can zoom in on the guests. I can see the wheel spinning. Janae helped me with a lot of this positioning stuff. And then while I was in there doing it, I thought, well, if I'm going to do this for this series, why not do it for all the interviews and make the YouTube videos better? And so I created backgrounds.

30:43 We have a standard background that we use. It's got furniture pieces in it. I put my logo on the screen. I'm interviewing next week my one of my sponsors for my gold sponsors. I've got his logo on the screen for that episode so that I can kind of promote him a little bit more. So I'm doing this. I haven't recorded any yet. I got my first recording today and I tend to win with the new setup. Excuse me, not tend to win, sorry in the hot takes with the new setup. So I'm doing this. I'm excited about it. I'm excited about the way it looks. It feels really good. It feels very much on brand with the rest of the podcast. And so if it helps me up level my YouTube version of my show, which is secondary that and it brings more people into YouTube, then that's great. I just like the way that it looks. When I first set up my studio, I was really worried about the audio sound.

31:29 So I took and I put moving blankets all around me and I came into what was like a cave. And for the first year recording, I would come into this dark, dank cave. And about seven months ago I said I got to get out of The Cave. And it was so amazing that when I took the blankets down, yes, I spent some money on audio treatments for the walls and panels and all that, but what had changed in me was my mental change. It was definitely a, oh, wow, I want to go into this space now. I'm not going into this cave where I hide. And I think that we just want to make sure that it has to be pleasing space to you as a person too. Because if it doesn't please you, maybe the word is Zen. If it's not Zen the way you want it to be, you're not going to want to go in there and you're not going to give your best effort. So I just want to interject that, But go ahead, Jonathan. I know you want to make a comment as well. Yeah.

32:16 I just wanted to say if, if this gentleman, I think it was gentleman is starting his podcast, He doesn't need anything more than an iPhone. You can record your podcast on an iPhone and get started and then you can grow. You don't need anything special to just get started. And I find that when people think they need the the cameras and the, you know, then they don't ever get started. I need a camera, I need a road caster, I need a mic, I need all this stuff. They don't ever get started. They get all the equipment and then they don't know what to do with it and then they don't get started. Start with your iPhone. And I know people like Sinead are going to kill me for this one, but start with your iPhone.

32:58 If you want to get started, just do it. So, Janae, are you going to kill Jonathan about starting with the iPhone? Let's start there. No, not at all. Because at the beginning of this conversation, we sat, we asked a question, where are you going to spend 5K? And I said I would spend on data. We all talked about where we're going to spend the money. And I also said that I started my podcast on an iPhone. It wasn't video, but it was an audio podcast. But again, you're absolutely right, Jonathan, they got to get started. They got to put the shoes on and get out the door to start training for that marathon, right? You're thinking that you want to get this $500 shoes, you want to get these $600.00 clothes that are going to keep the wind off your back. None of that's going to work if you don't even have the stamina to go and run outside.

33:45 So yes, please use whatever you have. But that's why in my book, some stages I talk about your first thing is the phone, the the work that you need to do is not spending money on gear, is spending time on yourself and building that muscle. Thank you. Now I think that's a brilliant point and DRI want to ask you because I know you do editing work and I know I just started you here, but so let me ask you the question as an editor. So if somebody doesn't have a pro setup, how do you deal with that situation? Because BC said, Hey, you don't have to have a great mic. You don't have to have a great setup. But then I'm thinking about all the editors who are listening right now or may listen to this later and they're all going, but wait a second, you know, I'm going to, I'll give you a great example of that.

34:30 Yesterday when I recorded the show, my stuff was all jacked up and I felt so bad. I sent it over to Ashley and then she was very nice about it. She says, Ralph, we got to change some things around. But the DRI wanted to ask you, what do you think from the the perspective of an editor? Adobe Enhance is a great tool and I want to preface this by saying the paid version, not the free version, definitely the paid version because you can adjust all the levers and everything. I think the free version is on 100 and that's that's not good, that's horrible. And if you pay for it all like it in a one year block, it comes out to be a little over $8 a month, you know, to average out $8 a month. So that can cover up a multitude of sins. I use it.

35:22 It's in my regular workflow. So I am a big proponent of Adobe Voice and I think it's called Adobe Voice Enhance and they have improved on it since I first joined. They have version 2 out now and also I still put it through a phonic as well. I think it's like $14.00 a month if I'm not mistaken. Now I would like to get rid of a phonic and exchange it for one of my favorite lifetime things that I get from at sumo, but so far nothing has come down the Pike that I consider better than offonic. It's just so satisfying when you download that final result and everything is so beauty. It looks like someone came through with some scissors and just cut the straight line.

36:12 It's so satisfying. Thank you. DRI want to go to Billy next because Billy has joined us and then I'm going to go to BC and Janae. Go ahead, Billy. Good morning, hope everybody's doing good. So I wanted to jump in a little bit because I get this question as an Amazon influencer from other Amazon influencers. Like should I be shooting on my phone, my camera, whatever, and I'm always of like, get started, do it, do it dirty, whatever. Like build a plane on the way down. However, I do think a plan to level up your game sooner than later, depending on your long term goals. Because I've done 4300 brand deals. The number one piece of feedback I get is wow, your content looks so much better than everyone else's. And brands and companies and sponsors, they want to be associated with quality content and quality, you know, video, audio, all that kind of stuff.

37:06 And then also on the other side, on the production side alone, it's like I can build a house with a screwdriver and a hammer, but why would I do that when I can get a drill and a nail gun? It's like there's it's just a different game when you can sit down confidently. I spent $1000 on a piece of gear and the reason why I did that is because now my cameras don't flicker, my Cam links don't go out. Most people look at that and go that's crazy, why would you do that? Because now I can make 6 more videos in the time that was be fiddling around with the stupid camera that doesn't work. And then also in the beginning, if you want to level up your quality, but you don't have the resources people around you do. My first 25 episodes of a live stream that I was doing for that turn into a podcast, I borrowed gear from three different people every single week.

37:56 And you would be shocked at how many people have crap and DSLR cameras and lights just chilling that they don't use that. You can just go up to them and say, look, doing a podcast, I'm trying to get my feet wet, can I borrow some of your stuff? And they will let you do that. And I did that for 25 episodes before I ever bought a piece of gear. Thank you, Billy. And I think that's a good point. I love the community part of podcasting and I have met so many great people and BC I'm going to go to you and Janae and Alex, but I have met so many great people who are just willing to help who I like. I give you a great example. This last night I was stressing because I couldn't get this thing to work with the live in Riverside and a guy I met through another place, he says to me says hey, I'll jump on a call. I said dude, I got a late night.

38:39 It's tax season. You know, he says, fine, I'll do it at 8:00 and then Alex this morning he joined me super early so we could test things out. So that's the thing I love about podcasting and Billy, you just now is reach out to people and ask them for for a little assistance. But go ahead be see Janae and then Alex. I do want to clarify it real quick that the direction I'm coming from is also from the from the producer perspective and and I come from a broadcasting background. And the reason I, I wanted to really kind of push the idea of knowing post production is because, and I had a better way of saying this before now, but when it comes to quality or lack of quality equipment, recording a show for the first time and you're thinking about production, especially looking for producers to help. For me it's like if a producer.

39:29 If a producer doesn't know noise reduction, normalization, compression, then probably not a great producer in that sense. Audio is absolutely the number one thing. You are doing a podcast, you are trying to get your message across. Yes, we do have the amazing software now, but in the past we didn't have it and producers and editors would have to spend a ton of time fixing your audio. And I had that one experience with a gentleman. He was recording an episode with some big celebrity and the audio was so bad. So I had to spend. Two hours fixing that audio. Number one thing that you want to do as a starting podcasters, please spend $150.00.

40:12 Get a good microphone. No matter how many tools there are out there to make your audio better, putting the audio in cleanly the first time around is better than trying to fix in post. Producer will also say, oh, we'll fix it in post, but that's not the case over here. You know, you you don't have that money. So again, save some time for Dr. so she doesn't have to spend extra money on that Absuma products, right? If you give them good audio, good source material, boom, you're golden. Thank you. And, and Janae, I want to trumpet that because you don't have to have a fantastic set up. You go to a closet, go into a quiet closet with a decent microphone and just and focus on that. Everybody's, you know, got to have this great, you know, video podcast.

40:57 I love what you said, Janae. You're like focus on the audio because even on the video side, and this is going to sound kind of harsh, but I see so many videos that the audio is terrible. And I guess they get through it because there's video out there, but man, it's not good for the consumer. So I want to go to Wednesday the week, but Jonathan, do you want to preview what we're going to talk about on Obsession Worthy Podcast on Monday? So Monday we are taking a look at Radiolab is going to be the podcast and the episode is called Colors. So we're going to be breaking down that episode to see why it's truly obsession worthy and it's an interesting show and I hope you take a listen to it and enjoy it. So it's Radiolab and the episode is called Colors.

41:39 We'll ask Ashley to put that in the show notes. I'm assuming we can do that. So that'll be out there. So make sure you join us on Monday. But let's get to our wins of the week. So I want everybody to participate. The more wins, the better. I'm going to start because the win of the week was that audio and video work today. So I was stressing about that all night. My wife is like, you're stressed today. I'm like a little bit. So that's my win of the week and my other win is just being in being a part of this community. This has been great. I consider you all friends and it's been great to be here. So I'm going to be quiet now and I'm going to go to who wants to share their win of the week next. I got my money. For those of you who don't know I had, I got a team that does all the creative look for a client that I have and her podcast just launched and a honey book, which I use for my CRM did not have the money right away.

42:24 They gypped it on my account and it took a while to get here, but it got here this morning. We're all good now. Go ahead, Sid. As of yesterday, we're scheduled through June with people and to shows and stuff. But yesterday everything loaded into Buzz Sprout with the landing pages done and the show notes done and everything done for every episode, all five of them through the month of March. And by the end of the day today, we'll have all the other assets, emails, blogs, social media assets all done. And it just feels really, really good to be 5 weeks ahead with things so that now we can pull back and start.

43:04 We've been trying for a couple of months to get ahead and so now we're five weeks ahead and so that can all sit there and get ready to go out while we work on other things. So that's, that's a great accomplishment. Sid, what a great accomplishment and an accounting lingo we would call that you now have margin and margin is a great thing. So congratulations, Sid. Let's go to Jonathan. I was getting ready to upload my episode for next Monday and I popped into my Buzz Sprout and saw that I have one episode. It's been trucking along, doing quite well, but hit 500 downloads. So I am happy for my little a brand new little podcast having that 500 downloads on that one episode. So that's a win. That is fantastic. Go ahead, Ashley. My win for the week is I had a great time writing with a lot of other great writers. We have a community writing night where we all just get together and we respond to various prompts and my other one is I'm playing with the band tonight. Go ahead, Janae, my one of the week. Is I got to be on stage all through the day to the today's episode and got to contribute as well. So that was my great win.

44:06 And my second win is I've finished ten guides for my pod glue platform that I'm putting together. So those are going to be published very soon. And I'm bringing in beta testers. So I'm super excited for that as it as I, you know, come close to that production. And then the last one is I've also finished a manuscript on my book that's in coincides with the app. Should I share the name of the book? Good, good. So I'm calling this book PRM Podcast Relationship Management. We've all over CRM. We've all heard of CMS, but PRM sits right in the middle of it and it's essentially a new category that I'm creating because it didn't exist before.

44:50 So there we go. Thank you. Thank you, Janae. Let's go to Tim. Tim, thanks for joining us and let us know your win of the Week. So this one's going to get you really excited. I am the financial Wellness guy for custom Border Protection, the national program manager for that. We just launched our FDIC Money Smart for Adults program. So I'm teaching that and I'm also training a bunch of people on how to train that. So it's not just one person against 66,000. I have my little minions going about, so I know it's not podcast stuff, but I know it's financial Wellness stuff, which is right up your alley. And then my podcast one of the week is I am starting a new series for my podcast, Create Our Podcast. And I've got all of March pre recorded loaded up ready to go and I'm excited to get this new series kicked off. So that's what I got for you guys this week. Tim, congratulations.

45:50 And yes, I think that's awesome what you're doing with the financial Wellness. We don't do a great job of that and especially people in the Armed Services and Border Protection, all that. That is a fantastic thing and we've got to do a better job of that. So we're getting ready to wrap up. Does anybody else have a win of the week they want to share? I'm happy to hear them. We always like to champion those wins of the week. Hey, Ralph, on my Amazon side of stuff, I've been trying a new strategy this year, which I'm happy to report it's producing 31 more dollars per day, which that sounds odd, but if you're in the business, you know, that's a huge increase on average on the on the semi passive stream. I don't believe in passive stream of revenue, but semi passive stream of revenue.

46:31 But then also on the podcasting side, I went, I've kind of retired the host side, been doing a lot of guesting. And so I've seen a huge increase in my community because of my podcast guest placements. So that's been a fun strategy to kind of test out. And so that's working really well. If anybody's looking to grow your audience or your community, being a guest is huge. Billy, thank you so much for sharing that. Dr. Do I see you want to share 1? For the past two years, I've had a client that is constantly giving me her files to edit and get out on a Tuesday. She gives me the files on, you know, a Sunday or a Monday.

47:14 And it's been rough. And I have a problem with boundaries, to be perfectly honest with you. She's my very first client. And so there's that kind of layer on top of it, and we are now 5 episodes ahead of time. I don't even know what to do with myself. It's fantastic. And that's my win. Yay. That's great work, the art. All right, everybody. Well, thank you for joining us today and I want to wish everybody a great weekend. Make sure you come back and join us again Monday morning for the Obsession Worthy podcast and make it a great weekend, my friends. Thanks again. Have a great one.