GTM After Hours
This is a safe space for the best GoToMarket execs, IC’s, and middle-managers in B2B SaaS. We've all failed and succeeded, so, of course we'll talk about both - and we'll spill the tea on how we coped along the way. Join host, and veteran SaaS GTM leader, Mark Bliss for some real talk about how to survive, succeed, and thrive in your GoToMarket career!
GTM After Hours
The Obligatory Podcast on Podcasting with Elijah Drown
In this episode of the GTM After Hours podcast, host Mark Bliss interviews podcast expert Elijah Drown, who shares his journey from corporate finance to becoming a podcast guru. They discuss the evolution of podcasting, the importance of finding your voice, and the common pitfalls in starting a podcast. Elijah emphasizes the need for businesses to embrace podcasting as a vital marketing tool and offers practical advice for startups looking to launch their own podcasts. The conversation also highlights the significance of repurposing content to maximize reach and impact. Additionally, they address common mistakes podcasters make and offer advice for newcomers in the workforce, encouraging creativity and self-belief.
Takeaways
- Epic failures in podcasting can lead to valuable lessons.
- Businesses should view podcasts as essential, not optional.
- Finding your voice takes time and practice.
- Engaging guests can lead to networking opportunities.
- Success in podcasting should be measured by relationship-building, not just revenue.
- Mistakes in podcasting are often more significant to the creator than the audience.
- New podcasters should focus on essential tools and organization.
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Hey, welcome to the GTM After Hours podcast. I'm your host, Mark Bliss, and I'm here with an incredible guest, Elijah Drown, who is a absolute podcast guru. His entire business is helping companies and marketers like you to jumpstart your podcasts and get out into the world. so without a lot of adieu, because I could absolutely just obliterate this entire podcast with all the adieu. But Elijah, you want to give the audience like the 30,000 foot overview of you, your career and why you love podcasts so much? Yeah, man. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate this. This is going to be a good chat to nerd out and probably spend about 45 hours straight on podcasts alone. It's going to be great. Yeah, yeah, don't don't check the actual time on your Spotify link if you're listening to this. Yeah, just imagine it's going to be 45 hours. I went to school like 25 years ago at radio broadcast school in Toronto, Canada I decided that that wasn't the dream because well, it's tough to get into and it's just a Dying market, right? That's where podcasting comes in I decided to have a family get in finance corporate spent some time about 16 years in there working up to even project management They decided to cut costs. I was part of a layoff package and then I moved towns to by the lake near Michigan. And, um, about four months later, I was like, no corporates, not for me. So in between there was internet radio podcasts, failed podcasts, try again, another podcast with buddies and just having fun throughout it, helping friends and family. And then it came a time recently this last year that I turned the side gig into creative entrepreneurial thing, a hundred percent of the time to help people with their video edits, their podcasts, getting started, leveling up and just kind of. turning that meh to magic as I call it and helping them along the way and having a good time doing it. So I want to get to the magic part of your math to magic, but but let's let's let's start with with some of the big epic failures that you've had on the podcast side. like, let's let's start there. Let's start with the pain and suffering. Like what is what has gone wrong? when I was in my early 20s, it was internet radio station was kind of cool. This is before Yahoo Music, if you remember, this is going like way back, early 2000s. There was no streaming, nothing. There weren't even the apps like Spotify. So it was all just set up a server rack somewhere and in stream. And that was kind of the old school nerdified version. Get a radio automation tool. and set it up and there's three guys, I was working part time at a pizza place, we were just kind of college dudes having fun and we realized kind of three months in that we burned through so much cash that we used like credit cards, Macs were done. That was, you know, entry level to business, like the crash course, fail fast. And we went through a phase where we said, okay, well, we don't want to pay all the rights and stuff to music and not get in trouble. So we're going to just reach out to Indy. artists and just play all their stuff. And a lot of people came to us and said, hey, we'd love to you to play our stuff. But then we realized nobody likes to listen all the time to indie. They want to hear ACDC and, you know, the Ramones and all that stuff. Right. Or even, I don't know, Taylor Swift, if you must. And that's what kind of drives people with that favorite feel good stuff. And then we couldn't sell advertising because nobody listened. And then you can kind of get into that flow. Later on, there was one called. Naughty by Nerdy Naughty by Nature, we called it, it's a spin off of nerdy by nature, to have that play on words. I had about four five of us friends. Eventually one person got an upgrade in life to having a couple babies. One got a manager job and myself kind of just going hard at it, two episodes a week. Found it really burned out because sometimes that ADHD rabbit hole, boom, you kind of get into oblivion and off you go, you get excited. You get a couple thousand listens per month, but the trade off was everybody didn't have the time and learned quickly to pace myself throughout that thing. And one other failure, tried to do this whole entrepreneurial thing six years ago. Somebody was willing to pay me, but I wasn't ready in the head space just after a breakup. It wasn't time for me. So I learned a lot about business and putting myself first and making sure the right time to do things. So, some business lessons. some burnout lessons and some, I ready to do this lessons? Yeah. Bit of pain. my biggest failure, I don't know if it's in line with burning all that cash on equipment before you get it up and running. But I have recorded an entire episode without audio before. So that's great. It was for a company, I don't know, a handful of years ago. CEO was on the podcast. CEO's mic. wasn't connected, but it was a solo episode and I never tested. Imagine turning that into a silent film or something where he's just kind of talking and spinning around in a chair or something frustrated and you just put little subtitles and then the rest is captioned that's wrong answers only. In modern day that'd be cool but maybe you still have it to repurpose. That'd be fun. It's not a waste. aspect is, you know, I had to book them back to do it again, right? And I get the question, why don't we just record and dub it? I'm like, it's an audio podcast. That's what we're doing anyway. Yeah, I've had guests show up and like ladies, some ladies like full makeup and no disrespect. Like some people like to get all glammed up for the podcast. They had the camera ready, everything to go. And I'm like, it's audio. You're good. Don't worry about it. And then they had to like rip everything down. It's like, just record it. Keep it for your socials. It's all good. But the people's perceptions of podcasts kind of fun, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's really changed where it used to be a kind of a this nice to have like accessory thing where, you know, some companies were putting them into place, but it was largely just personal brands that were really succeeding in podcasts. Now I don't know about you, but I feel like you can't have a company without a podcast anymore. It's another social media platform, if you will, the funnel, you know all about those things. And even Spotify is chasing the almighty video. They went into video on their Spotify platform and now they won't even let you skip ads. Their advertisers won't let them. And there's big news about Joe Rogan misleading people saying, yes, if you buy the premium or the paid tier, and you go up the chain of dollars spent, you can skip the ads or you can pass them. And they go, no, you can't. So all of his fans, don't know, 20, 30, however many had hit to make the news or 3 million. They were all pissed off at him because of that. Spotify chasing, like that's how big it's becoming. And that's how little big companies understand this thing. This magical thing that's just starting hit the mainstream. Well, if somebody is at a big company, they probably have some sort of top down initiative to ensure that they have a podcast or that they're putting out a certain number of episodes and they have processes and procedures in place. How do you build it from the ground up when you're at like a scrappy startup and you're one of two marketers on the team and you're like thinking we should have a podcast. What's your advice to those folks? If you're looking to best bang for your buck It might be helpful just to get an expert even for a couple hours consult or just do a like they call launch strategy package It's usually you know under a grand if you will for most people to kind of show up and just do it You do you know the recording stuff you the software stuff the the planning the strategy the guest management all the things that will kind of Accelerate the googling and trying to figure out what the heck is actually going on Because even if you go to Reddit, there's about 400 different opinions on the podcast subreddit. So it gets a bit tough. I would start there and then learn all the, I guess, one-on-one, the basics, the foundational elements, and then you'll have everything in place. And then it's just a matter of getting the content, figuring out with your marketing folks how to get that out there and socialize it and then get everything in place. So once you have those systems and kind of figure out from an expert opinion, this is what you need in a box. It's on a silver plate. Have fun. Good luck. And then they can kind of figure out what works with the data they get and then kind of just build from there. And don't expect to happen overnight is what I could say. Yeah. What do you think about finding your voice through several episodes? I think a lot of people are so worried about the first few episodes that they just put everything off, as opposed to just recording them and finding your way through this podcasting thing. The marketing term I don't really love is private podcasts. It's just recording audio without sharing it with the masses and if you're willing to take time to Whether you're a founder you're an entrepreneur or DIYer or a bootstrappy startup Just do a 10 10 episode podcast private podcast thing and just go through it Maybe five ten episodes somewhere in there and throw it out. Just count it as the garbage podcast. Whatever you want to call it sanitation express and just go through it and figure it out. And then once you're in a groove and then start, you know, get a couple episodes, get a proper launch, get some pretty graphics and just get a social media plan and go boom. I think that'd be better because if you start dry or cold or whatever the term is, it'll suck. And if you have imposter syndrome to the moon, you'll hate it. And then you'll go, I'm done. And then people will hear that in your voice or even on camera and through the clips or socials or YouTube. It won't work as well as you like it to for the people that It launches and in sorts through the roof They probably have a team that knows what's going on They have a plan and they look confident sound confident and they've got their kind of system dialed in the conversations the questions and kind of the voice that they want to shoot for so Have something to throw away and then you don't have to worry about it and only you know that it sucked so to speak I love that. I think it's also worth noting that if you record an hour of dialogue, you don't have to use the whole hour. If 15 minutes suck, just cut that. Yeah, if you sneezed and fart by accident, I mean, I'm getting old. It happens. You giggle and something comes out the other end. Whatever, just cut it out. And with Riverside that you have, this is going to sound like a big, big to do. Maybe you have an affiliate link, hit it up. But, you know, there's the AI tools that can help and assist. They're not going to do everything. I wouldn't get them to do 100%, but there's a ton of different editing tools that'll kind of find those bloopers and and chop them out. Or like you said, a lot of the editing tools are like word documents. You just scrap out the sounds or the ums and the words and it's pretty good. Like if you want 90 % to super professional, done. Like the average person can't tell the difference. Me, I've been in it too long, so I'm going to be critical, but I'm not your target audience. Yeah. Well, I think you bring up a good point with with tools like like Riverside or descriptor or anything like there's some great tools out there that just make it accessible to folks who like you can have a USB microphone and then AI can enhance it like you don't have to have the full giant setup that would have been required even a year and a half ago. Sure. USB microphones are a bit tricky because some of the cheaper ones don't have the internal oomph that you need to make it loud enough for stuff. Some people like to play with all the dials and crank it up and they forget that they're recording the entire room. And then you get the hiss and the hums and the everything and maybe the train from like 40 miles away. It doesn't work. But if you can dial it in, maybe a little quieter, just a hair quieter than you like, you can always get AI to bump that up without it sounding like utter trash. You're right. And if you want to get that extra little bit, then those extra pieces, you know, 100, 200 bucks, keep iterating as your company has the budget to sound a little more professional. But you don't need the Joe Rogan experience, if I may, on audio for day one. Yeah, I think people see that and they see clips of that on TikTok and they, know, all of these professional podcasts, usually with a celebrity of some sort. and, you see that and you think that's what podcasting is. but what, like 99.9 % of all podcasts don't look anything like that, right? Like that's the top 1%. That, that, that's the professional sports layer of podcasting, not the Joe blow. company has a podcast level. If your audio is loud enough and crisp enough and clear enough without the ums and ahs, yeah, some people say those sometimes, but you know, if your company has somebody that has great communication skills, they're good at storytelling. They're knowing their audience and how to hit and you make it entertaining where maybe you segment pieces out like a talk show or other shows that you kind of enjoy. Then I think you'll have the magic. And as long as you can come across as, you know, fun and entertaining and relatable. and have that audio where you're not cranking or just kind of leaning in where you can't hear it, I think you'll be all right. And from there, it doesn't have to be perfect. These people that do A-B tests on thumbnails, and you'll see Mr. Beast, has tens of thousands per episode that they just grind through. You don't have to do that, right? And YouTube, a different day, a different time, but there's enough stats you can figure out, okay, when do people drop out? Was my story good? How many people listen? What's my demographic? Like all the basics you need for that. Um, I don't know the funnel and then you, you can just kind of iterate from there, but you're right. If it's 70, 80 % there, throw it out. Marketing startups do that, right? If your graphics not perfect, you're just going to get something out to market and then iterate based on customer feedback, just like a podcast. Yeah. All right, so we basically advocating for the Nike slogan and podcast, just do it. Yeah, just f and record, Mike or Mark. You know, I'm talking to the mic. Just just just fucking do it. Just get out there. Press the goddamn record button already. Get over yourself. Get doing it. Just do it. Just throw out the first podcast and then you're off to the races because you hear these big names, even they screw up and have these big pauses and arms and pick their nose when they shouldn't. It's silly, but you get the idea. You know, just do it. I wish I could credit it because you know, I didn't save it and I can't for the life of me figure out who did the study. But probably there was a, there was a study that was basically saying that for every 20 episodes that you record, you improve by nearly a hundred percent. And so it's like, you know, just that, that practice and repetition, like you just keep getting better. And so. I don't I don't know if it makes sense to say, hey, just grind out 20 episodes as quickly as you possibly can. So you you can get better. But there is something to be said about just getting in and making it happen. Or even if you have 20 coffee chats with prospects or guests or something and say, Hey, we're just going to do the series and make it into like a whole social media thing or marketing campaign. Then you don't feel like your company is just burning through cash and it's not billable hours. Right. And then you have something to actually do with it. Get creative with it, put in your newsletter, tease it or whatever you got to do and do a behind the scenes thing. And then ask for feedback. Be like, we're going to, should we throw this out? Should we not? You know how people put up posts? I'll probably delete this kind of hook. Do the same for socials or podcasts. Why not? You know, just that you said prospects. I really want to drill down on that. Like fucking epic way to increase your demand generation is using your podcast as a tool to connect with prospects. Yeah. And ABM is so important. This podcast element. If I could blow your mind a bit, I'm not a marketing guy. So I just learned this growth loop. So I do a lot of podcast work, as you know, but I also help produce live events. So every person for my client that comes on as a guest, I'm going to connect with them and I'm going to chat and I'm going to see if I can help them in any way. Right. Because we're cool. We're helping each other out and we do a thing. And if you can do that as a white label, as a startup, maybe that could help you also. get other clients. So now it's like the second degree of connection or whatever it is. But now you're kind of going through that, that sort of model. So it all doesn't also have to be you and your company starting a podcast. You could also do it on behalf of somebody else. You just happen to be the host. Like, I don't know the Daily Show. It doesn't matter who they are. If it's Robert or, or Colbert, sorry. Or if it's, if it's John Stewart, it's still the Daily Show. It's just a different person in the seat. So maybe that's another way to kind of get some cash while you're figuring things out too. I don't know. There's a whole bunch of different ways to go about Well, and talking about events too. mean, if you're already doing an event, why would you not record that audio and have have a podcast or, you know, speaker speaker comes off stage, spend 20 minutes with them talking about the discussion. And now you have a podcast episode. or you take that behind the scenes, Jen put on a paywall and party and then Apple and Spotify do a great job. I've seen Buzzsprout that you're on or I think it's Buzzsprout or Transistor or other companies will actually automatically put all the paid stuff with the free stuff in the same feed and it just figures it out based on who it is. Get the behind the scenes stuff charged four bucks a month and then you have that upgrade already and you know, you're starting to make a bit of money so that you at least recoup your costs. especially if you're bootstrappy and a stealth startup, you're going to need all the money you can get. I don't know. What do you think? Would that work for you? Oh, yeah, I that that aspect of it to where as long as you're as long as you're doing something You can tell the story of doing it, know, Gary Vee talks about that a lot and you know lover hate Gary Vee He's a hundred percent right here. Everybody waits until they've built something epic so that they can call themselves an influencer when In reality, most of us are just sitting here wanting to hear stories of people building something because that's what we're trying to do. And so many people are afraid to build publicly. Like I'm on LinkedIn going, what's wrong with people or how come I'm, you know, and joke around and don't take it too seriously. But as an entrepreneur, I love to get feedback. And if I'm throwing something out into the universe, whether it be LinkedIn or whatever, it's nice. Some people actually feel like they can, they trust me and they feel compelled to give me the feedback. So why wouldn't you do that with something where you're building trust and authority? You're getting close to people real close in their ears to figure out what's going on. Why not just use that as something you can just hang, play some cards, play some board games at the kitchen table and just have a good time and vibe. Yeah. Yeah. And all content is connected. It's like that, Elton John song from the lion King circle of life. Like it, I, I feel like people are like, I don't know where to start. I have to create all this new content for the podcast. Like, you don't. Whatever white paper or blog you just wrote, make that an episode and then just talk about it. Like this isn't the heart. or newsletters. I'm chatting with a writer. She's established writer and does a whole bunch of different things, books and ghost writing and the whole bit in marketing. And she says, I want to turn, repurpose my newsletter into a podcast. Whether she interviews people or takes the basics or just does a solo episode, it's all there. She's got like 400 different newsletter articles just to hit and it's already done. Or you can do the flip. You take the live, you make it into a recording on the YouTubes, you repurpose the YouTube as an audio, you get the transcript, make it a blog, social posts. It's all there. So if you're spending 45 minutes, an hour on the podcast, you might as well just farm it out everywhere and just kind of take snippets and bits and make it just this marketing factory. And people forget that. That's what you're doing, right? Yeah? Yeah. lead rabbit hole still like we're partying like it's 1999. And it's and it's really detrimental to them because it's like they'll they'll do this webinar. And it lives in that one singular channel, people may or may not attend it live. And then that's it. And then that's where that webinar is when yeah. I feel like every webinar could absolutely be structured as a podcast. And then you put the, on demand version on the webinar, or you have a podcast episode talking about the webinar. Like we were just talking about, like, like, building it and drilling down into a couple of sections. Like, I don't, I don't know why people are so in love with webinars and white papers. Uh, when society has shifted into more short form. content and connecting, whether it's audio or video, they're connecting in a different way than those old school mechanisms that just generate some leads that nobody's ever going to follow back on. It to kind of use an example Conan O'Brien and team Coco are really good at seven minute clips Jason Anderson Jason the George Costanza I'm screwing up his name of Seinfeld. He has his own podcast something like probably sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Thank you You got it. So pop culture not my thing podcast mine I Appreciate hanging out with old dudes for once like we're party in 1999 those folks I got the gray in my beard to prove that I was around and singing boy band songs in 1999. right. Good. There is a trend that I've seen or maybe I just woke up yesterday, seven minute clips and they're taking their full hour and 45 putting on YouTube seven minutes. So and then hitting something very specific so they can hit the key rates on the SEO, the terms, all that fun stuff and just getting a very specific question to answer. Or maybe you take that into five minute dailies on your podcast. Because the webinar is gonna be probably two to four hours. You have all this content You can practically make a book out of it But yeah people want to embed a page and put a YouTube's or a video on there and then put no index robots on it And then it just dies. Gotta make it something even ten years from now if it doesn't If it doesn't relate itself to time or decade, maybe just repurpose it and bring it back that evergreen keep it moving There's so many ideas Well, and whether or not it's successful, I feel like that's also a kind of a made up metric in a sense where success in the B2B world, if you're talking to B2B podcast and you're building something for your company, success is only tied to revenue. And so if you have one singular guest in a year, who comes on the podcast and then ultimately buys because you've built a better relationship. Their entire network saw the podcast clips and everything that you spun out. That's successful. And then you're also able to repurpose all the content. And so like you were saying, if you record a 45 minute podcast, you can take that into a seven minute clip that you put on YouTube and TikTok. And there's value there. And that you don't have to spend time or resources creating another piece of content from scratch. You're able to repurpose. so, yeah, I think success, people want to see high, like ridiculous download numbers and everything. And, and I think lessening expectations is so critical. Like you don't want your CEO thinking, thinking 2000 downloads are going to happen on episode three. Like it's just not going to happen, but you can. tell them that in this quarter, we are going to get a prospect on who's going to buy. Right? almost, I digress a bit because people, primarily leaders, CEOs, founders, all the people that are paying the bills for the startup, they're going, where's my value? But what if you considered a preface to say the podcast is developing permission to start selling? And if you can even start in there and be like, okay, first we need to actually get in, instead of doing social selling on outbound, this is your tech. If you can build the relationship here and then you can start funneling in the product products because you have them do some host read ads make it sound natural talk about your gummy bears or your edibles or whatever it is you're selling and have a great time and then maybe they will start to understand the value and all that data you're magically farming out anyway and collecting from the listeners and viewers that's kind of gravy Is that a good way to put it or am I just way off the marketing game? think it's great and I love the fact that your example was Edibles. I'm from Detroit, we're a legal state here. yeah, like I love that. That was your example right there. lamp. That's why I had to I figured you have fun in life. I don't know. Yeah because the lava lamp I see I just like the lava lamp with you know, behind me today. For those who are in audio only like I've got my lava lamp running but right above that is Michael Jackson's Thriller. And I just love how like, like right below that is where where the lava lamp is it's just a very chill vibe if you're if you're focusing in. onto it like a bottle of wine. has a seductive kind of stance and kind of sit down with a white suit on. He's like, how you doing baby? You know, and he's hanging on the lava lamp. It's stoners wet paradise. It's nice. Well, that it's it's him telling Paul McCartney that the girl is his. Yeah, well, Billie Jean wasn't his lover, so now this I love that example. And I think I think for our listeners, the biggest struggle people have is in that ROI side when you're building it for your your company. and I think if you can tie it to those intangibles that you can quantify, it makes it a lot easier. mean, even the social posts, I mean, if you just keep separate track of every social post that's made with repurposed podcast clips, you'll have full engagement numbers for the whole year that wouldn't have been possible without the podcast. You could probably get 10 to 15 short clips, especially if you hit YouTube, you're going for it because your new creator, you're going to have to go for like something super punchy. So you don't keep getting those rates, there's swipe away and there's views and they put it into like a pie. So if you get like 10 second people like it and they stay around for that clip and that builds the algorithm and kind of fools them into thinking that you're popular and you're cool. Whereas on the podcast side, if you can retain the listener, And you don't have those drop-off rates after three minutes five minutes and you can keep them for the whole thing Then you can start selling ads and then start poking those in there and get the revenue from that But if you get the drop-off rate early chances are you're not interesting I'm sorry or there's something where you're going on too long people just don't care anymore There's no more value and that's why I say kind of get those segments out there Maybe ask somebody 20 questions or pill play a game or go talk about random things in the background splice it up split it up and then keep moving Maybe do a game for a gift card or a discount to win from the guest, something like that. And then you can just have some fun while you're giving value. So with your, with your clients and in your business at a podcast sidekick or just creative sidekick your podcast sidekick. So, so your, at your podcast side podcast sidekick, are you typically getting people who already have a podcast and they're looking to make it better and more efficient? Or are you also having conversations of folks who are like, I'd like to start one and here's why. Mostly people that have something established and a lot of times like I just haven't had time My company is growing so fast. We put it on hold. We need to ramp this up and get it going again There was a gentleman that came in he had a an established audio podcast But wanted to start on the YouTube side and kind of figure that out and one person came to me recently She says I'm a solopreneur. I don't have the budget to pay you to help but I hate it. So I'm just gonna You know, we're going to do a lot strategy like five or six sessions, package it out, and we're just going to run through everything. I'm going to record it. Then she has it for an archive. She just wants to know everything that's the basics, and then she can iterate without having to Google and get confused. So mostly, want to level up, but some are kind of trickling in with different varies of startup. So I'm sorry to say it's kind of political answer, but it's kind of mishmash. Yeah. How do you approach that differently? What advice would you give to somebody who's thinking about starting a podcast now versus the advice that you're giving to somebody who's like, just haven't had as much success with it as I'd like? I don't think it's any different for me, which is gonna throw everybody off of their game. I look at every situation simply because I'm always thinking long term. Like how are you going to get the best kind of foundation, whether you're starting or how are we gonna get from point A to point B? And I don't care if it's 500 years down the road or day one, daisy girl. So that's kind of where I'm at. So I'll tell people that want to invest in their business for podcasts and don't just. Not just I'm going to pick up a microphone. I'm going to talk about sports and then talk about how my brother, ate too much at Thanksgiving. Like that's fine. You just go and record and have fun. But for the people who are really invested, then we kind of just figure out that plan, ask some questions. Okay. How do we get there and how do we take this seriously and how do people take you seriously? And then dive into every word like your Martha Stewart baking or I don't know, Snoop Dogg and the rap industry, Eminem, like everybody. Loves him regardless of who you are. You have to appreciate his craft. So that's kind of how I look at it There's somebody starting out you can google and figure it out and and go to forums and and and make connections Maybe go to some conventions podcasts or otherwise or for people we just kind of it's a different strategy a different conversation But I like to think of it. How do you get to point a how do you get to point b? And then everything in between is just kind of try to push yourself creatively as far as you'll allow it and your company's brand will allow it And if you can find a happy medium, that's your sweet spot and your audience will probably resonate with it. That's a long answer. Sorry, Mark. I got there eventually. It's good. It's a creative process. Yeah. What does somebody need to have to start their podcasts? Like, do you do you require them to go out and, know, buy buy the buy the microphone? Or are you cool with Hey, just just do it. Do it on your AirPods to start like like what what's kind of that like put together intro podcast starter pack that they need to buy. You can get away with earbuds, an iPhone to plug into, and then maybe GarageBand or something, or something free to edit with. But if somebody is going to do it on their own, I like to ask them to make it as easy as possible beforehand instead of having to fix everything after, because you're not going to have time for that. And AI is not going to correct all the mumbo jumbo. So have a microphone. Have some earphones or earbuds, whatever they are, just have something so that you don't get this constant circle and feedback and noise going from headphone to microphone. If you want a camera, because you're doing the video stuff, anything that's 100, 150 bucks that shoots in 4K is probably more than you'll ever need. If you want to do some lights, they're pretty cheap, get a ring light, and then just have a computer that isn't 10 years old. Believe it or not, even the Mac Minis are like 500, 600 bucks US. The basic model is plenty for a podcast and it's more reliable and it'll last more long term than most podcasts. Sorry, that laptops are kind of in that podcast range under a thousand bucks in my opinion, and you'll get more life out of it. If you already have a laptop or something as long as you, Chromebook, maybe not, something above that, but yeah, have a microphone, even if it's a USBC microphone, 100, 200 bucks, somewhere in there. I wouldn't go lower than, you may have one, but I wouldn't go too much lower than 100 because you get the cheap knockoffs and it's kind of like a cheap vehicle, right? It's anybody's guess in the manufacturing process, in my opinion, my experience, and then the camera and the computer and the desire to have conversations with people. Maybe some Riverside or StreamYard or those sort of programs, SaaS programs, if you're not too techy, to kind of have those remote calls, calendar software to remote. calendar like you do with the Googles and then just be ready to go to town. Have a plan, have a list, kind of be organized and from there you should be all set. From there you just iterate and have fun. love it. And then how should you prepare for an episode? Be curious For me if you're interviewing a guest Find out as much stuff as you can about them. I like to just be nosy all Borderline creepy on social media try to find out anything that you remember even going back to the past There's Nard war. That's the The human serviette he's out of Vancouver, Canada And he always goes at rap artists and hip-hop artists and takes this random fact from yesteryear and just goes at them and they're like, how did you know this? And it shocks and surprises them. You put in this effort to know that much about me, this has got to be great. And they'll put that effort back into you. So I try to come at maybe a half an hour conversation with 10 solid questions, have one follow up, ready to go, and then just move on. And don't try to keep going and go down a rabbit hole because eventually you're going to lose people. Have a timeframe that you want to shoot for. Maybe it's 30 minutes, maybe it's not. Have an extra 15 minutes to prep to make people kind of feel good, get their shoulders down, curse words if you're not an explicit podcast, and then go to it. But yeah, be curious. Get out there and know as much as you can. If you have to send a few questions or a primer, do it. But make sure you're making the most of the guest time. Make sure you have a few minutes to get relaxed and comfy. Make sure everything works like the microphone is actually turned on and you checked it. You know, Mark, no pressure. And we can all learn from it. I've done things too, but. Yeah, just make sure you're prepared, curious, and make sure that you're ready. And if you're not, then you're going to want to take a minute to stretch that out. Give yourself a couple weeks, because before you know it, it's going to be tomorrow, and you haven't prepped. love that. And it reminds me, so you can you can tell me you can tell me a little bit about your second grade teacher and how that impacted you, right? Yes, I hated her. Respectfully. It was really difficult. She was too hard on us and I hated reading because I love I can retain things you didn't really want to know but now you get to know and you're so blessed, right? Lucky you. Yeah, it's all audio here in the head as I point to my eye. It's that's how I kind of function because I can't sit still. My head is always noisy. So anything that I listen to, I love it. And she's like, why didn't you read that? I did. I just didn't remember anything I just read. And she just looks at me like I have three heads. Didn't love it. But grade two was great. We passed and I made it. me off. actually just saw a... So an old friend of mine had a post on social media where they were saying, whenever somebody says, read that book, but they're talking about an audio version, you didn't read that book. And I'm like, well, yeah, you did. But you read that book while you were driving. You read that book while you were walking the dog. You read that book while you were doing laundry. That multitasking aspect helps Some of us who maybe have a hard time sitting down and opening formal pages of a book helps us actually read it. not gonna say say you're gonna go out and bang something or search on the internet for something you're consuming it So it's reading it who cares people want to be called all sorts of magical things these days be identified as whomever they want and Everybody goes around googling stuff. You're using a search engine with text words. It could be bang It could be alt Jeeves. It could be asked Jeeves. I don't know It could be yahoo search or whatever was from the 90s frog find calm It could be Google but it's it's the same thing and people get this I have to know everything or be right about everything. Who cares? I'm just consuming it. And if you want to hate on video podcast words like I do, that's fine. But people are still going to use it and they're still having fun. Sorry, that's my rant. I'm good. I'm good. All right. so, so two, two final questions. the, the, the first one I want to get to, tell, tell, tell me, tell me a little bit about overcoming podcast mistakes. You know, you, you launch an episode and it's absolutely terrible and the reviews are horrible and people don't like it. Or I guess maybe that's worst case scenario. could just be simply, you recorded an episode without microphone, but like talk a little bit about how do you move on from some of the struggles that are inevitably going to happen, especially in your first like 20 episodes. You're the only one who's gonna give a shit about the mistakes. That's it. That's it. Stop caring as much as you do. You're not perfect. Get over yourself. I've been there, so I'm being hard to myself. But if you establish an audience, you have a loyal audience on socials or a newsletter or a blog or whatever it is, they're gonna love you and show up because they want more of you. Because you're already on a pedestal for them. It's the haters outside of that that have nothing inside. They're dark inside. Like the Tin Man. Forget him. You're going to get on the internet. It's going to be noise. It's going to suck because some people are trolls. If you can move past that noise magically and get used to the fact that, you know, with attention and virality, you're going to get a lot of people hating on you because you're successful. That's the only suggestion I have. No matter how many times you swipe through that podcast, no matter how many times you edit it, no matter how many times you tell the AI to stop using, replacing the word bar with mo, it's something's going to happen. And you just keep figuring it out. Make a note, figure a process, how to fix it, and move on. Because the more perfect you pursue to be, the less listeners you may have. Especially if you're bootstrapping, you're just starting out. Because they're going to expect that you're just going to town, you're excited, you're a bunch of people just having a party, if I may at work, with foosball tables and making stuff happen. And chances are you're going to make a mistake along the way. I love that. I do want to, ask you about your past. I'm not going to go as far back as second grade, but, I end every one of these, episodes, by asking you to give advice to rookies, you know, fresh into corporate America, Elijah. So, you know what, what what would you what would you tell your younger self like what advice would you give them coming into the workforce you know all those years ago Don't. Hahaha this creative dream 20 years ago and I and I almost regret it. I love the experience I love the corporate people that I worked with. I love being able to have the internal practices going from a call center Junkie if I may or guru or whatever a slacky lackey to all the way up to you know senior analyst in in tech project management, but I Just always have this what-if in my head. I'm glad that I started now, but I really, if you're creative, if you're extroverted creative and you have a passion for something and you want to start the thing, start the thing. If you like stability and you're nine to five, just make the best of it and try not to have an opinion about everything and just accept the fact that it's not gonna go the way you expected and that you're gonna have trouble fitting in regardless of what you do. So if you're going the nine to five, you have the family of benefits, I respect you. I did it for a long time. And you're just going to have to figure out how to be yourself while still keeping others happy and kind of working as hard as you can and being curious up the ladder. And don't complain when people aren't at your level of, I don't know, emotional intelligence or common sense or whatever. Right. And on the other hand, if you have this thing you want to start and you have a dream, believe in yourself and do it. Because even if you have kids or family or whatever, you're still going to figure out a way with your partner or yourself. to have a bit of a pool of money so that you can strive, thrive and succeed until you get there and be able to support yourself. Two-way street, either do it and figure it out and work hard or do your thing and believe that you can do it.