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John Corcoran 2:50

Yeah. So that’ll be later today. Yeah, I mean, I recently interviewed a guy who’s a professor at my alma mater. So that’s a good example. Jeremy, you did a great series for University of Wisconsin profiling different entrepreneurs and you interviewed, you know, the CEO of Mattel, CEO of Land’s End a number of other household named people where your your alumni office, I’m sure was thrilled that you were doing this and excited to introduce you to some of the most prestigious alumni and so I finally decided to do the same thing. I went to UC Santa Barbara. And your mascot is the Gaucho. Okay, which is Spanish for pants, cowboy pants.

Jeremy Weisz 3:34

That’s a really fierce mascot.

John Corcoran 3:36

It’s fierce. It is that’s true. They don’t have a big athletic program there. So we, I decided to do this and I reached out to the alumni spoke to a couple of people in the alumni department and they introduced me some people I recently interviewed a professor who’s also a venture capitalist, also a seasoned entrepreneur who’d started a bunch of companies is involved in he was involved in GotoMeeting, which is a precursor to Zoom, which everyone’s on these days, one of the early video conferencing companies, and now he’s a venture capital. Then he introduced me to another individual who had a great conversation with who founded You know, one company that’s at a billion dollar valuation. He is on the board and investor in a couple other companies that are multi billion dollar unicorns and just had a great conversation with him. Turns out his son listened to my podcast. So that was great street cred right there. But you’re right, it is personal developments, professional development, its connections. But this topic, we want to talk about tools and software recommendations. But before we get to that, one of our most important missions is to say to people, it’s really not just about the tools, right. You know, people come to us all the time. We see people start podcasts all the time. They spend 12 hours 20 hours researching the microphone. phone that they’re going to buy, they spend no time thinking about the people that they’re going to feature and how doing a podcast is going to really dramatically change the the network of people that they’re connected to, and actually putting some thought into that in advance. So I think our most important messages that that is incredibly important, and you need to think about that piece. Having said that, in this episode, we’re going to Tommy, this

Jeremy Weisz 5:26

is a popular question. That’s why we’re addressing it, even though it’s maybe seventh on our list of important things to address. Yes, like a distance seven, right? It’s still something that holds people up. And we want to see people that aren’t held up. And one of the things that holds people up is naming their show and the tools and the software and the stuff it takes to get it going. But like, like you said, John, it’s really about mapping out who you want to feature and the topics you want to talk about which if you have questions, you go to Rise25.com we actually help people map this stuff out. So you can launch and run your podcast the right way.

John Corcoran 6:08

Right? Or the The funny thing is, a lot of times people I’ve talked to so many people that, you know, three years ago, they spent $300, buying, you know, a microphone and all this other different equipment, and it’s been sitting on the corner of their desk for three years,

Jeremy Weisz 6:22

there was someone I talked to a couple weeks ago, and they were asking for advice. And they said I bought there was three years ago, they bought like $2,000 worth of equipment and never used it

John Corcoran 6:35

and never started. Yeah, it’s sad to see that. I mean, I talked to a guy. This is like a year ago, who had spent $100,000, while building out building out a huge Video Studio, buying top of the line, all you know, all this kind of stuff. But then he’d been doing it for six months and hadn’t gotten any good results from it, you know, nothing to show for it. Except for, you know, some pretty videos,

Jeremy Weisz 6:57

the strategy has to be in place,

John Corcoran 6:59

it has to be in place. So having said that, let’s talk about let’s start with microphones. So I’m sorry,

Jeremy Weisz 7:05

let’s let’s just say like we’re not technical wizards, right. So the advice that you’re gonna get from us, we’re about simplicity, and simplicity that produces a good product, but it’s not going to be we’re not going to we don’t geek out on technical related things. So let the caveat of you. There’s probably people there’s lots of people are way more experienced in this than we are we just find something that works really that works well. That’s fairly affordable, and go with it.

John Corcoran 7:39

Okay, the funny. The funny thing is, I will say to people with pride, if you paid me, me, meaning me individually to launch your podcast, I couldn’t do it from start to finish, I couldn’t do it. I don’t know all the different steps that are involved. We have an amazing team that does an incredible job of setting all those pieces up. But the reason that I’m proud of that is because what I’m really good at and what you’re especially good at what our superpowers is, is making sure the podcast is profitable, make sure that you use it to develop tremendous relationships to connect with people that you admire, to have great conversations to continue that conversation beyond the interview. How do you take it further? How do you go further? How do you turn that into a referral relationship or strategic partnership of some sort? That’s really where a lot of people drop the ball. And so that’s really what we focus our energy intention on making sure that that’s right. Now as far as the microphone is concerned, I’m speaking out of an audio Technica ATR 2100. The funny thing about it is 11 years ago, I purchased this microphone, not this exact one, but the same exact model 11 years ago, it lasted me about nine years, I made a decision at the beginning. I purchase it, boom done, didn’t think about it for nine years, and then it crapped out, it stopped working. And so I bought the exact same one again, I didn’t even upgrade I didn’t even spend more and get a nicer one which you have a nicer one, because I just

Jeremy Weisz 9:06

figured out much nicer. And by the way, if you’re listening and you have a suggestion of a mic you like Feel free to put it in the comments if you’re listening to this live, but, but yeah, ATR 2100 I think they have a newer version. This was probably the one you got. This is a Blue Yeti. I mean, yours is probably $70 this one is $120 and it’s a USB mic. I mean literally you could get a USB mic plugged into the back your computer and use it. Okay. Yeah, people have fancy sound boards, they probably that are plugging in and out of maybe nicer fancier mics, but we you know, you can get a nice sounding mic for 70 to $150. And this is a Blue Yeti. I have yours John actually over there because when I travel, I don’t like detaching all this stuff. So I bought another one which is yours that I bring with me

John Corcoran 9:59

my main mic Your phone is his backup.

Jeremy Weisz 10:01

Oh, I mean, because like he said, I could be in the middle of interviewing someone. And this could I mean, this is I don’t even know, this may be 10 years old. Yeah, this is really I mean, you can get the newer version, which is pretty much the same thing. But so that is part of the equipment we recommend, if you have other suggestions, put them like, you know, put them in the comments, or whatever it is. And I want to point out, we have a whole cheat sheet of the different equipment and tools and other things. So if you are, if you want to check, go to Rise25.com/cheatsheet, you can we share more recommendations of how to get clients, referrals, strategic partners, and about the tools and equipment everything there too. And so the mic, I don’t know if there’s any other combination. The other thing I want to say is their podcast arm is very helpful. Typically the mic just comes on a stand. So getting some kind of boom arm is helpful. This one is like a Rode podcaster boom moments in $99, I have another one that I get when I travel, they bring when I travel, it was like $20 it works fine, you screw it onto the desk. So

John Corcoran 11:06

it’s actually a great point. Because this actually gets a lot of comments having this boom arm here. And I say to people all the time, because they look at it, and they’re like, Oh, you have an amazing microphone. I’m like the microphones not that amazing. What’s amazing is just this arm thing here. And it’s just kind of amazing. Actually, the the this is not that expensive, an arm, but it’s just helpful in getting it out of the way. The other point I’ll make is people I see people all the time that have purchased like it’s $300 microphone, and then they record like this, they’re like standing over here. And so the audio quality is poor, because they’re not putting the microphone right in front of their mouth. So what I say to people just make sure that you get to put it right in front of your mouth. And if you use the the cheap little three inch stand that came with the microphone, a lot of times it’s gonna be way below your where your mouth is.

Jeremy Weisz 11:55

Yeah, and there’s a certain settings if you’re using the Yeti, which I learned because someone’s like your son’s doesn’t you weren’t using it correctly for and so they coached me on actually using it way back when 10 years ago. So there’s certain settings, you want to have this on that it works properly.

John Corcoran 12:11

So what other software recommendations? That’s a hardware mic. So

Jeremy Weisz 12:15

what microphone? Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s a mic conversation. Any USB mic that’s decent, is good. You know, the other one we get asked about is, what do you use to record? You know, um, actually, if you are doing live streaming, that’s a different answer than if you are not live streaming. But you can use something like Streamyard to livestream. And this will be a podcast episode as well. We use Zoom. I mean, most people are on zoom back when I used Skype with ECAM Call Recorder. But Zoom is just so easy. Everyone’s used to being on it, we just use zoom, there’s a lot of different ways to record. I mean, any way that that you find is easy for you that you’re normally using us. There’s no we don’t have a necessarily a preference, we just want to make it easy for the other person and for yourself to have any barriers in recording.

John Corcoran 13:09

Yeah, and yeah, and that’s, that’s a great point, it again goes down to it’s funny, because I’ll talk to people that have got a massive business, they have 100 people working for them, 200 people working for them, or they’re doing 10 million 20 million a year. And they want to know what software should they use to record. And I’ll also honestly say to them respectfully, this is not something that you should be focusing on. This is really, you know, spending your time thinking about those things are is not the best use of your time, what’s a lot better use of your time is focusing your energy intention, not on that piece. But having said that, it is important, and it is simple just to use something like a zoom, which everyone’s familiar with. You don’t have to use any kind of fancy recording software. Beyond that. Jeremy, what about any other software recommendations? If you Yeah, I mean,

Jeremy Weisz 14:00

I mean, as far as software goes, um, people ask, Well, how do I Where do I put it, like as an audio host? So is audio I mean, again, like the caveat is also this stuff changes, software changes, Zoom, you know, whatever, five years, 10 years from now people may be using something else. So just follow whatever is easier. The the where do you put it? How do you get it up on all these channels? Well, you need an audio host, just like a website needs a web host you need audio host. We’ve been using Libsyn for over a decade. You know, we like Lipson there’s there’s lots of audio hosts out there. Right. Yeah, but so again, we just look for something that is been in the industry for a long time and is stable and dependable. And all of them are mean there. The range of pricing is going to be from like $5 to $60 no matter what audio host you go with and we just like Libsyn they’ve been around for a long, long time. You know, some people ask us, you know, should I use Anchor it’s free. And john, you have an opinion on anchor in free. You know, there’s nothing that nothing is free, I want to pay for my services and know that I own the account. And it’s not going anywhere. I know, anchor was purchased by the Spotify by them. I can’t remember modify. Okay, so yeah, so they have major backing, which is fine. But they also, I forgot if you saw the social dilemma, but if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product, the app. So if you are on Facebook, and I paint well guess what you are the product. And same thing with anchor if you’re not paying for it, you are the product so they can use your mean channels.

John Corcoran 15:46

And we’ve seen this story before we’ve seen it play out it happened with the I forget the name of it, but was owned by Twitter, the platform shorts, short video snippets are like six second video snippets. And I remember reading an article about a guy who had 2.7 million followers on this platform, and Twitter and it was a free platform and Twitter just decided one day to shut it down. Notice nothing. And these people completely lost these livelihoods. These massive forces like Vine or something fine, thank you. Yes, yeah, yes. And so Anchor could be the same thing. They could just decide one day you know what this didn’t work out free podcast hosting turns out, who knew it didn’t work. And so they just shut it down and you lose your feed, you lose your subscribers, everything you put into it, because you didn’t spend anything for it. You lose all the little

Jeremy Weisz 16:36

$15 a month or something? Yeah. 10

John Corcoran 16:40

initial plan is $5. Yeah, exactly. It’s absolutely manageable. Alright, so people say that people also ask about now, people ask me all the time about different software that comes along. And you know, podcasting has exploded in popularity. And so there’s a lot more people asking about these different tools that have come around. And generally what I’ll say to people is, yeah, there’s some good tools that are out there for creating all kinds of digital additional assets out there. But again, you know, since we’re usually talking to a b2b business is profitable to begin with, it’s using a podcast for business development for content marketing purposes. Again, usually I say to people, not something you should focus on, something that you should you should be focusing on is how you can use the podcast. Yeah, and I also will say this, and I said this to people, even before we had a vested interest, and we were helping people with starting podcasts is that you should create pressure for yourself. By having someone outside not within your team, you should focus on on what you do best. And you should have an outside company or team that is worrying about these things. Because these tools change all the time. And you don’t want to have to, you know, go down a rabbit hole, spending an hour trying to figure out some tool that isn’t working, when you can just send an email and have them handle it. And a much better use of that hour is you interviewing to people who may be great champions of yours, that’s a much better use of your time. So for most companies, it makes a lot more sense for you not to worry about these various different tools.

Jeremy Weisz 18:10

That’s a good point, john, and like when we’re speaking, we’re speaking to that b2b business owner. If someone is trying to create the next cereal, or whatever the next series, they’ll probably, you know, geek out on the the technical part and making sure the sound quality’s like NPR style. They’re in a different type of business, right, their business is in the business of the podcasts are the content. Because I remember when one of our clients said, you know, I’m thinking of I heard the audio quality is like, three times better than zoom or something. And they went and they use that platform. And we named the platform, and the person on the other end couldn’t get it working, then that recording didn’t show up. I’m like, just lost recordings. Yeah, just don’t worry. They get wasn’t a necessity for them. And so

John Corcoran 19:06

yeah, One Last Tool I want to mention, which is you might laugh, but this is really important is Calendly, or some kind of online scheduling tool. There was acuity scheduling or Calendly. Yeah, the reason why this is so important is it’s amazing. But this one piece of streamlining the front end process of of scheduling people to be guests with you on your podcast without having really being time consuming. It can become really time consuming and it can sink the ship from the beginning because you know, I do two episodes a week Jeremy does two episodes a week we Polish over 100 a year. I don’t recommend that forever. And for most people, I recommend a weekly podcast, but that’s still 5045 to 50 people a year. And just the process of scheduling that can be really difficult. It can be draining of people’s energy. So using a tool like calendly to, to automate that process and and to streamline it is very powerful. So you want to make sure that you put some time in just to get that set up properly from from the beginning. And that’s not all. There’s other pieces that we recommend for it. But I we do recommend using a tool like Calendly.

Jeremy Weisz 20:13

Yeah, I wanted to say on that you want to make sure you have the best customer interviewee experience you can. And when you use a tool like that, first of all, it eliminates the back and forth. So it’s nice, they get to choose a time as convenience. Nice it also follow up follows up with the most frequently asked questions because you can set a follow up with here’s what most people ask me. And it just helps with the follow up of the person’s prepared because they may have questions. What’s the show? Like? What What should the setup be like? And so you could have that follow up in an automated fashion to best create the best experience for that guest.

John Corcoran 20:51

Yeah, yeah. Benjamin Fulgur says, unfortunately, this has happened to us last. I wonder what he’s talking about. He might have been talking about not having or misfire on the scheduling piece. I think that might have been what we’ve been talking about. So yeah, I mean, we see it happen all the time, where it’s

Jeremy Weisz 21:10

game changing, game changing. Yeah, for me to set up. And some people resist this, john, I mean, maybe we talked about the resistance point, which is like, well, I want to control my schedule. And I want to I mean, listen, I’ve gone through all that as well, like, well, I want to kind of look at it to see where I should put people in the end. Just send them to send them to the calendar link to schedule. Absolutely.

John Corcoran 21:35

Right. It’s gonna it’s gonna make things so much faster. So

Jeremy Weisz 21:40

software, I’m trying to think of as any other questions we get, we get how recording, we get mics, we get the audio host, we get scheduling wise streamlining the process, which is the scheduling link. Is there any other software tools that people ask us about?

John Corcoran 21:56

One thing that’s become really popular is creating micro content out of your podcast, which we do, if you look, if you follow us on LinkedIn, you’ll see us sharing that we create interactive dynamic audios, and we create graphic images. And you know, there’s no silver bullet perfect software out there, it requires a human to look at these episodes, look at what’s the best snippet that’s going to position, you know, both the host and the guest appropriately, sometimes you need to cut it down shorter. So there’s a bunch of different pieces. And there’s no AI that’s gonna like perfectly do those things these days. But that is creating micro content, and there’s a host of different tools and there will be more tools is a great way to take your your content and have it go further.

Jeremy Weisz 22:45

Yeah, that’s a good point, John, it’s like our process for doing that is the writer identifies what the best snippet is, then they basically hand it to the editor because you know, it’s transcribed and then the audio or video person will cut it at that certain point then that, you know, the editor will go back through to make sure the transcriptions correct. And then there’s someone posting it on the different channels and making sure that people are tagged and the right comments are there so there’s a lot that goes into that little 60 second snippet,

John Corcoran 23:18

right. Yeah, it’s a multi step process. So you want to make sure that you have that streamline because it again, it shouldn’t be something that you’re doing it should be something that is handled for you because the highest best use of your time is spent having great conversations with great people there’s

Jeremy Weisz 23:36

one other piece I forgot on the technical end because we’re so not the expert when it comes to some of the technical stuff is Ian Garlic actually the lighting okay so the lighting if you’re doing video um Ian Garlic I made him get on there was some episode Facebook Live they made him just get on unexplained it so we’ll have to find it and like link it up so people can watch it but I just got I think like $100 set on Amazon of these big lights and my leg is not even that great in this place because you know he advised I put something right in front of me which I don’t but because it just don’t have the room but a good lighting that where you have you know lighting in front of you is you know will make it look much better as well. Yeah.

John Corcoran 24:24

So with that, Jeremy where can people go to learn more about InspiredInsider and Rise25

Jeremy Weisz 24:29

go to InspiredInsider.com to check out more episodes of the podcast I’ve had anywhere from the founder of Kettle Chips to Atari to P90x to Big League Chew and I’ll Johnny and go to Smart Business Revolution where he’s had an amazing founder to me is some amazing this week alone. Netflix and what was the one that was was later today comedy Comedy Central Comedy Central Yeah. And you can go to Rise25.com and check out more if you’re interested in learning more about podcasting

John Corcoran 25:00

Go to Rise25.com/cheatsheet to grab a list of these different tools offer recommendations. And that’s it for this week. Thanks everyone for being here and we’ll talk again soon.