Gene: 0:14

This is sir Gene and joining me today is a dude named Scott. Scout tell the folks a little bit about yourself.

Scott: 0:21

Well, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on Gene. So I'm a 58 year old guy and when I was 50 I got this epiphany of is this all that's left I've, I've, I've always been, what I call a ham and egger. I've always gone to work. I, I raised my kids, I bought a house, I put money back. I did everything that a boomer is supposed to do. And then when I turned 50, I was like, I need more in my life. So I actually was really into podcasts. I listened to mark Maron's podcast and I listened to some NPR podcast and I thought, What would a local podcast look like? And so I searched out local podcasts and a lot of the major cities had'em. And I was in South Bend, Indiana at the time, and my city didn't have it. And South Bend is like right across the border from Michigan, so they call that area missa. And I wanted to talk to folks in Indiana and Michigan and my area. And so I started what was called the Missa People Podcast. And I would go to them, they would come to me. I built a little studio, my house and all that. And I really got into just talking to people who own businesses, talking to people in politics, talking to artists, musicians, just anybody who I thought had some value that could be highlighted on the show. And I did that for. I think, I think I did that for about three years, and I started that about seven years ago. During that time, I was still looking for more. I was, I was having fun with the podcast, it wasn't a hit, it wasn't something that's gonna climb the Apple charts or anything like that, but people listened to it. I got good feedback and I got to meet a lot of really great people. I made friends through it, which was really the thing I needed to do. I needed to reach out and get my friend list bigger. And that did happen. I still keep in contact with a lot of the folks I talked to, but I was still looking for more. And when I was 52, I started doing standup comedy and

Gene: 2:45

know, It's interesting, I, I've heard a number of folks deciding to do that later in life.

Scott: 2:52

yeah, it's

Gene: 2:52

cuz I'm getting Yeah, it seems like it because maybe it's just cuz I'm getting older and my friends are all getting older. But it sure seems like people that didn't really talk about any interest in doing standup all of a sudden taking standup classes or, getting a lot more interested in going out there and doing it. Which I, I find interesting cuz to me it always seemed like standup's a young man's game.

Scott: 3:15

Yeah. And, and it really is because, coming up in South Benmore it was at the time, it was pretty much 20 somethings, a couple 30 somethings, and then me

Gene: 3:27

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 3:29

And there was one older dude that came from, and I think he was a few years older than me, that came from a little bit east and would come to some of the open mics I went to. But other than that, I was pretty much the grandpa of the, of the comedy community there. And the, the, the way I got started was actually pretty funny because they I, I had, I'm in the IT field myself as a consultant and I had been with the same

Gene: 3:56

So, so is everybody else that listens.

Scott: 3:58

Yeah, I know Alright.

Gene: 4:00

it sure seems like that's the biggest demographic.

Scott: 4:03

You know what it, people do listen to podcasts and they listen to a wide variety. We're geeks and we're geeks in a lot of different areas,

Gene: 4:13

Yeah.

Scott: 4:14

But yeah, I I had worked at the same place for 17 years and I've always been a dry, sarcastic dude and I would kinda liven

Gene: 4:23

Wait, wait. A dry sarcastic IT guy? No.

Scott: 4:28

but an IT guy that can actually communicate. So that's, sometimes you don't get that with it

Gene: 4:33

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Scott: 4:35

but I, so I'd been there for, I, I think at the time it was 15 years I worked there, a total of 18 and they they did a company party every year, and it was a holiday party, but it was, they always had it in like January after the holidays. And I never went, I, I never had a desire to go to that particular party because I saw the people I worked with enough and it just wasn't, wasn't something I needed to do. So the guy who was doing the, the entertainment, they had gotten a magician like three years in a row. So he comes to me and he says, I want you to do standup for the company party. And my answer was a very quick, no, I'm not a standup. And I forgot about it. Then he came to me again and said, I really want you to do it. And I said, no, again. He came to me again, and finally I went home and told my wife, I said, man, Michael's just bugging the crap out of me to do a standup for the company party. And she said, well, you want to do it, so just do it. So I did it and I really enjoyed it. And really my standup was pretty much just roasting my coworkers and, and that's easy to do, especially when you've been working with him for years and it went over well. Everything, everything was fine. I was not, I would not consider myself a standup comedian, at that point, but I got the itch and started. There's only in South Bend there was only like one or two open mics that you could go to on a weekly basis. And I found them and started going to him and really made a lot of really great connections with young people pretty quickly and didn't get really good at standup for a long time. But I went to the Mikes made friends, kept working on my act and just. Did it as a hobby more than anything and just kept going at it. And then finally I got good enough at it that people were asking me to be on shows, on showcases and things like that. And then long story short, a friend of mine had a really nice rock, rock and roll bar. He had like the best sound system I've ever seen, and he had Thursday nights open. So I asked if I could do shows on Thursday nights, and I did either a showcase or I'd bring a headliner in from Chicago or a local headliner and put on a show. And that went over pretty good. During that time I was trying to get better at standup

Gene: 7:15

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 7:16

of course, listening to all the podcasts I listened to, I looked for standup podcasts and I found some that were pretty good and. I found some that were pretty bad. As, as there's a ton of bad podcasts out there, but I f I found some podcasts that were okay, but none of them had exactly what I wanted. And I'm, I'm a guy that doesn't get into small talk or inside jokes or just three guys sitting around shooting, shooting bull, that kind of stuff. It, it, it doesn't really appeal to me. If you're talking about a specific subject and you deep dive into it, that's what gets me. And so, because there wasn't anything out there, and I had been doing the Missa People podcast, I said, okay, let's, let's start a podcast that I would wanna listen to. And I am, I, I'm kind of a, a real knee jerk type guy, so, And a lot of people who start podcasts are like that. They say, okay, let's start a podcast. And tomorrow they start their, they do their first episode. I this I wanted, I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be special. I wanted to make sure it was fulfilling everything that I wanted it to do. So I really spent about a year researching and putting together what I wanted my podcast to be before I even.

Gene: 8:41

Oh, wow.

Scott: 8:41

and putting that kind of work into it. I, I, I lined up the guests I wanted to have when I went on to launch it. I had my artwork ready, I had a mission statement. My mission statement's very simple. The podcast is called Behind the Bits, and the mission statement is Serious Comedy Talk really easy. But it took me a long time to get to that. And in getting to it, I really felt like I had something good to, to bring out. I wasn't, I didn't have any expectations other than, ho hopefully learning about comedy myself, recording it and having other people learn at the same time. So I launched it. I don't know. And, and I, I know that you're not I, I know that you're not a 20 year old, but I don't know if you're in my age range, but I don't know if you remember Tom Dreesen.

Gene: 9:34

No, I don't.

Scott: 9:35

Okay, so he was he, he came up at, at the comedy store in the seventies with folks like, Letterman and Leno and all those folks, and was really, really good. He, he came from Harvey, Illinois, suburb of Chicago and was really a very popular comedian. You'd see him on Mike Douglas, Diana Shore, John. He did Johnny Carson like 30 times. He did a Letterman like 35 or 40 times, but was really good. And he was one of those guys that. You would think should have had a sitcom because he, he, he he was a good looking guy. He, he really had great stage presence and all that, but he got hooked up with Frank Sinatra through Sammy Davis, Jr. In the, I, I think it was towards the end, or like middle of Sinatra's career in the eighties, and actually worked as Sinatra's out opener for about 14 years. And during that time, he got all kinds of great offers for sitcoms. He did a talk show for a short period of time. Just all kinds of great stuff happened to him. But he really liked working for Sinatra. He d he didn't wanna be that sitcom guy, and so he just kept doing that. And that was pretty much what he did. And, and he's still a standup. He's 83 now, 84. And he still does standup and he does a show where he goes around and talks about his years with Frank Sinatra. So this guy's kind of my comedy hero and I got him as my first guest.

Gene: 11:10

Okay.

Scott: 11:11

And it was really, it was really one of those things that started everything off on the right foot for me. I know that not everybody knows who Tom Dreesen is because he chose not to get in the limelight. Like his hi, his, one of his best friends is David Letterman, so he decided not to be that. But he's one of the best comedy writers in the world. Can, can work a hundred percent clean. Is, he's, he, he's like an all-American. Comedian and I just, I just loved what he did, and he came on the show and I wanted to make sure that I was talking to comedians from all walks of life at all points in their career. So I talked to some of the old folks from the comedy store. I talked to new comedians that were just starting to get like feature gigs or headlining gigs and everything rolled in and did really, really well that first year. Now, my listeners were

Gene: 12:10

many episodes did you end up doing?

Scott: 12:11

In the first year, I, I did every week. So I d and I, there was a couple extra, I did like a Covid episode that I threw in there. So probably 53, 54 episode.

Gene: 12:22

Okay, well that's pretty good. They say the magic number for podcasts is about 50, is if, if you can get past 50, you're probably gonna keep doing it for quite a while, because statistically, like 90% of podcasts never make it to 50.

Scott: 12:38

Yeah, it's and really 82% don't make it past seven

Gene: 12:44

I believe that. Yeah. There, there is a lot of the, the, nice try sort of podcasts out there.

Scott: 12:50

yeah, yeah. And, and I think it's mostly lack of planning and, and folks really don't know, first of all what it takes. I mean, you do three podcasts and you know what it takes to put the work behind it. So you're gonna talk to me for a while, and the work you have to put behind it is a lot more than the work that you're putting in now.

Gene: 13:12

Yeah, well, I, I try to automate as much as possible and and make it as painless as possible after the, the fact. But yeah, I am, I'm definitely one of those guys to the chagrin of some of my friends that doesn't think the podcast is ready until there's post-production. A lot of people like to just hit the record button and then be done. There's very few people. There are some, but there's very few people that can do that and, and have it sound great. But typically there are people that came over from radio and doing live from the get-go. And so they have a different sense of, what it, what it means to get everything just perfect when it's live. The vast majority of people doing podcasts can't do that, but yet they never learn the post.

Scott: 13:57

Exactly levels and getting, getting rid of dead air and all that kind of stuff. Did, did I read, did I read Gene that you used script?

Gene: 14:08

I do.

Scott: 14:09

So I, when I found script, it was like, like that eureka moment,

Gene: 14:15

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 14:17

I mean, I, I absolutely love the fact that you can pop it in there, get the transcript, delete from the transcript, transcript, just like a Word document and do, do studio sound for my guest who had a crappy microphone. And it's just really fantastic what you can do with it.

Gene: 14:36

Yeah. It's a, it's a really good product. It's not cheap because you're, you're basically paying a monthly fee that comes close to what I pay for Adobe. But it is for the time being anyway, somewhat unique. Now, Adobe does have a beta of their podcast product that is very, very similar. It does the Texas speech. You can edit the audio using the text portion of it and it's going to allow you to do live streaming as well. So once that goes into full production, it's part of the full Adobe package. I think the script's gonna have a hard time holding on to the number of subscribers they do because it's, it's gonna be essentially a freebie. If you're already subscribed to Adobe, you're gonna get that product as a free add-on. But for right now it's not quite there. The beta does the basic functionality, but Descript still has a lot more features. And I, I've got a link to script in, in all of my uh, Descriptions the podcast, the info section of the podcast so people can click on it, go check it out. But I've done podcasts. I think my first one I did in 2006 or seven. And I've, so I've done a bunch of'em over the years and I don't think I could do three podcasts. I actually do a much stuff on YouTube as well, but I don't think I could do three podcasts right now if it wasn't for products like the script, because in the old days I still did post, but I did it manually by listening to the podcast slowly and then removing words at a time, removing dead space, doing everything in addition that needs to get done to clean it. But that process would typically be two to three times longer than the recording portion. With the script, I find it's closer to one-to-one, and if it's the same person, like it's a podcast with the same co-host, then I, I might be done in half an hour. It might go really fast.

Scott: 16:40

yeah. I've, I, my experience has been exactly the same. It was, it was two to three hours for every hour of recording, just going through, manually backing up. And, and it was, it was awful. And with the script, it's, it, it depends on how bad the person sounded on the other end. Cuz sometimes you need to run it through a few different things and check the equalizer, do different equalizer settings to get them to sound even somewhat good. But the fact that you can just go through, remove filler words and do all, all the stuff that I was doing manually, just really, and it's got some great video features too, cuz I've done some promo videos and you can do the same thing. And the nice thing is, is I never get it right the first time. I can just keep rolling and just take out what I don't want.

Gene: 17:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think my, my only real complaint about script is that they, they give you a certain amount of time for the transcription, and I've had multiple instances where I've loaded something in, it starts transcribing, and then like 10 minutes later I realize I, it's the wrong thing, or I had the wrong voice or something,

Scott: 17:57

Yeah.

Gene: 17:58

and then it's like, oh, well you're ready. Use a half your transcription time for this month. I'm like, God, damnit.

Scott: 18:04

Yep.

Gene: 18:04

it, there are situations like that where I've, I've ended up using up a good chunk of transcription time for the month by redoing a project rather than having new projects. And the other thing about it is I have noticed when you do, when you do tracks, like I typically record my track and then the other person on separate tracks, and then that way you've got isolation for for cleanup. But, but doing that descript doubles the amount of time that it sucks up from your pool of time for transcription because they, they basically use that time up. And I, I can't remember how many hours, it's like, I think I have 40 hours a month or something that I get, but I typically use it all up. But it's when you have two tracks, even though only one is speaking at a time, An hour long recording is two hours that it pulls out of your, your total pool of time for transcription because it processes each of your tracks individually. Whereas if you just, do more of an amateurish job, you dump it all in one track, you stick it into script, then it'll do, its best to analyze who's speaking based on the way the voice sounds, and then does a very good job, but it's actually doing a more complicated job cuz it has to recognize stuff, but it's only charging you for the one hour.

Scott: 19:23

right?

Gene: 19:24

And I've, I've sent them emails about them. Like, guys, this model is just like, it discourages good audio

Scott: 19:30

Yeah. Well, and and the other problem is, is I, I don't know if you experienced this, but the last few months has just been buggy as hell,

Gene: 19:40

Yeah. They want two new version, which is I don't, I never asked for it. I was fine with the way the old version worked.

Scott: 19:46

Yeah. The old, the old storyboard. But they did they put a fix out, I think it was this week, and I know I've, I've edited down I think three episodes since that, and I haven't had any of the problems I had previously. So I think the bug fixes have helped.

Gene: 20:06

Yeah. And they do put'em out on probably multiple times a month. There. Seems like there's an update all the time for it. So they are doing good work there. But I think they also realize that they've got a limited amount of time before Adobe is fully out in release. And one that happens. It's gonna be really hard for like, they're gonna have to either cut prices big time or give you a lot more features.

Scott: 20:29

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm I'm on the annual plan, so I hope, I, I hope that they keep, keep up and be at, at least as good as they are until Adobe gets their finished project product out.

Gene: 20:44

Yeah, well, I think they will be, but it's, it's gonna be a question of can they retain enough subscribers to pay for the infrastructure of their company once that happens,

Scott: 20:54

Right?

Gene: 20:55

I'm probably gonna move, I mean, I, I already pay for Adobe. That's why do I need another 60 bucks a month on top of

Scott: 21:00

Right. No doubt.

Gene: 21:03

So, but yeah, it's a good product. I mean, I think it was, when it came out, it was absolutely revolutionary. But, and even still, there's really nothing that does all of what it does all in one package.

Scott: 21:13

Right, right.

Gene: 21:16

So

Scott: 21:16

Yeah. Yeah. The

Gene: 21:17

what other tools are you using?

Scott: 21:19

I, I'm sorry.

Gene: 21:20

What other tools are you using?

Scott: 21:22

So really, I dump, I dump a lot of stuff into Audacity for a first time run through and, and that, that's fine. If I feel like I'll, I'll do, I'll do the cheat thing. If I feel like the person on the other end had pretty good sound and I had pretty good sound, I'll just combine the tracks and I will dump them into the script as one track so that

Gene: 21:48

do it that way. Got

Scott: 21:49

eating up the time Yeah.

Gene: 21:50

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing is if they, if they didn't have that limited amount of time, and I understand why they do it, but also I feel like, well, at least you should double the amount of hours for the standard pack. Cuz I, I buy the, the bigger size package because of the hours and if they like gave you 40 hours for the standard package that would be, I think I'd be a lot more inclined to, to stand them or, recommend them a lot more. And. I don't know a lot. It's true with a lot of these podcast things like, I don't know we could talk to you about what, who you like in hosting. And I've tried a lot of'em, and I, I know a lot of the, or at least I've interviewed, let's put it that way, a lot of the CEOs of the hosting companies but the, the, they all seem to have, I shouldn't say all, most of them have a limit on the number of hours of podcasts that you put out.

Scott: 22:49

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 22:49

And I just think that's, that's stupid. Like it, the cost is so marginal for them on whether you upload 10 hours a week, or sorry a month, 10 hours a month, 20 hours a month, or 50 hours a month. Like there's virtually no difference. To the hosting company in terms of their cost for that bandwidth. It's, it, it's negligible, but yet that's how Muslims seem to be. Yeah, that's how they, Muslim seem to be pricing this stuff. I would think a bigger cost is just like holding on to all your past episodes indefinitely. Like that would be the bigger cost, not the amount of hours that you do per month. Because the, there, there are certainly people that just do like an hour a week and then four hours a month is plenty of time for them. But they're already limiting you by the podcast. So you're, you have, they're basically charging per RSS feed,

Scott: 23:45

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 23:46

but then they're also saying, well, but also don't add more than 20 hours worth per month on your Rs, or whatever the number is for the

Scott: 23:53

Yeah.

Gene: 23:54

companies out there. So again, there, I feel like, like that model isn't really optimal because it. It's, it puts a limit to where there's not much cost difference for the company.

Scott: 24:07

Right.

Gene: 24:08

Who do you use? Who do you typically work with? For hosting?

Scott: 24:11

so like you, I've been through quite a few hosts. I started with Libson,

Gene: 24:17

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 24:18

I did Pod Bean, I did Buzz Sprout, I did Spreaker, and I have landed on Red Circle.

Gene: 24:28

Never heard of'em.

Scott: 24:29

Yeah, they are, they're a small company. They, I mean, their market share is super small, but it's got a couple features that I like. First off, they don't limit how much audio you put up

Gene: 24:43

Okay. All right. Good.

Scott: 24:45

and second, you pay one price for as many podcasts as you wanna

Gene: 24:49

Really? Wow.

Scott: 24:50

Yeah,

Gene: 24:52

Okay.

Scott: 24:52

whi, which is nice because I've got behind the bits. I just started your pod guy and I also host the podcast that I produce for my workplace. So I got three podcast, one price.

Gene: 25:06

Okay. And then how do they compare? As far as features?

Scott: 25:09

Features are pretty good. They do have programmatic ads that you can make a little money with, and I think you just need 500 downloads per episode,

Gene: 25:18

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 25:19

As an average. They've got that. They do bring in sponsors for larger pre-roll, mid-roll ads. I've been with them for a year and I think I've done three of those. And it's usually a 30 day engagement, four, four episodes, and they pay, anywhere from. I, I think my best was like seven 50 and my worst was like two 50.

Gene: 25:43

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 25:44

they've got that their their stats are pretty much like everybody else's

Gene: 25:49

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 25:50

basic, basic demographics, where they listen from. You know what, what Podcast player. They use, male or female, all, all that kind of stuff. Their, their dynamic ad insertion is really one of my favorites. And the reason I like it is, say I bring a sponsor on by myself and I, I've done that quite a few times and I wanna run it for a month. One of the things I can say is not only are you gonna get the four episodes that you bought, but it's also gonna run on all my previous episodes because that dynamic insertion is there and I can just say, boom, run it on all 151 episodes. And that's, that's a good selling point and it's super easy to

Gene: 26:37

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 26:38

It's

Gene: 26:39

and then when you're done with the month, then you'd take it out and

Scott: 26:43

Yeah. And then when, when it's all done, I replace it with the next one,

Gene: 26:47

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Got it. Okay. And then, so the red circle, is that like a reference to the record button?

Scott: 26:53

I think it is. Yeah.

Gene: 26:55

I was trying to figure that out. It's like, where are they getting that?

Scott: 26:57

Yeah. I've never, they did have a weird outage. It was about two or three months ago where I think it was almost, it was probably eight hours or so or so where I couldn't even log in. And I, I've experienced outages with other hosts before, but that is the only outage I've ever had with them.

Gene: 27:17

hmm. Okay. So we'll definitely, I'll have to check'em out. See how they compare. I've been really happy with buzz Sprouts for several years now.

Scott: 27:27

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 27:27

They've, they make the process very. As, as quick and simple as possible. For me, especially with multiple podcasts, it's really easy just to switch between them. But I am paying like 25 or 24, whatever it is, bucks per podcast in there.

Scott: 27:43

Yeah, and I think I paid 35 for three.

Gene: 27:48

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's uh, definitely a pretty good deal. Interesting. And then have you, have you added Podcasting 2.0 features?

Scott: 28:00

So you've mentioned that, and I don't even know what podcasting 2.0 is.

Gene: 28:04

Yeah. Yeah, we gotta fix that. Well, so podcasting 2.0 and if you, if you go to, it might be podcasting 2.0 as well, but if you go to podcast Index,

Scott: 28:15

Uhhuh

Gene: 28:15

Dot com, I believe, let me just type it in here myself, so I'm, I'm telling you the correct one. Then that will give you, oh, it's not podcasting, it's pod, is it maybe.org. Podcast index.org. Let's try that. Yep. It is.org. It is a, it's a nonprofit, so that makes sense,

Scott: 28:35

I know I checked it out because you mentioned it when we were talking and I checked it out and my podcast is there, so

Gene: 28:42

Mm-hmm. Yeah, they, they typically will they will add automatically podcasts after a while from the other, like if you submit it to Apple or Google or somebody but you can also directly submit it to them, but they als You can also find out more about Podcasting 2.0. So podcasting 2.0 is actually was developed by the guy that created podcasting in the first place. Adam. And, and obviously there's plenty of other people involved. I don't wanna neglect anybody else, but he's kind of the, the main headline guy. And I dunno if you know that history of podcasting either, but essentially Adam Curry and Dave Weiner were the two guys responsible for creating the standard initially for podcasting. And then Adam effectively gave it to Steve Jobs or Steve Jobs asked if it could be a part of the Apple software when the iPod came out. Not the iPhone, but the or maybe it was the iPhone. I don't know. I get this story wrong. Adam's obviously the guy to tell a full story on this, but. Essentially the index that Adam put together was taken over by Apple, and it's been in Apple hands since Dent, but probably about three years ago. He got a little frustrated the fact that there's been zero innovation from Apple, like there, essentially just have a much bigger version of the thing that he had given to them and have not done anything to include new features et cetera. And it, and so he started this podcasting 2.0 project, which is the expansion of the podcasting RSS to include new new fields in there to make podcasting more modern. And there's a whole bunch of new stuff that's in there. And again, I wanna leave it to the people that are actually working at it to do its justice, but it includes things like you can have. A monetization of podcasts directly from the listeners if you have a podcasting 2.0 compatible app, which now I think there's about 20 of them that are podcasting 2.0 certified in the app store and so not the official Google one, not the official Apple one, but a whole bunch on each of those platforms. And they utilize Bitcoin or actually Satoshi's, which are I think one 10000000th of a Bitcoin. It's basically a small denomination. And so it's, it's a, it's a reasonable denomination to be able to do small transactions then, cuz you're not gonna send somebody, one 1000000th of a Bitcoin like that. That seems like a weird denomination. So Satoshi's is the standard and it's, it's a one-to-one mapping with Bitcoin, it's not a different currency, it's actually the same. It's the same Bitcoin currency. It's just using a different server for it. And, and also it's done in real time. Whereas Bitcoin, I dunno if you do Bitcoin stuff at all, but it takes a little bit of time, like anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour for your transaction to actually go through the blockchain. So it, Bitcoin is not good for fast transactions. But with these apps, for example, you can load in, let's say 10,000 Toshi, which is, I don't, I don't know at this point what that equates to. Probably like 15 bucks or something,

Scott: 32:18

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 32:19

maybe less. could be less. And And then you can just specify that for every minute of listening to this podcast, for example I wanna send them a hundred, a hundred soshi per minute,

Scott: 32:33

Ah,

Gene: 32:33

which would be, I don't know, 3 cents or something, whatever. Maybe more than that. Again, don't ignore the math guys, cuz the cost of satoshis changes constantly. Depending. When you're hearing this, you may be either laughing because it's too low or laughing because it's too high, but either way you're like, you're totally off. Yes, I know I'm off. But the bottom line is it's a way to enable listeners directly to pay for the podcast directly to the creator and bypass the need for advertising or anything like that.

Scott: 33:05

Hmm.

Gene: 33:05

And Adam's podcast, which is one of the longest running podcasts ever, I think in the 14th year or something like that has been. Using what he described as a value for value model, which is, it's always free and it's always ad free. But the idea is that if you like it, send the donation in.

Scott: 33:29

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 33:30

And he has managed to grow that as a concept just using PayPal initially and then adding more different ways to do it. And I think a lot of people are really appreciating not having advertising. And so a lot more people are willing to contribute financially directly. If you have a podcast, it doesn't include advertising. And so with podcasting 2.0, you're now able to do that without having to take the time to go to PayPal, put in their email and decide how much you wanna send, all that stuff. That takes time and effort simply by saying, yes. Whenever I listen. And only for the minutes that I listen, there will be a donation sent automatically in Bitcoin. So it's a, it's a cool concept, and that's just one of the new features. There's a whole bunch of other features that are part of the standard as well. But like transcriptions built in transcriptions, multiple images so that you can, if you have multiple chapters in your podcast,

Scott: 34:28

I haven't chaptered, I, I haven't done chaptering yet.

Gene: 34:32

so yeah, if you do that not only can you add chapters, but you can also you, like, all my podcasts include the full transcription right. In the podcast as well. So a lot of stuff like that. And this script will spit out the the transcript automatically, of course. But it's, it's something that I think a lot of. Podcasters by more technical people. People that are interested in the technology of podcasting have already moved to, cuz it's been around for a few years. But of course the big guys are always gonna be the slowest to make any,

Scott: 35:03

Right.

Gene: 35:04

or move to anything that augments the standard and it's fully backwards compatible with the old standards. So, if you're, if you're creating a podcast episode in something more traditional, then it's all of these podcast 2.0 apps will be more than happy to just give you the subset of the features that have always existed.

Scott: 35:22

Okay.

Gene: 35:23

But I would definitely encourage you to check that out, get a little more info, cuz it does add a lot a lot more features to what people are used to, which is what originally Adam, gave to Apple back over a decade ago, back when jobs was still alive.

Scott: 35:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. I took a look at, I took a look at the site and one, one of the amazing things that. Popped up to me was, like 440,000 new podcasts launched in the, what, like the last six months or something?

Gene: 35:55

Yep.

Scott: 35:55

Yeah.

Gene: 35:57

Yeah, there's, it indexes three, 3.8 million of them total podcast rate now, I believe.

Scott: 36:01

yeah, it's, it's mind boggling.

Gene: 36:04

Mm-hmm. yeah, it's it's almost half a million in the last 90 days. 365,000 in the last 30 days. But, but again, you're what you mentioned earlier, which is that the vast majority don't get past 10, and of the ones that get past 10, most of those don't get to 50. So it, there, there are a lot of orphan podcasts, that's for sure.

Scott: 36:27

Yeah. And one thing I would like to see is

Gene: 36:32

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 36:33

if your podcast doesn't work and you've. Seven episodes up there, please just delete it.

Gene: 36:41

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Scott: 36:43

So, I mean, I, I don't know how you feel, but I feel like, I make an analogy to if, if I tell my friends I have a podcast, it's almost like telling'em I'm vegan

Gene: 36:57

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 36:58

It's like, oh shit, I gotta listen to that now. Or it's it because podcasts have a bad name because there's so many bad ones out there.

Gene: 37:08

Mm-hmm. There, there are a lot of'em. And, but that's, I mean, it's the same thing with books, right? It's, it's Right now, especially when you can self-publish books, when you don't require a publisher, there's no editor going through your stuff and saying, yeah, this is worth us as a publishing company to invest money.

Scott: 37:28

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 37:29

the good side of self-publishing is the authors keep way more money cuz they used to get, pennies and the dollar for their work.

Scott: 37:36

Yeah,

Gene: 37:37

side of it is that there's nobody really filtering for quality either.

Scott: 37:42

right. There are some terrible, terrible books out there.

Gene: 37:45

yeah. Yeah. And not, both in content, but also in presentation. There's some books that have great info that really just require a professional editor to go through and redo them.

Scott: 37:55

right?

Gene: 37:56

And that's something that we gotta put up with. And I, I think that you really have to rely on, on, and I'm mostly talking about Amazon here, but rely on the ratings. Of the people that have bought the book to determine whether or not you wanna spend the money on it, because the cover might look great cuz that's usually paid somebody, most people pay somebody else to create the cover. I've never done that. I've created my own covers for my books because I think that's a waste of money to pay somebody for that. But, but also, I've not tried to do anything super fancy either. But but yeah, it, it's, I think it's a similar thing with podcasts. Like, you're if, if the podcast has no reviews, it's like, well, you're on your own. This may suck, or it may be good, you never know. It's got some reviews that, that gives you a little better ideas. Lisas if you're gonna enjoy it or not.

Scott: 38:43

Yeah. Yeah. The, the only I, I get like, I do the Amazon unlimited. What whatever you can get the free books for, and I will try out a book. And all I've really have lost is my time if it's not good.

Gene: 39:00

Yeah. Well, the time's, the one thing you can't replace, so

Scott: 39:03

Yeah.

Gene: 39:05

Yeah. That's, that's not a I'd rather lose money than time.

Scott: 39:09

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I, I agree with that and I'll, I'll give it a chapter or two before I decide. I'm gonna delete it off my Kindle

Gene: 39:17

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so while I of jumped into the whole podcasting 2.0 stuff I guess, you, you, I stopped you when you were going through your, your history or background, and we got, I think to the point where you were doing Podcasting for, or podcasts both for your region and the comedy one, and what else were you doing?

Scott: 39:42

Yeah. So the behind the bits is, is my comedy podcast, and it's been going for three years now, and I never, I never had big expectations of it, like taking off. And it turned out. Second year, it did take off. I won an award best Interview style podcast award from one of the places, and it was a vote award, although I was nominated by them. I can't remember the name of the place, but I was nominated by them and I, I rallied for votes like crazy, and I ended up winning that. And then that gave me a big bump because they put it on their Twitter feed and all that kind of stuff. I got some pretty good guests and things kept rolling. Especially during the pandemic. It things rolled really well. I got some great guests, people had time, they were listening. And my listenership grew to a point where, I could, I could bring on sponsors, I could I, I could run programmatic ads and make a decent living at it and not a decent living, but pocket money. And it really, I got a little bit of clout. I had publicists coming to me saying, Hey, will you have my comic on? And stuff like that. And I really got into, okay, what makes a podcast good? And, my success was really just because I kept at it and, and listen. Listened to my listeners when they gave suggestions and things like that. And so I really got passionate about pod podcasting and I started one for the place I worked at in Indiana. And then I worked for a company out of Birmingham here and I started one for them. And I thought, I, I, I was talking to other podcasts cuz, cuz you know how we get around and talk and they kept saying, one of the things I like to do is help other people start podcasts. And I thought, well, Let me get into that game. And so I started a podcast in January called Your Pod Guy, and I've got a website called your pod guy.com, where I will consult with you and get your podcast started for you. And the only thing is, is most people focus on what I consider the ticky tac stuff, like your microphone, your the software you use. I mean, we both love the script, but you know, it's really not the most important part of your podcast. It is what is your podcast about? What do you wanna accomplish with it and what's your mission? So I, I started your podcast to help people get through what I think is the important part before they even start podcast.

Gene: 42:23

Mm-hmm. So, other than the software and hardware, what kind of things are you asking'em, or, or, helping them decide?

Scott: 42:34

Yeah, so the first thing I ask them is, what do you wanna accomplish with your podcast?

Gene: 42:39

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 42:40

And I'll tell you, I work with mostly people who have a business that they want to promote. So, a really good, I work, I'm working with a real estate agent, and a really good thing for a real estate agent to do, to cement that trusted advisor status is do a podcast. And it doesn't even have to be a weekly podcast. Everybody thinks they have to do it weekly. A month or monthly or twice a month is totally fine. But if a realtor has. The knowledge that, okay, this is, this is what is gonna help you sell your house. If you remodel your bathroom and you spend$8,000, your return is gonna be X. Or if you paint, your return is gonna be X. Putting podcasts out about that and then sell. And buyers, buyers wanna know how to buy, buy a house and first time buyers. I tell you what, I owned my house. I had my house for 30 years in South Bend, so I hadn't bought a house for a long time. I didn't even know what markets were like. And guess what? I'm in Huntsville, Alabama now, and it's nuts,

Gene: 43:48

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 43:49

I wish I listened to a couple podcasts about it. So a, a realtor that puts a podcast out. It's a great marketing thing as long as it's informational and it's not just a commercial.

Gene: 44:01

So, are you still doing the, the Indiana podcast after you moved?

Scott: 44:06

no, that's gone

Gene: 44:07

Okay. I was gonna say, that'd be weird.

Scott: 44:09

Yeah, I I actually gave that up I think in the first year I did behind the beds, cuz I just couldn't do both.

Gene: 44:15

Mm-hmm. Got it. That makes sense. So you're, you're basically working with businesses that wanna utilize podcasting as part of their marketing efforts.

Scott: 44:24

Yeah.

Gene: 44:25

Got it. And now do you work with their marketing people or who do you typically work with?

Scott: 44:29

so it depends, if it's a single real estate agent, I'm working directly with them

Gene: 44:34

Sure, sure.

Scott: 44:35

and once we get the framework done, that's when I say, okay, let's start looking at what you know, what's the basic equipment you need and how can we get this to where you can do a podcast for dummies and do this yourself. Or who do you want to farm out the editing to? Who do you wanna farm out your social media advertising too? Help them find the right people to get everything moving. And then let'em go. One of the things that I see out there in podcast land is there's all these gurus that want you to pay'em so much money a month in order to get their podcast in the top, top 10 apple or whatever. My thing is, is I want to, I want to give you the most information and give you the, the best start you can to your podcast, and then get outta your life and let you do your podcast

Gene: 45:32

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you're really you hit'em before they start, or.

Scott: 45:36

yeah, it's, that's really the best thing, and I will work with a podcast, say they are thinking about a rebrand, say things aren't, say they've gone for a year and they've plateaued as far as listeners, and they wanna know what to do next. I will, I will consult in that type of manner as well.

Gene: 45:54

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then what's, I guess, what are you seeing as the, the size of listenership that these companies are trying to get to? Obviously the more, the better, but you know, there, is there a point that, which it's not worthwhile for them to do the podcast? Or is there a point at which like their investment in doing the podcast actually is sufficiently large to pay back? What are you finding with those?

Scott: 46:19

So when you think about it, so let's take my company for instance. My company does a anywhere from 15 to 20 minute episode twice a month.

Gene: 46:32

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Scott: 46:34

it's very, very short on one topic. Say, say we're talking about cybersecurity and the different things that. Available to you that weren't, besides antivirus that can help you keep your network secure. So we'll do a episode, an informational episode that is really targeted towards like, sea level people that can say, they can take away a couple good nuggets and take that back to their IT person or contact us to help'em out. And as far as the time that's invested in it and the money that's invested in it, first off, it's zero because it's hosted for, it's hosted on my account for free

Gene: 47:20

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 47:21

and second, as far as the time I spend about probably an hour. For every episode. And then I give it to our marketing person and she probably spends another hour putting posts together, social media posts, cutting out snippets and, and things like that for LinkedIn. And so really it's two hours an episode and we get maybe, I th I think our best was maybe a hundred. However, it's the right people. It's our own clients. It's our clients sharing it with their peers. And we've already seen things come of it. And the other thing is, is our employees are listening to it. So they are understanding what our initiatives are and how we're talking to our clients. So you've got a level one tech. He understands that we are saying that. Spam filter for Office 365 is probably not as good as you want for your email.

Gene: 48:24

Yeah.

Scott: 48:25

So it's, it's really, it's, I think quality is a lot more important than quantity when you're doing a business related podcast.

Gene: 48:35

Mm-hmm. that makes sense. And what, like what type of clients have you been working with in terms of size of business? Now you mentioned some real estate agents. What, what other types of clients seem to be in the right niche for you?

Scott: 48:48

right. So, I'm just starting, so I'm, I, I've got three of'em going. I, I'm work, I'm working pro bono for a guy in Boise, Idaho who is starting a comedy podcast,

Gene: 49:02

Oh, okay. That makes sense.

Scott: 49:04

I've got a local real estate agent here in Huntsville. And I've got a guy in South Bend, Indiana who developed an application for people who sell like Amazon, F B a, eBay, Etsy all, all, all the different, all the different ways to sell your stuff or sell from a warehouse. And he basically takes all that and puts it together so you know where your inventory is, you know where your sales are coming from, and it's basically an API that you can plug into just about anything. And I'm working with him to get his podcast going. That talks not only about what he does, but all the stuff that's adjacent, all the things that Amazon FBA sellers go through.

Gene: 49:51

Sure. Yeah. That I, I probably wouldn't mind listening to that myself. I've got products on Amazon.

Scott: 49:58

And there's not, there's not a ton of those out there.

Gene: 50:02

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 50:02

That's, that's one of the markets that's not overly saturated. I, I, I like this podcast 2.0 site, but I use listen notes when I'm looking for podcasts that are in a certain area, and it's got a real good keyword search function. And I use that. And I know when I search that there wasn't a whole lot in that area,

Gene: 50:25

Yeah. Well, I mean, podcasting index is really. like the site is only just to tell you a little bit about the company. Yes, you can get some stats and data out of there, but for the most part, the focus for them is on working with developers to create the new standard.

Scott: 50:40

right?

Gene: 50:41

So it's really as much as anything a proof of the concept in live. And it's also, I mean, one of the motivating forces here too, initially for them was to have a site that isn't big tech.

Scott: 50:55

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 50:56

because it, it happened on the heels of all the de platforming that big tech started doing to where, apple dropped Alex Jones podcasts and a bunch of other people's podcasts and, and literally the same day Google Drop'em and everybody else. And you have people that literally had millions of listeners all of a sudden being homeless

Scott: 51:18

Yeah,

Gene: 51:19

and obviously people have their own political opinions on this matter, but it doesn't matter to me anyway, on whether they were far lefty or far righty or, or centrist. The idea that the people controlling the indexes can make arbitrary decisions on who they don't want to be in the index. That's very dangerous in my mind because that type of power should not be within one company. And of course now we've had the Twitter hearings on in in, in Congress showing that not only was it Twitter making decisions, but it was actually f b i bringing decisions to Twitter that they would like to see happen.

Scott: 52:01

Yeah.

Gene: 52:02

And all of that stuff is just like, whoa. This is not what was envisioned originally for any of this stuff. Like when Google started doing indexing of websites, we didn't think that. Eventually, the only results we see are companies that pay Google,

Scott: 52:18

Yeah.

Gene: 52:19

and that's what we are seeing right now. Everybody on the front page and usually the first few pages, they all, one way or another give money to Google. Whether it's directly through placement on the search results or through, it's through AdWords or whatever else. You're seeing paid results. You're not seeing the actual index. And that's why I've, I don't use Google for Index either. I, I haven't for a while there, there are more neutral sources out there. And so with Podcast Index, being a, a nonprofit off in its own little world, it, it really means that you can't de platform a podcast.

Scott: 52:57

Right. And

Gene: 52:58

to find, but you can't de platform.

Scott: 53:01

yeah. And I think that's important. There's, I, the, the whole freedom of speech thing is really getting, like you said, it's, it's dangerous right now.

Gene: 53:13

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's, it's people that are your age. My age. Like, we took a lot of this stuff for granted. Like this wasn't a question. The, the idea that, Ford Motor Company can say, only certain people can drive Ford cars.

Scott: 53:27

Yeah.

Gene: 53:27

Are you kidding? That was not a thought anybody had. It's like, wait, didn't that all disappear in the sixties when we got integrated schools? And now all of a sudden there's a resurgence of that. Not, not necessarily based on skill and color, but definitely based on ideologies.

Scott: 53:44

Yeah

Gene: 53:44

so it, it is I think it's important to support companies and, and organizations that really promote true freedom of speech and podcasting relies on freedom of speech.

Scott: 53:54

exactly.

Gene: 53:55

There is no podcasting in the book. 1984.

Scott: 53:58

Yeah. It's funny on behind the bits, I, I made a rule for myself that I'm gonna have guests on that don't share my ideology as far as politics or religion or anything like that. I was gonna bring, cuz I'm a lefty and I was gonna bring on people who are funny and people who have done something that I think adds value. So I've had some pretty. Pretty heavy conservative guests on, and Tom Dreesen is one of'em. And I get these notes from my liberal friends are like, why do you, why'd you have that guy on?

Gene: 54:39

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 54:40

And I'm like, because he adds value. This isn't a politics podcast. It's about standup comedy.

Gene: 54:47

Yeah.

Scott: 54:48

And I've even, so I've, I've had people wanna cen censor me and I've, I've had people say, I'm not gonna listen to your show anymore cuz you had this dude on.

Gene: 54:57

I know. It's crazy.

Scott: 54:58

Yeah.

Gene: 54:58

and, and I don't know if you had to listen to any of my previous episodes, but I actually just had a a 20 year old Gen Z kid on, well, I call him a kid. Because I wanted to, in as much as I can make fun of all those people his age, I, I wanted to have the, that perspective directly from the horse's mouth

Scott: 55:17

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 55:18

by anybody else and see, what are they thinking? And is this, is this something that is similar to what I remember at that age? Or is this like completely crazy wacky shit that that I've never went through or any of my friends? And then I also had somebody that was like 10 years older, somebody that was in his late twenties after that. And now I've got you, you're, you're 58 you said, and self-identified lefty. So that'll be fun for a lot of my listeners. I think I definitely skew right? I'm, I'm very much a libertarian, so I was, for a good chunk of my life, I was the seen as a lefty by the conservatives. Now I think we're best friends, so it's things have shifted in our lifetimes, that's for sure.

Scott: 56:07

It has, and it's funny you talk to the. You talked to a, a Gen Zer

Gene: 56:14

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 56:15

their point of reference for their opinions is so much different than ours.

Gene: 56:19

Oh yeah.

Scott: 56:21

We didn't have a thousand people telling us this is wrong when, when they have no basis of saying it's wrong on social media when we were kids.

Gene: 56:36

Yeah, absolutely. And I remember even in college, like having some professors that were clearly ideologically socialist. There's no two ways about it. But even then, it like you, well, at least I remember being smart enough to know that, okay, well I should expect that cuz this is the last bastion of socialism was universities. Well, it, it seems like, good luck finding somebody who isn't a socialist in in academia right

Scott: 57:08

Yeah.

Gene: 57:08

it's 100% taken over and, and to the point where when, when you and I were in, in college, like somebody being called a socialist or communist was an insult. It's not anymore to these kids. Like they think, well, yeah, those are the good ideas. This is where we need to bring the United States to in order to save it.

Scott: 57:28

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 57:30

So it's, it's a very different mentality and it's not the sort of old, union socialism. It's very much a Chinese style socialism that they're into.

Scott: 57:41

Yeah. And that's scary.

Gene: 57:42

Yeah, it's I would've not predicted this, that's for sure. I mean, I'm usually pretty good at making predictions. I find myself being right more often than not. But the direction that the youth right now is going, I would not have predicted. I just would've figured they all be, just brain numb zombies looking at their phones, which is what I make fun of'em for. But politically, I, I think they're quite different than what I would've expected for sure. So do you, you, I'm not a, like, I'm not a big comedy guy. I've certainly gone to a few comedy shows, improv things over the years, but it's not really an area I follow. So, other than the big guys, like, obviously Joe Rogan, who will have comedians on occasionally not as often as he used to these days. And Mark Maron and like, who else do you really like out there for comedy

Scott: 58:30

It's, yeah. Most of the comedy podcasts I like are more independent, like mine.

Gene: 58:40

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 58:41

There's, there's one that's brand new of a couple guys from Indiana who have both been doing comedy. I think one's like 10 years in, and the other one's like 13. And it's called Matt and Dwight. Just my, and I've, I've interviewed both of'em on my show, but they talk about like comedy 1 0 1 stuff, and, and the, the title doesn't. Tell you what you're gonna get. So the, they made a mistake there, but that's okay. But they, I, and I wanna say, I wanna say their Listenerships, probably they're friends right now, but it's one, it's one of the best podcasts for any new comedian that wants to understand what it's all about, what, how to put a set together, how to get paid, all that kind of stuff. And

Gene: 59:35

What's the name of the podcast

Scott: 59:36

got, I'm sorry,

Gene: 59:37

What's the name of the show

Scott: 59:38

it's Matt and Dwight just might, and Matt is with one

Gene: 59:42

just might, that is a horrible name.

Scott: 59:44

Yeah, it's

Gene: 59:46

Ugh. They need to hire you.

Scott: 59:50

Yes. Yeah. They definitely need a rebrand, but I think, I think they're doing it just for fun. But the content, and for me, the most important thing on a podcast is content.

Gene: 1:00:01

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 1:00:02

And it's absolutely fantastic. And there's another guy, and he's been doing it for years and he does a show called The Art of Bombing Podcast and the what he does, his podcast center out centers around a comedian coming in and talking about their worst bomb and how they recovered from it.

Gene: 1:00:24

Yeah, that sounds pretty interesting. That's a good name. That actually ties into the topic and having people talk about their worst experience is always entertaining, for sure.

Scott: 1:00:33

yeah, he does, he does a great job with it.

Gene: 1:00:37

Mm-hmm. No, that's, that's cool. And then are you still doing standup locally where you're at now, or are you just busy with the podcasting stuff?

Scott: 1:00:46

So I've, I've gotten away from it and I'm just starting to get back into it. The, the move, the move was hard. I mean, when you've been in the same place all your life and you move 600 miles south to Huntsville, Alabama, it's, it, it, it was a shock to the system So, and I'm just starting to get to know the, the folks around here and the thing with comedy, it's definitely not like riding a bike. So if you, if you stop for a period of time, you've gotta make up that time again,

Gene: 1:01:21

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 1:01:22

And at my age, I, I, I, I'm making decisions on where I wanna spend my time. And I've decided after, last year I did so little. I did like one page show and a few open mics. And this year I've decided, okay, I'm gonna put a little bit more effort towards it and maybe try to get myself on some showcases and stuff like that. But I'm also redoing my material, getting, getting my chops back by doing open mics and stuff like that. So this year I will do more than last year, but probably not as much as the years before when I was in South Bend.

Gene: 1:02:00

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So how do you like Huntsville?

Scott: 1:02:03

I love it. The re we came, so I, we've got two kids. My daughter is 32 and she lives in the DC area. And my son. Got a job for NASA outta college and came to Huntsville and

Gene: 1:02:22

say it's a big airspace industry there.

Scott: 1:02:24

yeah, and the funny thing is, is he studied meteorology and was planning on Washington working for the National Weather Service and he did some presentation in Chicago and a NASA guy was there and he said, I, I think you'd be a good fit. And they actually brought him down and paid for his master's degree and gave him like an internship, a paid internship. And now he's like in management or something. But we wanted to be close to one of our kids and we were in DC enough times to know that we didn't wanna live there. So Huntsville, it was.

Gene: 1:03:02

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. It's And I think in a lot of ways Alabama gets a bad rep. It's, it's a beautiful country out there. The weather's good. The it, it's just not well known for anything particularly other than, poor education, So, but it doesn't mean that that affects the the city life and everything else. That's very different out there.

Scott: 1:03:27

And Huntsville's, I think about 50% bigger than South Bend. So it's, it's a bigger city, but it still has a small city feel. And, the mountains are, hiking in the mountains is great. Their mountains aren't big, but they're, they've got great trails.

Gene: 1:03:44

than we, we have here in Texas, that's for

Scott: 1:03:46

Yeah. a little flat. Yeah.

Gene: 1:03:49

Yeah. Our, our mountains a hundred feet tall, so,

Scott: 1:03:52

Yeah. But yeah, I really, I've really enjoyed it here. The one thing I do miss is we were by Lake Michigan and going and walking the beach and the trails at Lake Michigan was really, really fun.

Gene: 1:04:05

Yeah.

Scott: 1:04:06

But yeah, it's, it's nice. I don't miss the lake effect snow. I'll tell you that

Gene: 1:04:10

Yeah. But now you're not too far from the coast. I mean, you're not right on the coast for sure. But how, how long of a drive is it to go down the coast?

Scott: 1:04:18

it is right around two hours.

Gene: 1:04:21

Yeah, that's reasonable. That's a weekend trip for sure.

Scott: 1:04:24

yeah, yeah. We've done it. We did it. So we were by ourselves last Christmas and just, we went and spent a few nights on the beach there.

Gene: 1:04:32

Yeah. Yeah. Which is nice. And I, I, in Austin where I'm at it's about a three hour drive down to the Gulf, so it's a little bit further. It's you certainly have to, you can't just do it in one day cuz then you're gonna be driving for six hours.

Scott: 1:04:44

Yeah.

Gene: 1:04:45

But it's still close enough for, a weekend or an overnight, pretty much anytime. And it's, it's nice to have the ability to get down, to open the water like that.

Scott: 1:04:56

Yes. Yeah, it definitely is.

Gene: 1:04:58

Cool. All right. Well, so I guess let's get your contact info, all that good stuff. Obviously you said you're looking for, or working with companies already, and I'm sure looking for more that want to get some help in putting together their, their podcast. Are you also looking for any kind of comedy stuff? What, what kind of, what are you looking to spend time doing?

Scott: 1:05:20

As far as podcasts go, if you. Have an idea for a podcast, or you think you want a podcast, just contact me. I'm not gonna charge you anything to talk to you about it. I, I do like a free initial consultation, I call it, but I'll, I, I love meeting people and just talking to'em. So whatever your podcast is about, if you want to get steered in the right direction, I've got a checklist that I, that I made up about what your podcast is about, and then all the ticky tac stuff, like microphones and hosting and all that kind of stuff. So I will definitely help you absolutely free. And then if you think it's a good fit and you want me to take you down the road, then you know, I will definitely bring you on as a client. But,

Gene: 1:06:04

Which by the way is, is nice cuz a lot of times I'll get approached with a whole bunch of questions people have. I'm happy to give'em a copy of my list of what I use. It doesn't mean it's gonna be the best fit for them. because I've been doing this for over a decade. But also I, I'm not really gonna spend any more time than I have to, to reply to'em because I'm doing other stuff. I'm not doing any kind of podcasting, consulting or anything like that. So it's more of a favor if you reach out to me and ask some questions. It's hard enough trying to get people that I co-host with to get all the right gear. I don't want to, I don't wanna be doing that for just the average person. So it's interesting that that's a niche or a little business that you're that you're also doing on the side, which is great.

Scott: 1:06:49

Yeah. And I, I think it's, I think it's gonna be fun. Once again, I don't have huge expectations for it. If I, if it takes off, that's great. If it doesn't, I'm always here. I, I bought the url. It's your podd guy.com. So,

Gene: 1:07:04

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 1:07:05

Yeah. So,

Gene: 1:07:06

Yeah. That's, that's an easy one to.

Scott: 1:07:08

decent url, so I, I think that's fine. I'm, I'm probably gonna spend about 80% of my time with local folks because I can, sit there with them and be in person and, and take'em through it that way. But I, I will be glad to take on folks from anywhere in the country or in the world for that matter.

Gene: 1:07:27

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so if they wanna email, is it just Scott at your pod guy or what's the email?

Scott: 1:07:35

Yeah. It's Scott at your podd guy dot.

Gene: 1:07:37

Yeah, that makes sense. So that's cool. Now, one thing we didn't cover them before I forget here too, is so I record, since we're talking about sort of the, how the sausage is made stuff I typically will record audio only podcasts on Zencaster. Some people like clean feed. I used to use Clean Feed, but I find that Zencaster is a little slicker because it actually saves the audio from both sides. rather than just providing a conduit for the audio. What have you been using or what have you found other people using for podcasting?

Scott: 1:08:10

So Zencaster is a big one. Riverside FM

Gene: 1:08:13

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 1:08:14

is a big one. I personally, because I do a livestream video for my behind the Bits interviews, I use Restream io.

Gene: 1:08:25

Yep.

Scott: 1:08:26

I'm. Rethinking that a little bit

Gene: 1:08:29

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 1:08:30

because there is a good percentage of time that there are audio issues from my remote guest.

Gene: 1:08:39

Mm. Did you, do you walk'em through to making sure that in their settings for Restream, they turn on high quality audio.

Scott: 1:08:46

Yeah. And, and still, if, if there's any bandwidth glitches or they, they don't have a mic and they're using AirPods and stuff like that, it just doesn't, I I feel like Restream exasperates the issue that's already there.

Gene: 1:09:04

that's probably true. Although I do like that Restream can, you can dump right into script.

Scott: 1:09:08

Yes. Yeah. So I, I hope that they, they do multi-track, which is great. The only thing is, is I, I've got a road caster Pro, so. I record my audio on there and it sounds better than the tracks I download from Restream anyway, but yeah, and it's just, I, I'm, I haven't made a decision yet because I pay annual on that too.

Gene: 1:09:37

Yeah.

Scott: 1:09:38

I, I do annual

Gene: 1:09:39

not cheap. That's like 40 bucks a month, if I remember right.

Scott: 1:09:42

So I think every Black Friday they do a half off

Gene: 1:09:47

Mm.

Scott: 1:09:48

and it's good for both monthly and annual. And the nice thing is, is once you're in it, you're in it for life. So when you re-up, it doesn't go, it doesn't revert back to the price.

Gene: 1:10:00

So interesting. Yeah, cuz I, I've got the the cheap package on there just cause I've been playing around with it. But one of my YouTube channels we, we have the pro package from them that we use, but, that's paid for by the channel, but for myself, I've just got the little cheap one. But that's interesting. I'll keep an eye out for the next time we have a Black Friday. Come along and see if I can get in on that deal.

Scott: 1:10:23

Yeah. And they've been consistent with it. Cuz I was with Streamy Yard before and Streamy Yard is about the same price normally.

Gene: 1:10:32

Yeah. A little fewer features I think.

Scott: 1:10:34

Right. And they never do like a half off thing like Restream

Gene: 1:10:40

So they did have 30% off. Let me think how far back this would've been. I wanna say Memorial Day of last year. I think we got a 30% off deal on them

Scott: 1:10:49

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:10:50

right around there. So they do Rama occasionally, but lately it has been the full price.

Scott: 1:10:56

And there's a lot of other players coming up. I see. I see. Other similar types. Platforms coming

Gene: 1:11:02

Well, Adobe's another one. They, they've got a competitor to Restream that's coming up as well.

Scott: 1:11:08

Excellent. Yeah, I, I, I love the competition because that's gonna push features. A and it's also gonna bring the price, the cost down. Yeah.

Gene: 1:11:18

Yeah. Yeah. Cuz again, 40, 40 bucks a month or 39, whatever the hell it is you're still looking at 500 bucks a year. So this is, these are not insignificant costs for having that level, but obviously with three Stream or Streamy yard, you're getting video, you're getting video editing live editing at least, and you're getting multiple concurrent endpoints. So you're, you're going to like, I think when we do our, our show, it goes to not just YouTube, but also Twitch, Facebook and a handful of others that I don't remember. So you do get more features out of it. Obviously way more than just audio. But this is also why I like to do, if I do a pure audio recording, I usually do it on Zencaster

Scott: 1:12:05

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know the, the Zencaster recordings, cuz I've been on a number of podcasts that use Zencaster and definitely between that and Riverside fm it's just

Gene: 1:12:21

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And then Zencaster, during Covid started doing, like, their free plan got vastly expanded.

Scott: 1:12:32

Yeah, I remember that.

Gene: 1:12:34

And so, and it's still expanded, so I don't, I mean, I guess there's enough people like paying them money for the, the video features cuz basically video's the, the main feature you gotta pay for.

Scott: 1:12:48

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:12:48

but like today's recording, I've done two and a half, three hour recordings on their free plan on Zencaster.

Scott: 1:12:56

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:12:57

And it's like, holy shit, this is great. Cuz it's the same high quality. It's a, there's no cap. Like if you have free plans in most of their platforms, like, oh, you get 30 minutes. All right. Well thanks for nothing. But these guys literally allow anybody that wants to do remote interviews with podcasts to, to do it for free and in a nice ui with the ability to have each party be providing their remote audio directly to Zencaster, they take care of the mix minus they take care of all the issues that we as audio guys usually had to do with hardware or software on our end. Like they just take care of all that stuff. And all you gotta do is just download the files when you're done. In fact, you don't, I don't even do that because I've got it set up to automatically upload the files to my Dropbox. So the files are literally on my computer within about 15 minutes after the end of a recording.

Scott: 1:13:51

yeah, yeah. That's nice.

Gene: 1:13:53

It's, it's really slick. And again, I like, I don't pay for it. It's free.

Scott: 1:13:57

Yeah.

Gene: 1:13:59

Can't beat it.

Scott: 1:14:00

I'll never forget the first time I tried to figure out mixed minus.

Gene: 1:14:05

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's for a lot of people, it's and I've got like, I use the MOTU mixer and the, I don't, again, you probably don't know the backstory on this unless you were deep in the podcasting back about five years ago. But Adam and I did a Kickstarter for a, a new design of a podcasting mixer hardware for the computer where, you know, the guy who literally invented the podcasting took his requirements

Scott: 1:14:35

Mm.

Gene: 1:14:36

doing a podcast. And then I was the c e o of the company. And then we worked with a designer and engineer and the guy that did PCBs. And anyway, we built a few prototypes of this device and it was, It had a lot of features that the, up to that point, existing devices, mixers didn't have, because really mixers were being made for musicians, not for podcasters. So it was always some adaption going on. And we did the Kickstarter and as the the, the money dude, I, I had some very rigid requirements on how well we had to do in the Kickstarter before we committed to the production of any kind of units. And while we kicked off very strong in the Kickstarter, it fizzled out. And I think we had a, like around 200,000 pledged or so. And that was nowhere near, and we'd need to have at least half a million, ideally a million pledged in order to be able to order the mass production of these things. And so, product basically didn't, didn't materialize because we didn't have sufficient enough numbers in the Kickstarter. But lo and behold, about a year, maybe 18 months later road came out with their product, which was the same shape, very similar in functionality. Had a screen just like ours. I mean, it was just like, oh, how nice. They took our spec made it a little bit bigger cuz we had four channels. They, they went to, I think it's six channels, right?

Scott: 1:16:07

Yeah. Well they've got four channels natively and you can add Yeah.

Gene: 1:16:11

yeah, yeah. And so it's like they expanded on what we had, but it's like, wow, 18 months would be about right,

Scott: 1:16:17

Yeah.

Gene: 1:16:18

So I, I'm positive at the very least, there was somebody that was paying attention to our Kickstarter from Road and then they said, well, there's interest, but there wasn't enough from to make it. Maybe we should.

Scott: 1:16:30

Yeah.

Gene: 1:16:31

And it's a lot easier for a company that has other products, obviously, than a brand new startup

Scott: 1:16:35

Oh yeah,

Gene: 1:16:36

off the ground.

Scott: 1:16:37

yeah

Gene: 1:16:38

but I've been a MOTU user for like 35 years, so I'm still a big believer in those guys. There's nothing else that touches'em. It's pro audio quality products for stage and recording musicians. But complex is all held to configure.

Scott: 1:16:53

yeah.

Gene: 1:16:53

So like mine is set up with eight different mixed minus channels, so I can have a whole bunch of different sources that that can all be on and intermingled with each other. Without anybody getting any kind of feedback. But again, it's like, it's, even knowing the products for many years, I still sometimes go, wait, wait a minute. How, what the hell? This isn't working. What am I trying to do here?

Scott: 1:17:16

Yeah.

Gene: 1:17:17

So definitely get some of that. And have

Scott: 1:17:19

heard about the issues with the Roader Pro two?

Gene: 1:17:23

Yeah. Haven't really paid attention. I know there people were saying, wait for the updated firmware. What, what kind of stuff were you saying?

Scott: 1:17:31

the, the pro the, there's firmware issues, but the hardware is no good.

Gene: 1:17:37

Really?

Scott: 1:17:37

Yeah. It's I, I've, I've seen people return three of them because keypads didn't work. The, the sound pads didn't work. If you hit the sound pad, your audio would completely go off

Gene: 1:17:53

Hmm.

Scott: 1:17:55

Like, like short circuits, just just, I don't know what they put into this or

Gene: 1:18:01

controller shoes?

Scott: 1:18:02

Well, yeah. What r and d they did, but it was definitely not ready for prime time

Gene: 1:18:08

Wow. Yeah. That's not good.

Scott: 1:18:10

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of folks have just given up and they went back to their pro one

Gene: 1:18:15

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's too bad. I mean, again, that's another segment where the more competition, the better it is for everybody.

Scott: 1:18:22

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Gene: 1:18:24

Gets get more of that. And I know that there are, there's now more of a market for that because it's, it's very similar needs from both podcasters and YouTubers or, streamers.

Scott: 1:18:34

Yeah.

Gene: 1:18:35

So you, you want to have, More than two channels, but not necessarily 10. You wanna have a bunch of buttons that you can assign. There's, there's, there are more things that these products can do. And I, I think there's another one that was a task, a TX or task camera, somebody, somebody's got a, a product that starts with a tea. I think that is competing with the road one very directly, but the more of'em come out, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

Scott: 1:19:04

Yeah. Yeah,

Gene: 1:19:05

you use before you got the road?

Scott: 1:19:07

yeah, I know the, on the road one that I have, they pretty much said they're not gonna do any more updates,

Gene: 1:19:15

Mm-hmm.

Scott: 1:19:16

which is fine because it works. But when I first got it, they kept putting feature updates out and I know a couple of them, I rolled it back until they fixed it because it was more trouble than it was worth, but now it's nothing. And they're putting everything into the two, but the two is a piece of crap. So

Gene: 1:19:37

Mm-hmm. Well, hopefully they get the quality control issues in their control.

Scott: 1:19:42

Yeah.

Gene: 1:19:42

Cuz I'm sure they'll do that eventually if they haven't already, cuz they don't have a choice.

Scott: 1:19:49

And I do know the features they put into it were really more towards streaming than podcasting

Gene: 1:19:54

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and I think we're gonna have more companies that have been focused on streaming, like stream deck El Gado. Like those guys are going to add more that is also good for podcasters as they expand their product offerings. Like I have out there new stream deck plus I think it is, it's the one with the knobs

Scott: 1:20:15

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:20:16

and that comes with a built-in mixer. Which is great for streaming, but could just as easily work for podcasting as well. That essentially creates a multiple inputs and outputs that all mix down to a single channel, and you can do mix minus very easily on it. So there, there's more and more stuff that's coming out that kind of targets this studio, but not for music kind of environment,

Scott: 1:20:45

Hmm. I've, I've never used the El Gado line, but I've heard it's really good.

Gene: 1:20:50

Yeah, I would call it mid-tier. So it's, it's, you could think of it as like expensive home gear or it, it's close to, but not quite at the level of professional quality stuff. But it's also about a third of the price of the pro.

Scott: 1:21:07

right.

Gene: 1:21:08

If you wanna look at, getting switchers for video, you're looking at thousands of dollars with the El Gado products, you're looking at the hundreds of dollars

Scott: 1:21:16

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:21:17

So it's, it's significantly cheaper than like Black Magic or other alternatives out there that would be in the thousands of dollars that are more meant for pro studios.

Scott: 1:21:29

Right?

Gene: 1:21:29

But it's also not super cheap. Like their lights, I think are 169 bucks. And, you can go to Amazon and get lights of the same brightness for 29 bucks.

Scott: 1:21:40

Yeah.

Gene: 1:21:41

So you're always gonna pay a little premium going with Delgado. But on the other hand, it's high quality. It's usually Mel Metal rather than plastic housing. And it all works together. So the, the different products are meant to be used together and talked to each other.

Scott: 1:21:59

Yeah, for sure.

Gene: 1:22:00

good stuff. All right. Well, anything else you wanna bring up we didn't talk about? Because I, I feel like we've reminisced about a lot of stuff and some things we've had in common. And I think it's good to get your perspective. You've also managed to fulfill the niche of me interviewing somebody now that is a older Gen Xer as well. So I'm going down my line of different age groups I'm talking to,

Scott: 1:22:23

So technically I'm a boomer

Gene: 1:22:25

how are you a boomer? Because I, I What year were you born?

Scott: 1:22:28

64. So the,

Gene: 1:22:30

Oh, you're barely a boomer.

Scott: 1:22:31

yeah, the cutoff 6 64. So I I'm not really accepted by boomers or Geners.

Gene: 1:22:39

that's right. Go away

Scott: 1:22:40

That's right.

Gene: 1:22:42

Yeah, cuz I, I guess, people born in 65 are definitely gen Xers.

Scott: 1:22:46

Yeah. Yeah. And, and it really depends on what chart you Google. Some of'em. Some of'em have boomers stopping like in 59.

Gene: 1:22:55

Oh, really?

Scott: 1:22:56

Yeah.

Gene: 1:22:57

Yeah. That's probably technically more accurate, but I think, I guess what I've been more familiar with is like 65 being that cutoff. That's 1965 to all you kids out

Scott: 1:23:08

yeah.

Gene: 1:23:09

that's last century shit,

Scott: 1:23:11

That's right.

Gene: 1:23:12

Uhhuh, It's kinda like, I, I like seeing these old videos of, like documentaries that are colorized and audios restored from the 1930s and stuff. And and they're interviewing people that were born in the 1860s. It's fun to watch and just see the perspective that people from a hundred years ago had were well over a hundred at some point, but But yeah, it's there's, there's a whole generation that ha that was born after 2001

Scott: 1:23:42

Yep.

Gene: 1:23:43

and, and they're gonna be running things before too long.

Scott: 1:23:46

Mm-hmm.

Gene: 1:23:48

So. Scary thought,

Scott: 1:23:49

Yeah, it is

Gene: 1:23:51

for sure. Well Scott, I appreciate you being on, this was definitely fun to talk a little bit about the inside baseball or how the sausage is made stuff. And I, I think you've got a, a very interesting background here with, well, I mean, not so interesting on the IT side cuz everybody's doing that, but more interesting on the comedy stuff. And it's cool that you've got this business concept to actually help people get podcasting done right, rather than just struggling through it on their own.

Scott: 1:24:20

Right, right. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I really really appreciate it. And I'm gonna check out this podcasting 2.0 thing.

Gene: 1:24:28

I think you need to dig into it and, and kinda make sure that you're, you're following those two point ohand for any of anybody you work with because it's really just not only a matter of time until it becomes a standard, but also getting a leg up. Like, I know my podcasts uh, the one before this one that I did was one of the first ones that had the full transcripts in it and people were like, how'd you do this? This is magic. It's like, well, as long as you are using one of the apps that supports it, which now is virtually all apps, it used to be a handful of maybe five, five or six apps then you just, people are surprised at things that they didn't realize a podcast could do and having fully searchable texts where you can just type in a topic. And this is great for like political podcasts cuz you know, you're covering multiple issues. You, you punch in, well, I wanna only know about what name your election that you want, like Arizona or something. Then you go directly to that spot so you don't have to listen to the rest of the show. You could go to the part that you're actually interested in. And then the multiple images for enclosures is really cool too because then you, you can have, like, what I used to do is the things that I'm describing in the podcast, I would actually have the image of in the podcast player. So you, it wasn't quite videos that would be very big download sides if, if the videos were enclosed. But just being able to see the reference image of what, what the person's talking about is.

Scott: 1:26:02

Yeah. Yeah. I, I really like that idea. I'm definitely gonna dig into that.

Gene: 1:26:06

Yeah. Well, cool. I I wish you luck and stay in touch.

Scott: 1:26:11

Yeah. Thanks a lot, Gene.

Gene: 1:26:13

Take care, Scott.