This week we’re talking about the Best Podcasts for Event Planners & Meeting Planners! Our special guests include Graham Wheeler of SocialTables podcast, John Federico (aka GadgetBoy) of the EventTech podcast, Mike McAllen of Meetings podcast and Meetings podcast news, and a familiar face on the show, Brandt Krueger of GatherGeeks (BizBash). What a lineup! Right? These #EventIcons of Podcasting are here to discuss how they got started with their podcasts, and to share their tips and tricks with any of you who are interested in starting a podcast of your own. In this episode we discuss some of the best tech to use, as well as some things to avoid when you are getting started. You don’t want to miss this! Tune in, take notes, and bring your questions!
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| Will : | Hey everyone. It’s Will Curran from Endless Entertainment, and… |
| Laura : | Laura Lopez with Social Tables. |
| Will : | We’re back for another exciting episode of #eventicons. This week, we’re broadcasting live from most amazing marketing conference you could ever go to InBound Hubspot’s Marketing Conference. We are broadcasting live from there, and we have an amazing topic, quite on the topic of inbound marketing and a big part of that strategy. We’re talking about podcasts of the events industry. I’m going to take these off right now so you guys can all see my eyes. |
| Before we jump into our guests, I want to take a second and pause. I want you guys all to take out your cellphones and pull up the Twitter app, and I want you to share this will all of your friends on Twitter right now, event-icons.com using #eventicons. All throughout this show, our amazing live tweeter, Alex Plaxon, is going to be tweeting the entire show. You want to join him in sending your tweets and your questions on Twitter. Throughout the entire show, I’m sharing this with everyone because the bigger the audience we get in today the more amazing this show is going to happen. I promise you. | |
| Along with that as well, this is not your typical Webinar or podcast where we’re just going to be interviewing one on one with people, but instead we have multiple guests and also the chance that we’re doing this 100% live, so much that there’s no editing or anything involved, which is sometimes very scary. When we are going through our guests, you actually get the chance to ask them questions, so just hop on Twitter using #eventicons or if you’re watching the go to web and are live right now, over in the chat panel or the questions panel you can actually enter in all of your questions for the guests there, and we’re going to answer them live for you right now. | |
| That’s what this show is all about. Your chance to ask the events industry icons your questions. We’re going to jump right on in. | |
| I have to introduce these guys because they’re just fantastic. These are some of my closest friends in the events industry. We’ll start off Mr. John Federico. John is known on Twitter as gadgetboy, is that correct? | |
| John: | I’m gadgetboy, yes. |
| Will : | Your specialty is all about event tech, is that right? |
| John: | Yes. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Event Hero and I produce the Event Tech podcast. |
| Will : | John’s really fantastic at basically putting together amazing pod stories, interviewing all the latest event tech, so whether you’re at IMAX or some other convention, this guy’s met them all. He knows what they do. Dives deep in their softwares. Their physical hardwares. All the really cool event tech that’s going on, so if you want to know what’s going on at Event Tech, John’s your man right here. John, thank you so much for being on the show. |
| John: | Thanks for having me. |
| Will : | Mr. Brandt Krueger. Brandt is now a third, fourth time guest? Third time guest? |
| Brandt: | I think three. I think it’s three. |
| Will : | Three time guest. Brandt hosts GatherGeeks. GatherGeeks is an awesome podcast produced by BizBash, and you’ve also produced quite a bit of other podcasts for the events industry. Brandt is a bad ass of podcasting. We were talking tech a little bit ago about what cool apps you need to be using when podcasting and everything like that. Brandt is definitely the man when it comes to podcasting for sure, and GatherGeeks is definitely a greet resource for getting a lot of really awesome topics together because it is curated by BizBash. You get amazing guests literally day in and day out and everything like that. Do you think I kind of hit it on a good …? |
| Brandt: | Pretty much sums it up. |
| Will : | Sums it up. Yeah. The topics really, really awesome, so definitely check out GatherGeeks and thank you Brandt for joining us today. |
| Brandt: | My pleasure. |
| Will : | Awesome. Now, one of my favorite friends. My very tall fellow. |
| Mike: | My tall fellow. Nice. |
| Will : | Mike McAllan. Mike is a host of Meetings podcast and Meetings podcast news. Mike actually interviewed my on his podcast and that’s how we got formally introduced. We clicked very well because we are formally AV guys. I guess I’m still an AV guy, formally AV guy. Recovering AV guy I should say. Mike is fantastic. Meetings podcast is a great podcast. If you want to know what’s going on in the[inaudible 00:04:26] industry because you publish it daily now, is that right? |
| Mike: | Yeah. It’s daily. |
| Will : | Daily, so if you want to know what articles are coming out, what’s going on in the news today, all you have to do is subscribe to Mike’s podcast and it’s short too. It’s like 15 minutes long. It’s really short. |
| Mike: | It’s five to ten minutes, Will. |
| Will : | Five to ten minutes. Even shorter, so it means great for listening on the road over to work and getting all the articles really quick and you don’t have to read the articles, which ADA person like me, it’s just absolutely amazing. Thank you Mike for joining us today. |
| Mike: | Thank you, Will, for having me today. |
| Will : | Thank you. Last but not least, actually a newcomer to the Event Icon show. We are so excited. His first show ever, Graham Wheeler. Graham is the host of Social Tables podcast. As you guys know, Laura is an amazing person over at Social Tables, so we had to get the Social Tables podcast on here. These guys are doing really in depth interviews. They’re good. They’re amazing, so I like to say it because I was on the first episode, so I like to say that’s the best episode. |
| Graham: | Okay. Okay. |
| Will : | No. They’re all really, really good. |
| Graham: | Had to go there. |
| Will : | Really in depth interviews with icons of the events industry, new technologies,[inaudible 00:05:38]. Then, sometimes you guys do multiple people guests where you’re focusing on different topics, like the layouts and diagrams and things like that, you guys are doing for Social Tables, is that right? |
| Graham: | Oh, yeah. All that. You really covered a big scope of it actually, and having been on the first episode, I’m going to assume you listen to more than just your episode.[crosstalk 00:05:57] turn of events podcast. |
| Will : | Yeah. That’s right. The turn of events podcast. I’m sorry about that. Yeah. Absolutely awesome podcast, and one of the great things too, you guys started up your podcast about less than a year ago, right? |
| Graham: | Yeah. Well under a year ago, I think at this point[crosstalk 00:06:15] |
| Will : | It’s very recent so it’d be really interesting to hear your perspective being like the new kid on the block starting up your guys first podcast, so it’ll be really exciting to hear. |
| Those are our amazing guests, so we’re talking podcast of the events industry. I’m really excited to have you guys all here. Of course, me and Laura, I think we’re going to jump in on a couple of questions, too, since we host obviously Event Icons as well, so this will be really exciting. If you love listening and listening to the events industry, this is going to be a great episode for you. | |
| I’m going to let Laura kick it off for the first question though. | |
| Laura : | Awesome. We start every episode with the same question, which is what got you into the events industry, so John, we’ll start with you. What got you in the events biz? |
| John: | You know, I don’t like the layout here because I get picked first for everything. Back in 99-2000, I was the executive director for a non-profit, for free agents, for independent professionals. I produced a conference called the Free Agent Forum, which was fun, and I started that in 2000-2001 in New York City. Not the best time to start a conference series, but that was how I got my start there. A number of years later, there were a number of challenges that a knew existed throughout that production process, and when we started our company five years ago, we decided, let’s just pick some of the biggest challenges and try and solve them. We’ve been doing now for five years now. |
| Will : | Just so people can I guess be clear too, so what ended up getting you started at Event Tech podcast, too? |
| John: | That’s a great question. Sorry. I’m an AV geek. I was, not like you guys who are professional AV geeks. I was the AV geek in high school and college, and I played in band and the whole thing. When podcasting hit the scene in late 2004, whatever it is, 2005, I jumped in. I had a very popular show in marketing technology for a while. Then, my co-hosts all got different jobs, and it was just too hard to schedule, so we let it go, unfortunately. |
| There weren’t too many podcasts around event tech, and the tech piece is a big interest of mine, events of course, but I’m half geek on my mother’s side, so I like to get involved in the tech stuff. Nobody was doing it, and I was like, “This is great,” so I said, “Why not?” We can get in there and talk specifically about the issues related to event technology that planners face everyday, whether you are an experienced planner or you’re a noob because let’s face it, a lot of planners are scared. You cannot get them to give up their clipboards or their Microsoft Excel. Talking about new technologies, they get freaked out, so we like to break it down, make it really simple so they understand what the tech does, when you should select it, how does it work, what’s it like to work with that company, do you need to have a PHD in computer science or can anyone do it, that sort of thing. | |
| Laura : | Perfect. Mike, what about you? What got you into the events industry and then the second question is what got you into your podcast? |
| Mike: | I feel into the events business, I was a fireman for a long time. I broke my leg. My roommate at the time in San Francisco, I had shattered my leg and got it fixed and I was living in the city with all these girls in this apartment, which was great. I wasn’t dating any of them. They were just my roommates, and I had broken my leg. I got it fixed. I was there, my roommate said, “Do you have a passport?” She was working for a production company and I flew off to Korea, and that’s how it started. |
| I was a production assistant and worked my way up in a company called Envisioned Communications. They did giant shows like, Oracle World and I moved into being the resource manager there, where I staffed all the show, ran the production department, did all the proposals, videos. I really was out looking for resources all the time, which and in turn, I decided to start my own company, which I did. | |
| [Grashakavitz 00:10:31] Media and that was 14 years ago. I think I started in 2006 or something. A lot time ago before[crosstalk 00:10:39]. Yeah. No longer than that. Was it 2006? Yeah. Ten years ago. I’m not good at math. Another thing I’m not good at. | |
| The podcast was started eight years ago, and it was just to meet people. I did for, it was the blog on Grashakavitz Media sight, and it was just to meet people. If I wanted to meet one of you guys, Brandt Krueger, I just instead of just doing a cold call, I would call you up and say, “I’d like to interview you on the show.” It was a great way to get clients back then, and then it evolved into what it is now, which I don’t do any interviews. I’m going to start them back up in January. That’s how evolved. Did I answer the question correctly, Laura? | |
| Laura : | Of course, yes. |
| Mike: | Thank you. |
| Laura : | You passed. |
| Graham: | Correct. That was a correct answer. |
| Mike: | Thank you guys. |
| Laura : | McAllan out. Just kidding. Graham, what about you? What got you in the events industry and tell us about the inspiration behind Turn of Events? |
| Graham: | Yeah, so I can keep it pretty short and sweet. My previous two jobs, one was much more on the event tech side of things, but I was on the sales side of things. The product itself really, really interested me. It was pretty much run of the mill social media marketing platform, but straight out of college, it looked nice and shiny, and I was wide eyed. Then, I moved to a much more corporate setting where I was actually doing infrastructure research and a little bit of IT work. I wanted to almost get a little hybrid of that sort of professional work going. I can confidently say that angellist.com kind of saved my career, and showed me what Social Tables was all about. |
| If you’ve never been to a party, and you want to compare it to anything else, you’ve never been to a Social Tables interview process because it is greatest thing on earth. A question that we openly ask is, “What makes you weird,” and as soon as I heard that, I knew that I wanted to work at Social Tables and also be a part of the hospitality industry. Lot of little baby steps that got me here and as far as Turn of Events and the Social Tables podcast goes, it just seemed like an easy way. Simple production to get our word out. Get the Social Tables brand out the door in a new medium that we had never really tackled before. It didn’t cost us any money outside of a mic that we still use for off and on projects to this day. It’s just a great way to connect and in this industry it’s all about that networking. Yeah. That’s what I got. | |
| I want to make sure correct as well. | |
| Laura : | I think so. |
| Graham: | Got a streak going. |
| John: | Now you have to tell us what makes you weird. |
| Graham: | Oh boy. I’m give you the same answer I gave in my interview. I have seen every episode of Gilmore Girls. |
| Mike: | That’s weird. |
| Graham: | Then I was like, “Oh man. I kind of like Gilmore Girls,” and now I’m like a Gilmore Girls champion. |
| Will : | Except for the redo. |
| Graham: | Very much so. Unabashingly, so. That’s what makes me weird. |
| Will : | Awesome. |
| Laura : | Good answer. Last by not least, Brandt. What got you in the event industry and what was the inspiration behind GatherGeeks? |
| Brandt: | The last time I answered this question, was probably on the Social Tables podcast and I gave about a half an hour answer as far as how I got into the industry, so if you want the detailed version of how I got into the industry, go back and listen to that episode. I’ll go and give you the shorter version. I went back and listened to it later. I was like, “Oh man was I rambling.”[crosstalk 00:14:58] |
| Basically, I got out of school with a degree in Technical Theaters, so light, sound, building sets, and things like that, and worked for a little while for a rental lighting house. We sold lights and I got to play with some of the very first moving lights that were out there and programmed those on big hunky consoles. Shortly after I left there, I hooked up with this old hippie rock and roll guy who was a good chunk of his events were corporate events. He was being hired by a production company out of Minneapolis, and basically on one of the events that he first allowed me to go out on my own, I went out for beers with the owners of that production company, and I wound up getting hired by them the next week. | |
| Started working for a production company there. Did that for about 18 years, and just about two, two and a half years ago, went out on my own and started my own company doing event technology consulting. | |
| On the podcast, I got into podcast probably nine years ago at this point, and my older daughter had just been born and I found it a really easy way to stay up on the news. Technology news and things like that, and just really loved the format. Fell in love with the format. I still listen to a lot of podcast, probably 15 or 16 a week on one and a half to two speed, depending on the podcast and how fast they talk in it. Just absolutely loved the format and so I really wanted to for a long time, do an event industry podcast. | |
| The opportunity finally came up about two years ago, as well, where we did the first one I was one, which was Event Alley, with Lindsey Rosenthal and Tahira Endean. All of those still exist. It was a weekly video podcast. They’re still out on Youtube. I actually saved the URL, so it’s eventalley.com. It will forward you to the Youtube channel because there’s a lot of good interviews in there. It was years worth of weekly interviews that we did with the event industry. | |
| Then, after that, you know kind of petered out. I stated to work on the GatherGeeks podcast with BizBash, and the CEO David Adler over there, co-host Audrey Gallien, and we’ve had a great time doing that one now for about a year and a half. | |
| Similar reasons to a lot of the ones that have been given. It gives me an opportunity to meet more and more wonderful people in this industry ever single year. There’s so many people out there that I’ve met and so many people out there that I haven’t meet that are doing fantastic things in this industry, so I just eat it up. I love it. | |
| Will : | I think the one interesting thing that you guys all came up with, well, maybe I should ask that question to Laura, then I’ll ask my question, I think. |
| Laura, how did you get involved because I don’t think anyone’s ever mentioned, we’ve talked about this on the show. What go you involved with Event Icons and podcasting? | |
| Laura : | The way that I got into Event Icons was I was a guest, I think I was a two time guest. Originally, I had, I cannot even remember the first time I was on, but I had so much fun and Will was going out of town and asked me to be the guest. What? |
| Will : | I was in the Panama Jungle. That’s why I cannot do the podcast. |
| Laura : | Oh, yeah. You were in the jungle in Panama. I think the WiFi was a little spotty. You weren’t sure if you could run that show, so bare in mind, I had only done the one episode, and I logged on every other week just as a bystander. You entrusted me to run the entire show by myself, which could have been a total disaster, but it was actually a lot of fun. The two folks who were on the show with me, we talked about content and marketing and events. Bizabo and Etouch is still stay in touch with those folks. It went really well and then, as we all know in the event industry, we get super busy, so of course, we got super busy. Show dropped down from weekly to, I think it was monthly. |
| Then, Sean Holiday, who’s one of the co-founders of CroudMix, and Will, we all, I think I sent you all a message or a Twitter DM, I forget what it was, and said, “Hey. You know what I miss? I really miss Event Icons. Let’s bring that back.” Will signed us up to be co-hosts, so I’m on the show almost every single week. That’s how I got back in cahoots with Event Icons. | |
| When it comes to the podcast, Turn of Events, it helps that I sit right next to Graham. He’s my best buddy and so I was like, “Oh. You’re doing a podcast. I want to be on a podcast.” I don’t know [crosstalk 00:19:58] | |
| Graham: | Hold on. Hold on. That is not … it’s the other way around. Laura, for some reason it was my idea and I was making Laura do the first episode by herself with Will. Then, I was like, “I want to be on a podcast.” Then it was like gruesome twosome. Just paired up and that was it. |
| Will : | Never turned back since then. |
| Laura : | Never turned back. Never turned back. Will, I have a question for you. Where was inspiration for Event Icons? |
| Will : | I think we did a whole episode on this too, so if you want to five or six episodes back, a couple weeks where we finally did a reverse interview where Sean interviewed me. Did the whole thing, so I’ll keep this one brief. |
| Essentially, it was similar to Mike that I wanted to meet awesome event professionals and I wanted to experiment with the [Blab 00:20:56] platform actually. It was a selfish desire to play around with the new technology that I thought was going to blow up and literally, it did blow up. Not in a good way. Basically, we started doing it and realized I had so much fun doing it because I used to host an internet radio station when I was a kid. I got back to those days where technology meets the entertainment aspect, and I was just having so much fun meeting so many different people so we knew, like you said, we had to keep it going. Then, we moved to GoTo[inaudible 00:21:23] obviously, and it’s been great ever since. Definitely look up that episode for the full story. | |
| I have a question for all you guys. That kind of sparked my mind it that, I never realized this, but a lot of times when you create a podcast, everyone here does something other than run a podcast. You know you’re not, like John’s not full-time podcaster. Mike’s not a full-time podcaster. We all do our own thing on top of what we do, so my question to you guys is, what is your … because there’s probably a lot of people out there listening right now like, “I want to start a podcast.” What would be your recommendation to those people who run a company or the marketing person, or maybe they love creating content, whatever it may be, but they want to start a podcast of their own. What would be your recommendation to them? We’ll start it off, so Graham, you’re the green thumb in the room, so you obviously just got involved in it, what would be your experience and thoughts on that? | |
| Graham: | I can start by saying what not to do and this was months and months ago. We had just moved in to this beautiful new office in the middle of downtown DC, and we were throwing things to the wall and seeing what sticks. We started out with this idea of pretty large, big ideas with big production behind each episode and we quickly realized that was not even remotely in the cards, again for a bunch of reasons. |
| Then a time reason. Like you said, we have different jobs, but the key to our success in the long run was, Laura and I, we would always just stress simplicity. If you really can find a pocket of time in which you can dedicate an hour or two a week to something like getting a podcast off the ground, and you have a limited budget to a degree, it literally will not happen if you don’t keep it simple. Whether that be just developing a show structure that doesn’t ask too much of you, developing and editing frame work that doesn’t make you have to get crazy educated and just get into like a wormhole of what you can do outside of garage band, really. I just was always a big fan of keeping it simple. Keeping the conversation light, keeping it lively, keeping it humorous, so that when you do it week after week after week, it never becomes a chore. It’s always fun. It’s always different. That would be my big one two. | |
| Will : | I love how you offer the anti-advice. What not to do as well. I think we’ve seen that on our end too. When it gets really complex, that’s when crazy things start to happen, too. We talk about maybe sneak peak maybe adding some theme music to the icons and maybe we’ll take your advice and keep it simple. |
| Mike, what about you? What would be your suggestion for someone looking to start the podcast? | |
| Mike: | I think having a clear vision on what they want to do. It is a time suck and that’s a good thing too because it could be fun. It could be very creative. I’ve tried to vary my crazy over the years. I think having, what do they call it, something calendar, contact calendar of what you’re going to try and do. Do that. Also, if you can batch things, it’s fantastic if you can do more than one interview because you know how that gets if you’re doing a weekly show and you got to go to another one and you want to go on vacation or something. You got to start thinking about your calendar. Don’t worry about the tech part of it, I don’t think really. I think that can be overcome pretty quickly. That’s pretty much it I think. |
| Will : | Awesome. Fantastic. Brandt, what about you? What’d be your feedback? |
| Brandt: | I think most people that are getting into it, are getting into from a place of passion. They’re passionate about the topic, but then there are these secondary motives of marketing. Whether it’s marketing and event or marketing your company or maybe marketing yourself because it’s your podcast and you want to get sponsorship and actually make money and become a podcaster, in giant air quotes, and make money doing it. |
| There’s those secondary reasons but you’re always starting with that passionate thing, so what unfortunately happens for a lot of people is they’ll bang out the list like Mike was talking about, the list of all the episodes they want to do. They’ll burn through the first 15 episodes of fantastic content that they’ve always wanted to do in the first 15 episodes. | |
| What I’ve recommended to a couple people that have come to me and say that I’m thinking about doing a podcast, is do that list and then you’ve got your first tier and your second tier topics and your third topics of “maybe that’s not my favorite idea, but I need more ideas,” and then jumble them up so that you’re doing one of your favorite episodes you ever wanted to do of all time and then one of the ones you’re less excited about. | |
| Then, keep some of those really excited topics in reserve so that if you ever bump up against a month or a week where somebody bails or your really just not feeling it because you’re busy and you just got back from a conference and you took the red eye last night, you just don’t want to do it, do then one of those topics that you’ve always really wanted to do. That’ll help keep the spice in your podcast relationship. | |
| Will : | I love it. That definitely happened with Event Icons. We were just like, “We want to get everyone in” because it’s all about gaming for that[inaudible 00:26:46]. You just name off all the people, you just do Twitter search, and all the people we wanted to meet. All you guys. Then you get to the point where your like, “Oh. We exhausted the whole list,” so yeah, we wish we had thought very far in advance about, “Man, we’re going to have to do 52 episodes of this a year,” and we’re coming close to the one year anniversary of this show like what are we going to do when we hit 52. How are we going to produce another 52 as well? I love that advice. |
| All right. John, last but not least, what’s your feedback? | |
| John: | Oh goodness. Keep it simple. When we did our first show, it was panel style. That was a problem right away. Everyone was in my home studio, so we basically just cracked open a bottle of wine, or two, or three and did the show. I was so in the weeds, that I was multi-track recording every microphone and editing everything, it just got crazy. The reality of it is, you don’t need it. There comes a point where your audio quality is good enough. Make sure you find that level because nobody wants to listen to junk audio because there has to be a balance between content and recording quality. Then, just keep it simple, just like Graham said. |
| I’m at the point now where, I record the show using Zoom, so I record video and audio. I’ll edit my video file and then rather than edit the audio file, I just strip out the audio file. Boom. Now, I’ve got an audio file, and I’ve just completed basically two files in one step. This is just one example. Anything you do to keep it simple, especially if you go back to your original question, which is, if you do other things, this isn’t your thing and you have to maximize your time, definitely figure out how to have very simple workflows. | |
| Well, ideally you could hire someone to do that, but I’m a nerd like that and I like to do my own, so I don’t hire people. With that said, if you have a show that has guests, get someone to do scheduling. I have a VA I work with and she does all of my scheduling, which is awesome when I go to conferences. We were just at IMAX and she was just setting them up for me. I was just meeting people and pulling out microphones and recording. If you can get someone to do that, that’s really helpful. | |
| Will : | Awesome. I love having[inaudible 00:29:06]. I think Tara’s our schedule master. We meet every week to talk about what’s coming up and everything like that. Tara’s the one who’s like, “Okay. I’ll go get that person. Okay. I’ll make sure they’re here. Hey. What’s going on this week? We have a gap here.” I definitely agree with that advice. |
| Laura : | Awesome. I have[crosstalk 00:29:25]. Go ahead. |
| Brandt: | I just want to pile on a little bit, which might even fade into where you’re wanting to go next. One or all of us touched on keeping it simple to start with and not necessarily worrying as much about the production quality and things like that. I think when you’re ready to go to that next step and start slowly investing in equipment and things like that, the number one thing that I then usually go for is the microphone, so that you do start to get that nicer audio quality because we’re more forgiving of things like picture quality and things like that. When it’s difficult to hear and understand, and especially those of us that are one one point five speed or two speed, it gets difficult sometimes if it’s a really echoy room or something like that. “Oh man. I got to slow it down and listen to it.” |
| I would say when you’re ready to take that next step and you’re ready to start slowly investing in equipment as budget and time allows, I think the first thing you start going into then is audio quality. | |
| Laura : | Awesome. Just to note here. John and Brandt, you guys have a sick set up. You have your little filter. Your mic. Can you just share with our guests today what kind of equipment do you have and maybe a suggestion? Actually, that may be a good question for Graham actually. Mike, I’m sure you probably have a really amazing set up as well, but what should beginners … what are you using and what is recommended for a beginner podcaster? |
| John: | I would say forget about what I’m using. Don’t even think about what I’m using. This is, I guess, a similar version of what Will has. This is an Audio Technica AT2005USB, anyway you can find one. It’s one of the best selling ones ever. You can plug headphones into the bottom, so you can monitor what’s going on. It works as a USB mic, so you plug it right into your machine. If you ever need to pick a step up your game and use it with a mixer, it also has an XLR connector, which is just a microphone connector. That’s all it is. I think this costs now maybe $50. You want to do anything, get one of these and a decent set of headphones and you’re ready to go. You can use multiple USB mics now if you have a Mac. I don’t know about a PC. If you needed to double up every so often to do one or two, this is all you need. Don’t go crazy. |
| Laura : | Brandt, what about you? Should we not worry about your setup either? |
| Brandt: | I agree whole heartedly. Yes. This is the setup that I’ve put together over the course of almost four years now. I’ve been putting it together piece by piece because I want to and because that audio quality is very important to me personally. Again, that’s not where you start. You work your way into that as you go. I’m running a Heil PR40, which is basically a studio microphone. It’s very good at noise canceling. I’ve got another Heil, I forget which model it is, I use for when I’m out and about. It’s amazing how much those microphones will cancel out a noisy show floor or something along those lines. Will, you got to use one of them when you broadcasted live from IMAX and you could not hear that show floor. |
| Actually, the one that you’ve got too, so I want to get to yours as well. Has a really good noise canceling, so when you’re in those noisier environments it’s not picking it up. | |
| Then, I run mine, it’s a regular microphone, it’s not a USB microphone because it’s a standard broadcast microphone. It goes into, I just got a Barenger USB mixer, that that goes USB into my back. | |
| Will : | I want to jump in because I’m the AV guy. I’m super nerdy about this stuff. This is what John recommended, the ATR, the ATR2100, that’s this one. It’s the number one selling mic on Amazon and this is what I used on the show floor with your mic, and right now there’s a couple of people, I’m lucky enough to be in a quiet room at the convention, but I was prepared to be in the hallway or being on show floor and I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. |
| I think having a good, specifically like a Cardioid microphone it’s called, I believe or a dynamic microphone[crosstalk 00:33:56]. I’m a horrible AV guy.[inaudible 00:34:00] and I listened to recordings of it. It just makes all the difference. I had the blue Yeti before that. I just got Heil PR40 as well, and I had the blue Yeti, and that worked out really, really well. | |
| One of the issues I had is, it just picked a lot of ambient noise in my home office, which obviously when I have construction and things like that, aren’t the best. This thing is my travel mic, so when I’m on shows and things like that, I bring this with me now. | |
| Brandt: | For those that aren’t watching, Will’s in a pretty good sized meeting room, ballroom in a convention center, and normally that would be very echoy on a lot of mics. You would just get that echoy room noise. Sorry, John. |
| John: | No. I would just say, if there’s any geek stuff you need to take away from this, Dynamic microphone. Not condenser mic. Dynamic not condenser. Condenser is designed to pick up ambient sound, whereas dynamic mics like this one are designed to work based on proximity. You can use them on conference, on exhibit hall floors. Any geek thing you want to take away, it’s dynamic not condenser. |
| Will : | I’m glad you guys answered this question[crosstalk 00:35:09] |
| Graham: | I was just going to say, just consistent theme. I think what you’re hearing is like tying into the earlier question, is like understand that there’s going to be somewhat of a sunk cost in early podcasting. It sounds like mic across the board. That is the initial investment. You kind of get by the rest of the way. That’s all I was going to say. |
| Will : | Boom. He drops the mic. No pun intended. I’m glad you guys mentioned the trade show thing by the way because that was one of my questions is, a lot of people who are probably tuning in maybe they have an event and they want to have a podcast to promote the event. Maybe they want to record people at the events. Do you guys have any recommendations, I guess Mike, because you obviously come from an AV background as well, what would you recommend for if someone maybe wanted to record some of their sessions, like the general sessions, some breakout rooms? How would someone do that? Should they just stick a laptop in the corner? What are your recommendations? |
| Mike: | Well, first I wanted to talk about my own mic as well before we got into that because no one asked me, which I think is very rude. I’m not sure why I was eliminated from that. I am not an AV guy. I own a production company. I’ve always been in the creative aspect of it. The audio visual stuff is never been my interest at all. Though I know a little bit to be dangerous. |
| I have an Audio Technica Eliminator 7000, which is an awesome microphone. I don’t know if you guys have ever heard about it. | |
| Will : | No. |
| Mike: | No. That’s not true. I don’t have that. I have this really expensive microphone. I have a little recording studio next to me and I’ve used it forever and it’s really great. I’ve used this also and to my untrained ear I cannot really tell the difference and that’s me because maybe my hearing’s bad or whatever. One thing I want to tell you too, there’s a show, a podcast called the Podcast Engineering School by Chris Curran, and you guys can go check that out too. |
| Will : | Spelled like Curran, like my name. |
| Mike: | Yes. Chris Curran and he’s a great guy, but he has a whole show about this. If you want to really nerd out on finding out about this stuff, that’s what he does. He goes to podcasters and talks to them about … have you been on that show, John? |
| John: | I haven’t actually. |
| Mike: | You know Chris Curran don’t you? |
| John: | Yeah. |
| Mike: | On sight, there’s all kinds of recorders that you can plug in. I usually just get lined into the soundboard. Is that the question? That’s what I do[inaudible 00:37:33] to get the audio. I wanted to say that, I’ve had this little [aderall 00:37:38], I think its a Bar9. I’ve had this for since I’ve started doing this and it works fantastic for me, but I like the sounds of people around when I’m interviewing people at a conference. Again, I’m not a giant nerdo guy, but this thing is fantastic. I don’t think they make them anymore, so it’s probably not a good … |
| Will : | Awesome. |
| Laura : | Cool. |
| Will : | [Aderall 00:38:03] recorder essentially. |
| Mike: | Yeah. Little recorder. It’s fantastic though. |
| Laura : | Hey everybody who is still logged on. Thanks for staying logged on on today’s show. This show is all about you, so if you have a question for our panel don’t be shy. Feel free to ask, I don’t know which side it will be on for you, but use the questions panel and ask your deep dark burning questions you have about podcasts to our panel. I trust that they can answer them, so be sure to do that. |
| My next question, and this is probably good for anybody who’s not as familiar with- | |
| Will : | Oh wait. We have a question from the audience. For those who don’t know, Alex is actually at Mound with me, hence why he’s here. This isn’t a hologram. Alex is[inaudible 00:38:58] live Tweeting and I think you have a question from a live tweeting audience. |
| Alex: | Yeah, but it’s my question. How did you all come up with the names of your podcast? |
| Will : | That’s a good question. Let’s start off with Mr. Mike. |
| Mike: | My podcast is about meetings, so we called it the Meetings podcast. |
| Graham: | I don’t follow. I don’t get it. |
| Will : | Keep it simple. |
| Mike: | Well, I’ll talk to you later about it. |
| Will : | Okay. Okay. Graham, what about you? |
| Graham: | We have a co-worker in the office actually, so if Laura sits right next to me she says, Laura sits right across from this gentleman, David [Bodameir 00:39:50], and he’s been know for creating these meetings called HeadStorms lately, where much like I’ve said before, normally for like blog headlines or something, you just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks and we just laugh a lot. In this case, we were just brainstorming ideas, again this is months and months ago, and he actually I think, Laura tell me I’m wrong, I think he came up with Turn of Events and I just remembered we had a little Google doc … was it you? |
| Laura : | It was definitely me. Yeah because I literally Googled. We were trying to find something that had the word social and tables in it, but that wasn’t the SocilTables podcast. All of the table idioms were just awful. They were bad. Social and tables, but we looked up idioms for events, but they were also not very good. We thought like, “Turn of Events,” which sometimes denotes something bad but it can also denote something exciting is going to happen. “In an exciting turn of events” |
| Graham: | We were hoping for the latter. Exciting not like… |
| Will : | What about you, John? |
| John: | SCO. It’s all about SCO. GatherGeeks I love because it’s clever and I’m a recovering[inaudible 00:41:11] guy and so I love that. GatherGeeks, like what does that mean and so even though I love it because I know what it is, you have to build a brand around that. For me, it was all about the SCO. Even since then I even[inaudible 00:41:25] as the Event Tech podcast #eventtech all one word because why not. Somebody wants to share your episode and you’ve already included the hashtag for them. You’ve made it easy. They don’t have to remember to do it. It’s all about SCO and social. |
| Mike: | Why are you attacking Brandt about this? |
| John: | No. I’m attacking Brandt. I love GatherGeeks but Brandt and[inaudible 00:41:50], they have the platform to build that brand. Not everyone can starting out. |
| Mike: | That’s true. |
| Laura : | That’s very true. |
| Mike: | Good recovery on that one. |
| John: | No. It’s true. You know what, I guess I should have been obvious, because we’re all a bunch of smart people here, but I should’ve said that. When you got a platform like BizBash, you can build a brand like that. If you’re just a little ole guy like me sitting in his home office, building a brand is a lot harder, so you go with what works in terms of search and social. |
| Laura : | Awesome. Brandt do you know how they came up with GatherGeeks? Was that before you joined the fold? |
| Mike: | Was Fred’s idea. |
| Brandt: | No. Actually, what’s funny is that I have absolutely nothing to do with the naming of the two shows that I’ve been on. I think David Adler came up with the name, and they did really build it as its own entity and its own brand. The full name of it is GatherGeeks A Podcast By BizBash, so I think they’re definitely looking at it from a branding standpoint, but to John’s point, I did name my company Event Technology Consulting because that’s what I do. |
| Laura : | Very straightforward. |
| Brandt: | It wasn’t some kind of spartech or something along those lines. I wanted to name it what it was. Was surprised the domain name was still available. |
| Laura : | Spartech. |
| Mike: | I’m looking up spartch.com right now. |
| Brandt: | Wait, is that the[inaudible 00:43:21]? |
| Will : | I don’t think I’ve ever answered this question for Event Icons, so we came up with Event Icons because we wanted to interview icons of the events industry. The reason we say #eventicon as a show is similar to John. We wanted to make it so, everyone knew what the hashtag was, knew how to share it, and I’m a big proponent of when people name their events, that they should use the hashtag everywhere because everyone will ask the question, “What hashtag should we use?” Might as well just include it in the name call it #eventicons. |
| Laura : | Perfect. |
| Brandt: | It’s spelled H-A-S-H-T-A-G, I’m |
| Graham: | Got it. |
| Laura : | Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. This next question for all of the event profs who are logged on right now watching today’s show, why should they even listen to podcasts, especially those in the events industry? Why is it a useful medium to them? Why is it unique aside from reading a blog or consuming any other content in our industry? Let’s start with Brandt. |
| Brandt: | I think it’s a very unique medium because you can do it while you’re doing other things. You cannot do that with a book and you cannot do that with a blog and you cannot do that with so many other ways of consuming the information. That’s, again, why I got into podcast was because now I had to hold a baby in my hands and be quiet and bounce up and down. I was still able to consume. I’ve become almost entirely an audio consumer of information, so I listen to audible for my books and I get almost all of my news on technology and a lot of the world on podcast. I think that’s what makes it unique, is that it’s something you can do while you’re driving to work, on your lunch hour, while you’re doing something else, kind of like how the radio used to be for a long time in most peoples houses before TV overtook it. The radio just was always on and you weren’t necessarily listening 100% because you were doing other things, but you took out of it what you took out of it. |
| Laura : | Awesome. Graham, what do you think event planners and professionals should listen to your podcast or just in general? |
| Graham: | Well, I just think it’s, I know that I am hardwired. I’ve been hardwired as a kid to watch television. There’s something about it, the Saturday morning cartoons, what have you, and when I was introduced to podcast it triggered that again in me, but as like a younger working adult, and it’s just storytelling. It’s human to want to listen to other peoples stories, whether they be humorous, satirical, based on facts, news, as Brandt was saying, obviously mobile is the given. It’s obviously out there for you whenever and wherever. It’s just a human medium. It’s just storytelling for your ears. That’s how I view it. |
| Laura : | Mike, what about you? |
| Mike: | I agree with everything so far. It’s just the proliferation of smartphones and that we are always in front of a screen. It’s so nice to be able to go for a walk and listen to something. It’s just nice to get out and walk the dog and still be feeling like you’re learning something. I’ve personally been producing a lot for people lately, other podcasts, and it’s been interesting to have those conversations with people who have the media companies and stuff in our industry, to start talking to them about, “Why are we using this content because people want to absorb it, but they’re not going to sit and read your magazine?” I read some magazines but not really anymore. I think we’re all on the same page with that. |
| Laura : | John, Will, anything to add? |
| John: | Well, as Mike said, I think we’re all on the same page with that. I guess the only thing I might add, it’s a little bit what Graham had said. The multitasking, totally, audiobooks, I’m a big fan of audiobooks. I used to work at audible. I’m all over that. There is stuff that doesn’t come through in the written word. It’s nice to hear, so to Grahams point, that’s human and that’s true, it is a very human thing. These are designed to be casual for the most part because you have no time limit. It’s not like it’s a 30 minute show and you’ve got to record 22 minutes because the remainder is full of commercials. We could do this show for three hours if we wanted to, so there’s a flavor you get from something, from a casual conversation like this that you wouldn’t necessary get from even radio for that matter because again, radio, it has to adhere to time. |
| Brandt: | Top of the hour. Bottom of the hour. |
| John: | Top of the hour. Bottom of the hour. Exactly, so everything everyone else said, but again, there’s just a flavor you’re going to get in addition to the information there’s a flavor, there’s a feeling you get. |
| Mike: | The intimacy too, because you’re actually entering the persons head, right? You’re going into their body.[crosstalk 00:48:43] |
| Yeah. Well, but it is interesting because you are actually listening into someones conversation that can be kind of cool. | |
| Will : | I think the answer the question too, so for me I agree with what everyone said. I think one main reason I listen to podcast too, is that unlike audiobooks or books, is that audiobooks and books are very strategic. They take a long time to publish. Sometimes audiobooks don’t come out until three, four months after the book’s been out, and the content will be old by then. A lot of times they focus away from being very tactical and the one thing I love about podcast, for example, I wanted to learn about paid traffic and how do you drive traffic with Facebook ads and Twitter ads and Google ads and Youtube ads and that sort of stuff. Well, I was able to tune into a podcast every week because he was able to stay on top of the trends. I got really tactical with things where you can get really in the nitty gritty of everything going on, whereas in audiobook you cannot necessarily get that. It’s kind of what like a blog provides you. |
| Blogs can be very timely and quick but again to everyone’s benefit, you can listen to it on the way to work rather than having to read it only when you have captive audiences. That’s my answer. | |
| Laura : | Good point. Great point. We’re nearing up on our time here for today’s show. |
| Will : | We are not going for three hours. |
| Laura : | No. We’re sorry.[crosstalk 00:50:07]. |
| One question I wanted to ask since you all have, we’ve interviewed each other. I’m sure there’s tons of other people you have interviewed for your own podcast or elsewhere. Who is the most memorable guest you’ve had on your show and why? | |
| John: | That’s like asking which is your favorite children, like which one- |
| Laura : | You have a favorite. You have a favorite. |
| Graham: | Is it? Is it? |
| Laura : | no[crosstalk 00:50:40] |
| John: | No. I mean I … yeah. |
| Graham: | I love you all.[crosstalk 00:50:46] |
| John: | From my perspective, they’re favorites for different reasons. I should say. Some of them are really down and dirty, like truthful. I’ll get guests that come on and share their headaches and the things they had to go through in order to achieve something. The kind of backstory you wouldn’t necessarily tell everyone. That’s cool, but then I’ll get someone who has a really cool new technology, and I just like that because I’m a geek and it’s a good show and it’s a great conversation. |
| Then, you get people who are funny, like Don Berger from SocialTables or Ben Hindman from Splash. All right fine, it’s hard to say that, but I will come up with one more because it’s recent and I think Brandt might agree with me. Recently, I had James Wiler on from a company called Skookum. We did a case study on indoor positioning and directional systems that they built for this crazy home furnishing show in North Carolina, and we broke it down. What is it to create the app? Install, literally a thousand beacons everywhere, and we really went through the step by step process, and I learned a ton. You can bet if I learned something, my audience learned a lot from that as well and to me that’s a perfect episode. It was fun. It was geeky. It was good casual conversation and it was a great teaching opportunity. That’s a long answer but anyway. | |
| Laura : | Brandt, your favorite guest? |
| Brandt: | Yeah. I have to totally agree that you cannot really pick one because they are so different for very different reasons. I’ve been very lucky to have some big names on the show, like Frank [Zipofitz 00:52:41] from previously working on the Super Bowl. We had James [Carvel 00:52:47] on one of the episodes of GatherGeeks. My favorite episodes are the round table discussions, just like what we’ve been talking about this whole show, where it’s the casual conversations. It’s the one on one, well not one on one, but the group discussion, so going back to event alley, those were my favorite episodes where we would just run down the news and say let’s talk about this one for five minutes. Then, let’s talk about this one for five minutes. Honestly, most of the podcasts that I listen to are in that format. |
| I really enjoy those type of discussions. We just had one recently that we recorded at IMAX as well where literally four of us just sat down around a table and passed the mic around and had a great conversation. Those are the episodes that I remember the most. The fun. The laughing. | |
| We had some great discussions when pot was first legalized in Colorado and started to just thinking about how that was going to effect our events. You’re going to have to significantly increase your catering budgets.[inaudible 00:53:52] and have a lot more snack breaks. It still makes me laugh now just thinking about it. Those conversations, those casual round tables are definitely what I love the most. | |
| Graham: | Yeah. I completely agree. I think what worked best for us and our favorite episodes, if I can agree with Brandt, it was when we had the opportunity to have people in the office, it always just seemed better. I think we really started out the gate and we were doing all sorts of video chatting live. We had to stream a lot of our conversations, while they were great, if anybody, and I’m sure we all know at this point, when you’re face to face with someone, that’s when you get those organic moments. When you capture that 30 seconds that you’re like, “Okay. This is landing in a bottle right now.” Laura and I were fortunate enough, I know this was definitely my favorite episode, maybe not even my favorite episode, but best experience was being face to face with a woman who worked events at the Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland. We did a live walk around. She brought us underneath the stage and everything. We were capturing those minutes of lightening in a bottle and at the same time, just getting to see a real cool venue, which Social Tables is all about. |
| Laura : | The host a lot of concerts, so it’s sort of like going backstage at your favorite, the biggest venue in your town or city. |
| Graham: | It was a blast. |
| Laura : | Mike, do you have a favorite? |
| Mike: | Yeah. I have one that was … first I want to say that my parents, I know they always thought I was their favorite child. Always. My favorite podcast, I could go through like, I’ve done a ton of them. There was one that stood out named Bruce Couch. I interviewed him and he’s from a company called BodyGroup and they do design and stuff. They work on all the big stuff in the Bay Area. He had had his brother died and he had revamped his whole company and it was really powerful to hear him, how he fired a bunch of clients because they were you know, we’ve all had bad clients. They were like just really crappy clients and he just fired them and said, “You either work the way we work or we don’t work with you,” which as a business owner, it’s very hard to think about always firing somebody because you got to make payroll. You got to do all this stuff you got to do. |
| The podcast I talked to him with, and he is unfiltered dude, so it really caught me by surprise when he started sharing all of this stuff, but something happened in his life and then he made changes and now he has this great company and he’s happy. That was my favorite one. Off the top of my head. There’s a lot of ones that I really enjoyed but that was the one. | |
| Will : | Can I answer this question? |
| Laura : | Of course. |
| Will : | This is episode 34, 35, so we’ve had 35 shows and I think one of the interesting things we don’t really do one on ones very often just because we love this Brady Bunch style. It’s definitely been, everything’s been focused on topic, but I will say the most fun I’ve had on an episode, it’s going to come as no surprise, is the IMAX episode we did two weeks three weeks ago. |
| We had all you guys literally just walk up, we’d hand you the mic and we’d start talking. I had no questions prepare at all. I had no idea what we were going to talk about and you guys had 15 minutes. It led to some of the greatest conversations and I laughed so hard when Mike way on. | |
| It was just so much fun paired with like, “How are we going to do this live with people walking by,” and Sean was grabbing guests and people were watching live. It was so much fun, so I think that from a technical perspective, you know from a performance perspective, and just the guests were amazing. It was just so much fun to get everyone in real quick and do an interview with them. I think we did two hours long too so it was extra long as well. Those two hours seem like went away super fast. | |
| Laura : | All right. We’re nearing the end of the show. Saddest part of the show, but this is the same stage where we ask the same exact question at the end. What cool new resources do you all have to share for the event profs who are logged on? |
| Let’s start with Graham. What resources do you have? Blogs, books, your favorite scuba mask, podcast? | |
| Will : | Scuba mask. |
| Graham: | Is that a thing? |
| Laura : | Oh yeah. Scuba mask. |
| Graham: | Well, while I don’t have a scuba mask at the ready or multiple. Is there a favorite really? If you want to get access to all of these guys podcasts and you have, … I don’t care if you’re an IOS user and Android user, Brandt and I have talked about this on Turn of Events, the pocketcast app is the single greatest thing know to man. It is just aesthetically pleasing. It is so easy to use. You can organize your tiles. I know I get OCD like that, so I, at this point, have my Monday podcast at top. I know I’m going to listen to WTF and Comedy Bang Bang on Monday’s. You just rip through them and it’s just such an efficient app. You can really customize it if you’re a podcast nerd like we all are here. I cannot recommend pocketcasts app enough. |
| Laura : | Great. Mike. A resource you can share? |
| Mike: | I just learned of one the other day. It was called tunity. T-U-N-I-T-Y, and it was a crazy app that you can hear the audio on a TV if it’s muted. You just take a picture of it and it pulls the audio, so let’s say you’re sitting in a, we all travel all the time, you’re sitting in a bar and you want to watch your football game. This football game, you can go take, it’s muted. You take a picture of it and then put your earphones in and you can listen to it. It works when you leave. It holds on to the sound. It’s pretty amazing little app. I’m trying to think of other things how you could use it, but- |
| Will : | Can you take a picture of a person and read their mind? |
| Mike: | I haven’t tried that. Maybe. |
| John: | You should try that on Peanut. |
| Graham: | You’re not a tv. |
| Mike: | Anyway. It’s kind of cool for sports, just like I was listening to the Warrior game the other night like did. I walked down the street and it worked. Wild stuff. Wacky and wild. |
| Laura : | All right. Brandt, do you have a resource to share? |
| Brandt: | I definitely want to check that one out. Sounds fascinating, but since he didn’t plug it, I would like to plug Mike’s PDF on podcasting. Mike’s put together a nice little PDF on if you want to do podcasting for events, and Mike you’ll have to give them the URL, but it’s a nice little, if this is something you want to get into, you can go and check it out. He’s got all the resources there and all the things that you need to know if you’re going to get into your own podcasting. Mike why don’t you take it away from there. |
| Mike: | Take it away? You want me to read through the PDF? |
| Brandt: | Yeah. If you could[crosstalk 01:01:09]. You know what, that would save us a lot of time of you could just go ahead and read the whole PDF. |
| Graham: | Just go ahead and do that. |
| Brandt: | I’ll listen to it on two point oh later, so you know. |
| Mike: | I’ll share it. I will share the URL with these guys and they can put it in the resources on the blog because I don’t know where it is right now. I think it’s Podcasting For Events is what it is. |
| Brandt: | Sounds right. |
| Laura : | John, do you have a favorite resource you can share? Blog, podcast, at all? |
| John: | Well, this is the podcasting discussion, so yes. There’s an app out there called Zencaster. Old school podcasters will thank it’s magic, only because it solves so many of the challenges that we had early on. Things like trying to use Skype to record, or etc. Zencaster works really well because what it actually does is, you connect it to Dropbox, it all runs in a browser. When you press the record button, it records a high quality audio file from each person that’s participating in the discussion, and it saves them out to a Dropbox, to Dropbox. Then, you can take those high quality audio files and merge them together in something like garage band. |
| Without geeking out too much, why is that a good thing? Right now, we’re using go to Webinar and we’re squeezing all this video and audio to go to Webinar, and there’s always limitations, right? Like my bandwidth could be bad or someone else’s could be bad or the audio’s bad, and go to Webinar has to deal with all of that in order to produce a file. | |
| Why Zencaster’s so cool is because it produces a high quality audio file locally, so you’re always guaranteed to get good audio. Then, you just stitch it all together later. It’s great. It’s just a great tool. Right now it’s free at the moment. If you want to get started, you can use it for free, I think they start charging when you start to have multiple guests and so on. If you’re just doing a one on one podcast, I don’t think there’s any cost. | |
| Will : | I love it. I think Brandt told me about that. You told me about that or something. It’s so exciting. |
| I got two cool resources for you guys. For the podcasters out there, I know we said don’t go for the expensive nice equipment when you’re starting off or maybe if you are using the ATR2100 and you want to go for the nice mic now and get the Heil PR40, I just picked one up. There’s a website called Broadcast Supply Web, BSW. They’re actually the only people who make a pop filter for the PR40 and if you do a little bit of browsing around, so they have packages for podcast. They actually have some really amazingly priced podcast packages. | |
| I don’t know how they do this, but normally the PR40’s like $350 just for the mic, and you have to buy the stand that’s $200 and the pot filter’s $50, ends up being $700-$800. They sell a package that has the sound card, the PR40, the stand, the pot filter, the shock mount, the cable, it’s literally a podcasting thing in a box and it’s $600 for a PR40. It’s really, really awesome if you are wanting to upgrade to a really nice mic, which hopefully I’ll be using that next week, so you can hear a little bit of what that’s like. Really highly recommend Broadcast Supply Web. Really, really awesome. | |
| Then, another one, going to give a plug to HubSpot because I am at their conference and they just announced a really cool new product that the CTO’s been working on called Growthbot. For anyone out there who’s doing content marketing or anything on the web and you basically[inaudible 01:04:43] you need to get reports put together or you need to do some research, a lot of times it’s like you wish you had another person to help you. Basically they designed a slackbot and also a Facebook messenger bot that you connect your Hubspot, your Google[inaudible 01:04:55] to and you ask it questions like, “What was my traffic like this week compared to last week?” It will text, tell you exactly what you need. You can tell it, they’re working on making it so you can say like, “Hey. Copy that blog post to medium,” and it will automatically do that. | |
| It’s going to be a virtual marketing assistant. Amazing. Really cool. It’s called Growthbot. Definitely check it out. It’s free right now, so get it while it’s cheap. | |
| Graham: | Our digital’s guy at Social Tables, shout out David Goodman, Laura and I in the[inaudible 01:05:26]channel. He’s just Growthboting all day. It works. It’s really, really cool. |
| Laura : | Loves it. |
| Will : | Laura, what about you? You have any cool resources you want to share? We never ask you. |
| Laura : | I’m never prepared. I’m doing the asking. |
| Will : | The tables have turned. |
| Laura : | You caught me off guard. Oh. Here’s something. This is a brand new tool we started using for social media scheduling. It’s called Edgar. E-D-G-A-R. Will loves Edgar. |
| Basically, what you do is, it’s smarter scheduling, so instead of just hopping into your favorite social scheduling apps of your choice, what you do is, you create a library of social media content. You designate a category, so is this a headline? Is this a humorous post? Is this controversial? Is this a snip it? Then, you create your schedule. Say your schedule is, “I want to post a twitter 10 times a day at the bottom of the hour,” you tell Edgar, “Here’s my library post. Here’s a time I want them to go live,” and it will fill in those posts for you, so all of them are automated. Then, Edgar will only continue to repost the blog post that gets the most engagement. | |
| Will : | A lot of people out there who use buffer, are more like, “What’s this differ than buffer?” I call it buffer, but what it does is, a lot of people when you get to buffer, then your buffer, buffer just goes, “Sorry. You’re out of buffer.” Edgar pulls from that awesome library, so I think it’s great if you’re a single marketer and you’re all by yourself. |
| I live Edgar. Its created by, she was in my entrepreneurship class. The girl who made it, I know her. She’s nice. | |
| Mike: | Is it Laura Roader? |
| Will : | Laura Roader. Yeah. Thank you. |
| Laura : | Oh, okay. |
| Will : | Yeah. Laura’s awesome. We are out of time. We went a little bit over time. I hope you guys don’t mind, but I want to give a huge round of applause and if all the people on line can give a huge round of applause to our amazing guests today. Thank you guys for begin on the show. For all you guys that are tuned in right now, I know you guys are eager to rewatch this. Catch all those resources, everything like that. If you’re watching the recording right now, you’re probably already there right now, but we’re going to post all of the show resources, all the show links, the twitter account for these guys, and a transcription, and the recording, oh my gosh, it’s the best thing ever, right on our blog. Just go to helloendless.com/blog, post it over in the chat. Just click on that, and be sure to subscribe because you want to know when these new episodes are coming out. You want to be watching live. It’s going to be fantastic. |
| If you’re not watching this live right now, you’re watching this recording, I feel really bad for you because you just missed out on a ton of fun, a lot of audience live questions. Alex is live tweeting over on twitter right now, so you definitely want to be catching this live from now on. Catch us next week, Wednesday’s at 5 pm eastern and we will catch you guys back for another episode, so thank you guys all for tuning in and we’ll catch you guys later. |
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