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Welcome to podcast answers, the show where we help you start and grow your podcast answering

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any podcasting questions along the way.

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That's right.

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We are here today to help you start, grow your podcast and understand just a little bit

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more about why your episode is not showing up once you publish it.

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So you get your episode going, it's all polished up and you're ready to publish.

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You do publish, you go back and check your favorite app and it's not there.

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I've heard many people ask the question, "Help me, my episode is not getting published

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to a specific directory.

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Why didn't it get uploaded to a specific directory like Apple Podcast or Spotify or

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etc. How long does it take to publish episodes to other programs, other platforms? So I want

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to cover just a little bit of the basics today on how podcasting works. You may not know how it

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works, but essentially once you publish your episode and upload it to your media host,

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they create a file. It's called an RSS feed. And what it is, is it's basically a listing

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a text listing of what your podcast is.

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So the information like for this show, it's the title podcast answers

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the description of what the podcast is.

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And then it has all of the episodes.

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So it lists one episode.

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It may say, you know, this is the episode and it has the title of it.

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It has the information for the description and it has the link for your media file,

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etc., etc., etc.

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You take that file, you take that RSS feed and you send a link to it.

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So when you when you first start your show,

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you log into podcasts, connect for Apple and you say, I'm submitting this new show.

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Here's the RSS feed, etc, etc.

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And you do that with all of the different directories and a lot of the podcasting

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apps pull off of the Apple podcast app, Apple podcast directory or the podcast

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Index, Index Directory.

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But podcasting is a pull technology, not a pull push technology.

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So when you publish your episode, it doesn't say, Hey, Apple podcast,

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here's, here's the new episode.

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It also doesn't say, you know, it doesn't upload the file to Apple podcast.

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Apple podcast actually just links to your episode.

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So it doesn't get uploaded to Apple podcasts.

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just it's just a link.

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So sometimes because it is a pull technology, it takes time for your

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episodes to go out into your once you're in the episodes in the RSS feed.

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It may take a time for your directories to pull the latest episode.

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The directories have a time that they go back and check.

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So they check, let's say Apple podcast, we're just going to use Apple podcast

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here, Apple podcast may check every hour for a new episode.

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So the Apple Podcasts directory is going to come out to your website, to your media

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host and say, Hey, is there a new episode for podcast answers?

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Yes.

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No.

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Okay.

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It's going to come back an hour later.

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Or the time is, is not necessarily an hour, but in this example.

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So in an hour later, it's going to come back and say, Hey, is there a new episode?

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You may have published that new episode, but you may have also published that

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episode right after they just check.

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And so it's going to take Apple podcasts an hour to know that your podcast is having a new episode.

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So because it is a pull technology, it takes time for them to come out and pull the new episode.

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Now, some podcasts apps, so if you're using other podcast apps, they may not get the

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listing off the directory, they may check directly on your RSS feed.

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And so again, then in that case, the person can just go out and refresh the feed, you

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over refresh their app and see because the app will go out and check.

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So what can you do?

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Are there things that you can do to make this go a little bit faster?

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Yes, there are.

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There are things that help out with this.

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So the main thing is be consistent.

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Publish your episode on a specific day and a specific time and do it the same time every

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week.

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So for this podcast, I release on Thursdays.

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And so Apple podcasts know that I release these on Thursdays and usually it's sometime

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in the afternoon.

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For my other podcast, every time I record it, I, in a new episode, I release it on Tuesdays,

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on every other Tuesday, and I release it at 1am every time.

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I can schedule that because I record ahead of time and then I just wait until in my podcast

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media host, I sell them Tuesday, 1am, put the new episode out.

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And so Apple podcasts and the other directories start to learn your publishing habits.

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So they're going to know every other Tuesday, Andy's going to publish an episode of the

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Dudes and Dads podcast, and it's going to be at 1am.

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Go check it.

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So that's one way that you can make your episodes show up faster in the directories.

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If you're consistent with that and you do the same thing every week.

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So some of the other things that you can do is use something called WebSub.

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And essentially that's a way for you as you publish, so podcast apps and directories can

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subscribe to a WebSub.

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They can say, "Let me know every time this podcast updates."

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your podcast media host may or may not support this.

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And there are some problems with this because the apps have to go back and resubscribe every

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so often.

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They can't just say indefinitely, show me when this podcast updates.

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It has to resubscribe and say, "Hey, I know it's a week later, but resubscribe me."

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And so that takes a lot of time to do and a lot of bandwidth.

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And so not a lot of things to support because it is problematic and it doesn't scale very

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well.

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If you're a directory and you have a million and a half feeds to go back and try to subscribe

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to those million and a half feeds to check to get notified of a web sub is a pain.

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And so there's something kind of new.

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It's been new within the last couple of years and it's called pod ping.

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And the cool thing about podping is it's based on Bitcoin, not Bitcoin, but it's based on

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blockchain just like Bitcoin is.

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So essentially it's a blockchain and anyone can publish to the actual chain.

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So what some really smart people at podcasting index have done, podcast index have done,

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is they've created this thing called podping.

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And a lot of new, a lot of companies are starting to support this.

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And essentially what it is is when you publish, you use it with their tool, it'll send what

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it's called a ping, a pod ping.

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And what's cool about it is it, unlike a web sub, it doesn't require the listener to

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resubscribe.

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All they have to do is watch the blockchain for this specific kind of ping.

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And then they'll know when an episode is published.

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There's no resubscribing.

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It scales really well.

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the cool thing about it is as a directory, they can even use that as an ingest point.

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So they can say, "Hey, I see this podcast being published as Ping with PodPing, and I

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don't have this podcast in my directory."

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And then it can go out and get the RSS feed and add it into the directory.

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So it's really cool, a cool way for people who are building directories to not have to

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check as often because if you have to go out and use your servers to check a million feeds,

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two million feeds every hour, that's a lot of web traffic.

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Even if nothing has changed, they have to go out and say, as a regular poll to say,

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"Hey, is this updated?

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Is there anything new in this episode?"

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That wastes a whole lot of data, internet traffic, having to do that, computer cycles

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having to do that.

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So with this pod ping, it's really cool because they don't have to go out and check.

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They can just listen to the stream of pings and know if something is published and then go out and check.

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So it actually saves a lot and it's actually immediate.

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It's really quick.

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I can publish an episode of this podcast and within seconds of it being published,

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it's out in the podcast index.

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It's out in a lot of new podcasting apps because they're using pod ping

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because they're listening to pod ping to know when to update.

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So sometimes it's not just a matter of waiting though.

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Sometimes there are technical issues that can happen with your feed that can cause your

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cause your episode not to show up in the directories.

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Did it actually publish to your feed is the main important thing.

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You may have created this awesome episode edited it and it sounds great.

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You uploaded it to your media host, but you didn't hit publish.

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It didn't actually show up in your feed.

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And so your RSS feed.

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So the best thing to do is you can open your browser, type in your feed address, and physically

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see in there what episodes are in there.

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You can see.

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So for me, if I'd open it up and go to feeds.podcastmirror.com/podcastindex, you'd see all of the list of episodes

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that we have in our feed.

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If my latest episode is not in there, then you are not actually going to get published.

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Your episode is not actually going to show up to have people listen to your show.

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The other thing is your feed may be too large.

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So several megabytes is too large because it does take a while because if people are

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ingesting this, it is too big.

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There's a technical limitation.

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It is just a text file, but if you have thousands and thousands of episodes in there, that can

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get really large and that can cause the directories not to show your latest episode.

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So what can you do about that?

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You can write less show notes.

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I mean, you still want to be detailed, but you don't need to make a book out of it.

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You don't have to put in your whole transcript into the show notes.

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That's going to blow out your feed.

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You can also check to see if your host allows you to publish only the last number of episodes

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in your feed.

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So, let's say you do have a thousand, two thousand episodes.

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Your host probably is going to allow you to say only show the last 300 episodes in the

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feed.

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And this will help because that will keep the feed size down because that will, yeah,

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it'll just keep the feed size down and not be so large because you're only showing the

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last two episodes or last 10 episodes or whatever.

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And the last thing that can happen is you forgot to put a title on your episode.

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Most hosts aren't going to allow you to save your episode without a title and publish,

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but some do.

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And if there's not a title, it's not going to show up in the directories because they

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have no way to know it's not a title.

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There's not titled.

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And so you need to make sure that your episode is actually titled and there is a title to

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it.

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So guys, if that's something that you're dealing with, I would love to help you out.

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I'd love to help you create your show.

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You can contact me several different ways, but the most easiest way is just to go to

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podcastindex, podcastindexpodcastanswers.com/contact and get a hold of me there.

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The other way to do the thing you can do is we have a Discord channel and I would love

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to have you there.

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It's just podcastanswers.com/discord that you can there go and see and talk to me about

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all sorts of different issues.

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Guys, with that, thanks.

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and have a good week.

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