So how much is that?

Welcome to the podcast.

Editors mastermind the show, the podcast about the business of podcasting for

podcast editors, hosted by the crazy for some of us, at least for now.

We'll talk more about that toward the end of the show, but before we get started,

we'll just do quick introductions.

I'm Brian and Springer.

You can find me@toptieraudio.com.

I'm

Carrie Caulfield.

Eric, you can find me at Yaya pod, Justin ducks.

I'm Daniel Abendroth and you can find me at Ruff media audio.

Jennifer Longworth:

I'm Jennifer Longworth.

Jennifer Longworth:

You can find me at bourbon barrel, podcasting.com.

Today.

We've got something that we're going to talk about that I'm not a huge

expert in, and I'm wanting to learn quite a bit about, but because we've

got this mastermind, we have people with varying degrees of experience.

With hiring people to help us with our podcast production.

And so we're going to talk about hiring editors to work with people

involved in post production, all of that kind of stuff.

It's something that I've done a tiny bit of, but not a lot.

And so I'm looking to learn quite a bit before we maybe started talking

about like the how's and the what's and the why's, I'm just kind of wondering

for each of us what's our experience been in terms of working with somebody

else, doing some of the editing for us.

Started by being a subcontractor.

Well, not started, but my experience with that was doing work for Matthew Passy

and maybe somebody else and seeing the, oh, look, I don't have to be in charge of

this show, but I can come in and edit it.

So I have a little bit of experience on that end of it too.

And then a few months ago, I guess in the last year, suddenly I'm like, I need help.

And I brought on a couple of people locally.

To help

me.

How's that worked out for you so far, you did some subcontracting

for Matthew and now you've got a couple of people that worked for you.

What was that process like?

How did it go for you?

Which part let's talk about bringing other people on to work for you.

Let's let's talk about that.

Okay.

So as many folks know I'm in Lexington, Kentucky, and I've started the

Lexington Podcaster's meetup group.

And I went to that group specifically because I want to be centered in

Kentucky, focused in Kentucky.

My hub is in Kentucky, whatever you want to say.

So I went to that group and threw it out there.

Hi, I'm looking for editors.

Who's interested.

And then I got a couple of people who said they were interested.

The one girl I had met at a meetup, so I was familiar with her and the other.

Guy's like, I work for the college radio station and I'm looking to build

my portfolio or whatever, and I brought them on and gave them the two shows.

I hate working on the most.

One was a little bit easier than the other, but I didn't go through

like an application process or a vetting or anything real formal.

And the one guy that relationship fizzled out because I wasn't on

top of it, sending him files and then the deadline would come up.

I'm like, oh, I didn't send them the files.

I'll just do it myself.

So that comes back to me being a poor manager.

That's why he doesn't work for me anymore.

But the second one.

Um, she is still willing to work with me, but the host of the show she was working

on has decided to take it in-house and get his buddy to do the editing or whatever.

And then.

There'll be back,

right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's quite possible.

Now you've seen that happen more than one.

And then I've also outsourced show notes, which

isn't specifically what we're talking about, but I had to do a 10 99 for my

show notes writer, and I hadn't paid the contractors enough to have to do

a 10 99, but that's something that I think of is when Texas all around.

Doing

that.

And a 10 99 being the form that says I paid this person.

So I have to report it to the tax authorities to say, I paid this person

so they can get their money out of them.

Yeah.

That's how it goes.

How about you, Daniel?

I know that you're the one that originally raised the question.

What experience do you have in the area?

I've never worked with another editor, but I have contracted

out the show notes, transcripts, and then I have an assistant to keep me

organized and do the management for me.

Yeah.

So that's my experience.

I haven't had to work with an editor.

You

mentioned the virtual assistant.

That's something that I always kind of felt like if it's my business, I

need to be the guy that's in charge.

Cause I'm a guy and I'm not sure that that's the case because when

I go to a doctor's office, it's not the doctor that's in charge, right.

The doctor walks in and somebody just tells him, go here, go here, go here.

The doctor's not in charge of anything except maybe payroll

at the end of the month.

And so I like that.

You've got it set up

that way.

Like I'm good to editing.

That's what I want to be doing.

I can't do as much editing and money generating activities.

If I'm spent doing, like organizing my files and chasing back from

my client for their work, or like keeping things organized.

And it has like, my business has grown now.

I've got more clients to deal with.

So like, it doesn't make sense for me to spend a couple hours a week sorting

files, getting everything in order.

Whereas I can just hire somebody to do all that for me.

So whenever I come into work in the morning, I just look at my to-do list.

Like here's my priority of episodes to work.

It releases a ton of brain energy.

I can't even think of a word, but it's just like now my brain doesn't

have to focus on all this other stuff.

I can focus on editing and growing the business and

doing business related things.

And

then Carrie, I think, uh, you've got what, like 200

contractors that work for you or something

like that?

No, not 200.

So hi.

Hired an editor, you know, after I've been, was doing this for about a year

and I just needed somebody to kind of do the overflow and he's still with me.

And even though I have my case load or my client load during the fellowship,

I did my darndest to keep him.

And then I also hired a year after that.

I hired two more editors who are still with me and I really did.

And do everything in my power to like keep work coming to them so

they could just hang on with me.

And I think it's gone really well.

Like there have been times where things have come up, I've needed

to focus on other stuff and having them take care of like the editing.

So I basically have them do a first pass usually, and they're taking

out all the ums, you know, all the filler and then I'm reviewing it.

And that has worked really well in terms of client satisfaction, actually.

And my satisfaction, I did have a virtual assistant.

She left to get married, which was very sad.

And I have been the nerve.

Yeah.

I've been trying to replace her.

That's a tall ass to replace a

good I'll ask.

It is absolutely.

You have to be able to trust that person.

Editors and they love, I love the editors I work with.

I really do not want them to leave me ever.

No, you can't have them.

But I think that virtual assistant role is like, Key because as Daniel

said, like it frees up so much Headspace, you don't have to worry

about, oh, did I reply to that email?

Did I follow up with this?

Did I send a reminder for this call or are all the files and all that

junk that takes up space in your head?

Um, I really don't like to do so, so I think what I'm going to end up doing.

Now that the fellowship's over, I'm going back to a full client load is I

am going to transition the one editor who isn't an audio engineer, because

again, the other two are audio engineers.

I'm going to transition her into a more like virtual assistant

role because she does have the podcast management experience.

She can answer a podcast questions I've been looking

kind of looking around for VA's.

Started having this editor do quality reviews to make sure, cause

I was starting to make mistakes.

Um, and I had a conversation with her and we were talking and I'm

just sitting here thinking like, why have I not asked her to be my voice?

And that's one thing that I think is really kind of cool about working

with somebody for so long, as you do get to know them and they get to know

your business and you build this level of trust and it's really awesome.

Like they can do other things, they can kind of grow with your business.

So that has been my experience.

My experience for, with in terms of subcontracting, I

think has been really kind of twofold.

I do sub-contract for a production company.

So I'm not subcontracting for an editor, although the lady can do editing, but I'm

doing all of the editing for her company.

And so I have that.

And then I've also for the past five or six months, I've

worked with another editor.

You guys all know who he is.

Um, Michael Jerry, excellent editor.

He's done some great work for me.

And so I've been able to start bringing him.

A little bit, he does a good job, but I'm a control freak.

And so that's been a bit of a challenge to overcome that.

Cause that's, it's a thing I'm just going to say it is,

it totally is.

It's hard.

Let go.

Yeah, but that was my biggest stumbling block.

When I first hired somebody is letting go and then realizing how much I

needed to invest in that relationship.

As a manager.

To get things done the way I like them done the way I know my clients

like them done and that takes effort, but it it's paid off in spades.

I mean, yeah, it's a learning curve.

It

is for silver.

And I think, you know, the first couple of years.

Michael did we went back and forth a couple of times, cause there's just,

there's a process of learning each other.

I mean, this is the same thing I tell my clients, right?

This is my first edit for you.

We talked about all this stuff I would like for you to listen

through and make sure that this is what you were expecting to get.

And if not, let me know because we need to handle this now.

And so I try to give that kind of experience to the people

that work for me as well.

I think at least from my perspective, it's worked well and I hope that

it's worked well for Michael.

And then I did recently bring on a book.

To free myself up, but the VA thing is something that's definitely

something I'm interested in looking at.

I think one of the things that has kind of tripped me up in the past is when I think

about bringing somebody on, I think about bringing somebody in long-term and Michael

or Matthew rather was commenting how we just had this conversation a few days ago.

And it's true.

He and I were, I think last Saturday we were talking because he looks

around and he goes, you know what.

I could be somebody surge capacity.

So if you want to go on vacation or if you get a bunch of stuff

all at once, we talked about that.

And I think that was one of the things that I thought about

when we started talking about, Hey, we should do this episode.

I was really only thinking if I'm going to bring somebody on, I'm

going to bring them on for years.

Right.

But this could be something where a couple of months out of the year, maybe there's

some work and Matthew has his own gig.

Right.

He's not trying to work for me.

He's doing some work for me.

And I thought that was a really valuable perspective.

Have you guys ever tried something.

I

actually have, and I have like a list of people

that I'll use for one-offs right.

Editors.

I trust that I know can usually it's like kind of last minute that I know can turn

it around, that I know will do a decent job and that I know the rate's going to

be reasonable because you know, not every client is paying you like $500 episode,

not any client.

So that's also something to be mindful of.

So I have this list of people that I know that are in my business's budget

that I can outsource to in a pinch.

And if one can't do it, then perhaps another one can then I think having

a list, having a context like that is really helpful because stuff happens.

I hadn't thought about having that kind of surge

editor because there are times where it's just like, I have.

All of these episodes that need to be edited, but I also want to work

on my YouTube video, or I also want to do this thing right now, but

I can't because I have deadlines.

So having somebody who can be like, Hey, I need to need, like these

three episodes edited this week.

Can you take care of it and not have to worry about like, keeping them

kind, like what is dealing with keeping a constant flow of work to them?

Just having somebody just like, Hey, this week I need this.

Yeah.

I definitely liked that idea.

And it's something that I'm thinking about for sure now, because.

I don't mind reaching out to a client and saying, Hey, you know,

I'm going on vacation in a month.

So let's start getting ahead.

I would much prefer to be able to say, I'm going on vacation for

a month and this person is going to help you out while I'm gone.

Now, if you'd like to, you can get me your stuff early and we'll get it processed.

But if you don't, this is how we're going to work through that

so that you can keep your stuff.

And just be aware that this will be the person during that time.

VA helps in that situation too.

Cause that's how I'm gonna use my VA is like the client sends the audio.

Then my VA will send like, Hey editor, here's the episode you need to edit.

Hey, show notes, writer, here's your work.

And so I don't even have to like do the management aspect of it.

I have a VA to take care of that.

And then having, just making sure, like following up, make

sure everything's getting done.

No I'll be doing that, but just all like the nitty gritty.

I don't have to worry

about one of the other, oh, go ahead, Carrie.

Sorry.

I'm going to say that again.

The problem is getting a system in place that can handle it.

I've tried like five or six project management systems at this point.

I think I may have found one, but now I'm starting to doubt it,

but the sweet

dash thing.

Yeah, it's really good, but it's just might be too much.

What happened to air table?

Air table is.

I don't want to have to pay monthly for every client and every contractor,

it's a monthly charge per user.

So that's quickly going to turn into hundreds of dollars a month and

I'd rather not have to spend that.

So speaking of hiring people, I actually found somebody

on Fiverr to set up my sweet dash.

So, I don't know how it's going to turn out.

Like he just sent me a video of everything that he did.

I told him what I wanted.

I showed them what system I was already using with notion.

And it was like, I want it to function like that, but I also want

it to do these extra automations.

And so fingers crossed.

But when I go look and see what he does.

That it's set up and if not, I'll I kind of get it.

It's just that I didn't want to spend all the time.

So that's

another thing.

Yeah.

Well, I mean it's important.

I mean, time matters.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then another thing I did was hire somebody

just to help me with Instagram growth and in full disclosure, I just went

to Fiverr to find somebody and.

This dude, he actually is really good.

He wasn't very expensive.

And in just seven days, he like, who might Instagram followers

by like a hundred something.

Wow.

Oh, wow.

And then he was like, though, he's like, you got to post, you got to post.

So he was like, keeping me accountable for my roles, which I was really

impressed with, you know, sometimes it's trial and error, but for me, Those

types of jobs that you don't necessarily want to do or don't have time for, or

just don't have the like feed dash.

It was the emotional bandwidth.

It just didn't have it.

And I just couldn't make the flow chart that I needed to make to set it all up.

Cause they feel like it needs a flip chart.

So finding help, there is really a valuable thing.

I used to edit a business related podcast and the

guy had a guest on to talk about.

So the guy ran like a VA company that was specific towards this industry.

And the one thing they said was like, there are two reasons to hire a VA one to

do the things that you're not proficient in, and that they can do better or two

to do the things they are proficient.

That you just don't have time or bandwidth for just don't do them.

What about the things you just hate?

Like books don't do don't even bother with accounting.

Just don't

yeah.

Yeah.

I

did that last night.

The thing is that, Hey, are you, there are things you typically

are doing now and a proficient.

Yeah.

That you can, don't have the bandwidth for like bookkeeping

and you can go back and listen to our profit first

episode.

Oh man.

I was listening to that again the other day and just such a good reminder.

I bought the book.

I didn't just listen to three interviews.

I went ahead and bought the book.

I'm going through it.

I'm being a grown up today.

That was, I didn't catch that one.

It's episode 28.

It was just published a couple of days ago.

Very much worth the list.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wasn't actually on that one when I was here on the back end going, oh my gosh.

I wish I was in this discussion, but I learned,

and some of us might've been trying to invite you in, I don't know

who that could have been Daniel and me

Jennifer Longworth:

maybe, but that's a weird,

so we talked a little bit about maybe not

having to bring somebody.

All the time.

Right?

So do I want somebody who's week to week or month to month?

Or do I want somebody who's here for a few days when I need them or a

couple of months, whatever that is.

I think one of the other things that we need to think about before

we go out and start hiring somebody or even consider hiring somebody is

how do we want to work with them?

Because I've typically thought of bringing on somebody to do soup to nuts.

So everything from audio repair to final mix.

But the reality is I don't think it necessarily has to be that way.

How do you guys work together?

So with my girl, I will receive the files and I do

the processing through RX seven.

That's what I still have.

And then I'll send her the process files, but because I don't trust the

audio repair because the subcontractors, they haven't spent the money to get

RX seven, Vance, their subcontractors.

They're not making as much of it.

The money to drop on this.

So I go ahead and I process the pause before I send them out.

And I've never heard the term soup to nuts before.

Oh, sorry.

Uh, appetizers to dessert.

Does that work better?

Okay.

Gotcha.

So I mentioned that I worked with Michael and the way we are we're

currently working together is I do.

The RX portion, he does the editing and then I do the final mix and master.

And part of that was because I'm a control freak.

And we talked about that.

Yeah.

But part of that was also because the client that he's working on is

not a terribly profitable client.

And so for me to be able to pay him even close to what it's worth,

I had to do a portion of the workload for that account to work.

However, I'm at the point where I'm going, do I really want to go the, you do it all.

This is your show.

You work on this show route, or do I want to divide it up between repair,

mixing, cutting and mixing editing, and then mastering and I, I don't know.

Yeah.

So I will say that I always start a new

editor with just doing a first pass.

So they're just strictly going in, cutting out the filter.

Cleaning it up and this is just the interview and then they send it back.

So do they send you mixed down or do they

send you back a session file?

Um, session file or separate tracks?

Like I have one that was sending me, you know, in the beginning

with my first editor, I had him send back just to separate tracks.

Now I have him send back the session file.

However, now they can do, you know, they all now have RX, you know, at least

standard, but I have like, I've have paid for them in the beginning to get elements.

So I make sure that they have the software and yeah.

Don't have the expectation that they have to purchase this.

Right.

Cause they're doing it for my business.

So I will at least give them elements and then they also get my course, so

they can go in and learn how to use it.

And then, you know, at that point they can then.

Do the pre-processing, they can do some mixing on it.

They can do the first, so whatever they want to do, they

send me back the session file.

I will tweak things.

I will just go over the content.

Cause I do have some content editing, you know, do content editing for my clients.

And then.

I will tweak the mixing a little bit based on what I know the client likes,

cause everybody has their own thing.

And, and maybe one of the things I should do is like let the editors know.

And I, I may start to do more of that than I do the mastery.

And then that goes to the, the review editor or the quality assurance

girl, I just have an official title.

So then she'll put her ears on it and she can actually.

Now since she's been with me for so long, if there's just like something simple

that needs to be cut or needs to be smoothed out, she can actually take it.

Hm, you file into audition and clean it up and then send it back to me.

So that's kind of the system,

somebody mentioned control a minute ago

and you just are relinquishing so much control and it's just like,

Ooh therapy.

Okay.

Profit second type conversation.

If I have to pay for therapy.

Um, no, it's just, I, the only way.

These editors can do what I want them to do, and I can get my money's

worth out of them and get that peace of mind is to actually make that

investment in them and then trust them.

And I have been working with these editors for years now.

One of them is like, started with me and like 2018, the other end, like 2019.

A long relationship now.

And they have stayed with me through, you know, the feast and the famines.

So I think that's because of that investment, but now some of them, like one

of them has gotten so good and like, I'm like working really hard to give him work.

So he doesn't leave me.

Yeah.

Which is a good problem to have.

Right.

Because then that keeps you always focused.

Keeping the pipeline full, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cause he is like, and I can always depend on him and that's wonderful.

Like there's no price tag on that.

And I have given him raises like overtime too and Christmas bonuses and

whenever I can and you know, I just bought when, you know, the quality

assurance girl, because I want her to, you know, start taking more of a VA role.

I bought her a ticket to the amplifying her voice conference.

Because I want her to have that industry knowledge, because I want

somebody in a VA role that doesn't have to ask me, well, this person

asked this, what should I respond?

I want them to know that information because a good virtual

assistant is going to be able to.

To have the same knowledge as I do about this, like podcasting one-on-one stuff.

Yeah.

So it's an investment.

It is an investment.

Yeah.

I mean,

transparently, I think I'd rather work for you

than for me, Carrie, just for your contractors than I am to me.

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

I'm not hiring yet.

That's okay.

I'm pretty expensive.

So I know

that makes me wonder.

How we pay them.

I don't know if that was a question you had on your mind or not Brian,

but how do you pay your contractors?

I mean,

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

what's the going rate?

Well, what's the going rate?

How do you decide?

Because one of my guys was getting X amount and the other one was getting

Y amount, but it was based on the show and how much profit margin it

had because I had showed on someone.

So I had two shows that if I did it myself, I'd be making the same amount of

money, but one of them, I had show notes.

And in subcontractor editor, another one, I just had a subcontractor editor,

so they were making more, but I thought the other show was easier anyway.

And so is it like, make sure you come home with profit or make sure they're getting

a fair wage, which is questionable.

I would argue that there's some tension between those.

Not inappropriate to take home some money for having found the client and continuing

to manage there's value in there.

But depending on what that client is paying you for the work that's being done

and what the in quotes going rate is for someone to do that, a professional to do

that, there's going to be some tension there and you're probably going to.

Work that out the way I do it is when they take on a show and this

is, you know, one show, one editor.

So just take that with a grain of salt, we agree on the price.

And then when he finishes working on that episode, I ask him to invoice me that way.

I've always got a record of the payment and it's clear that it's

a business relationship, not a, not an employee, all that stuff.

Right.

So I'm trying to handle all of that stuff and go like, this is

the invoice from the company.

I paid the invoice.

This is how we're doing.

That's how I do it.

I don't know how everybody else does.

So

all my contractors have different rates, so I am using

contractors, one in Philippines, one in Egypt and one in Chile.

So what I do when I hire, sorry, that's my dad.

What I do when I hire contractors in different parts of the world, is I

go and look up what the average wage.

And then I make sure I pay them a lot more.

And that's a little bit different depending on what the episode is

or what's in the episode budget.

So for instance, I have one show that's 90 minutes, it's a premium rate.

I pay more for that one.

So I pay them essentially double for that.

And then I have other shows that have higher, but, you know, so I try to pay.

What's in that show's budget.

I don't know that this is the best system because it's a lot of like keeping track

and it's a lot of them keeping track.

Sometimes I forget.

Right.

Sometimes they forget.

So, you know, that's still a work in progress.

Me.

You know, American editors or Western editors tend to pay the same price.

So I, it doesn't matter if I do those.

One-offs are usually with people in the Western world where it's just

the competitive rates initially.

But I think one thing I have found working with people in the Western world

and first world countries is that like, I don't know that they quite understand

what the white label relationship is.

Because sometimes I get like, I've asked for quotes and sometimes I am

like, girl, I don't even make that much.

Um, right.

I don't have that in my budget, which is fine.

But, uh, you know, when you're working for another company, it's good to

remember that you don't have the overhead.

You don't have to worry about the managing the client relationship.

You're not the one who gets yelled at, if you make a mistake, you're just

like doing the editing, turning it.

Yeah.

Back in and it's cool.

Right?

So that's the only problem I really run into is trying to manage the expectations.

Of the first world contractors in terms of doing the white labeling, not

everybody obviously, but I have had some like, wow, I should be working for,

do your clients know that you're having

somebody else do the editing?

Uh, yes and no, because you know,

I do let them know upfront.

I let them know in that consultation.

However, they think they forget.

Because all they get is me sometimes when there's a mistake, they're like,

oh, did you know somebody else do this?

And you know, uh, I have to be most of the time I have to be like,

no, No, that mistake was all me.

Um, because you know, most of the time they're doing a first pastor

doing that grunt work and I review everything and I master, you know, I do

the mastering process for everything.

So I have put years on it, which is why I hired somebody

for quality review, because.

Yeah, I'm not always

perfect.

Quality control is something that I've been considering,

adding to my offering as well.

I've been thinking about actually hiring a transcriptionist to review an

automated transcription using descript so that I can say, Hey, I'll deliver

you a transcript for this amount.

But then that also becomes a quality control step where they say, Hey,

I heard this or this sounded weird.

And trying to leverage that relationship to maybe also catch potential issues

and having a quality check.

Been a huge help for

me.

So you have somebody that does that for you also?

Yeah, my assistant does.

Oh

yeah.

Well that's again.

That's why I was like, well, that can be something that, um, my quality control

person can step into that VA role.

That's absolutely something that, that, cause anybody can listen to a podcast

and be like, oh, that sounds bad.

Yeah.

And never listen

again.

And I just want to give a shout out to Helen.

I did some coaching with her and she's just crushing it.

So she's going to, we can all go work for her.

Awesome.

Cool.

I didn't realize she had four positions open, but that's great.

You do.

Right.

So we talked a little bit about the scope of work and

that kind of stuff, but I think what originally brought this whole topic

up was Daniel asking the question?

What should we ask if we want to interview an editor, Daniel, do you

want to share a little bit about your.

Your thought process and what was going on and what you were looking for.

So I know like one non-negotiable for me is they

have to use my da, I use Reaper.

So I knew like I had to.

Find people that were proficient and Reaper.

Fortunately, I have a Facebook group full of podcasts, editors that use Reaper.

So I had a source like put an application out to, but I didn't

really know what to ask beyond.

Like, Hey, what's your name, your email.

And like how long they've been using Reaper?

Like what are their tools they're using and like their turnaround time.

So then I threw it to the mastermind guests.

Ideas.

And then one that Brian, that you mentioned that I really liked was the

philosophy of editing, which like, for me, it's like, you know, a good editor.

You never know that they were there and err, on the side of sounding natural

as opposed to removing everything.

Fluency.

So I think that's like a really good vet to kind of see like where

they're at and whether or not your like, philosophy is right.

You

want to hear something funny?

Always that kind of goes along with this is I was interviewing for kind

of a big job, not too long ago.

And that's one of the questions.

That they asked.

I love

it.

Yeah.

The interesting thing about that question is it, I

mean, it's easy to either lie or to be aspirational or to maybe not have

an accurate picture of what you think.

Right.

So if you've listened to this show and now you go, I'd like to work

from Daniel, you would say, well, my philosophy is you shouldn't

be able to tell that I was there.

Then there's the question of, can you actually deliver the goods?

Right.

My philosophy on that is that it's perfectly appropriate to ask

somebody to do a trial edit for you.

And I'm not talking about like a 90 minute episode, although if you want to

edit an episode of the podcast, editors mastermind, to prove that you've got

the skills, believe me, if you can do this show, you've got some skills, but

many have

tried and I dunno.

Two to five minutes is enough.

What do you guys think?

Yeah, actually

depends

on the show.

Well, here is what I think it was Carrie green who said this or Darrell?

Darnell.

I can't remember which one, but they said they actually take

audio with very specific problems, little clips that they know.

That editors are going to have to deal with, and then they give

them those to do a test at it.

And if they can't solve those problems and we're not talking about anything, like

super complicated, we're talking about, you know, mouth clicks, a little bit

of background noise, leveling problems.

So if they can't do that, They're not the editors that you want to work with.

Yeah.

Which I thought was brilliant.

I think I remember Darryl talking about something like that, where he said he

also does that because he knows that they're going to have to send it back

because no editor that has ever tried to edit whatever it is that he sends them

has not returned at least one issue.

So he's also looking to see how do they deal with.

Having to go back and retouch something, which, you know, you can ask somebody

like, how do you deal with stress or having to do something again?

And if they really want the job, they'll say I'm great at it.

But when push comes to shove, I don't know that any of us really

like to do the second pass.

Right.

And then how do they handle criticism?

Are they going to like, be angry at you?

So

yeah.

What about the rest of you?

Do you have any, like, I don't have a sample to send anybody other than

an episode of the podcast editors mastermind, which is probably not a fan.

Fair piece of work to send for what I normally do trial by

fire, what four tracks,

cross talking and all sorts of crazy stuff.

And then Carrie's crazy voiceover.

We should send him to the episode 28 to do and make them have

to like line everything up.

I did not send a test run to.

Not like a small sample, but I can see if I had the same few

minutes to send to everybody.

That'd be a good idea.

I think the one girl ended up doing a better job on one show than I did.

I was like, okay, well she can keep it.

She's doing a better job

than me.

The questions was like, what's your approach to editing.

And can you share your process?

And I was reading one of them.

It's like, oh, that's a really good idea, because like, I want to hire

this person just so I can piggyback off what they're doing and learn from,

you know, you should share with us what that was.

I had to like, look at the responses and pick out which one it

was.

Yeah.

No later, not live.

That's going to be our little secret.

So what was it?

Sorry, what was your question?

Just, do you have a section that you send for sample edits?

That's something that I think I need to do.

I think it's worth.

Yeah, I don't have

one.

I need to find one.

And then it's like, do you want to send them something like our show, which

is going to be a real challenge or something more in line, um, was like what

you do, like sending them one of your clients, like a sample from your client.

But then it's like, can you do that ethically or do you need to talk to

your client first and being like, Hey, here's what I'm looking to do.

I think you need to talk to your client first about that.

I don't think that there's anything wrong with sending them our

show because first of all, it's like worst case scenario, right?

And if they can reasonably deal with four tracks, like, cause I have

like tried to hire some editors who were like, well, I've never, I've

only worked with one track before.

Like that's all I've ever done, which is a surprise because that's what some editing

programs are like a podcast VA programs.

They only teach like that how to edit one track.

And so it literally is a new experience for them.

If I can throw them.

And they can kind of figure out how to put everything together

and make everything sound decent.

Even if it needs revisions.

I just say that was successful if

you send them like just the first five minutes of our show

with whatever their lead is, so that they have to line stuff up, like that'll

really show, can you follow instructor?

Because I found a number of people when we had people reaching out to us

who wanted to edit the show, they're like, oh yeah, I can totally do this.

And you send it to them.

Like the instructions literally say at this point in the intro, this is

where the interview portion starts.

As you fade out under it.

And I get them back and it's faded out over 30 seconds and then 10

seconds later, this stuff starts and I'm like, I mean, it was literally

right there and all the video

that goes

with it.

Well, I did, I mean, we've had some people reach out that I didn't necessarily

think could actually pull it off.

And so I want to give them the chance.

And I also want to set them up for success because I realized that this is

a challenging edit and I sent it to him.

I'm like, send him a video.

This is where all of the things are.

This is how you can line it up here, here and here.

This is what you do.

I've got some stamp notes for places where stuff.

Don't cut out all the, all the breasts and we get something where

all the words are smushed together.

The breaths are all gone.

It's been compressed until, and not compressed.

Well, like you can compress the snot out of something and still

have it sound good if you do it.

Right.

But it

was so the other thing that I really

like when I'm like hiring somebody is how enthusiastic are they?

So one person who was like, I never worked on anything, but more than

one track actually came back and said that to me and then said, but

I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to watch this video on how to do it.

Yeah.

And then I'll send it back to you.

Cool.

And I was like, that's awesome.

That's the kind of person like, if you're just honest about it.

And following directions is a big thing, because if I tell you to

email, like if I put up an ad and I say email me and you try to DM me.

You know, you aren't worried.

Right.

Do anything else, but email me, you don't put the right subject

line that I tell you to put it in.

You're just gone.

Cause you know, I'm going to get 500 emails.

Right?

Whenever I put the application in my group, I made sure

like, do not DME fill out this form.

Fortunately, nobody did.

I was like, anybody DNS me?

Like you're automatically one because unsolicited DMS

are gross and don't do that.

And I don't want to work with somebody like

that.

Right.

Yeah.

I see him like six months later and

two, like it didn't follow directions,

so it's going to be awkward.

And, uh, so if you can't follow

directions in the application portion,

Then like that's so important.

It's just followed the directions.

I would say maybe I should have made my application process

more complicated to test their direction.

Following skills, click here

for page two.

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

I have done that before.

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

Yeah,

don't answer any of the questions on page one.

Please proceed to page.

Oh, snap.

Are you only promoting this in the Reaper editing group or were you putting this out

somewhere else too?

So far I've only done the report.

One, because it's my groups.

I want to give them priority and like kind of first dibs.

So Hey, if you're not in the Reaper group join and you get first access

to whatever, as long as you use Reaper, as long as you use Reaper yet.

And if you're not, if you're using reprinted on the group,

what are you doing with your life?

I don't understand.

Yeah,

seriously?

Yeah.

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

It's called Reaper for,

yeah.

Yeah.

Or go to Reaper for podcasting.com/group.

And then Michelle is going to post and just busters.

Cause I'm not allowed in that group because I work with a lot

of female podcasters and I want to have like a female perspective

in the editing process as well.

It's cool.

Yeah, that's actually something I've thought about

because it does seem like even in the Hindenburg group, there's a fair

number of females, but it is still biased toward dudes a little bit.

And I'm not sure how to overcome.

You have to reach out to women.

You happen to know somebody actually, you know, two

people I do.

And you've been very helpful in getting people in that group.

I don't want to say that you haven't, but it's

still biased.

Right?

So if you.

One to work with women, you have to like reach out to your women, friends

and yes, Helen, the second time in two days, Reaper

has been mentioned or recommended.

Is it a sign?

It is.

It's a sign that you should totally go with Hinton.

Not necessarily, no, but Reaper is a solid piece of software.

Somebody interviewed me earlier this week asking if I didn't have

Hindenburg, what would I use?

And the answer is Reaper audition because I can buy Reaper one

time and be done with it.

I auditioned, I buy it.

Ah,

I know.

Yeah.

I is like, either love it or you hate it.

And at this point I just, I just.

I just don't feel like learning anything else.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's the thing is like, if you're proficient in a

doll, there's really no need.

I can't think of like a feature that anyone has that we're switching.

No, unless you want to switch anyway, other

than cheaper,

but you know what?

I have a free pro tools account.

I have Reaper, I have audacity.

I have Hindenburg and I have audition on my computer.

So the time cost of learning a new dog.

Tremendous.

Yeah,

but I will, if I have to, and if you pay

me enough, I will learn any doll.

Um, I don't know if you saw it.

Ashley said, um, when it comes to the whole women thing, it's been that way

since, before podcasting was a thing.

Definitely

agree and totally, absolutely.

Ashley.

So it's up to you guys to like, change that.

Definitely.

Mark Dale says, learn your doll over switching.

Yeah.

Be a proficient.

And then I think it's a little bit easier once you know, what your daughter

does and then switching, it's just a matter of finding all the buttons.

Yeah.

Cause they're all essentially doing the same thing.

It just reproduces it better.

I think maybe one of the thing that we haven't talked about

in terms of bringing on contractors is contracts with my clients.

This is something I have in place, but truthfully, I don't actually

have a contract in place with the editor that works with me.

What do you guys do?

How do you approach that?

Subcontractor for other folks, I didn't sign a contract.

And so when I brought on contractors, I didn't have them sign contracts on

a, pay them through PayPal or Venmo.

So it's probably not the best

shot.

I always make everybody sending nondisclosure because the worst thing

that I think could happen is that they.

Say anything about my clients that my clients don't want said.

I hadn't thought about that.

Yeah.

That my clients don't, everybody gets a nondisclosure.

I treat all my clients.

Like I have a non-disclosure with them.

That's like kind of standard for me.

And I wasn't really doing contracts with my contractors.

However, I do have, like, in my notion I have kind of a policy.

Hmm for them, like what to expect, how we work, how I work specifically.

I do let them know when I talked to them.

I do let them know that like, sometimes I'm bad at like

communicating or responding.

Like if I'm just done with the internet for the day, I'm just done.

If it's pressing, I will get back to them or I'll have, you

know, my husband take care of it.

And I also have like sick days.

If you are sick, if you are not able to do anything, please

let me know, like immediately.

So I can make sure that the work is covered, that kind of thing.

And just, I also have a thing that says, you know, when you're out in the

wider world and you're representing their company, so like don't be

a jerk, you know, will Wheaton rule, you know, be nice to people.

That kind of

thing.

One thing I want to include in mine is a non-compete clause.

Like you can't talk to my client.

Don't steal my clients.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

My clients, you know, that's very smart and it's probably something I

should have, but because I, you know, the work ebbs and flows and because I

did the fellowship, I have encouraged my contractors to do work elsewhere.

Oh, like, I don't want them, like, they

can't work for other editors.

Right.

I just don't want him to steal my client

exactly.

Right, right.

You can't go after my

clients, although I have given a client to a contractor.

Yeah.

It's just like, you can have that one.

Yeah.

That's easy enough to write in as a, without

prior written permission.

So I actually wrote a contract to subcontract for somebody else and the

work hasn't come through, but the way that worked, because he isn't, it.

I wrote the contract and said you can't contact or pursue for

business purposes or something.

Yeah.

Any client that is known to work for this person for 12 months after the end of

the relationship or something like that.

That was actually a little bit tough to figure out how to write it out because

I'm not a lawyer that seemed important.

I don't

want them talking to my clients, not so much.

It's like, I don't want, I'm afraid that they're going to steal the client.

Cause like one thing, like, I don't think that's going to happen because

I have such a strong relationship with all my clients, but two, I don't

want any confusion with my clients.

Like they talk to them.

My wife slash business partner or my assistant for certain things.

And I don't want them to be in like, okay, well, it's an editing question.

Talk to them by your show notes, talk to this part.

Like, I want very few, like they contact any three of us and that's it.

Right?

Yeah.

And they don't have to like, worry about who they need to

contact.

Yeah.

And I often cause sometimes I think about like the whole agency

model and then I feel like that's why they're our account managers.

Right.

But then you watch something like mad men and then the account

managers steal the clients.

Yeah.

I mean, that's Jerry McGuire, same

thing.

Right.

There's always a risk.

So I wasn't always a fan of contracts, Ashley.

Or Ashley Lehman, but I am so getting into them and I am building them into

my system and employee handbooks, because I feel like my contractor

thing is kind of an employee handbook.

I like contracts.

I don't like creating them.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

I want them in place, but I don't want to do the work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's why I make like sections.

So I've been using quoters IO, even though I can do it and like

a gazillion other things I've been using quoters IO, because that allows

me to like save contract sections.

Right.

So it can have like all the like super legal jargon.

You know, by section like payment terms, scope of work, that kind of thing.

And then I can just save it, copy it, and tweak it as I kind of like

am able to repurpose it, which has

been really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

W we need to probably go ahead and wrap this up.

Cause before we go, I wanted to give Jennifer a chance to share a

little bit about what's going on.

Cause there are some changes coming to the pod.

Editors masterminds.

So, Jennifer, do you want to share?

Well,

that's really open.

I could say whatever I want.

Now you can, as long as it's good about me.

Okay.

Wow.

Well, this is my last for now episode of the podcast.

I run a mastermind show because.

Uh, about six months ago, started working as a real estate

receptionist at a real estate office.

And now I've moved up to office manager and that takes a lot of my brain away.

By the time I get home.

Especially with my kid home.

She wants me to feed her

so

annoying.

I know, I don't understand this.

It's not like she's small, she's 18.

She can feed herself, but she expects me to cook dinner for her and everything.

And then after working all day and I'm still a podcast

editor, I haven't subcontracted.

And so my evenings I'm like cooking or.

Editing or sleeping or, you know, not doing anything.

That something had to give.

And so I'm stepping down

for now.

So for those of you that are watching, I'd just like to encourage you to

stop by Jennifer's Facebook profile and show her a little bit of love.

Let her know that you'll miss her because we suspect that she'll be

back when she realizes she can't live without us, but it might take some

time because we are an acquired taste.

Uh, do we have time for, to pod decks question of the day?

Always.

All right.

So today's pod Dex question of the day is who would you like to sit to next?

Can't even read

matter requirement for this job.

I'm a podcast editor, not a podcast.

Narrator.

Who would you most like to sit next to on a 10 hour flight?

Um, nobody because I hate to fly

or Daniel, maybe in your case, who would you like to sit next to on

a bridge, going to Memphis for 10 hours?

Isn't there a bridge breaking or something near Memphis.

They had to shut down the main bridge

coming into Memphis because they found a structural crack that's

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

so Delaware, I mean,

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

we do that stuff on purpose here.

Can I say my wife?

Yeah, you definitely can.

Out of anybody,

I would have to say.

Is that a, is that a cheater answer?

I mean,

no,

I have sat next to my husband for like a 12 hour drive

does that, and we had a great time.

I

bet you did.

I was on a train

ride.

How about you, Jennifer?

Who would you like to sit next to for a 10 hour flight?

Oh,

wow.

I'm going to sleep.

So it doesn't matter

a pharmacist with a lot of Xanax on main.

Yeah, no hesitation there.

I don't know, maybe one of my pals from the UK who I don't

ever get to see, that's a good one.

Caroline, who we've only hung out.

Like we had a great day on the beach the one time, but I don't see.

So

if we had like a podcast conference on a plane,

who would we want to attend?

Yeah.

Maybe that should be our next one.

Cause that'd be, that'd be fun.

That'd be

a lot of fun.

I've got a handful of answers right now.

So I felt like I had an answer until Daniel reminded

me that I could also include people that I am actually likely to sit next

to on a plane, which would be my wife.

I was thinking people that are unlikely to sit next to.

But definitely wouldn't mind sitting next to Catherine for

10 hours or more on a plane.

That's been fun in the past.

If I had to choose somebody that I didn't get to sit next to.

And haven't really met.

I would probably say Darrell, Darnell.

Cause I'd like to pick his brain a bit about running an agent

you haven't met yet, but I feel like

you need to get them drunk first.

Well,

the 10 hour flight, we can make that happen.

I mean, I don't really drink so I could give him mine, I

guess you haven't met Daryl.

Cool.

Like you guys I've been in the

same room as

him.

You've been on the same zoom call as him, for sure.

Which is

almost the same.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I definitely have pec 20, 20.

I mean, yeah, mark.

If we can have more than one person, definitely have that PC

flight, we might even invite you if we let people from Atlanta come,

Hey, do we now with the jet, do we not even able to, I

dunno.

I dunno.

Wow.

I'll have to see it.

Just freeze that

weekend, but all right, well with that, we're

probably going to need to wrap it up.

Cause this is quickly taking her I'm.

Brian is being a, you can find me@toptieraudio.com.

You're muted.

Carrie

I'm, Daniel . You can find me@rothmedia.audio.

And if you want a copy of the podcast editor application that

I created, you can find that at podcast editors, mastermind.com.

Editor application, and there'll be a link in the show notes,

Caulfield, Eric, Yaya podcasting, and I

did find the unmute button.

And if you want to be a guest on our show, you can go to podcast editors,

mastermind.com backslash, be a guest.

And I'm

like as me.

Why are you talking?

Yeah.

Well, no, you can't ever excellent.

Okay.

I'm Jennifer Longworth and you can find me at bourbon barrel, podcasting.com or

across social media at K Y podcasting.

K Y stands for Kentucky.

Give her love folks, gave her a lots and lots of love.

I mean this time of me

pray for us because we got to figure out

how to go on without Jennifer.

So

yeah, you're going to have to do like the three, like

side-by-side thing on stream yard,

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

you know what we could do.

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

Guest hosts,

guest

hosts, guest host.

I mean, nobody will be able to fill your shoes.

Right.

But we can let people

try.

Yeah.

So if people want to be a guest, Carrie has already given you the

information for how to do that.

And if you would like to demonstrate your mad skills as an editor,

You can also reach out to us.

We have an episode of the podcast editors mastermind that you could do for practice,

or if you'd like to edit this one and try and turn it into something, even

relating to a conversation, just let us know podcasts, editors, mastermind.com.

Thanks everybody.

Bye bye.

Carrie Caulfield Arick:

Uh, turn down your game.

Uh, so.

Mmm.

Mmm.