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Welcome, everybody, to Podcast Answers, the show where I help you start and grow your

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podcast, answering any podcasting questions along the way. That's right. Today we are

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talking about accessibility. What's that mean for your podcast? What's that mean? How do

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you create an accessible podcast for yourself.

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But first, a few things to cover.

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If you want to join us in our live Zoom backstage, you can go to podcastanswers.com/backstage.

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That'll get you into our backstage and that will allow you to hang out with me, ask questions,

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potentially even be on screen.

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So if you want to do that again, that's podcast answers.com/backstage.

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And we would love to have you.

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But first, let's talk a little bit today about podcast accessibility.

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So what are some ways to make your podcast more accessible?

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First is providing transcripts for every episode.

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So you can easily do that a couple different ways.

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I use a software called Mac Whisper,

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which allows me to generate

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after I've created my podcast episode.

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I take Mac Whisper, I run my audio through it,

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and what it does is it creates a transcript file,

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a SRT or VTT transcript file,

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which you can then, on most new podcast apps,

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you can, or most new podcast hosts,

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you can attach that to that,

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and it will allow you to create a transcript

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in your RSS feed that allows the podcast apps to play that file as you're playing it, as

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you're playing your episode so that that way people can read along with your episode.

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Super handy for those, especially that may be hard of hearing or as we've seen today,

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a lot of our new generation has the captions on when we are when they were talking, like

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when we're watching TV, they have captions on.

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So you can do this for that so that they can make it easier to hear easier to see easier

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to be with that.

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Now the other thing that you can do is is some podcast hosts will generate that that

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SRT or VTT file for you, meaning that you upload your file and they will generate the

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file put it in your feed.

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Now this may be a cost for some some things I'm I host on captivate and if I allow captivate

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to create my my transcript, then it does cost me a little bit for them to do that.

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But it allows that they will generate that if you don't have

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if you do not have that ability to generate that on your own.

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Yes. So it is a pretty awesome software

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because it does allow you.

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MacWhisper is a pretty allow awesome software.

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It does allow you to create that right locally on your machine.

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And it allows you to give get all of the files that you need for

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for your podcast host.

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Now, the great thing is, if you don't even do this, some

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some podcast players will generate one for you.

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Apple Podcasts recently has started

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creating transcripts for you if you do not provide one in your podcast feed.

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So the great thing about that is that allows you to

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you don't have to do anything.

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You can just go upload your file.

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And then once Apple podcast gets that, they will create a transcript for you

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for those watching in in Apple or listening in Apple podcast.

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So that that's one way that you can make your podcast more accessible.

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The other thing is to use clear audio and speak at a moderate pace.

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So using a good mic is going to help.

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You don't have to get a mic like I have.

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I have an SM7B that's a but a $400 mic, but that will that mic is going to create amazing

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audio and allow you to to have amazing audio going forward.

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Now you don't have to have an amazing mic to do that.

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You can get one for $100 or even less, but that will make your audio sound really good.

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Again, an audio that's not listenable.

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People are going to turn off right away.

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It's not going to be able to hear because a lot of sometimes people have hearing problems.

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And if you have a good mic, that's going to help them get that audio in there in your

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ear in their ear and be able to understand you, you better.

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The next thing that I'm going to say is speak slow.

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So speak at a moderate pace.

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You're going to have to speak slower than you think you need to.

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going to sound painful probably to yourself. I know for me when I'm not behind the mic

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right here, I speak at an incredibly fast pace. And some may even say that even on the

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mic that I do that, that I, I speak really fast and it's hard to understand me. I always

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joked growing up that my sister and I spoke so fast to each other and we could understand

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each other, but no one else could understand us because we spoke so fast.

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But. In a podcast, you don't want to do that,

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you want to speak slower than you think that you need to,

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it's going to sound really slow to you because you hear yourself

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when you when you're hearing yourself, you understand what you're saying

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because you know the intent behind your topics,

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you know the intent behind what your speech and so.

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But the other people that are listening to you don't know what you're saying,

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You you know that you know what you're saying so you can say it faster.

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But those listening to you don't know what you're going to be saying.

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And so it takes some time to hear you.

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And when you speak fast, a lot of times we jumble up our words.

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We smush them together, and it's really hard to understand.

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Now, that gets even worse for somebody who's not a native speaker

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of the language that you're speaking in.

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I'm doing this podcast in English, but if I had a French speaker

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that doesn't know English very well or a Spanish speaker that doesn't know English very well.

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Now think about that.

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They're trying to translate that in your head, their head.

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They're trying to listen to you speak.

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And it gets really hard to do that because if you're speaking so fast, they can't understand

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what you're saying.

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They're going to have trouble trying to translate what you're saying in their head.

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So speak a lot slower than you think that you actually need to to get your job done.

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Now, the next thing that I would say is when you are talking and you're describing something

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because now, especially if we're doing video, if we're doing a video show, like I have this

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on on YouTube as well as an audio podcast, I may say something like, hey, this is my

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phone.

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This is an awesome phone.

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Well, I just held up my phone, but you don't know that if you're just listening in audio.

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So I need to describe what I'm saying.

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This is my phone.

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It's an iPhone 16 on the back of it.

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It has a clear case and on the back of it as a QR code.

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And it is an amazing phone.

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I love it.

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Describe what you're saying.

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Describe what you're seeing.

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Describe, describe, describe it because your audio only listeners are not going to have

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any idea what you're actually talking about.

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The next thing I want to say to you, and this isn't necessarily for.

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Making it accessible, exactly,

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but depending on what your show is about, you may need to include content

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warnings for sensitive topics.

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Do this in a pre-roll.

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I've recently done an episode, not on this show, but on a different one

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where normally that show is going to be family friendly.

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Normally we're talking to families.

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I know people listen in the car with their kids.

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And our guests used a couple of some language

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that wasn't necessarily suitable for all audiences.

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And so what I did is after the interview,

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I went ahead and recorded a pre-roll that said, essentially, Hey, I know that you

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people may normally listen to this in the car with their youngins.

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And just wanted to let you know, this interview does contain some.

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some language, or if I was talking about a sensitive topic

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that I may not want my kids to hear, I want to include that in a pre-roll.

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Now, another thing that you can do is.

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Offer multiple audio formats, this is going to become accessible for people,

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you have to think about this, your audio, if you're recording in an MP3

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and you're, let's say, doing it at stereo 128 K.

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That's not very, very big in today's standards, right?

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I mean, it's it's about a mega minute or something.

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But what happens to those people who are in third world countries

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or in places that don't actually

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they can't get the data that you can?

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There's a lot of places that can't get data like we can here in the US

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and in other parts of the world.

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So you think about creating a lower quality format,

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maybe something that's mono in

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96 K or even less.

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Bitrate, it's going to be a lot smaller file.

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You can do this a couple of different ways.

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You can use the alternative enclosure with a new podcasting to 2.0 standards,

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which allows you to say, hey, this is my normal enclosure,

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but this is a lower bitrate one or this is a video one

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that's not necessarily used in a lot of the podcasting apps yet.

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But the other thing you can do is create separate feeds for this.

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So let's say you have

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a video feed in an audio feed.

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for people who just want to listen to your audio or even a low bitrate feed.

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Create a separate podcast RSS feed.

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Now, the other thing you want to do is ensure that your website

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and podcast platform are screen reader friendly.

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There's a couple of ways you can do this,

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but you want to make sure that screen reader friendly

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with all of your alt tags on your pictures and things like that.

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That way, people that are using screen readers can understand

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what they're seeing on on your website and things like that.

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because again, I do recommend that you have a website.

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Now, again, the last thing I would say is consider adding captions

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if you have a video version.

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Now, traditional actual video podcasts in the RSS.

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You should probably bake in your captions for that.

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And what that I mean is you when you're doing your video

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editing, generate captions and they're on the video.

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This way, people watching your video can have captions.

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Now, again, that's not.

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Super relevant in today's day and time,

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because a lot of people who are doing video shows are not using

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video files in their RSS, they're actually just using them on YouTube.

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So if you're using YouTube, great, because YouTube will generate captions for you

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if your video is hosted there.

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So these are just a few things that you can do to make your podcast

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a little bit more accessible to people.

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I would do just encourage you to go out and make awesome content that's accessible for

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everybody.

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And if you have any questions, if you feel free to contact me at podcast answers dot

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com slash contact.

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If you want to start your show and need help doing this, if you've got any value out of

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this show, I would encourage you to give that value back.

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You can do that by going to podcastanswers.com/buymeacoffee and you can just show me your appreciation

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and help me out a little bit there.

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So with that, guys, have a great week and keep podcasting!