Welcome to Podcasting Tech, a podcast that equips busy

entrepreneurs engaged in podcasting with proven and cost effective

solutions for achieving a professional sound and appearance.

I'm Matthew Passi, your host and a 15 year veteran in the podcasting

space. We'll help you cut through the noise and offer guidance on software and

hardware that can elevate the quality of your show. Tune in weekly

for insightful interviews with tech creators, behind the scenes studio tours, and

strategies for podcasting success. Head to podcasting tech dot

com to subscribe to this show on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

and join us on this exciting journey to unlock the full potential of your

podcast. It's been a little while, but excited to get back and do

one of our studio tours here on Podcasting Tech. Today, we are chatting with

Kevin Palmieri. He is podcaster, speaker, podcasting coach. He

has a show, the Next Level University podcast,

and he's all about self improvement and helping people with a better life. Kevin,

thank you so much for joining us today. Matthew, I appreciate you having me on.

Any chance I get to talk about podcasting and all things podcasting, I am

always excited. So I appreciate the opportunity. Oh, glad to have you on.

So literally just before we we started to hit record, you were telling me what

you were doing in life working for a company that helped out schools improve their

energy efficiency. But, obviously, you're not doing that anymore. So what

kinda led you from the the 9 to 5

to switching to more of a entrepreneurial life and and get into podcasting?

Yeah. When I was doing this job, I was convinced that if I made

a certain amount of money, if I made a $100,000, all of the problems

in my life would go away. I made the money, and it didn't it

didn't seem to work like I had hoped. And I

ultimately, I realized that for most of my life, I had lived unconsciously. I didn't

know why I was doing any of the things that I was doing. The

opposite of unconscious is hyperconscious. And in

2017, much like a lot of people, I was watching a lot of Joe Rogan,

listening to Joe Rogan, and I said it would be really cool to have a

podcast about this. So in 2017, I started a

podcast. I fell in love with it. Then the following year, I was

sitting on the edge of a bed contemplating suicide because I was just

so miserable, and I felt so stuck.

And then I ended up leaving my job a few months later and then

trying to figure out how to do this and how to do it profitably for

the next few years. And here we are 7 years later. So

you you used the word in there that I'm sure caught the ears and attention

of lots of, listeners profitably. So

what was the initial thoughts about how you're gonna be profitable with the

podcast, and and where did it eventually lead you?

Initially, I think I was very naive where I just thought, that'll happen

eventually. It'll happen the way it's supposed to eventually. And that

just wasn't the case. I was 2 years in, so we didn't monetize

for 2 years. At that point, I was $30,000

in credit card debt riding the struggle bus. And I said to my

business partner, I said, I I really need to start making some money here, man,

or I'm gonna I'm gonna be in a bad place. And he said, I think

we should start coaching for free. And I said, I don't know if you heard

the last part of what I said, but I need to start making money. So

free is good, but I need to make money. And he said, well, Kev, you've

never coached in this line before. You have to build trust with our audience. You

have to build belief in yourself. So I reached out to 5 people who

I knew listened to the show, because I had talked to them. And I said,

hey. I'm interested in doing coaching. I've never done it. I will coach

you for free weekly for the next 8 weeks, and

there's no strings attached. And everybody I

reached out to, all 5 people said yes. And I said, okay. This is something.

This might be something. At the end of the 8 weeks, I said, I can't

do this for free anymore. I'd love to keep coaching you. What do you think

of $50 per call? And everybody said yes. So I went from

making $0 to $250 a week, and that became

the process of everything for us. That has been our business model

since, I guess, 2019 when we started coaching people.

Very, very nice. Is there any direct monetization from the

podcast itself, or is it just the podcast as a vehicle for

driving up sales in other places, which, by the way, I'm all for and highly

encouraging people, but just wanna see if there's anything else you're doing that is, you

know, more podcast direct. No. We've never done

ads. We've never done sponsors. We've done never done affiliates. We have our own

products. We sponsor ourselves, and we're kind of our own affiliates. So that's kind of

the way it's it's worked for us. Okay. So, if

you're not watching this, if you're just listening to the audio version, you're

missing out that Kevin has a pretty nice studio there, really nice background.

Take us through a little bit about the evolution of your technology and

and how you get like, what you started with and what you are working with

today. Yeah. In the beginning, I started with the old Audio

Technica ATR 21100 mic. I have it here. Reliable. Alt

yep. And then I had a I believe it was also an Audio

Technica little mixer, a little USB interface.

I started there. I wasn't I was using Audacity.

Still use Audacity. Yeah. Still still a huge fan. In the very beginning,

there was no video. So all I was

doing was sitting in my living room, recording into my

ATR, using Audacity, and then figuring out kinda how to do

the audio editing there. Then we moved into

my business partner's mother's house,

and that became our first, quote, unquote, studio. And we had

a couple of inexpensive Sony cameras. We

got a new mixer. We had, like, a really big mixer that is way

overkill that nobody ever really needs. And we kept using the

same mics, and we kept doing that. And then, eventually, we

upgraded to the camera I have, the Sony a 73.

That became our studio camera. For a while, we had, like, multicam

shots. And then we ended up I I would say

the pinnacle of of the experience was at one point, we had our own

studio, and it was it was the best. We had,

like, TVs on the wall, lights everywhere, curtains,

but it's really been the same equipment throughout

until we upgraded to the I think this is the a t 2020 or the

a t 2040 mic. Big fan of Audio Technica.

Obviously. So it's, yeah, it's kind of been that. It there haven't been that

many technological differences. A lot of it

has been the branding and then, like, kind of the the backdrop. So I have

3 d wall art. I have a bunch of lights in my studio. I have

lights on the ceiling for downlighting and uplighting,

and that's kind of and I have a TV that I'm seeing you on. So

it's kind of mayhem in here. Behind the scenes, it's a hot mess, but it

looks good on camera, and I guess that's all that matters. So I wanna talk

about that 3 d wall art in just a second, but you you said you

put together your own studio. So, Juan, is that where you're speaking to us

from today? No. No. This is from home. Okay. So you have this

studio. Is it like a commercial studio that you rent out and and use with

other people, or is it just something for you and your crew to to use?

This was just for us. It was an old mill building who they I

think it was probably, I don't know, 300

square feet. They gave us free rein. They said, yeah. You can put stuff on

the walls. You can do whatever we want. So, yeah, it was it was in

a mill building, and it felt really legit. There's something about

turning the key, opening a door, and seeing your own studio that makes you feel

super professional. So, it definitely helped me in terms of the belief of what we

were doing. Very, very cool. Alright. Nice. And now

let's talk about this 3 d wall art. So, again, if you're not watching this

on YouTube or if you're not seeing one of the clips, please go check

it out and and take a look just because it is a really fascinating backdrop

that you have there. You said it was a 3 d backdrop. Does that mean,

like, you printed it yourself, or do you buy it from someone else? I bought

it on Amazon. Okay. I think it was, like, $100

for, I don't know, whatever it is, 50 square feet. And then

I just used the command strips

to put it on my wall. Didn't like the way it looked. So

they're black. It's black wall art. I didn't like the way it looked just black.

It just looked plain to me. So then I got a bunch

of lights to kinda angle off in certain directions so

I could get some reflections, and then I kinda changed my lights. So I just

changed my lights from whatever color it was to orange because we're kind of in

hall halloween season. When we get closer to Christmas,

maybe I'll do black and, green and red. I don't know black and red. So

we'll see. We'll we'll see what happens, but I'm always trying to change something to

keep it fresh. Very, very cool. You know, and

in fact, we'll we'll we'll try and get a link for you from, where you

got those so we can make it available for people. It's a very, very cool

backdrop, and I imagine it does also help with the sound, but, right, it just

creates a very dynamic look, going on behind you. What

would you say, having been doing this for a while, was the

biggest challenge in podcasting,

or what remains the biggest challenge for you in podcasting?

Man, I think the the thing

that remains the biggest challenge for me now is making sure

there's so much advice out there, and there's a lot of really good advice.

But figuring out what advice actually applies to us, I

think we're we're in a different space where we have a successful business, and

this is very sustainable now. So it's not like I'm

necessarily clamoring for listens. I'm more

focused on making sure that the episodes are really good. We don't have guests

anymore, so that's kind of been a different pivot for us. So I

think the the hardest thing was monetizing, really, because

this was the thing that was gonna pay my bills. So making a

$1,000 a month wasn't gonna be enough because I I had more bills than that,

unfortunately. Now it's really sifting through the information to figure

out what is the most applicable information to us that

we can take and run with, and then just making sure that we're focusing

on what's the 20% of stuff that's gonna get us 80% of the

results. That's really a a big thing for us, because without the

podcast, none of this exists. So we have to make sure

that we're producing high quality content. And when you're doing an episode every

day, it's a challenge when you have dozens of

coaching clients and a 20 some odd person team to make

sure that you're putting the podcast first. So I would say

that's kind of the the hardest thing now is with more opportunity,

you need more discipline to make sure you're doing the right things that brought you

the opportunity in the first place. Is there any software or any

platforms that help you manage the podcast or

or keep the, you know, trains moving on time? I

love OpusClip. OpusClip is great for taking your

long form content and breaking into short form. Other than

that, no. Not really. We use Metricool for all of our social

media posting, so that makes life a little bit easier. You can just set it

and forget it. You can do that in Facebook groups too, so that makes it

a little bit easier. We have Facebook group. I'm a huge fan of

StreamYard. I know we're on Riverside here. Riverside's great, but StreamYard, we've

used for a 1000 episodes, and that's been good. I always tell

folks, like, you know, if if it works for you, then it's the correct solution.

I mean, I I like to suggest certain things. I prefer certain things.

But, really, when somebody says, oh, I see you use this. Do I have to?

It's like, is what you're doing working? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Stick with

it. Yeah. I tell people that all the time about Zoom. They're like, well, I

need to upgrade from Zoom. It's like, just do Zoom. If it's if it's easy

for you now, do it. And if you're here in 50 episodes, then you can

upgrade. Don't you don't have to do it a second. Right. I've also, you know,

seen the folks who are like, oh, but I gotta spend money on Riverside. It's

like but do you? Like, use it. And then if you're making

money and you wanna upgrade later, go for it. Just keep doing

what works for now, and focus on the content. Don't be so obsessed with the

the technology even though, of course, we're here on the show about why this technology.

As a reminder, everybody, we're chatting with Kevin Palmeri. He is podcaster,

speaker, and coach, Next Level University podcast. Of course, we'll have a

link to that and all the places where you can find Kevin here in the

show notes. Before we let you go, we have a couple questions we'd like to

ask everybody on the show and and get your take. So one is that,

is there a place in the podcasting world, whether it's

from the producer experience, the listener experience,

anything like that where you'd like to see some improvement? I would love to see

improvement in terms of the analytics. I think right

now, the analytics is just the Wild West, and

it's hard to read. You don't really know what

means what that analytics. I think analytics need to come

way up. That's fair. I know a lot of folks working on that, and the

the 2 point o crowd is is trying to get in there and do a

little bit better. Some of it is just limitation of the technology. Some

of it is regulatory limitations and privacy concerns, but I can

I've always had, in my days of production and

consulting, analytics, and and having a better understanding of our show is always

a sticking point for people, so I I can totally get that. Is

there any technology on your wish list, whether

it's a piece of equipment, some sort of software, whether it's something that exists or

something you'd like to see created that, you're yearning for? Oh,

I'm very much looking forward to the days where the

studio is bigger and there's a multicam. It

wouldn't be a lie it wouldn't be, like, a live multicam, but I would like

to have multiple cameras in the studio just because I think that makes for a

nice dynamic product. It does.

And in fact, I don't know if you saw recently at the time we were

recording this, RODE just unveiled their RODEcaster video Oh.

Which is a multicam video switcher. And while it

has scenes that you could set up and you could switch the cameras very easily,

it also can do AI switching in that. Right? It'll

it'll jump to whoever is talking. So that's a really it

seems like if it works the way it claims it's gonna work, it's an amazing

product and seems like that could solve that problem for you that you're discussing right

now. So, we'll try and throw a link to that in the show notes as

well in case anybody else wants to check out the Rodecaster video. I

am drooling for it. Hopefully hopefully, somebody will, you know, wanna put it

on my holiday wish list this year. You know, the the cost, the price?

About 1200. That's not terrible, all things considered. No. I

mean, if it does if it lives up to the hype, it's well worth it.

Mhmm. If not, yeah. But

Rode hasn't put out a terrible product yet, so I I have very high hopes

for it. Alright. And lastly, do you have a podcast

that you listen to? In other words, is there a show that as soon as

it comes out, you stop listening to other stuff or, you know, you

you can't go a day or 2 without listening to

this show, when new episodes drop. I know I always sound terrible

when I say this, but, no, I don't really listen to anything else because I'm

trying to review ours to make sure I'm getting better. And

with with one every day, it's hard for me to do anything else other than

that. So no. That is fair. Is there anybody,

or any shows you just wanna mention or give some love to while you're here?

Oh, man. I would say Grow the Show is

a great show. Kevin Chennaldin, that's a great

show. The oh, Mark

Asquith has a show. I don't remember the name of it. Oh, Mark has a

bunch of really good shows. He just launched a new one with Danny Brown. Those

are all good. He was doing 1, on his own for a long time. He

also does a Star Wars one. So Any any of those, specifically the

podcasting ones, any of any of those, I would recommend for sure. Anything from Mark

Asquith deal. I have no problem I have no problem putting a a link to

Mark here on the show and, giving him some extra love. Well, Kevin

Palmeri, podcaster, speaker, coach, host of Next Level

University podcast. Please check out his stuff.

We'll put links to everything that he does, including his coaching work if you are

in the market for that. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us here on

the show today. Thank you for having me, my friend. I appreciate it very much.

Thanks for joining us today on Podcasting Tech. There are links to

all the hardware and software that help power our guest content

and podcasting tech available in the show notes and on our website

at podcastingtech.com. You can also subscribe to the show on

your favorite platform, connect with us on social media, and even leave a rating and

review while you're there. Thanks, and we'll see you next time on

Podcasting Tech.