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So--

How much is that?

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Um, um, um.

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Um, um, um.

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Hey there, and welcome to the podcast Editor's Mastermind,

almost exactly on time edition.

This week, we're going to be talking about how

we get the work done.

But before we do that, we'll do quick introductions.

I'm Bryan.

I'm on the bottom.

You can find me at toptieraudio.com.

And above me over here is--

Daniel Abendroth.

You can find me at rothmedia.audio.

And I'm Jennifer Longworth.

You can find me at bourbonbarrelpodcasting.com.

Unable to join us this week was Carrie Caulfield.

I keep getting her name wrong when I type it

in the show notes, and I don't want to get that wrong.

It's important to get names right.

I don't know if you guys know that.

But this week, we're talking about getting the work done.

This is actually something that Patrick mentioned

on the most recent episode, which was episode 91.

They recorded without me, and it was stellar.

You definitely need to go check that out.

- Oh, thanks.

- One of the things that he said was that he really

appreciated some of the older episodes where we talked

about tools and processes and all that kind of stuff.

And so we thought, hey, that's probably a good idea

'cause in the last five years, nothing has changed

in my business or Jennifer's or Daniel's.

So that's what we're doing here.

I thought maybe as a starting point,

we could share a little bit about what's changed

in our businesses.

I know we've shared a little bit of this,

but not everybody's been with us all the time.

And I'll kind of start out.

So last year, I had typically 10 shows that I was working on

on a monthly basis.

Some of them were more frequent than others.

And through a series of people leaving shows

and leaving people that I subcontracted from

and that kind of stuff, I'm down to basically two shows,

which meant that the contractors I was working with

had to let them move on.

Had a couple of people that were doing some editing

and one person that was doing some podcast management

with helping with show notes and scheduling

and that kind of stuff.

And I basically had to retract all of that

to a one-person operation, which as you can imagine,

has changed my processes a little bit.

So who wants to go next and share a little bit

about what's going on with them?

- Well, I'll go ahead 'cause I have a very similar story.

Things are going really strong.

And then I think it was towards the end of last year.

So I think last year was probably like the lowest

as far as like new clients coming on.

And then like I started this year, it was, I had,

I think three clients pause their show

with one of them confirming that it's an indefinite hiatus.

One may be coming back in September

and then one that was supposed to be a month

that is now two months, maybe three months.

So we'll see how that ends up.

And there was a couple people going from weekly episodes

to every other week.

And then one actually switched to monthly,

but I was able to upsell like,

'cause they do like video interviews.

And so then I pushed the idea of like taking

a 45-minute interview and then taking like six-minute chunks

out of it and uploading that to YouTube

and like making shorts and like a bunch of more content

out of that one interview.

And so still the same amount of money as every other week,

but only doing monthly.

- And then there's me.

My friend set me up a spreadsheet

so I could better track my billing and my clients.

And in December I had six paying clients.

Well, my spreadsheet is at 25.

Not all have started yet.

So some of them assigned contracts, paid deposits

for launches haven't started,

but there are 25 on my spreadsheet now.

So, sorry guys, I stole all your business.

(all laughing)

- Steal our business.

So we do have a comment.

Patrick's joining and listening from the car.

So Patrick, glad that you could join us.

I think he's actually on his way to a volunteer event

or something tonight, if I remember correctly.

- Band concert or something.

- Yeah, just like me last time,

except mine was for my kid instead of just volunteering.

But Patrick, we're glad you could join for what you did.

So from my perspective, I'm really interested,

and we'll go through all of us,

but I'm really interested to hear,

because you're kind of in the middle of it, Jennifer,

what's changed and is changing

in terms of how you approach the work?

What's changed about your processes,

tools that you're using, anything like that?

- At some point, I think it was last year,

I was introduced to Adobe Podcast Enhanced Speech.

If you haven't checked that out, check it out, it's amazing.

It's like-- - I use it quite often.

- Yeah, I use it all the time,

unless it just makes things worse, but usually it doesn't.

(laughing)

But so that is a part of almost every show,

it just gives it a more broadcast quality sound.

I don't know what it does, but it's magical.

And that's the biggest change in process,

like for show to show, but like overall,

I'm not doing as much editing anymore.

Two things I said I'd never do.

(laughing)

Hire people and edit video.

Well, crap, I'm doing both now.

So I hired help and they're doing most of the editing.

Now I have three regular editors.

And then we added video because I had an old client

who was an audio client a few years ago, disappeared,

didn't hear from him, came back to me a month or two ago,

said, "Hey, do you do video now?"

And I was like, "Yes."

- Of course I do. - As a matter of fact,

starting today.

How much do you charge for video?

This much.

Well, that's too much.

Okay, that much.

I don't know.

I'm just gonna be starting a video.

I don't even know what to charge for video, but whatever.

Sure, come on, I'd love to have you back.

It was a great show, I enjoyed it.

(laughing)

So I have a video editor guy on my team now too then.

- Nice.

- That's awesome.

- Yeah, so I was saying in the green room,

a lot of what I do now is just download, upload, upload,

download, download, upload, upload, download.

So I do the audio engineering part of it.

So I get the files through Dropbox or Google Drive,

depending on the client.

- Boo.

- I know.

So I download the files, I run them through RX,

I run them through Adobe Enhance, I make them sound good,

and then I send them to the Dropbox folder of the editor,

and then the editor does whatever they do

and sends it back to me through Dropbox.

We tried Basecamp after talking to Daryl Darnell,

but it's been, I don't know, I'm not sold on it yet.

I'm still in my free trial, so we'll see how it goes.

I don't know, I didn't start all my contractors on it,

but we're trying that out, might try something else.

I don't know, eh, figure it out.

But then after I get their files back through Dropbox,

then I either move it to the Dropbox folder

or Google Drive of the client,

or upload it to the media host.

So all I'm doing all the time is just file management,

which is kind of nice.

Sometimes I sat down to do one show the other day,

I was like, I am not feeling on this show today,

and I was like, what are you doing?

Dalton's probably available right now.

Just send it to him.

(laughs)

I'm like, oh, hey Dalton, you want another show?

Yeah, I'll take it.

I'm like, great, thank you, he's great.

So that's my process now, downloading, uploading,

uploading, downloading.

- Has having those people involved in this

changed how you have to think about pricing

and money and all that stuff too?

- Absolutely.

My prices are about to dramatically increase,

like next week.

I actually said the new number out loud

to someone yesterday.

They said, how much do you charge us?

I'm like, it's this.

I gotta practice saying that out loud

because it has been that.

And we're not doing that anymore.

We're gonna get up there

because I have more expenses now, of course,

and I don't make as much money now,

and I'd like to make money again.

So I pay attention to the average every year

that Steve and Mark do.

I still probably don't quite reach that mark,

but it's a lot better than it was.

Yay. - Cool.

- That's amazing.

You had to like start practicing saying that price

without that quiver in your voice.

- I know, I know.

- That's always been my issue.

- Someone is doing a discovery call with me soon

and they're like, we need a beginner price.

And I'm like, oh, don't know what that means.

- You need a beginner editor.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

I'm not gonna go back to what I used to charge, no,

or what Daniel used to charge for Pete's sakes.

- Yeah. - No, in all seriousness,

a beginner doesn't know what they're doing.

It's going to be harder for you as an editor.

- Yeah, I'll just say my beginner price

is actually more than my veteran price.

(laughing)

- Yeah. - Yeah.

I don't know about your experience,

but my experience has been

once people have been doing this for a while,

generally they get better at returning

a high quality recording,

or at least a higher quality recording,

and thinking through what they wanna do.

So there could actually be less editing going on.

- Yeah. - Do have a question

from Steve.

Jennifer, do you have any kind of profit ratio

you're trying to keep?

Like 30% over what you pay your contractors or 50%?

- Yeah, you know, I should,

but I don't yet know that.

I'll share, when I had contractors,

my target was always like 50% between profit and owner's pay.

It was never there.

It was more like 25 to 30,

because by the time I paid for them,

and then software upgrades,

and all the tools to run the business,

I hadn't reached enough scale that it ever got to that,

but that was my goal,

was because it's still a very hands-on business for me,

even if I was only doing like 50 to 60% of the editing,

still very hands-on.

I can't just run on 5% margin

like it was a Fortune 500 company.

- I'm working with our small business development center

here in Lexington,

and they've given me like a spreadsheet website thing

that I can drop real numbers in

and see real time how these things can play out.

And I haven't been utilizing it,

but it's a free resource.

So type into your city resources

anyone who wants to start a business,

but I've met with them a couple of times,

and that, you know, it's not why I've grown,

but it's helped me with my mindset of growth.

But I need to drop my numbers in

and look and see what it means,

'cause I'm not a numbers person.

- So I'm gonna channel my inner Carrie for a second here.

When are you gonna do that, Jennifer?

- That's a real good question.

Tomorrow.

- Oh, okay, nice.

- I think I have that time tomorrow afternoon

after a consultation call,

'cause I have those all the time now, but.

- So Daniel, what about you?

Has anything changed in terms of the processes

or the tools or anything like that?

- Not as far as like workflow goes,

as like getting client interaction or whatnot.

I still use Slack for like talking to my assistant

and kind of like company

or like business related communication,

email for clients and Airtable for project management,

because Airtable is stupid expensive.

If you wanna have like more than a couple of people,

'cause it's like $20 per person per month.

So it doesn't make sense to pay all that money

to have all my clients in Airtable.

So I utilize the free Airtable as much as possible

so everybody has their own base.

And the one thing I have changed,

so instead of before,

they would submit their episode into Airtable,

which would trigger a Slack notification.

And then my assistant would go grab all the stuff from there

and put it in like a main base where I worked out of.

A couple of issues would arise,

like where the client would update something

and my assistant and I would miss it,

or she might miss like an episode coming in

or just things were getting lost.

So one thing I did add is a Zapier integration.

So every time they add or edit in their base, my clients,

it automatically updates it in the main base.

That way any changes, it's all automated,

which saves a lot of headaches and a lot of extra work.

Yeah, it's like added tools as far as like post-production

and kind of like putting out things,

but really like nothing else has really changed

with the workflow between clients and I.

- Yeah, we'll definitely hit post-production as well.

So for me, very little has changed.

I still get files by Dropbox.

I still use Google Sheets to track like production calendars

and stuff like that.

I've just found that to be really good.

But then my actual project management software is ClickUp.

I don't have any of my clients in there.

It's a hurdle that I've never really jumped through.

And to be honest, with only a couple of shows

to work on right now, I don't have a strong appetite

to start pushing on that because for just a couple of shows,

email and Dropbox has been working fine.

I did make the switch last year.

I was using Zapier, which you brought up,

and there was a lifetime deal for Pavley,

which is kind of the low-price version of Zapier.

Not all of the integrations work quite as well,

but it was a one-time purchase.

I did the math.

It pays out in like 18 months.

So I said, "Pfft, let's do it."

So now I was able to move myself down

to the free version of Zapier

and keep a couple zaps a month for whatever that is

that Pavley wouldn't do, but then I'm able to use that.

And in terms of client onboarding for contracts and stuff,

I'm using SignWell, which also was a lifetime deal

from AppSumo several years ago.

It's like DocuSign or like the document feature

in Dropbox or whatever.

But because it was a lifetime deal, I got that.

And then for scheduling, I've actually started using,

for most of my meetings, I've started using Google Meet

because it's free instead of,

it's not as high quality as Zoom.

I know it's hard to say that, but--

- Wow.

- Especially when I think about,

if I have a consultation with somebody,

I'll schedule a Zoom, turn on the high-quality audio

so they can hear what I'm trying to show them

if we're showing stuff.

But for just a face-to-face, it's super quick.

And one of the things I found

was that I would create the event,

and as soon as Google knew

that somebody else was going to be attending it,

they would put in the Google Meet link also.

So then there'd be a Zoom link and a Google Meet link,

and the people would get confused and go to the wrong one.

So I just said, let's cut that out.

I'm supposed, I've been told there's a way to disable it.

I've been through all the controls.

I can't figure it out.

I'm clearly not smart enough.

So I just went with it.

So I'm using Google Meet for all my meetings.

And then I think one of the things

that I did change last year,

'cause I archive session files and the final episode,

like what's uploaded,

and I got myself an external hard drive.

So I actually archive it to that hard drive.

And then I have that backup to Dropbox.

So I have a physical copy here

that I can pull over in a couple of minutes by USB.

And then I have the Dropbox for the remote version.

So I feel pretty good about the backup process.

It's not quite as clean as I'd like.

Oh, and Steve says that

because we're telling AppSumo stories,

he's gonna end up spending some money.

Hopefully, if you do, it's a good thing.

I don't have any current deals to share with you.

Pablie was not an AppSumo lifetime deal.

They have their own deal.

And I don't think SignWell has been on a lifetime

for quite a while,

but there may be something coming up

that the other two have.

So I think that's what I have.

What about post-production?

There have been some significant changes

in my post-production,

but I wanna hear about what's going on

with the two of you first.

- Well, I'll go next, or again,

I feel like we're going in a circle.

- I like it.

It's easy for me to keep track

of going counterclockwise on this.

- Yeah, yeah.

So I'm still using Adobe Audition

and iZotope RX 10 Advanced,

but my contractors, unlike Daryl,

who was on and has everybody use Adobe,

I haven't gotten that strict with people yet.

As long as they give me a good sounding product

and can fix things if I ask them to fix it,

so far, it's going okay.

So I have someone using DaVinci,

and I don't remember what the other two use,

but I do the final mastering and audition as well.

- Any new plugins or anything like that?

- No, I don't get too fancy with that.

I just kind of, I lean into alphonic or Adobe,

and just kind of like get lazy with that type of stuff.

- I think you're gonna upset some audio engineers.

- I know, but I'm not an audio engineer quite yet.

That's why I need to get better.

Now that I'm not doing the editing as much,

I might have time to learn more audio engineering tricks,

but I'm not very good at it on my own.

I mean, I sat there,

I had a client who worked with me for like three years,

disappeared, came back last week with bad audio and said,

"Can you fix this?"

- Oh no. - Yeah, and I went, oh.

So they have an outdoor conference and it's just bad.

It was very bad.

So I put it into RX, I played with it.

I did the automated stuff.

I tried EQ, I tried this, I tried that.

And I worked on it for an hour and I still didn't like it.

Threw it into Adobe, didn't like it.

Threw it into alphonic, didn't like it.

And alphonic says, "Give us a rating, one to five stars."

How was it?

And I gave it two stars and commented,

"This was terrible audio going in,

still terrible going out, not your fault."

Oh, right, I did it.

They wrote back, they tweaked the settings,

redid it, made it listenable,

and that's what I sent to my client.

So kudos to alphonic for that.

- Really? - That's really cool.

- Nice. - So shout out to alphonic.

- That's a good little review for them.

'Cause I haven't used them in ages.

- I hadn't either.

And then somebody mentioned it recently.

I was like, well, Adobe didn't fix it.

I even tried like moving the little slider this way

and that way and nothing, and RX,

I'm not good enough in it on my own to know what I'm,

I mean, I was doing what I thought I should do,

but it wasn't working.

- How about you, Daniel?

You switched to Pro Tools, right?

- Yeah, I got that big top tier subscription.

- $800 a year?

- Yep, that's the one.

Nope, still on Reaper, but absolutely no plans to change.

So I use RX 10 standard,

and I know there's conversation in the podcast editors club

about like RX 11 and all that.

Just like at this point,

I don't see a point in upgrading again,

unless they do something crazy,

or if they do something stupid,

then I've every reason to move away from them.

RX 10 for my initial cleanup,

and then bring that into Reaper.

I forgot to look at like what we talked about

on the last time we went over this,

but as far as like typical kind of,

I guess the most common plugins I use,

NS1 from, most of these are gonna be from Waves,

NS1 for like Denoiser,

Vocal Writer to help balance it,

Sibilance for those S's I don't like,

and then API 2500 is kind of my main compressor,

but I'll also use like Sheps if I want some,

it needs a lot of work and I wanna keep it simple.

I'll throw Sheps in the way you can do EQ

and all this stuff and whatnot.

Another good new plugin I recently picked up,

D-Room 2, which is a really good D Reverb plugin.

- Who's that one by?

- Ascentize.

- Okay.

- They also had like another plugin I was interested in,

but I didn't, couldn't justify it.

- DX Revive, yeah.

- Yeah, but I couldn't justify the cost at the time,

but that one's like really good.

I rarely use RX's D Reverb anymore.

I usually throw that into my chain in Reaper as needed,

and does a great job.

And then Fresh Air is another good one.

That's also free, which I love.

And then Re-Limit, which is built into Reaper.

Now for some, so if you have an interview,

like two people in the same room,

so there's gonna be some cross bleed.

One plugin, it's a Reaper specific thing,

so anybody, Reaper users out there,

it's called Auto Mixer, it's from Leandro Fakianetti.

But basically what it'll do is like it kind of auto runs

and does its settings, but it monitors the tracks.

And whenever one gets louder than another,

it lowers the second one, the lower one even more.

So that way it always emphasizes like the actual speaker.

- Very cool.

- Which saves a lot of time.

- Yeah. - Cool.

- And then we were talking about that a little bit before,

but occasionally when I need it,

I'll use Adobe's Podcast Enhance or whatever it's called,

the AI Enhancer, which most of the time

does a really good job.

It's really funny whenever like it's an interview

and then like there's some background noise

or like a fan or something,

it tries to create a voice for that.

It just makes really weird vocal sounds.

- Yeah, yeah, it does that.

- But it does, for the most part, it does a really good job

if I need to like restoring really bad audio.

- Nice.

I have made some significant changes from what I did before,

specifically in the area of audio repair.

And a lot of this I owe to Jesse McCune,

who has kind of pushed me to move away

from using a repair stage when a repair stage isn't needed.

So my old process, I get files,

the first thing I do is I check them out

and I go and fix things.

So it's a light background noise reduction

in almost every case, some kind of reverb reduction.

And I would either use Accusonus,

De-Verberate, or I would use iZotope RX.

And I would use them in the standalone programs typically.

I would do some kind of like a mouth de-click.

I would do that as a separate process.

I would do fixing the asymmetrical waveforms, right?

'Cause you'll get some where they're kind of

all over the place.

And for headroom reasons,

I wanna have those relatively even

so that I'm not pushing something up to clipping

in order to get the other half of the waveform

a little bit louder.

So I would do some of that stuff.

And I've basically stepped away from all of that

except in the extreme cases.

And I have a fairly standard set of plugins that I use now.

So there's not a lot of variety.

Still using Hindenburg.

I thought very strongly about leaving Hindenburg last year

when they rolled out their new version

and basically just messed that up.

But so far, I can't justify getting away

from the editing workflow 'cause it's built for editing.

And that's the biggest time suck

is actually doing the editing.

So my typical chain, I typically use some Sonible plugins.

So the Smart EQ, the Smart Compressor, the Smart Gate,

if I need a gate, the Smart De-Esser,

which actually has a built-in de-plosive as well.

So it checks for sibilants and it checks for plosives.

And there's some advanced settings

where you can turn pieces on or off.

So if there's not a problem with plosives,

I can turn that part off.

You can tweak the settings.

I think it sounds to me more transparent

than using something like the Waves,

I think it was sibilants that I'd used for a while

and they also had a de-esser.

I didn't like the way the S's sound when they did that.

This sounds a little bit better to me.

It's not perfect.

It's not as good as a hardware de-esser,

but it's also not three grand.

So it was much better than that.

And then I've also started using their Smart Limit.

So I'll typically run those on each channel,

but not the limiter.

I'll put the limiter on the master bus.

And then if I need it,

I'll use something like Super Tone Clear,

which is one that Jesse's talked about a lot,

and that will do some level of noise reduction

and some level of de-reverb.

And those are really the two things.

Sometimes I'll use the iZotope Mouth De-Click.

If I need that, just use it as a plugin.

And then if I get something that's a hot mess

that you might think of uploading to Adobe Enhance

or using Descript Studio Sound,

because basically it's so bad

you have to recreate the audio,

I'll use Accentize DX Revive Pro.

I paid the extra for the extra settings.

And that, it's not artifact free, but it helps.

It makes it better than it was.

And for me, if I need that one,

it's bad enough that there was nothing else that I could do.

So I very seldom use the standalone editor

for RX or Accusonus at this point.

Did I say Accusonus?

- Yeah.

- I very seldom do that.

The only thing I use the standalone RX editor for

is at the end, after I've exported everything,

if I've got some asymmetrical waveforms,

I'll use the automatic phase realignment to fix that.

Again, just for headroom reasons.

And then on my master bus, I used to run a lot of stuff.

Two or three plugins in a chain and some other stuff.

Now I run one plugin, it's called the Glue.

It's an SSL bus compressor,

similar copy type thing with a couple extra settings.

And then I run the smart limit.

And then I'll usually put Ulean loudness meter on there

just to make sure that I'm getting the levels

where I want them.

And between the compressor on each channel,

the one light compressor on the master bus,

and we're talking like two to three decibels of compression

usually on the master, and then that limiter,

I'm generally able to get it within a half a dB

on the first export before I do any loudness matching.

So I feel pretty good about that.

And that's kind of the full audio post-production.

I'm still using Hindenburg, so I'll still use that

to export the final audio, add the metadata tags,

all that kind of stuff.

So we'll get to future stuff in a minute.

That's my audio chain.

There are some other software packages

that I've picked up recently though

that are on some other stuff.

So I've started using Cast Magic

if I'm working on some show notes or that kind of thing.

So for those that have gone and seen the podcast,

like our show, after we get the file back from Alejandro,

I'll run that through Cast Magic

and I'll have it create a summary for me

and find some interesting points in the conversation,

some titles and that kind of stuff.

And then just like any learning language model thing,

I go through and I fix it, and then that becomes the thing.

And then I started using Mac Whisper for transcriptions.

We do a transcription for this show as well

for accessibility reasons.

And what I've found is that transcription,

which runs on my local computer,

runs better than any of the other transcription services

that I've used in terms of automation.

I'm not saying that one,

like if I paid for Rev with a human review,

which is like two bucks a minute or something for the audio,

it's like crazy expensive, I might be able to get that.

But yeah, Mac Whisper has been a huge win.

- It sounds like that's a Mac only thing.

- It is.

It depends on the Whisper framework,

Backbone something or other.

There may be a Windows version of it, I don't know.

But that has been killer.

You've got the option for different size language models

that it can use for the AI portion of the transcription.

And I use like medium or something,

but you can get like a larger library basically,

but then it affects your runtime.

And I've found that I get really good results.

It's not perfect, but it's good enough

that generally for my name, I have to fix,

change Brian to Bryan and it spells Enspinger [sic] wrong,

but it gets Top Tier Audio right.

And Abendroth, it usually gets correct,

Longworth, it gets right.

And like, if it can get Rothmedia.audio

and realize that that's a website and treat it that way,

that's pretty good.

So I feel pretty good about that.

- So we've switched from doing Descript for transcription

to using Cast Magic.

- Okay, yeah.

Because Michelle has found that's a lot more,

well, Steve kind of told us, and then we tested out,

Michelle found that it's,

the transcripts is much more accurate than Descript.

- Which is sad if you think about it.

'Cause Descript is a lot more expensive.

- Yeah, and like Descript, Michelle always had an issue,

like trying to like click and drag to fix the speaker labels

because she would do it and then like mess everything up.

So she'd have to like go through a script

and highlight what she needed to fix,

export it into like a Word doc and then fix it there

because she couldn't do it in Descript.

And she doesn't have to worry about all that

with Cast Magic.

- So I actually, last year at this time,

I was using CapShow for that.

And one of the big frustrations I had from them

is they didn't make it possible

to download the transcription.

So I felt like they did the transcription,

everything was based on the transcription,

but you couldn't download an SRT from it,

like the actual subtitle file.

And part of me was like,

I get that that's not really what you're doing,

but come on guys.

- How hard is that?

- But then also one thing I noticed was,

and this is gonna be true of any tool,

their summaries and stuff were very formulaic.

You got one that was like a movie trailer

in a world where people are editors

and everybody's an idiot,

three people stand out and it's Daniel Gen-

Right?

It was that kind of thing.

And there were like three different formulas that they use

and their headlines were almost always

the same set of formulas.

And what I've found with Cast Magic is I get,

it seems like there's a wider variety

and it's less focused on trying to get that

four sentence hook that reads like a movie trailer

and actually providing a useful summary.

So I was happy to say goodbye to that charge.

And then also Cast Magic, if I needed to,

I can download that file.

And they've been very responsive.

I was sad to see Cap Show go for me,

but at the same time, Cast Magic has worked better for me.

- Do you use anything, Jennifer?

Like any-

- Yes.

So I use Cast Magic and Cap Show

because somehow I'm still paying for both.

So-

- Oh yeah.

Interesting.

I know how I can save you some money every month.

- I run out of space on one,

then I go to the other and run out of space on that

and go back to the other.

And it's like, you run out of space.

I'm like, yeah.

If I would just like listen to the episodes,

I might be able to write something,

but I'm not listening to any episodes anymore

'cause I'm not editing them myself.

So that makes like show notes a challenge,

but I have started charging extra for show notes

and uploading 'cause there were some people who slid in

and scope creeped me for a while there.

So I don't do that for free anymore.

And I'm also not listening to the shows myself.

So I'm just kind of hoping that Cast Magic is all right.

- Well, and it sounds like Steve is saying

that Cap Show is gonna go through a big update.

So maybe you'll wanna hang on to that.

Do you have the early bird pricing with Cap Show?

- I don't know.

They just take my money each month.

And I'm like, oh yeah, I'm still paying for that.

Why better go use it?

'Cause I just maxed out Cast Magic for this month.

So I go back and forth and I mean,

I've put them head to head before,

you know, when I was first starting to use them

to see which one I liked better.

And sometimes I like this one better.

Sometimes I like that one better.

I usually have to refresh my feed a few times

and Cast Magic knows now I have a prompt,

give me a one paragraph, give me a two paragraph summary

for podcast show notes.

So it'll do that as it's part of its magic.

- Is it really nice?

- Yeah, that's one of the things I've liked

is if I get a prompt that works,

I can add it to the automatic output.

So I've got a couple, like one that I'll put in there.

Like when it's processing this show,

it will be essentially find me all the links

for all the things we talked about.

It's probably not gonna get a hundred percent,

but it's gonna get some that I forgot.

'Cause I'm taking notes and trying to make sure

that I get everything.

And for those that are listening later,

there's gonna be a lot of links

'cause we talked about a lot of tools, but it helps, right?

'Cause you miss stuff.

So one thing that I've been considering

and I'm kind of shifting toward the future

as we come to a close on this part.

- Well, before we do that,

I do have one other tool I've just added.

I'm really excited about like really getting into this.

And this is what Steve was talking about earlier

when he's like, did I sold him something the other day?

And it's called, this is an AppSumo deal called Minvo.

So Steve had told me about, what was it?

Opus Pro, I think.

And I think this is something very similar,

if not identical to, but essentially you can upload a video

and it'll go through and pick out like clips and whatnot

and turn them into like video clips with like captions

that pop up on the screen and whatnot.

So it's great for like YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels,

or you can do 16 by nine resolution for whatever.

- Nice.

- Yeah, and so I uploaded like an interview

and it gave me like 12 or 15 possible clips

and go in and kind of tweak it, fix captions or whatnot.

And so while I was saying earlier about the one client

who went to monthly,

but I talked him into doing a lot more content,

that's part of what I'm doing is throwing it into Minvo

and getting all these clips and shorts and whatnot out of it.

- Nice.

- How much is it still on AppSumo?

- No, it's not.

- I got an email from AppSumo that's like,

"This is like 38 hours."

- Oh, bummer.

- This looks very similar to that thing Steve told me about

that I've been meaning to check out.

- I looked at it and the big hurdle for me

was that I couldn't buy it unless I also spent $100

for the annual membership to their elite program

or something for AppSumo.

- Really?

- Yeah, I tried in like three different browsers to buy it.

It's like, if you buy this,

you're also gonna have to do this.

It's like, nevermind, 'cause I'm not in a position to drop.

The plan I would have needed for what I wanna do with it

would have been like 150 bucks plus I'm rounding, right?

Plus an additional 99 a year or something.

So I said no on that.

But I would definitely have my eye on the next one

that comes through and see if that one makes sense.

- Yeah, I'm excited about that one.

- So one thing I've been thinking about,

because I do at some point wanna grow the business

to where I have some people working for me again.

But a couple things going on.

One is I have some concern that employment law

is going to change and I won't be able to use contractors

in the future.

And the other is I've looked at the pricing plan

for Hindenburg and if it's a business,

it's a different pricing structure.

Similar to Reaper, right?

You can buy it $60 with an individual or $300 I think for--

- $229?

- Yeah, something like that.

The difference is Hindenburg, like a single license

is like $400 or something like that one time

or you can subscribe to it.

If you're a business, it's only an annual subscription

for each user.

So every time I bring somebody on,

I'm adding another $500 a year in overhead.

What I've been looking at is I think,

if I think about a future workflow

where the workflow could involve video and audio

and shorts and all that kind of stuff,

I'm thinking about, and I'm probably gonna test,

making the switch to DaVinci Resolve

because Resolve Studio is like $300 one time purchase

and my understanding is it's free updates

for a really long time.

Maybe not for life but I haven't paid for an update yet

and I've got the paid version already.

So I'm trying to see if that workflow will work

because I would much prefer to be able to buy a license

for somebody that works for me and have it be perpetual

on whatever machine we use it on without regard

for whether or not that person leaves the business

because it's a really weird place to say,

I want you to come on as a contractor

but you're gonna have to buy this software yourself.

You can only use this rather than providing it

for somebody as an employee.

So that's one of the things that I'm thinking through

and also kind of to Daryl's point,

if everybody's on the same platform,

it makes things so much easier.

I like the plugins I use but DaVinci has some pretty solid

stuff built in, right?

So other than their audio repair leaves a little bit

of room for improvement in terms of noise reduction stuff

but it's included.

So that's kind of where my head goes

in terms of future stuff.

I haven't really been keeping my eye on anything else

but I'm wondering what about the two of you?

What are you guys looking at in terms of the future

or things you're keeping your eyes on?

- I'm trying to learn how to be a project manager

and I've got like a consultation with somebody

about digital project management next week

who's supposed to help me figure this out

because the two other editors who have teams

that talk to talk about automating it

and getting your systems down and all those things.

So for me right now, getting systems in place

is more important than probably anything else at this point.

(laughs)

Because an editor I talked to yesterday is like,

okay, you have to read the book.

10X is easier than 2X or whatever.

I'm like, okay, I'll get the book.

But about scaling and stuff, I'm like,

and if you read all these books about how to scale,

how to scale, it's all about the systems

and I don't have those in place

because I just kind of jumped into it.

So that is a future thinking.

Is it Basecamp long-term?

I don't know.

Is it Asana?

Is it Trello?

Is it Monday?

Is it something else?

Is it any of these?

Am I fine just doing it the way I'm doing it now?

No, I don't think so.

So. (laughs)

- Well, I think there's a really tough balance

between the system, which I'll call the system

being the way you do things and the tool that supports that.

- Yeah. - Right?

And it can be, my tendency is always to jump in

and try and over engineer the system

based on the capabilities of the tool.

And so I think, I mean, you'll have this consultation

with somebody, but I think where my head would go

is what are the things that are the most commonly happening

that we can make sure that we have a good process flow

for that, like pick up the one that you think will just,

it doesn't have to be the highest leverage thing,

but the thing that you can get knocked out the easiest

that will take something off your plate

and free up that time and that mental space

for the next thing.

'Cause I don't think you have to develop the whole thing

at the beginning.

- Well, not the whole thing, but it's,

I mean, with 25 shows, it's getting hard to keep track of.

- I'm sure, yeah.

I haven't been there yet, so I don't have any answers.

- Well, not all of them are doing anything right now.

They're kind of in like, one's about to go on summer break,

so then I won't have to think about them

for a couple months.

They're education podcasts, so they always take a break

over the summer and they come back.

That's why I gotta talk to people who know more about that.

'Cause I don't have a system's brain.

- Yeah.

My brain doesn't work like that.

I keep things in my cloud, and when it rains down,

I take care of it.

Oh, and something over here now is raining down.

Not necessarily in order of importance.

It's just kind of like, oh, whatever, it is up there.

That's not advisable.

- Daniel, anything you're keeping your eye on

or thinking about for the future?

- Does it feel like the systems I have in place

are working fine?

I guess now it's kind of like rebuilding mode

as far as getting business back up to where it was.

So marketing is gonna be on that,

which is something I've, it's always been my Achilles heel.

I hate doing it.

I have no interest in it.

- Well, you're gonna have to get over that, Daniel.

- Mm-hmm.

I was talking to Michelle earlier today,

and I think an easy-ish solution is just start a podcast

aimed at our ideal clients.

And that way, one, we can get easy social media content

from that, and also easier to keep up with podcasting trends

and just kind of demonstrate, hey, we know what we're

talking about when it comes to podcasting.

- That's what I use this show for.

(laughing)

- Nice.

Well then, if Daniel does that, you might have a second

show, Jennifer.

Show, Jennifer.

- I'll hire you to do my editing.

- So is there anything that we didn't hit before we move on?

- Well, we didn't talk about client acquisition.

- Okay, let's do that.

- Which sounds like you two are challenged in at the moment.

- Only 100%.

- So have you changed anything or just stopped everything

and just haven't started, or what's happening there?

- For me, honestly, I have not tried to push that this year.

I've been really tired.

I think I probably got a little bit burnt out.

I know the idea of managing 10 clients with a full-time job

doesn't seem like a lot, but I may have pushed it too far,

and so I haven't.

I kind of feel bad about that, and at the same time,

at 5.30 tomorrow, when I go back to bed after feeding

the dog, I'll probably not feel terrible about it.

- And for me, it's like, I haven't changed anything

'cause I've never really done anything.

I've always relied on word of mouth and referrals,

and I think in the niche I focus on,

that has been through a huge slump,

which is why it's also affecting me.

- Gotcha.

- So no, I haven't changed anything.

Obviously, I need to, and I think also

a little bit of burnt out and just being hit

with pretty much within a week, two weeks,

having five clients come up to you and just say,

hey, this is what's, it took a mental toll,

and I think starting a podcast, but also maybe looking

at other niches to focus on, I think would go a long way.

I'm not excited about that grind, doing that again.

- I don't have this problem right now, okay.

(laughing)

- No, and for those of you that are watching,

if you go check out Jennifer's Facebook page,

and I assume probably also her LinkedIn profile,

you'll see why she's not having

a client acquisition problem right now.

I think if I were to summarize what I think I see

is probably five to seven in-person events a month

and reasonably consistent posting on your part

on Facebook and Link, I guess I don't really use LinkedIn,

but I assume it's there as well.

- It's not as consistent on LinkedIn as it is.

I'm trying to throw LinkedIn something.

- The bar's much lower on LinkedIn, though,

let's be honest, the bar's not as high.

- No, I'm trying to be more consistent on Facebook.

- So if you're wanting an example of how to do it right,

I would recommend checking out Jennifer's.

She's focused, you're focused a lot on in-person,

which really I think works for you.

For me, the prospect of going out at night

to talk to people, I like this a lot better.

This is more fun.

- Well, see, I have a part-time job.

I don't have a full-time job,

so I'm not stuck in the office all day,

so every Wednesday at 1130,

you can find me on Burke Road at BNI,

meeting with the same people every week,

trying to build the know, like, and trust value with them

so that they will refer me.

That's the theory anyway.

- I think we need an episode where we just pick

Jennifer's brain on how she's done all this in-person stuff

because it's like, yeah, that sounds awesome.

I don't know how to get started doing that.

- Well, I throw my own podcast meetup each month.

That's me. (laughs)

I put that on, so there's one.

- For those that are watching live

or those that are listening later,

if that's something you'd like for us to do, let us know.

You can hit us up on Facebook,

or you can reach out to us by email,

info@podcasteditorsmastermind.com,

and let us know that's something that you would want

because we wanna make things that are good for you.

Steve says that pick Jennifer's brain

about how she finds time to sleep might be a show idea.

- I don't have a problem with that.

I am a power sleeper, so I get 10 to 12 hours a night,

believe it or not.

So I find time to sleep.

It's a priority.

- My pets don't let me do that.

- I think we're gonna have to start throwing stuff

at you, Jennifer, before--

- Oh, no, no!

- So before that happens, we should probably move on

to the chat GPT question of the day.

So Jennifer has that. - I do.

- This is your opportunity also to join in in the comments

if you would like.

So Jennifer, what's our question?

- I asked it, I phrased it question of the day

because it gave me the same superhero thing twice last week.

So it says, okay, other than podcasting,

I'm qualifying this, if you could instantly become an expert

in any field or skill, what would it be and why?

- So I'm guessing marketing isn't an option

because it's gonna be related to podcasting.

- I think that was my idea.

Don't kill my idea.

- I'm like, oh, audio engineering.

No, that doesn't count either.

I'm like, that's what I would--

- Instantly become an expert in any skill?

- Yes, expert in any field or skill.

Nunchuck skills.

- Oh, bo staff skills.

I think I would choose piloting

because I hate waiting.

- I do wanna get my pilot's license.

I don't know if that'll ever happen,

but that's just like a goal.

- 'Cause I think it'd just be cool to be able to go flying.

- Mita says stock trading.

- Ooh, that'll be good. - I like that.

- That'd be nice.

- I would say like computer techy nerdy stuff,

like HTML, CSS coding stuff.

- There you go.

- Like that.

I don't know anything about that,

but it sounds like it would be useful

and make me some money.

- Steve says parkour.

So I think, Steve, are you gonna be Dwight

or are you going to be Steve Carell from "The Office?"

I don't know.

Parkour sounds great.

- So the thing that's been in mind is woodworking.

So I've recently got into woodworking

and to be able to do it well,

I think it would be a lot of fun.

- Yeah.

- And learning how to stain.

I've been struggling trying to stain

'cause I built a nightstand,

but I cannot get the staining right.

It looks awful and I'm really discouraged by it.

- Oh, I'm sorry.

- Oh, Patrick has one.

- Yeah.

Patrick says game show host.

I think that would be excellent.

Patrick, I think you'd be really good at that.

I think I would probably just wanna stay at home,

but that might be a great one for you.

- Yeah.

- We've hit all three of us.

We've hit the comments.

So I'm gonna take the question of the week down.

So one thing we wanted to share with you as the audience,

in case you haven't noticed,

we occasionally struggle to get out an email

to everybody to go, "Hey, we're doing a show."

So the question for you would be,

if you find the show valuable

and you're looking for something you could do to be involved,

would you like to be responsible

for sending an email every couple of weeks

and say, "Hey, we're gonna be recording tonight."

If so, reach out to us,

info@podcasteditorsmastermind.com,

'cause we'd like to talk to you about that.

'Cause we forget and that's not good

because the show's kind of important.

So there you go.

What if somebody wants to be a guest?

Daniel, how can they be a guest?

- Well, I believe you can just simply go

to podcasteditorsmastermind.com/be-a-guest,

fill out the form and somehow it'll get to us

and we'll figure out how to get you on the show.

- Yeah, the Magic Gremlins take care of that.

And we really do wanna know if you wanna be on the show,

if you've got a topic that you're interested in,

we're very much interested in making the show

that's valuable for you.

This is fun, but we want it to be good for you as well

and to help you.

- And that's whether you're an expert in something

that you wanna share or you're struggling with something

that you wanna get the community's input on,

we would love to have you.

And with that, we should probably sign off.

I have been Bryan, if you still want to,

you can find me at toptieraudio.com

and over here is--

- Jennifer Longworth. - Oops, this way.

- No, wait, you posted, you pointed at me first, no.

- I did.

- Jennifer Longworth at bourbonbarrelpodcasting.com

and my socials are also bourbonbarrelpodcasting.

- And I'm Daniel Abendroth,

you can find me at rothmedia.audio.

- And unable to join us this week was Kerry Caulfield.

We're hoping she can be back soon, we love her,

we miss her and she's important to us too.

And with that, we're signing off

and I don't have anything smart to say.

So Alejandra will probably do something fun with this.

Bye. - Bye.

(laughs)

(upbeat music)

- How much is that?

(grunts)

(gasps)

(upbeat music)

[music]

[laughs]