Kevin: 0:01

Okay, guys, so there has been a massive unlock in the podcast growth opportunities. Really, I have figured out how to take your podcasts from like just a good show to number one, okay.

Alban: 0:15

Date Taylor Swift.

Kevin: 0:16

Nailed it there. You told me, you stole my thunder. Oh it's interesting.

Alban: 0:20

Can you believe that we all we were just in the office and I kept hearing about this we were sitting in front of us all this time and no one has thought Like.

Kevin: 0:28

I've read countless articles on how do you grow your podcast. Never once did anyone say date Taylor Swift.

Jordan: 0:35

But be like Koi about it, Don't actually confirm it.

Kevin: 0:39

Whatever, you guys see new heights. I have not seen how far they are, but yeah, we talked about that podcast on the show before we did yeah, and it was funny because I didn't know who Travis Kelsey is.

Jordan: 0:50

and now I do.

Alban: 0:52

Do you feel like you were in the know when other people were figuring out about football and you were like actually I know about this guy because he's a podcaster?

Jordan: 0:59

I was really proud of myself because, yeah, we had my father-in-law over and we were watching the Seahawks game and you know how they play clips from like other games going on. There was a clip of the chiefs game.

Alban: 1:09

Sometimes they call those highlights Okay.

Jordan: 1:14

I saw him and I was like, oh, that's Travis Kelsey, he has a podcast, and I was like super excited. And then I saw Taylor Swift and I was like, okay, if I was that famous and there were rumors going around, I would 1000% show up just to stir the pot. Like, even if it wasn't true, I would 1000% go to that football game and just like make people like lose their minds. I mean, right, they could not be dating too, and it's just like to get more publicity.

Kevin: 1:45

I mean, my interest in whether they're dating or not is so low I could absolutely care less. What I am ridiculously excited about is that this is the ultimate unlock for marketing your podcast, because he went celebrity. Yeah, Him and his brother have been doing this podcast for a long time. We have talked about it before. It is a good show, no doubt. But just like on the rumors that he's dating arguably maybe the most famous person in the world, his podcast is now number one on the Apple charts. I mean, if Taylor Swift showed up at one of our pickleball tournaments, our podcast is going to number one.

Jordan: 2:22

This growth hack really feels like. I saw a hack for social media presence today and tip number one was to go viral. I was like this is so weird.

Alban: 2:34

So step one on how to make a million dollars make 900,999, then make one more dollar.

Kevin: 2:42

All right. Well, feel free to take that tip and apply it to your own podcast in life. Hope it helps.

Jordan: 2:46

Here we go, we're back from Orlando Did I look like a little bit more sun-kiss than normal?

Kevin: 2:57

Yeah. I guess yeah.

Jordan: 3:02

So we were gone for the Buzzsprout meetup in Orlando, florida. So you guys flew me all the way there to hot hot Orlando.

Kevin: 3:11

Beautiful, sunny Orlando.

Jordan: 3:12

Beautiful, sunny Orlando.

Kevin: 3:13

Which, as a Floridian, it's weird that we landed there not typically a place that I mean unless you happen to live in Orlando. But if you don't live in Orlando, floridians don't usually make that a destination. But since we have some people who you know we're flying in mostly Jordan, just me, actually, I think, just you everyone else drove, but it's a good central spot for everyone who we have a lot of people around Florida and a little bit north of Florida, so central spot for us to meet up. And they have this place it's called Reunion Resort really big houses, so we tried houses this time instead of a hotel environment, and I think that was a win.

Jordan: 3:42

Right Felt like a win, I agree. It was really funny, though, because I got off the plane and Tom picked me up and took me to the girls house and it's this little like mini mansion. I was like, oh, this is so nice. And the girls were like, have you been to the guys house yet? And I'm like, no, I just landed. And they're like good, let's show you around and you can enjoy this, and then we'll go to the guys house. And then we went over to your guys's house and it was just like the most beautiful house I've ever been in.

Alban: 4:07

Comparison is the thief of joy Jordan, it is.

Kevin: 4:11

Yeah, there's a lesson there I think it's in the podcast space about being happy about your numbers versus comparing to somebody else's numbers.

Jordan: 4:17

But it was actually nice because we did a lot of like the work activities and meetings and stuff at the guys house. So really the girls house was just for like sleeping and showering. That was it.

Alban: 4:28

The way you're calling them guys house and girls house to me sounds like we live on fraternity row or something.

Kevin: 4:35

It kind of was like a fraternity. It really was. All the houses in that neighborhood were big like that Like they could house multiple people, it's true.

Alban: 4:41

But the whole idea is that a area that's all Airbnb's Kevin or people living there. These are big, big houses. I mean, I think our house had like nine bedrooms or something like almost everyone had their own room.

Kevin: 4:51

I don't really know. I do think most of them are probably vacation rentals. It seems like that would be a weird place to live. But yeah, since we have more guys on the Buzzsprout team than girls, the guys house ended up just being bigger and with more bedrooms, you end up getting more space that's available for meetings. So it had a really big kitchen, really big outdoor space it's a couple of them really big living, like multiple living rooms, big theater room, and so that was the perfect spot for all the teams to break up and do individual meetings at, and, with the kitchen and dining room being huge, that's where we did all our team meals as well. So something to think about if you have a small business or something like that. It seemed to be a win for our team to be able to do a house versus hotels. Hotels are fine, like everyone gets their own room in your own space and you get the privacy to be able to decompress. But with these houses you kind of get that plus. You get just the ability to hang out in a common space without other strangers walking around, or just like the sterility, sterility, sterility, sterility there's a word there the environments of, like the fluorescent lights and the boring hotel meeting rooms and stuff which just kind of zap energy instead of help be in a fun new environment.

Jordan: 5:49

I think the other case for the house is probably that was a little bit cheaper than doing a hotel room for everybody, right, because we had a lot of people.

Kevin: 5:56

Yeah, it can be, depending on the type of house you get or the type of hotel you get. You know, compared to the last meetup we did a year ago, it was about cost neutral. Oh really, we were in a pretty nice hotel in the Florida Keys at that point, and so those hotels are a little bit more than you'd probably get if you just went to, let's say, chicago and found a decent hotel in Chicago or something like that. But there's all these hidden costs with hotels, like getting meeting space and stuff. You then have to use their food service and then most of the stuff is union rates, so it's non-negotiable and it's priced pretty high. And so the house option gives you the ability to do whatever you want. You know you can bring in food. Or, like we did our team breakfast every morning. So we just went to the grocery store and bought a whole bunch of ingredients and then we let the team split up into groups and cook breakfast for the other half of the team and then the next day the other half of the people cook for everyone else.

Jordan: 6:42

You're making it sound like very simplistic, but it turned into a little bit of a competition where each team yeah, I think one team was competing and the other team was not.

Kevin: 6:51

It was a bit of a one-sided competition.

Jordan: 6:53

So each team had to create their own restaurant and their own theme for the breakfast and cook up these meals. And yeah, it was ridiculous. I don't even know how you guys pulled it off.

Alban: 7:05

We made the RSS feed and eats the restaurant based on podcasts and we had every meal that we had. Everything we had there was a podcast pun. You'd start off with a cup of Joe Rogan and you'd head over to the cereal bar and Kevin had 99% immunity juices and Conan needs a smoothie.

Jordan: 7:26

Yep, Conan O'Brien needs a smoothie.

Alban: 7:28

I posted a bunch of pictures of them on X and so we a little link to those. But we had a lot of fun just making up names and coming up with podcast puns, and it's fun when you have a big group. The benefits are you ask everyone like, oh, does anybody like making breakfast? And we have one person who's like I love planning it. And then you have a couple other people that are like I actually am really good at cooking and we're like oh, I didn't know that. And one guy had a breakfast cinnamon rolls recipe that was passed down in his family, and somebody else loves making potatoes for breakfast, and so we just had a big group and everyone chipped in and was that a ton of fun?

Kevin: 8:02

Yeah, I think my favorite it wasn't my favorite name, but my favorite little artwork was we based it off of the Pod News Weekly Review and it was Pod Tatos Weekly Review and Brian Hunt from our team had a good like breakfast potato recipe and so we redid their artwork to look like a little pod potato and I thought it was super cute. And instead of with Sam Sethman and James Gridland, it was with peppers and onions. That was my favorite. But my favorite tasting was the. I guess there's a podcast called Doughboys which I haven't listened to, but we rebranded that to the Cinnamon Doughboys and Brian Treywick who does he's on our infrastructure team he did those cinnamon rolls that were like everyone was talking about the entire time. I mean, everyone's coming back for lunch and being like, is there any more cinnamon rolls? And then for dinner and dessert anymore cinnamon rolls.

Jordan: 8:45

Yeah, I think it was like 11 o'clock at night and we just got out of the pool and the girls like were heating up the cinnamon rolls in the microwave. Like people could not stop eating them.

Alban: 8:53

I don't like cinnamon rolls that much. I definitely don't like cinnamon or any of that, and it always just feels like way too sweet and they're not savory at all. And these were really good.

Kevin: 9:03

Yeah, it was. He did like the real deal. The night before we got back we went to Epcot we can talk about that in a second. But when we got back it was like 10 o'clock, 1030, and Treywick heads to the kitchen and he starts making the dough because it had to rise and stuff and so it's all from scratch. It was so good.

Jordan: 9:20

So yeah, you mentioned going to Epcot. That was such an exciting thing for me, especially like being in Idaho, like I hadn't been to Disney World in like 21 years, so that was such a big deal for me.

Alban: 9:31

It was the first time you saw the fireworks, right.

Jordan: 9:33

It was because I went when I was 12 years old and they canceled the fireworks every single night that I was at Disney World. It was just due to like weather, so it was. It was really cool to go and, you know, they had the Food and Wine Festival there, and so we were able to go around and just get whatever food and drinks we wanted from all the different countries, and then, yeah, I got to see the fireworks finally, which was incredible.

Alban: 9:56

I don't know if I've ever thought of any fireworks as being incredible.

Jordan: 9:59

I don't know, well, maybe it's because you guys are in Florida, so you're just kind of like calloused to having those kind of fantastical performances.

Alban: 10:06

We're just shooting off fireworks pretty much nonstop yeah.

Kevin: 10:10

So the Epcot deal was really fun too. They have a new ride there called the Guardians of Galaxy ride and not everybody did it because it's a roller coaster. Not everyone likes roller coasters but some of us did and I have to say that is the most favorite I've most favorite ride I've ever been on, like any type of ride ever. Wow, I thought it was ridiculously good. It's not like a thrill coaster, it's not going to scare you with massive drops or anything, but I mean it is a roller coaster Like it's moving pretty good and it has some up and downs and I don't even know if you loop or lie Like you're not even at least me, I wasn't even paying attention to really what we were doing as much as you're just completely enveloped in this experience. And they've got great music playing and the visuals are amazing and it just feels like you're just moving in a really joyful way along with the music, while your eyes are like peeled open, huge, because the visuals are ridiculous. It looks like you're flying through space and flying around planets. We all walked out and our mouths were just like wide open, like just joy filled, super smiley. This is like that was so fun. It wasn't. You know not what you expect on a roller coaster. You expect to be like that was intense or that was scary and we were all just completely overflowing with joy.

Alban: 11:11

Much more joy focused than other roller coasters. I've been on a lot of roller coasters where a few minutes in or you're just starting and you're like maybe I shouldn't have done this, this isn't going to be fun, I'm not going to enjoy this, and then at the end you're like, oh, now I feel like excited that I did that, but you're not really loving every moment of it. There's a bit of you that's like maybe this is a bad idea. I am going to fall off Right. This one was more just. I guess you went really fast but never felt super fast because everything was very smooth. I guess the roller coaster technology has gotten a lot better, but I've been on some that they go fast but they also are really jerky and I do not enjoy that at all. That just feels like somebody who's you know brand new driver is driving like a sports car and you're in the passenger seat saying please be a little more careful.

Kevin: 11:54

So we also had a. What else would we do? Oh, Albin and John, let us off on our first night with a really fun game of not your family feud, which was all based around podcast questions, which was super fun. The Buzzsprout team is surprisingly bad at podcast trivia. Oh my gosh.

Alban: 12:08

It was the work trivia that everyone their podcast, when everyone nailed.

Kevin: 12:11

Yeah, we did better at the podcast categories than the general work categories. We're terrible at that.

Alban: 12:17

You should be proud of this, kevin, that everyone was so bad at it. But the question that stumped everyone when it was like what podcast app is the most popular? People are nailing the top 10 answers. Then we are over on which countries listen to the most podcast. Easy, devices, easy. And then when we got to work related ones and it was like how would you embarrass yourself at work? People weren't that great at it. And then it was like what would an annoying boss do? Every single person got to guess at least twice and we got like two of the five answers and John and I are just like dying walking back and forth but like no one ever said yell and I'm like that's a pretty good sign that nobody here. The most common thing that people said on the real family feud was yell. Like that's the first thing I said bad boss yells and nobody. At Buzzsprout we had probably a good 20 people to guest. We thought, oh yeah, yelling, I did have a job worse when you yelled at me.

Jordan: 13:11

I just remember like you're talking about, like walking back and forth, it was not walking. You and John were like in such disbelief that we could not get a single answer. That was on the board, that you were actually crawling between teams because you couldn't stop laughing, because it was such a spectacular failure. We were just coming up with all these ridiculous things that like, yeah, an annoying boss would do this or a bad boss would do that, and like none of us could get it.

Alban: 13:35

It started getting very personal. These are the ones that I loved. I mean, these are fairly few questions. Have you ever seen the show? Like they're supposed to be the most common things I wanted to say? And listening to her, it was like, well, I know this is what my bosses make me do, so they make you fill up their water bottle. I'm like what do you think? Like 16 people out of a hundred are like oh, I'm not the water bottle again. There's so many, there's so many good answers like that I was. I was laughing so hard. It was hard to breathe for a while, but we had a ton of fun with that game. We also had a pickleball championship.

Kevin: 14:10

Yeah, we had a pickleball tournament which turned out to be a win. Like not going to have gone horribly because Orlando is super hot and we played in the afternoon, but we were blessed and we got some cloud coverage. We actually got a little bit of like super light, sprinkling rain for five minutes to cool off the courts and then we ran a tournament with everyone on the team Would we start with like 16 people total?

Alban: 14:27

That sounds right. 16 buzzbrows yeah, that's the full team.

Kevin: 14:30

Yeah, and then we ended up with a male champion and female champion and our male champion we're happy to welcome to the podcast today. Albin Brooke was our male champion. Oh, thank you, kevin. How does it feel to win the first annual buzz sprout 2023 all team meetup pickleball championship?

Alban: 14:46

I could not have done it without you being my coach, kevin. I've played a lot of pickleball together. I don't know exactly how it happened, because I know I am, at best, the third best male at pickleball in our company. And so I think there might have been like a lucky bracket. You see this in March Madness, every year he gets a good bracket and then they go a little deeper into the championship than everyone expects. So I feel like that's what I had. Jordan, you were a runner up on the female side.

Kevin: 15:12

Right? Yeah, that's true. We don't have the champion, who is Lindsay Perez, to represent the women, but you have the runner up, Jordan Blair. How are you able to do it? How are you able to go from never playing pickleball to being runner up in the tournament?

Jordan: 15:24

I don't know.

Kevin: 15:26

I honestly have no idea. You just dug deep. I dug deep and kept fighting Never gave up.

Jordan: 15:31

It was kind of a shocking thing for me because the pickleball tournament. When I found out we were doing a pickleball tournament in the dead of summer in Orlando outside, I thought this is the worst thing to have ever happened to me and I have to say it was actually one of the biggest highlights of the entire thing for me. It turned out to be so much fun and we also got the really cool custom Buzzsprout Keep podcasting pickleball paddles, which are gorgeous and now I have to take it up because I have to use them. But yeah, it was really fun and it was kind of cool getting coached by you guys on how to play pickleball. And then you know not to pat myself on the back too much, but I picked it up pretty quickly.

Kevin: 16:10

Highly improved. Yeah, there's definitely some raw talent there. I mean, you don't get to the semifinals without having some natural talent. Now you just have to develop it.

Jordan: 16:17

In the semifinals, everyone also busted out the water guns and we're spraying us while we were playing the final.

Alban: 16:24

Except I'm the only one not wearing glasses. And I've got John. I've been friends for I don't know 15 years well beyond, before I ever worked at Buzzsprout, and so John has zero issues with annoying me and picking, obviously sitting there with a water gun about five feet away blasting me in the eyes yeah, I'm really sorry to be like John. I'm trying to win a championship here, dude.

Jordan: 16:46

It really is a miracle that you won that.

Alban: 16:48

Oh man, well, I've got. Kevin has big wrestling belts that he handed out. I have one in my studio right now. We can put one in his chapter art.

Kevin: 16:55

Yeah, I think you have a championship belt. You earned it and Lindsay got one as well. I think we have a picture of both of you guys wearing your belts. But my highlight, I think, has to be the team ice bath challenge and, more specifically, I think, jordan's ice bath challenge. So at some point I think you went in on the first night, right, we set up a little. We brought a portable ice bath loaded up with ice, a little water and a few people did it who have done ice baths before, and it was pretty non-dramatic, like it was just a yeah. Yeah, it's just an optional thing. You can have ice bath. There's one outside and Jordan had pumped herself up and she said she was going to try this and we recorded some audio from that.

Alban: 17:36

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go go go, go, go, go, go go go, go, go, go, go, go oh my gosh, you got to get set. You got to set, just breathe.

Tom: 17:45

Okay, am I done? Am I done, am I done? 30 seconds 31, 32, 33.

Jordan: 17:51

I went into another place. I went into another place I don't even know. It was so funny because we had joked on this show about doing team ice baths during the Bus Brout Company meetup and I said that jokingly and then it actually happened and it was one of those things where I was like you know what, they threw me on an airplane, shipped me across the country, I'm getting in the ice bath Like I'm going to do this.

Alban: 18:15

To be clear, I told you this is going to hurt much more than you think. Even though you now have raised your expectations, they're not high enough.

Jordan: 18:22

You told me that and even with that in mind, I was like, okay, this is going to hurt, it's fine. And it was such a shock to my system I only have words. I think I blacked out. I don't remember. I don't like being cold and it was just excruciating. But I have to say that once I got out of the ice bath and had a towel around me and I started warming up, it was this weird thing where my body was like, oh, you didn't die, and then there was all this rush of endorphins and I felt like my skin was just tingling like electric. It was amazing and then I wanted to get back in. So I get it, I get it.

Kevin: 18:58

That is, yeah, that's the death zone. And you're like, oh, I can do this longer and longer. Yeah, it can become dangerous, but yeah, it's fun right.

Jordan: 19:06

It is fun.

Kevin: 19:07

And that water was extremely cold, so I think you should be extremely proud of yourself. I think it was either 38 or 36. There was no temperature regulation on it. It was just how many bags of ice do we have, dump them all in and the water temp is going to be the water temp, and it got down below 40, which is that's an intense cold punch.

Jordan: 19:21

Yeah, all right, that makes me feel better, because I was like, if this is not that cold and I had like the reaction I did, that's not good.

Kevin: 19:29

No, I was intense. You and Joe Rogan, he has nothing on you, you and him, or so.

Alban: 19:35

We've talked a lot now about fun things that we did. One of the things I really appreciated was with us all being remote we don't see each other face to face a ton and one of the things we spent a couple hours doing was just listening to little segments of Buzzcast and trying to identify what do we like, what could be improved, and it was pretty surprising, Like we could just listen to a five minute clip and all of us pull out oh, here's something I would have liked to have improved on and changed. I think Kevin did. This came out of something you mentioned to me, I don't know, a few months ago. I think you listened to like a Tim Ferriss episode and he talked about going back and re-listening to his old shows and how much that helped him improve. And then it reminded me Jordan Harbinger does the same. He goes back and listens to episodes to kind of figure out what he could do differently, and there is something to it. Really, if you listen with a keen ear to yourself, not just when you're editing but as a finished product, a lot of things pop out and you start noticing things that you could improve. What kind of a cold open would sound better. Oh, I could have explained this better. Oh, I could have set the stage here and it would have made this whole segment a little bit easier. There's another like 10 minute ramble segment by me. You start identifying those and I'm hopeful that it will lead to an improved Buzzcast product for everybody who listens.

Kevin: 20:49

That is a good strategy and it could be a rhythm that you get into. If you record on a weekly basis or bi-weekly basis or bi-monthly whatever, you probably have gotten to the point where you're listening to your final edit, or maybe you listen after you publish just to make sure it's on all the platforms or something. But you probably that's not a super hard habit to get into which is just listening to the final episode of the week that it's going out. But what you could add into that workflow a little bit and create a rhythm around is also make time during your week to go back and listen to one of your other episodes, one of your older ones, and maybe you just start randomly or maybe you put a system around it. Maybe you start with episode one and you're on episode 10 right now. So every week you're listening to like 10 and one and then 11 and two and 12 and three and so on and so forth, but doing that with the intentional ear that Alvin's talking about, and maybe have a notepad with you. Don't do it when you're exercising or driving in your car, but make it part of work improvement and write down some notes about some things that I used to do early that maybe I don't do as much, so that's a win for me. Or here, look, I did this. I don't like it and I'm still doing it now, so that's an area that I can improve on, I think, going back and just listening to really old episodes.

Alban: 21:47

you know, you just said it. One of the really fun things about that is you start seeing all these things that naturally have dropped out over time. Oh, I used to use a lot more filler words, a lot of ums and ahs and what and not what, what's not filler words. But you notice like, oh, I've got a little bit better at filler words or I'm getting better at not like heavy breathing into the mic or Jordan, when you first started editing Bus Cast, I used to sit there and play with AirPods and you were like, what's that clicking noise? And I was like, oh boy, I can't have AirPods or a clicky pen near me, or else I'll start adding that into the episodes. And you start noticing, hey, it's not about perfection, it is about continuous improvement. And when you can go back and listen to something from a couple of years ago, you start seeing the continuous improvement. You know it gets better and better over time. And then if you add in a little bit of intentionality, where maybe you're going back a few episodes and looking for areas to improve, you're only going to accelerate that process.

Kevin: 22:47

It's not uncommon for us to hear things like we hear them in the Facebook group or we're going to hear talk to people at conferences and they'll say I was so terrible in, you know, the first 10 episodes that I did and now I'm an episode 100. I'm such a better podcaster. Should I go back and rerecord those first 10 or first 15 or just cherry pick the ones that are terrible? Or I made these amateur mistakes and our advice usually is no, because for twofold one like you can go back and use that as a resource to improve yourself. But also it's fun for your listeners to be on this journey with you and it can be encouraging to people like to go back. And Pat Flynn talks about this all the time. He used to open up when he did a live conference. Oftentimes he'd have a talk where he'd open up with one of his first episodes and it was cringe worthy. Oh, it hurt to listen to. It hurt to listen to and to see somebody who's as successful in podcasting now as Pat Flynn is to see like that was where you started, Like well, I sound better than that and he would use that as an encouragement tool for other people that you don't need to be ashamed by it. Like we all start somewhere and regardless of where you are, where you start like you're going to improve, so embrace that, be proud of it, Be like, look at how much I've improved over time. You don't have to replace it and it's great. And anybody who started with you back then and remembers that and they see where you are today, they're just going to be proud of you and cheering you on and be more of a super fan than anyone else. It kind of reminds me of like you ever have a hometown band that went big, or maybe a band that you went and saw when you're in college or something, or just somehow you stumbled upon a band before they got big and like you have a tendency anyway to be much bigger fan. Like I knew them from the beginning. I knew them when they were no one. That same type of thing can happen in podcasting, but it can start to go away if you're going back and kind of rewriting history. I don't have anything to say about Google podcast, so I'm going to let you guys carry that.

Jordan: 24:23

You're the one that wanted to talk about it.

Kevin: 24:25

I just said that's something that happened. I didn't say I wanted like I had a hot take on it.

Jordan: 24:31

I swear it looked like you wanted to talk about it. I swear it.

Kevin: 24:36

I mean, I understand how you could have that impression, oh my gosh, but I really don't have a hot take on it. I mean, google's podcast has pretty much been dead for the past couple of years anyway.

Alban: 24:48

Well, I feel like we got to set this up and then do the thing, do the show.

Jordan: 24:53

We need like a like news, like breaking news. Google podcast is officially shutting down, even though they announced it back in April, when YouTube music was becoming a thing.

Alban: 25:05

Right, wait, they announced that Google podcast was going away.

Jordan: 25:08

This is all news. No.

Alban: 25:10

Really.

Jordan: 25:10

Yes, this is all news.

Alban: 25:12

I'm kind of with Jordan. Wait, kind of with Jordan. Either it happened or it didn't. Did I just miss it? I know?

Kevin: 25:17

Either you're with or you're not, but I think I'm kind of with her. I think they pretty much said that they're not doing much with Google podcast anymore, but now this is totally official, this is official, official.

Alban: 25:29

There was a point where remember how they used to have that little player in the search results that you could click and you could actually listen to a podcast, but you couldn't click through to the podcast and that went away. I remember pod news saying is this the beginning of the end for Google podcasts? But what we heard was it wasn't the end, it's actually just. That was a really bad experience. So Google ended that experiment and now I feel like we're in this. Maybe I'm wrong. I just feel this is this is it's final. It's going away. Yeah, google podcast is migrating to YouTube music. I don't know if I'm surprised, but I sound like I'm more surprised than both of you, since both of you knew about this thing, but I don't know if it was news.

Jordan: 26:13

I feel like we already talked about this. I feel like we talked about this this summer. Google Podcast hasn't had a single update since last August, so we're talking over a year ago. And then, like you said, they removed the carousel thing in the Google search and then they announced YouTube Music. So it was like duh, it's going to replace Google Podcasts. I don't know To me, I thought we had already talked about this. I could have sworn. We already talked about this.

Alban: 26:39

Yeah, well, they did send out this email yesterday, which is what kicked everything off, and maybe I have to, maybe I need to own up to this now, because the beginning of the email hi Albin. Recently we announced Google Podcasts will be dissented next year. This is what happens when there's breaking news, but maybe he's not breaking. We wanted to reach out directly with more information about what to expect. Remember, now, nothing's changing. You continue using Google Podcasts as normal. Over the coming months, podcasts in YouTube Music will be made available globally and we'll start rolling out tools to enable you to transfer your podcast show subscriptions from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music.

Kevin: 27:19

Okay, so let me ask this question, which I'm sure we're not going to get clarity on but wasn't there some sort of Google Podcasts app on Android devices? It was a default app. It was there by default. A default app, Like it was built in that it could play podcasts. I know it wasn't like a full feature or something. I don't know. Is that going away too? Yeah, so does YouTube Music come as a default app on Android, or will Android be back to not having a default podcast player?

Alban: 27:45

That, I think, is where well, we don't know Will YouTube Music become the default app? I would doubt it, but we'll see. But that's the only way that it would be a default app. There would be a default podcasting app. This is probably the biggest news is for the really good third party Android apps that are all of a sudden going to have a bunch of people looking for, hey, what's a really good alternative.

Jordan: 28:09

Yeah, makes me wonder if some of the newer models of, like the Google Pixel and things like that, are going to have YouTube Music loaded on as opposed to Google Podcasts.

Alban: 28:19

So Google Podcasts is across. All of Buzzsprout Podcasts is 2.6% of all the downloads in August. The Apple Podcast is number one. So Spotify is an alternative for people who are on Android devices. Cast Box is the next most popular. Then you've got a Overcast, which is a Apple exclusive. Amazon Music Podcast addict, pocket Casts. Those are some good options there, but I think we're going to have a lot of people looking for a new app. Maybe YouTube Music is going to become that alternative, especially if the migration is really smooth. But YouTube Music is a pretty small music player and so I think it's going to be a pretty big leap to imagine that you're going to get most of those people to migrate over. But as much as I love YouTube for video and I think YouTube has done this incredible job of getting new listeners into podcasting they start watching a video podcasting and then eventually they start listening to audio podcasts. As much as I love that, this is now at least the third major podcasting app that Google is going to have killed Google Play Music, which had podcasts. Then they started Google Podcasts and then Google Play Music was there at the same time and then eventually Google Play Music Podcasts closed and then we had Google Podcasts, and now that's going away. Was there something? There was one other too, wasn't there, kevin? Before Google Play Music.

Kevin: 29:52

I don't think there's anything before that. You're talking specifically about podcasting. There was certainly a Google Reader, which was like in the RSS space that they just shut down, that a lot of people were using and liked.

Alban: 30:01

So this is at least the second podcasting app that Google has abandoned. They started with Google Play Music, where they added podcasts, and then they started Google Podcasts and ran them at the same time, which caused a bunch of confusion. It was only a few years ago. People were migrating from Google Play Music to Google Podcasts and then they added YouTube podcasts inside of the YouTube Music app and I feel like we're going to ask people to migrate again. But as a podcaster and as a podcast listener and probably somebody who worked inside of Google, I'd feel a bit frustrated that it feels like we're doing reorgs, but I'm not understanding what's the value of these changes. Why do we think that reorganizing this under the YouTube brand? What new thing is going to happen? What is different this time? Besides, there seem to be less features in this new app and we're just going to have to redevelop the app and hope that we can build up listeners. Does that make sense? It just feels like another Google Graveyard product and it makes me less and less excited for what YouTube podcasts are going to be, whatever YouTube plans are. I get a little more cynical every time they say oh, we totally know what we're doing now and it stinks because we know a lot of the Google team. We've known people that worked on Google Podcasts. We know people that work in the YouTube team on the podcasting product. They all seem to love podcasting. They all seem like they're really smart. They know what they're doing. I'd love to hear what's the thinking. What is the value of moving this all to another new app? Or has this just been a series of different people making the decisions and podcasters kind of left scratching their head? Have either of you watched this Coffeezilla video the exposing a podcast scam?

Kevin: 31:59

I don't know what Coffeezilla is. I haven't watched this video, but I did see Theo Vaughn did an episode about not getting paid by Cast Media, so I think it's the same type of thing.

Alban: 32:06

right, Same thing. I think that actually might have been what started it. Coffeezilla is a YouTube channel and Jordan, do you understand that? Is he actually a journalist or kind of a YouTube journalist?

Jordan: 32:17

You know, I did watch this video and I got the vibe that he is an actual journalist or he is like a YouTube journalist. I don't know. The line is so blurred between journalism and like content, like online content. Now I can't tell if somebody like actually has a degree in there or not.

Alban: 32:32

Yeah, it seemed like he had some background, maybe actually working at a newspaper as a journalist, but in either way, very good video. So what happened was there was a podcast network called Cast Media and I think Pod News reported on this a few months ago that people were saying they weren't getting paid. And you know, I saw that and never thought anything else about it. And then Theo Vaughn put out a video about we got scammed and I didn't think anything of that, I didn't watch it. And then somebody sent us this video and Coffeezilla interviews all of these creators who were all signed with Cast Media. Cast Media was representing them and was getting them a bunch of ad reads and they were being played on their podcast and they were all doing the ad reads and the advertisers were, you know, hopefully getting some value out of that and eventually they all stopped getting paid. And then when they started talking to each other, it was millions of dollars what was it like? Close to four million dollars by the end that they'd yeah, I think it was like four million. Yeah, it was a. It's pretty wild.

Jordan: 33:35

The problem is that they did these like guarantees to the podcasters, and so they're doing this like upfront amounts, even if, like, the ads aren't actually meeting that. This video is sort of on the heels of a new story that I saw about Tenderfoot TV suing Cadence 13 for a very similar thing, and it was like I don't know. I want to say like $500,000 of back payment and then they like canceled their contract, and so then Tenderfoot's coming after them saying like no, you owe us this money. And it was the same thing minimum guarantees, like you know. So I think that might be part of the problem.

Alban: 34:09

Yeah, there's a. There's a line between bad at business, signed a bad contract and trying to steal money, and it seems like, from watching this video, these are not the opinions of Busbrough or its own commercial entity. This is just me watching a YouTube video that may or may not have been made by journalists. We don't know, but we'll never know. Cast media does seem on the scam side. If you watch this video, you will come out looking at it going whoa. They interviewed the founder of Cast media and it comes off very dodgy. He's kind of trying to avoid answering questions. He's talking a lot about how he got creators paid more. He keeps going back to well, we're on this call because, like people say, you owe four million dollars, it doesn't really seem like you pay them more and there's some that just seems like bad business deals, like what you're saying. They promised guarantees so they said, no matter what, we'll at least get you a million dollars this year or something, some number, and so if you're a big podcaster, you go shoot. I'm only making 300 K this year, so a million I'm obviously in. And I think as they kept trying to get bigger and bigger podcasters, they started offering bigger guarantees and maybe some of those didn't actually make money so they were losing. But there's also a bit that a bunch of people are just saying over time they stopped paying and they paid late, and they paid later and they paid later, and they were always kind of dodgy about the financials and eventually we realized we haven't been paid in six months and we're owed three, four hundred thousand and in the end they're saying, hey, we're going to declare bankruptcy if you don't sign some other paperwork with a new agency. And that one felt much more like the scammy side of it, though I think the tenderfoot TV in cadence 13,. That one seemed a little bit like we promised you we could get you a guarantee and the market changed so much. We're sorry if there's no way we're ever going to be able to get you this guarantee. So it's a bad contract, but at least that one seems like they're more upfront about it, but it's just like it's the same story.

Jordan: 36:05

I think it's one of those things where this is why you shouldn't just solely rely on advertising dollars, because it does kind of fluctuate a lot, especially when you're doing like these bigger shows and bigger deals and contracts. It's just, it's crazy how much it fluctuates even between the months of February through like June, as opposed to September through December. Like the ad dollars just really roll in right when the holidays are starting up and then it just kind of like flattens out a bit, so it can be a little bit harder to make these deals when things are up and down so much.

Alban: 36:41

The main takeaway for me was this is a very common story. Somebody shows up and says I'm going to help you make way more money by taking all of the busy work off your plate and I'm going to do all the ad sales for you and I'll take 30% or some number. You just do your part and you just focus on the entertainment. I'll do the business side and the people that can deliver on that man is that an awesome deal? But the people that can't deliver on it, who now have you locked up and you can't go get your own advertisers, and then if they ever have financial issues, you're kind of stuck in a bad deal. That's where it seemed like everybody kind of just went with this guy because everybody else was going with him and so they all went. Okay, let's just sign on with the same podcast network. And podcast networks seem great when the money's great and then as soon as the economy started to shift a little bit, it all started falling apart. And I think whenever we talk to indie podcasters and they say really just want to be part of a network, so that a lot of the busy work that I don't love isn't something I have to deal with anymore. I think it's also important to remember you are giving things up and there's new types of problems that can come in when you're working with a big agency.

Kevin: 37:47

Yeah, well, there you go. So that's where it impacts the everyday podcaster, because normal podcasters are not getting calls from big podcast promoters and getting offered millions of dollars a year on a minimum guarantee to advertise against their podcast. But what is happening in the independent podcast space is they are getting opportunities and calls from podcast networks that are being put together on shoestring budgets and trying to bring 10, 15, 20 shows together and they're saying what value are we going to bring? Is we're going to find advertisers and we're going to bring them to your show and, as part of this deal, you need to move your hosting company and sign this paperwork and agree to all these terms and then you're going to start making some money. Albin's right. Sometimes it's a legitimate business deal and they're trying to get a situation where it's a win for everybody. But more often than not, it's somebody who's trying to take advantage of content creators who are putting out valuable content and they're trying to monetize that content on their behalf and then get a cut of it, and sometimes they want a piece of ownership of your show. So if you say, if they say, oh, we're not selling the show, what we thought and you're like, oh, this deal's not turning out the way I want, I'm going to leave the network. Well, you might be locked in for a certain amount of time, or they now own 10% of your show, regardless of what you do with it in the future, and that stuff is happening at a surprising rate, like we're hearing from people and getting feedback from multiple channels that more and more of these small little podcast networks are getting set up and who knows what all the deals are. So if you start getting emails about that, if people start inviting you into it, we're not saying like it's always a bad thing. What we are saying is be cautious, because a lot of people are getting burned all the way up and down the chain. Small shows are getting burned, medium shows are getting burned, and here's this cast media story where big shows are getting burned, and so we might not have a lot of. I can't relate to somebody who's like, oh, you guaranteed me a million dollars for my show. It's not hard for me to relate to you, but it is happening up and down the chain. There are people who are saying, oh, you're going to make $500 a month off your show if you join our network and move it over to this hosting provider and read these ads and everything, and then two months later they've never gotten a check. It hasn't worked out the way they want. They're like I'm going to go back to doing what I was doing before. I don't like all. You're controlling my publishing schedule. You're saying I've got to do this, that and the other. I don't like that. I'm like I'm going to get this done and they can't get out and so just be careful. There's a lot of people anytime. You know, industries pop up and there seems to be a little bit of you know new ways to make money or something. There's always people who will legitimately enter that business and say I want to do good in this industry and I want to help people. And then there's also people who don't have the purest of intentions. So just be careful who you work with.

Jordan: 40:08

Albin, the other day you posted this Lower Street podcasting for influence report in the group and I wanted to hear some of your takeaways after reading this.

Alban: 40:17

There's so many people who just have like opinions about podcasting and they tell you things you must or must not do, and sometimes they're based on research and sometimes they're not. And this was an interesting piece of research about B2B podcasting, specifically for people that are doing podcasts in an attempt to reach decision makers at companies. So, thank CEOs, executives, c-suite you know business owners and if you've got a podcast that you know the intent is to reach these people, this would be a really interesting report for you. So they interviewed a bunch of UK and US business decision makers and they found some interesting stuff about podcasts. They found out 55% of business owners and founders listen to podcasts check daily. I do that. Well, you're a business owner, so you're in the 55%. If they like the podcast, there's a 20% increase in brand awareness and favorability. That's a check. Is that also a check coming podcast?

Kevin: 41:15

I would agree with that. For sure.

Alban: 41:16

I listen to podcasts of brands that I really love and enjoy, and I'm like a brand advocate for I feel like if I go around your house now, kevin, it's full of just a bunch of podcast advertisers. Yes, that's probably true. You've got a palaton back there. You're wearing a whoop, you know. I feel like these are very podcast-centric kind of companies, yeah.

Kevin: 41:36

I have listened to the whoop podcast proudly hoisted on Buzzsprout, and Edge Theory Labs just launched a podcast. They're the Cold Plunge provider that I bought my Cold Plunge from. They have a podcast. So, yeah, I love this brand awareness stuff and I don't want to cut you off short there, alan. But here's what's super exciting, I think, is that this study is great and it talks about the power and effectiveness of doing brand-centric podcasting, and so many people who we meet and potentially listen to this show want to. They love podcasting, they do their own personal podcast and they want to get into the industry or podcast more. If you work for a small, medium or even a large business, there could be an opportunity for you to head up a branded podcast for the brand, a branded podcast for your company. And maybe, even if it's not a company, maybe you're a teacher and maybe you say, hey, I'd love to do a podcast for the school. Or maybe you work at a realtor, broker or whatever Like there could be opportunities and benefits that you might be able to transition some of the responsibilities that you do in your day job into podcasting. A friend of mine owns a business here in Jacksonville. It's a pretty large business, successful business and they just started up a branded podcast for their company and he's got four or five people on his team now who are heading up that podcast and so and I think a couple of those people like transition from other jobs in the company and then they brought in one or two new people to also be a part of it. But if you love podcasting and you're good at it, you have some expertise and you want to be doing it more. Maybe you don't have to like leave your current job to be able to do that. Maybe there's an opportunity to do it within your existing job, integrated in.

Alban: 42:57

We've seen this in the Jacksonville podcaster group quite a few times. Somebody says, oh, now I'm working in podcasting but it's for the same company they're already at and they went and pitched to somebody in the company saying, look, I've been doing a show and it's all about Pokemon Cards or something totally different. But I have the skill set and I really think that our company should be doing a podcast and they play out the business purpose and then they get the job. So we've seen it quite a few times where that's happened in the local meetup group, and I think if that's something you would like to be doing, if you'd like to be doing podcasting more often, go read this report, because it really hits home how many decision makers at big companies are listening to podcasts, they're relying on podcasts as their primary source of information and they trust podcasts, and so if you've got this report and you think, hey, we should be doing a branded show, this is the information that you want. So very cool that Lower Street Media put this together and we really enjoyed it.

Jordan: 43:58

Road released a statement saying that if you update your computer to the Mac OS Sonoma, it might not be compatible with road products. So they're basically saying like, if you use like a roadcaster, if you use like a road mic or things like that, don't update it until this is fixed up. So right.

Kevin: 44:15

So more specifically, I think it had to do with Intel Macs. If you have a Mac using the new Apple Silicon with like a M1, M2, those are totally fine. But it's the compatibility with Intel chips which I think, because that OS would still use the technologies called Rosetta to basically make it compatible with it and there seems to be some sort of incompatibility with it. So if you're a road product user and you're running an older Mac like more than two or three years old, then you might just want to hold up on the Sonoma upgrade.

Alban: 44:40

But this comes along with a bunch of other Apple updates. So iOS 17 just launched and there's a bunch of new Apple podcasts features that they've added. The one that I think I appreciate the most is the focus on podcast episode artwork. So now artwork is full screen, it's highlighted whatever you have an episode. I feel like we need to start doing more episode artwork for Bus Cast now. I had to scroll back a bit to times where we did use it and I just love it. I love highlighting artwork for individual episodes. It adds a little bit extra to the show.

Jordan: 45:12

Yeah, it looks really cool. I love the on the listen now page of the Apple podcast app. They have like the up next carousel and it's so pretty how they highlight not only like the podcast artwork, but also if you have episode artwork that replaces the podcast artwork on this and it's like I don't know how to say it it's like a big feature. I mean, it's just like this like block of your artwork and the way that they have it, sort of like a gradient out. It just I don't know. It looks so clean and I've seen it with a pod news weekly review to. They use the episode artwork. So it's really cool seeing the person's face and their name and then knowing that if I click that I'm going to listen to that and then also on like if you open a podcast and you go to the episodes and you start scrolling down. What's interesting and I actually didn't realize that they were going to be doing this is they have the thumbnail of the episode artwork in the episodes. But what's funny is they only put the thumbnail if there is episode specific artwork. If it just has the regular cover art, then there's no artwork featured on the episodes page.

Alban: 46:15

Yeah, and that makes a little bit of sense to me. I wouldn't want to see the same buzzcast artwork over and, over and over again, and so if you are going to create episode artwork, it makes sense that that's going to get highlighted. There's some more search features that I've noticed. There's a few more widgets you can. Actually, if you get the new phone, you have a button on the side and you can like program this one button to do something on mine.

Jordan: 46:36

Wait are you holding a new phone?

Alban: 46:38

I am holding a new phone. I had to get the button. It was all about the button.

Jordan: 46:42

Of course you did.

Alban: 46:42

Of course you had to get the button. I feel like I've been waiting years for. What's very exciting to me is having one cable. I'm very excited about traveling now with one cable, so my computer and my phone and iPad and everything can just use one cable and then the other one. We talked about this a few episodes ago, but Apple podcast subscriptions are now going to pull in subscriptions that are connected to other apps. So if New York Times has a subscription and you've subscribed through the New York Times app, now that's going to be able to show up inside of Apple podcasts, and I think that's a really nice feature, because if you are using Apple podcasts as your podcast driver, you want to use it for all your shows, and hopping in and out of a bunch of different apps so that you can go and listen to audio content isn't the best setup. The best setup is where all your podcasts are in one app, and so I love that Apple has done that.

Jordan: 47:35

Yeah, and this is really new. I mean, they actually announced this just a few hours ago. So that was kind of exciting for a recording morning to have a big announcement like that. And it's neat because I mean, when you open your Apple podcast app it's going to pop up with a subscriptions connected page and you can just sync it immediately. You don't have to like sync up every single subscription that you have now that it's available, they're just going to do it for you. This morning I was reading the Pod News newsletter and a headline caught my eye Podcast radio is to launch in the US in Detroit, tampa, charlotte and Fort Myers. The stations will be hosted by Pod Jocks, including former KROQ FM personality Jean Bean Baxter.

Kevin: 48:23

Get out.

Jordan: 48:23

Is that our Jean Bean?

Kevin: 48:25

Wait, is it? Are you for real? Yeah, if that's the Jean Bean who we know and love, that is awesome.

Jordan: 48:31

How many Jean Beans are there? I? Don't know it's got to be our Jean Bean, right.

Kevin: 48:35

I would hope, because he's the original Jean Bean. I don't know.

Alban: 48:37

Well, jean Bean, let us know. Send us a boost. If this is you, let us know. If this is an imposter, let us know, so we can make sure we boycott this podcast radio setup. These are radio stations. Is this just like the podcast hour or is it going to be more than just like a little segment?

Jordan: 48:55

To me it sounds like it's going to be an actual podcast radio station.

Alban: 49:00

So it'll have its whole like you tune in and boom, you're right in the middle of like a podcast.

Jordan: 49:05

Yeah, so it says. In addition, fans of spoken word content will also be able to stream the first four custom stations and discover new podcasts via the podcastradiouscom website.

Kevin: 49:15

Yeah, I'm sorry we're kind of bumbling through this. This is your deal and please let us know so we can have you on Buzzcast and we can ask you all these questions about how this works and why this works and why this is so awesome. So I hope it's you, Jean Bean or it's not.

Alban: 49:28

You still come on. We're still not a hundred percent sure what's going on with this story, but there either is a like little segment or it's going to be entire radio stations dedicated to podcast. Either way, it's exciting. I'm hoping for entire stations, get more and more people tuning into podcast and learning about it. I've heard about podcasts because of this American life and I bet a lot of people could have a similar podcast gateway drug when they find the podcast news station.

Jordan: 49:58

It is time for sound off. This is where you are listening or sending your tips, tricks, podcasting advice. Alvin, do you want to kick us off with the boost grams?

Alban: 50:06

The first one came in from Dave Jones. Missed you guys dearly at podcast movement. The pinned episode tag is definitely a quickie that could be done in no time with very minimal effort on it. The pinned episode is a feature we think would be really cool for podcast apps, so we talked about how it would be fun if the podcasting 2.0 added the tag for it. Dave Jones does a lot of that work himself, and so I think on it means pinned episode is going to become a thing. So excited to see that, dave, and hopefully we will see you at the next podcast conference.

Kevin: 50:36

Okay. Next boost comes in from Jean Bean, the original Jean Bean, and he says here's hoping Apple picks up the podcast namespace. Also, I liked the pinned episode idea. We like that idea, also Something that we talked about. We think we might be able to implement that sooner than later. We would really love some podcast listening apps to pick it up, because we hate implementing features that don't really work anywhere. Of course, we can make them work on your Buzzsprout website, and so maybe that's where we start, but I would love to see some support from some podcast player apps that say hey, if you have a pinned episode in your feed, then we will display it at the top. So hope that happens. Jean Bean also says I'm so glad you all put the mic mount setup in the chapter art. It's awesome. I think that's referring to when I forgot my boom arm and I was doing a remote recording, so I used a paper towel holder and that was awesome. So thanks, jean Bean.

Jordan: 51:16

It was funny, all right. And then we also got another booster, graham, saying this is it's either junior or JR from West Virginia on commonplace podcast and I want to thank you all for bringing insightful information from podcast movement. Due to illness, I couldn't attend and now I have great knowledge from you all about the happenings without being there. That's good. We'd love for you all to do a bit on listener migration.

Kevin: 51:37

Yeah, I assume, moving from one podcast host to another. Sure, we can cover that in an upcoming episode. We also have some great YouTube videos on it, so if you don't want to wait for us to talk about it on this show, head over to our YouTube channel, and you should be able to find that pretty easily. Albin, do you remember what that video is called?

Alban: 51:50

No, but it's probably something like move your podcast to Buzzsprout. I don't know if we really highlight the migrate away as much, right, yeah? So hopefully, jr or junior, you're looking to move to Buzzsprout. We could send you all that information.

Jordan: 52:03

Yeah, or I could link to it in the show notes here there you go. Perfect, yeah. And then two episodes ago I have the question what is your biggest podcasting pet peeve? And we got a response on Twitter from Dispured News saying my biggest pet peeve of several candidates would be podcasts that are far from the de facto standard loudness level, so that boost is required and later an adjustment to whatever I have queued up next. Yes, this is definitely a big one, especially with all of these programmatic ads. I've actually been having an issue with that recently with local ads. You get a lot of local businesses trying out podcast advertising and they don't understand the loudness level and so it's really quiet after the podcast.

Alban: 52:41

Yeah, I've run into this lately, listening to a new podcast called Search Engine. It's PJ Foats new show and the music on it like the theme music just seems like it's another couple of decibels higher, yes, and so whatever level I put it at, it's fine. And then that music comes out and it's uncomfortably loud. I will either crank it down or now I just go instinctively skip the music. But it's not bad music, it's good music. It just has, like it's a little too loud. So loudness normalization Did you ever notice?

Kevin: 53:11

on that same podcast, pj does host read ads, but he's using some ad insertion technology, like we have in Buzzsprout, to insert those ads. So it is still his voice, but the levels drop and like that's that's. I mean it's better to go low than to go loud. But when I was listening to this latest episode about why do we still buy diamonds, and then he had a couple of hosts read ads in, both of them were like so low that I was listening in the car and I couldn't even hear the ad. So that made it really easy to skip over because it was super obvious that this is an ad. So yeah, getting your levels right is super important. One of the ways that Buzzsprout helps you get your levels right is with magic mastering. So we sign up with magic mastering. You know that it will always be right, even if you do it yourself. It's a great insurance policy. If you don't want to learn how to do it yourself, you don't have to just turn on magic mastering.

Jordan: 53:52

And then we also got some responses in our pot and box, and the first one is from Barnabas.

Barnabas: 53:57

Hi, it's Barnabas from the kids code podcast. Probably my biggest podcasting pet peeve is putting your podcast title in the episode title. It means that your listeners often can't see the name of the episode itself and well, yes, they know what podcast it's by. They don't know what the episode is about as clearly, especially on podcast apps that don't have a lot of space for the episode title. So, yeah, that's my big peeve.

Jordan: 54:34

That's a great one. You know, in addition to that, not only the podcast title, but also the people who spell out episode number this, and then you can't see what the title is.

Kevin: 54:44

I agree, Barnabas. Thank you so much for sending in that voicemail. I listen to a lot of podcasts in my car. When I'm driving around and the screen doesn't display that many characters, like even less than what's on your phone. Or if you're on a computer, you get to see a lot, but in a car you get to see very little, and so I have that problem all the time Episode numbers, podcast names and I have no idea what the episode is titled. So thank you so much. And you sound like one of our younger listeners. So, if I'm right about that, thank you so much for learning about podcasts and getting interested. It's a great hobby, something you can do for life. I'm excited that the younger generation is hopping on board.

Jordan: 55:13

And our next one is from Tom.

Tom: 55:15

Hi BuzzCast crew. My name is Tom Raftree. I'm the host of the weekly climate confident podcast and the twice weekly digital supply chain podcast, and my pet peeve with podcasting is the lack of interactivity. It often feels like you're screaming into a void when you publish podcasts because you so rarely get any feedback from the people who are listening. And yes, I see the irony of that being my pet peeve while I'm replying to a question you posed on the BuzzCast episode.

Alban: 55:44

Thanks, that's why we have the segment Tom. We feel it too. Podcasting can be very one way, and so we appreciate you not only having a pet peeve, but also solving it by answering your question.

Jordan: 55:56

Yes, All right. Next one's from Daniela.

Daniela: 56:00

Hi, my name is Daniela Stockflat-Mannis and my podcast is because everyone has a story or be has. What is my pet peeve with the podcast and I have to say, is when, after working hard to edit an episode and you send it to the guests, I ask for feedback and if they will share it, and you don't hear anything for weeks. So I tend to send the second email and sometimes I do get a response. But, yes, that is one of my biggest pet peeves. Thank you for the shows that you do. It's always very helpful and I learn a lot.

Jordan: 56:35

Thanks, daniela. I think that this kind of goes hand in hand with Tom's response about creating this thing and then just not having any interactivity, and especially with your guests. When you have somebody on your show and you want to be respectful to them and honor them by having them listen to it beforehand, and then they don't take the time to do that, that is kind of hurtful and I can see how that would be a huge pet peeve for somebody.

Kevin: 56:59

Yeah, I agree, and I'm not sure there's much you can do about it. Some people are just going to be OK by being that type of person, and some people would never do that to somebody, and so just wishing you the best of luck of finding more people who honor your time and respect the effort that you're putting in your show and are thankful that you were able to have them on as a guest, and want to repay that favor to you by, at a minimum, listening and hopefully going above and beyond and sharing that episode with their circle as well.

Alban: 57:21

I'm reminded of an old Buzz Browth Conversations episode I did with Kate Casey and she interviews lots of people who are minor celebrities, mostly on like reality TV shows, and she gets almost all of them to share it on social. And the way she did it was she during the interview, asks people what's your favorite photo of yourself? And she gets a photo from them and then she uses that to make a sound bite. And then she sends that sound bite along with text and is like here's what I want you to post. And when it's already like completed and done and it's a photo they like of themselves, she tells them like you're a genius, it was such a good clip that you did. I guess that helps get them over the hump of actually going and posting. So I love those tips. I don't know if that'll get everybody to share it. Some people are just self-conscious about their own voice on a podcast, but maybe some of those tips would help.

Jordan: 58:10

Yeah, and that was a great interview. I'll link to that in the show notes as well. Finally, we have a response from Darren and this is a response to a question that you had, albin, a few episodes ago, asking what the worst environment was that the listeners recorded in.

Darren: 58:24

Hey, good morning. This is Darren Wright and I've got a podcast called Finding Financial Flow and the funniest thing that I've had so far happen is I had famous NFL coach on, marv Lewis talking about coaching and support and I didn't know that my wife had scheduled a window reinstall in our house. Oh no. So I was recording in my home office in one room and in the other room they're reinstalling these windows and there's hammering and drilling going on. It was a total disaster because it took me like two months to get Marv in and so we just muscled through it and the recording is pretty bad, but he was a trooper and we still publish it, so you can actually listen to the comedy online at Finding Financial Flow. But I've got a few more, but that probably takes the cake so far.

Jordan: 59:13

Oh my gosh.

Kevin: 59:15

Terrible house construction with the biggest interview that took you months to set up. That's great.

Alban: 59:19

It only ever happens during the big interviews. The small interviews, the ones that don't matter, they go off flawlessly. But it's like the one you're like I really want to get this, because then I'll feel like I can do even bigger interviews. This is my chance. And then it's like, oh yeah, the window installed today. Obviously it's just horrible. So, kevin, I think you're up next. What's our sound off question for this week?

Kevin: 59:40

All right so I want to take this in a totally different direction than any of our previous questions. Excellent, all right, but I am going to tie it back to podcasting and it's going to be a bit of a challenge. Okay, right now I'm getting to a point in my life where my second child is getting to the place where he's going to have his own driver's license very soon. My oldest child has already gone through this, but she had the ability to get a hand-me-down car from a relative, so we didn't have to figure out the car situation for her. But now she's off in college and she has that car with her. So now my next child is coming up and I'm trying to figure out how do you solve the car problem for, like, if you don't have a family hand-me-down or something like that, or like there's not an easy way to share an existing car, what do you do? So, in the throes of all of that, I want to hear stories from our podcasters. So here's the exercise part is that we like sound off segments to be 30 seconds or less. Tell me a story about your first car, why it was special to you, how you acquired it, something relevant about a first car story in 30 seconds or less. I think that can be a fun creative exercise for some of us to go through. That was fun.

Jordan: 1:00:37

Kevin, do you have an example of a first car story for us?

Kevin: 1:00:39

I was wondering if you're going to ask me that. Oh, of course.

Jordan: 1:00:43

I'm not asking.

Kevin: 1:00:44

I haven't honed it down to 30 seconds yet, so I'll try to hit 30 seconds and it'll be a little rough. My first car was a Chevy Cavalier 2.4 liter manual and it was a beater. It was not a cool car at all. But what I loved about that car was it gave me the opportunity to experiment with something that I really couldn't mess up, like you weren't going to make it worse. And so I remember going to a pawn shop and saving up some money and getting a new stereo for it and then ripping out my dashboard and trying to figure out how to install it. Oh yeah, that was fun. Like I worked on it for weeks and finally I got it figured out and got the dashboard put back together. And I remember the headliner for the car would always fall down. I didn't have any money to take it to a repair shop and get a new headliner, so I just found push pins that were the same color and always tack that headliner up, and it was something of my friends would always talk about when they get in the car. To me, that car was special. It wasn't cool, it wasn't expensive, it wasn't fast. Also, I met my wife in high school and I taught her how to drive stick shift in that car. So it's like a fun, just old story and memory that we have together. So it wasn't about having the coolest car, the fastest car, an expensive car, it was just that that car allowed me to do things, have memories with people who are still important in my life, and experiment on cars and play with things that I never would have done if it had been a nice fancy car or something like that. So that's my first car story. It doesn't really tie back. It's just like an exercise in succinct storytelling, which I think is an important skill for podcasters to have. The more stories we share and the more our audience gets to know us as individuals, the more connected they will be with our show.

Jordan: 1:01:58

It's like those writing exercises that you do in school where you have to do like a one-sentence story. Like it has to have a beginning, middle and end.

Kevin: 1:02:06

So let's try, if you're going to respond this week, and I hope you do like, take a second and try to write a 30-second story that somehow relates to your first car, like why it was special or how you got it or whatever a good memory about it and try to tell it as in depth as you can in 30 seconds or less. I think it might make you a better podcaster.

Jordan: 1:02:21

OK, so to have your response featured on our next episode, leave a 30-second voice message at podinboxcom, send a boost to Graham or tweet the answer at buzzcast podcast. And, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.

Alban: 1:02:38

All right. So for the next episode of Albin and Kevin's health journey, I have some insights now. Kevin Body hacks the body hack pod what you got. Kevin, I vote. We both were a whoop Jordan, this thing. They're like tracks, a bunch of health data, and I Think I've cracked the code. I went from consistent what they would say is like average sleep to now I'm in the top top percent. I'm hitting 95% recoveries plus every night and I have a proven methodology. Now it's only been three nights straight.

Kevin: 1:03:12

Wait, I can say how many nights in a row? Three, three.

Alban: 1:03:15

But proven method.

Jordan: 1:03:16

Okay, I have been Chronically tired for like the last two weeks.

Alban: 1:03:20

What's really nice about the whoop is you start tracking a bunch of stuff and then you start seeing which of the things actually makes an effect. And what I really don't love is like if you kind of listen to a lot of these body hack, bro-sciencey podcasts, like I feel like I listened to too many of them. They all tell you like if you do these 10 things and eventually have like 20 things, so you do none of them, but with the whoop you're actually like checking and you can figure out which of these things has a big effect, which one don't actually matter. So these are the things that matter for me. Number one Do not ever drink alcohol, ever. If you drink alcohol, it's it's just a poison. It's a poison that I've enjoyed a lot. Yeah, it's so bad for you. Every time I drink any and I'm talking about one drink of wine drink slowly two hours before bed. Negative 18% on my sleep.

Jordan: 1:04:13

Oh.

Alban: 1:04:13

So I'm not talking about like getting drunk or being hungover the next day. I'm talking about a single drink.

Jordan: 1:04:19

Yeah, I.

Kevin: 1:04:21

Tell everybody that because I've been wearing my whoop for quite some time. So, and everybody who knows me, who ever gets to the point in their life where they're considering buying a whoop, they say you've worn one forever, is it worth getting? And the first thing I always ask them is do you enjoy drinking? And they're like yeah, occasionally. What most people say anyway. And I say, okay, well, that is, you're gonna remove that from your life. And they're like no, I wouldn't, I won't happen. And everybody within like two months of wearing the whoop is like you're right, I'm not drinking, hardly at all anymore.

Alban: 1:04:46

That was part of the selling point for me, because I remember you and I talking about it. I went well, if I buy this, I'm probably going to stop drinking. And now it's like the costs are so much higher that Every time someone asks if I want to drink, I'm like I don't know, man, I know how much it's gonna affect me now. So, number one alcohol. Number two Sleeping in my house, verse traveling now that I can't always have changed.

Kevin: 1:05:15

Sharing a bed. But wait, you said you had three nights in a row, did this. You just went camping this weekend. Did you get a high recovery under camp?

Alban: 1:05:21

No, that was that one was lower. Shared bed is very important for mine, so if my wife's out of town, apparently my sleep score is lower, and for real I would have guessed the opposite. I would have guessed the opposite too, because I like it colder and my I mean my wife still is okay with the house being cold, but not super cold, and Apparently, shared bed is a Improver for me and the new one.

Kevin: 1:05:48

So this is how. This is how older couples get to the point where they have two separate beds.

Alban: 1:05:52

I saw that path before me and who stopped it. We're gonna not be the couple that's like obviously been separate rooms, but we're still.

Kevin: 1:06:00

This is your testimony to whoop. Is that whoop saved our single bed marriage?

Jordan: 1:06:04

I have separate bedrooms because I we do not sleep well.

Kevin: 1:06:08

Yeah, I hear that a lot horrible.

Jordan: 1:06:10

It's like a new thing that people are doing and, honestly, like I mean I said at the beginning of this that like I'm not getting good sleep, but it's not because I Sleep so much better Without anyone else in the room with me. I can't stand it.

Alban: 1:06:23

So, number one no alcohol. Number two shared bed. Number three Sleeping long enough.

Jordan: 1:06:29

So I, I, actually how long is long enough for you?

Alban: 1:06:31

if I'm not in bed For eight and a half hours, then I won't sleep, but seven and a half hours or less, and so I won't recover now. This is with me working out most days now, but if I so, I really have to be in the bed eight and a half hours lights off before I have to wake up the new one I have. That broke it all, kevin. This is now the next level level up. Got it a sleep mask. Is what a sleep mask Wearing?

Kevin: 1:06:59

the sleep.

Alban: 1:07:02

Nope, nope, just this is like a three dollar one bought off Amazon. I bought a hand, a few of them, you know, a few years ago, and sometimes if there's like some light in the room I would wear it. And then I was like you know, I should track this in my whoop. And Then I started seeing all the nights I was wearing the sleep mask were much higher, and it's because I will wake up in the night, but if the mask is on I'm not distracted. I don't see my watch and think, oh, it's this time. I have this much time till the day starts. Oh, what's my first meeting? And my brain starts moving. You just wake up, it's complete blackness and I roll back over and I'm back to bed. My awake time is down to like nothing and I think I want to move into. Like selling sleep masks, says now, I'm a believer. This is it the biggest, this is such a big. I mean consistent bedtime isn't up there with this. You know the workouts, the sauna, none of these hit. What about? What about eating, eating late at night? And you and you took the last one. Oh, did I this? Is it. This is the Kevin Finn, this is yours. Kevin was like you can't eat late at night. I was like, yeah, you can, what if you're hungry? He goes no, just don't do it. Don't eat late at night. I think one for me, yeah, and I just didn't think that was a thing. And then I realized I was like I'll do it, so eat dinner, and I don't go to bed for a good three hours and I don't eat anything else and I'm a little bit hungry, but I just go to bed anyway and I sleep so much better as well. So those are the things I have to do no alcohol, no eating late at night, wearing a sleep mask at home in the bed with my wife and Make sure you're I love.

Kevin: 1:08:34

The best thing about this is that you spent you know what $300 on a year membership reboot. Yes, after that year you're gonna pay $35 a month and you have to wear this thing in your wrist all the time and you have to Keep it charged and everything and everything you said is like complete common sense. Yeah, exceptional maybe the sleep mask, everything, but here's the thing good.

Alban: 1:08:51

In my mind I would have come up with no Sharing a bed is a negative. I just believed that and it turned out to not be true. Yeah, I also believed that doing the sauna was really helpful for my sleep turns out that's not true and I would never have thought the sleep mask was a help or the eating late at night. I knew alcohol was bad. I thought, oh, it's only bad If you end up having a hangover the next day. Yeah, that is not true. It's like one drink hours before and it's still. I'm embarrassed now in the morning. It's like what happened last night and I have to put in like the journal and I don't even want to like. I feel like I want To like lie to my dad like oh, I didn't drink Because I know it's gonna tell me the score right after I put in what happened the day before, yeah, and I just know it's gonna be bad now because I had a drink.

Kevin: 1:09:36

So no, you're right. As much as some of the stuff feels like common sense, it is personalized and individualized to each of us, like it is very much. You know, eating late at night might be fine for some people and much worse for other people and just absolutely terrible for some people. Like you were saying that you need to be in bed about eight and a half hours, I've gotten into the 90s on recovery with just six hours of sleep. So I think a lot of it has to do with the quality of your sleep and how fast you fall asleep and how much like blue light You've had beforehand or how much melatonin your body's producing. So there is, there are individual aspects to all of it, but at the same time there are some general principles that kind of apply to everyone, which is like you should be shooting for at least eight hours of sleep. Captain doesn't matter for me should be cool, you should. You know alcohol is pretty much universally bad for everyone. Those are all just common things.

Alban: 1:10:17

Do you have any others, kevin, any other insights on yours Insights?

Kevin: 1:10:20

on mine Now I think you kind of hit the big ones. Now what you'll you'll find out the longer that you wear this is that the amount of strain that you have throughout the day impacts your ability to Get consistently into those high 90s on your recovery, and so it becomes a constantly moving bar, which I know you're familiar with because we've worked together for a long time, so you're comfortable with moving bars. Every time you achieve it, it just levels up again.

Alban: 1:10:45

Kevin's like all right, that's good, let's do what's double that, I'm like right, double that, all right, yeah, so.

Kevin: 1:10:50

So that'll happen, you, as soon as you're hitting 90s consistently, and then you'll be like I'm doing the exact same thing. Why am I only 80s now? Well, because whoops pushing you to get even better like it's. It's all about self-improvement, constant improvement. Oh so what is now?

Alban: 1:11:03

as your HRV scores.

Kevin: 1:11:04

You know, like, let's say, your HRV is normally around 50, right, and so if you get anything close to 50, it's gonna put you in the 90s. Well, as soon as 50 becomes your baseline, it's gonna say, okay, well, then you're gonna have a baseline average recovery and that's in the 80s. That's like 85 is like yellow, that's normal. So now, if you want to get back into the 90s, you're gonna have to have an HRV of like 55 or 60. How do you get your HRV, hrv?

Alban: 1:11:24

is your heart rate variability.

Kevin: 1:11:27

So the time in milliseconds between, like your max heart rate and your resting heart rate and how long it takes to adjust between those two there's a lot of science between that's a really good measure of overall fitness level.

Alban: 1:11:37

And you're the balance of your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous systems right, that's the More scientific way of saying what I said.

Kevin: 1:11:46

Is your heart good yeah?

Jordan: 1:11:50

yeah, while you were talking about this, I was.

Alban: 1:11:52

I was on the you're on the whoop website website. I was, I was looking at the podcast.

Jordan: 1:11:57

Well, yeah, but then I saw the like yearly fee. I was impressed with how inexpensive the actual strap itself is, like you can get like a pack with like battery, the band the thing, for like 84 bucks, I think. Is that right?

Alban: 1:12:13

So that might be a replacement. That stuff doesn't include replacement like that. The actual whoops advice, the whoop device, is included in that $250 or whatever fee.

Jordan: 1:12:24

Oh, it's included in that.

Kevin: 1:12:25

Yeah, you have to pay the monthly fee. There's no way around the monthly fee.

Alban: 1:12:28

It's expensive, but the software is so good yeah.

Kevin: 1:12:32

So the way to do it is to is to buy a year. So if you think about it in terms of, I'm gonna pay around $300 a little less than $300 and I'm going to learn a lot about my health and fitness and overall well-being for a year from this device and then after a year you will have a lot of knowledge you won't need to continue to renew after a year you can, of course, if you have the money to do it and you're continuing to get new insights. But a lot of people just buy it For a year and they learn a ton of stuff and then you're kind of good to go from there.

Jordan: 1:12:59

Except it'd be one of those things where, like I did it and then I got like judgy about how my husband handles his health, and then I'd have to have him do it afterwards.

Kevin: 1:13:06

So it's great you become a judge.

Jordan: 1:13:09

Yeah, every time you go out with your friends, you constantly Like every time, like we'd go out, like at the bus, brought me up, I'd like have a glass of wine, you guys like you know if you have more than one.

Alban: 1:13:21

Kevin did that to me. I was, I jumped in the ice bath, I freeze. And then I'm like man, I'm so hungry. Kevin's like don't eat, it's gonna kill your recovery, it's gonna be fine. I'm like we have these little mini pizzas. He's like do not eat that, that's not gonna be good. And I ate it and my recovery was terrible the next morning. Kevin's like I told you not to eat late at night.

Kevin: 1:13:42

And that's why I started tracking. That's the best part about whoop is it makes you so much better than everyone.

Alban: 1:13:47

It's not about improving yourself. It's about Everyone else around you.

Kevin: 1:13:51

Yeah, it doesn't sound expensive when you think about that. Yeah, it's $300 to be better than everyone I know for a year. That's not bad.

Jordan: 1:13:58

Done I.