Dave Jackson’s Journey from Basic Gear to Professional Podcasting

Ever wonder what it's like to be a podcast consultant or ever

wonder what it's like to be Dave Jackson? Well, I had 2 members of the

school of podcasting throw questions at me. And so today, I'm gonna kinda peel

back the curtain and talk about how much it costs for me to

run The School of Podcasting. Let's start the show.

Podcasting since 2 1,005. I am your

award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson, thanking you

so much for tuning in. If you are new to the show,

this is how I help you plan, launch, grow, and if

you want to monetize your podcast, my website

is school of podcasting.com. Use the coupon code

listener when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription

and that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. And I

gotta tell you I am really, like, not

comfortable right now and I've actually had to pull myself off

the couch because I'm going to talk about me

today. And, a, if you're brand new to

the show, go listen to any other one, but but this one. I'm gonna kinda

bring in some some insights, but

I had 2 people, Stephanie Graham. You might remember her.

She was in the hot seat a couple weeks ago, nosyaf.com,

and Kim Newlove from The Pharmacist's Voice. Both

asked questions about kind of behind the

scenes of Dave Jackson, I guess, we could call this title.

And so I wanna bring up some things first because here's

why Stephanie kinda brought it up. Stephanie and I were

doing some coaching, and she said, wow. Your background looks

cool. What all is going on there? And I said, well, realize

I started in 2,005. So what

you're seeing right now is, you know,

19 years later, I did not start where I

am. And so that can really

kill your mentality because you look at where

you are, and you look at somebody who's been doing it for a while and

you're like, I can't compete with that. And I

understand that, but it's one of those things where

I don't want to what's the word?

I don't want to fertilize that thought that, oh, I can't compete.

Look. You start ugly. You start where you are, and you move on from

there. And then over the years, I'll talk about how I

added new things and such as we go along. But

I'm I'm really worried that when you hear where I'm at,

that, like, you think, oh, that's where you need to start. And, no, you

start where you are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And

so before we jump into the details, I thought I'd stare stare. I

thought I would share some just facts I found

about Michael Jordan because he's considered

the best basketball player ever. There are those that might argue

LeBron James. But the thing about Michael is,

if you talk to anybody, was his work ethic. But here's the thing.

Michael Jordan did not make his high school varsity basketball

team, talk about starting ugly, until his junior year

after he finally hit a growth spurt. So if you're like, oh, I

can't do this because I'm not well, you know, you keep going at

it. And so many people have just

said, you can't outwork Michael Jordan.

James Worthy, who later played for the Lakers, said after

about 2 and a half hours of hard practice, I'm walking off the floor

because he played with Michael in college. And he said, I'm drenched

in sweat. I'm tired. And here comes Michael pushing me back on the

floor, wanting to play a little 1 on 1, wanting to see where

his game was. He says, I don't do things half heartedly

because I know if I do, then I can expect half hearted

results. That is Michael's quote. Another famous

athlete, Tiger Woods, said, people don't understand

that when I grew up, I was never the most talented. I was never

the biggest. I was never the fastest. I was never the

strongest. The only thing I had was my work ethic, and that has

been what has got me so far. If we look at LeBron

James, someone I'm a fan of being from Akron, Ohio, he

said, he would get a special 4 page scattering report

before every game. His teammates got the 2 page report

because, you know, LeBron wanted the full report. He could run

when he played for the Miami Heat. He could run every play in the playbook

from all 5 positions. And he's

improved his field goal percentage 7 years in

a row. He keeps a strict diet, refusing to eat red meat or

pork, and he eats all sorts of healthy food.

So constant improvement and a work ethic

is kind of the things that ran through those three people.

And my first job out of college, I was a copier

technician, and the place I worked for had giant

signs everywhere that just said constant improvement. And

that's where I eventually went from being a copier

technician to training people on how to run their equipment,

which led to computer training, which led to all sorts of other things.

But I learned when you're in education, if

you're not learning, you're going backwards. That's just the

way life is. And so with that,

I started in my brother's basement. And you've probably heard me say that

a 1000000 times, but I say that because it was not pretty.

It was not fancy. I had a a pipe behind me

praying that no one would flush the toilet. I had a water heater

to the right of me and a water bed

behind me because I needed a bed. At the time, I'd just

gone through bankruptcy and a divorce, and they had a bed. And I'm like, I

don't care if it's a water bed. We'll just pretend it's 1976.

And then way over on the other side of the room was a furnace. So

not exactly your best, you know, studio

type situation, but it worked.

I am a musician at the time. I was playing in bands, so I had

a really old beat up Shure SM 58.

There's nothing more fun when you play in a band and you're singing back up

and some drunk comes and hits the microphone and hits you

in the face with a microphone or tips it over. Or I remember

one time, I was playing, and this guy had knocked

over the the microphone down at the the cover. Alright.

Great. And then he came up. He was, like, 64, 65. He's a huge person,

and he's drinking with a pitcher of beer. He kept saying, I'm a big man.

I have a big beer. And then later spilled it all over me and my

guitar. And, I started to take off my guitar and go after him because it's

one thing to, you know, knock me in the teeth of the microphone or whatever.

It's another thing when you spill beer on my baby, on my guitar.

And luckily, the lead singer, stopped me from doing thumb something

stupid. But, nonetheless, I had a microphone.

I had a little baby mixer, and I figured out that I could plug

the microphone into the mixer and then take the RCA,

output of the mixer into the line input of the computer,

and I could record. Not pretty, not great, not the best

equipment, but it worked, and I sounded like this.

To, you know, keep the cycle going that your first podcast is usually

pretty awful. What I'm just gonna do first is explain to you who the heck

you're talking about and and why I've done this. So again, my name is Dave

Jackson. I I live in Ohio, and I'm currently a,

I teach software and I do tech support. I've been doing

training for many, many, many moons. I've been

the head of a training department for a $40,000,000 company here

in Ohio, but I took my strengths, which is basically training.

And I think I have a I've been told told I have a a good

skill. I don't have a master of the English language. That's one thing.

And so, eventually, I got married, moved to Cleveland, had a

horrific marriage, got divorced, inherited a

lot of debt, and moved back to

Akron. And along the way, I have lived I had

my own business above a deli

in Cleveland, Ohio when I lived there. So I would come home with smelling like

rotisserie chicken because I was above the deli that was right beneath

me. I had another business office. And for the record, if

you ever decide to, like, hey. I'm gonna get an office.

The Internet does not come at the same price

that you pay at home. When it's home, it's x amount of money. And I'm

like, yeah. I I need the Internet. And they're like, it's x amount of money.

I'm like, what? And they're like, yeah. It's for a business. I'm like, well,

yeah. A business, but, really, this is just a spare bedroom about 12 blocks

down the street. They're like, we don't care. So Internet went went way,

way up. So there is some things that

you can benefit by staying at home. And if you wanna

save on your taxes, go see my buddy Ralph over at Ask Ralph

podcast. But Stephanie had asked, what do you

pay for the School of Podcasting? And she's not

trying to get in my wallet. She's just curious, like, what does it take to

be Dave Jackson? And it's really hard because I have so many shows

about podcasts to just separate the expenses for the school

of podcasting because there are some things I do because I have many shows

about podcasting. But the first one, I paid $20 for a

media host. Now for many, many, many, many years,

19, I was on Libsyn. And as I said last week,

nothing wrong with Libsyn. Absolutely not. And, but I

recently moved to Captivate because I

left Lipson. I was the head of podcaster education there. You'll

hear where I'm going next week, by the way. And I have moved

that show to Captivate. And so because Captivate has a really

cool dynamic tool, and Libsyn does have a dynamic tool,

but it's much more expensive made for giant networks

with lots of details that I just didn't need. So $20 a month for hosting.

My web host is podpage. And so for

me, if you're just starting out, choose the $29

plan as the middle option. If you want the cool, like, the really fun

tools, go with the elite program. And you may be thinking,

$29. I mean, I can get a media host for

18. Right? If you're using something like SiteGround or

$25 if you're using site or, not site engine,

WP Engine. But for me, when I've used

WordPress, I then had to spend a $119 a year on

Wordfence and then x amount of money on this plugin and

x amount of money on that plugin. And I was like, you know what? I'd

rather just have a $29 PodPage account

and not have to worry about backups and all this

other stuff. So I love PodPage. Another example

of I moved, The School of Podcasting is now in Captivate.

And, again, because I'm using dynamic tools, I moved my other show,

Ask the Podcast Coach, to Buzzsprout.

And by using PodPage for

Ask the Podcast Coach, I don't have to do anything. I literally I

I redirected my feed, and everything just updated.

On The School of Podcasting, I'm using WordPress where

I manually would grab the direct link to the MP 3 file on

Libsyn and then put it into PowerPress, which is a WordPress

plugin. And, yeah, guess what? I have to change

930 some episodes now. So I'm

actually keeping my Libsyn account open at the smallest

value as I slowly manually update

that. So that's when I was like, oh, I shoulda used PodPage for that.

So $29 for web hosting. Now I have an email

list, and I cannot I echo everything

that I've ever heard from every other entrepreneur. I should have started an

email list sooner. And so what I do is

there's a website called AppSumo, and I'll have links to

these out in the show notes. AppSumo has a lot of really

cool tools. And usually what it is, it's brand new

software that wants to get a lot of people on their

platform so that they kinda build up a bunch of buzz.

And some of their products, they actually build their own. And so for my

email list, I use SendFox. It's a single

payment, $50 for life.

That's it. And I've done that for years now. If you want to, you can

upgrade for a whopping $10 a month, and your email will get delivered a

little faster. But there's that. And then I have

that's for kind of my if you sign up, if you go to school of

podcasting.com/daily, that is that.

If you go to podcasterhappyhour.com

and you should sign up for that because we've got some really cool things coming

up at the end of the month, some demos. And if you are

kind of a person that really likes the networking that happens at

trade shows, that's kinda what this is, and that's gonna be a monthly

thing. So that is through SendFox. When you go over there, you'll see a SendFox

landing page. Now for me, just communicating with my audience, not

really a ton of marketing, I use Substack

because it's free. Normally, I'm not a big fan of free stuff because it tends

to go out of business, but I use Substack for

that. Now for my scheduling, because if you're gonna be doing

guest interviews, we talked about that a couple episodes ago

about the pros and cons and how to do interviews right. I

use TidyCal. It is a one time fee, $29.

Now when it first came out, it was a little wonky. And so I quit

using it, but since then, they have fixed it, and it's been

pretty rock solid ever since. And if you're a coach, you can

actually have people schedule your time

and pay for it at the same time. It's pretty cool. $29

onetime fee through AppSumo for

$13 a month. Now that is a yearly one. I think

it's maybe 15, 20 a month, but I use Hindenburg.

And you could say, well, Dave, you could edit in Audacity.

And I could, but I like to do narrative style interviews from

time to time. I just like it's a cleaner look.

It's, for me, less stressful in a way to edit in

Hindenburg than Audacity. But I do know people that make a living

editing, you know, podcasts in Audacity. There's nothing wrong with that

one being free. They just added some new features where now there's a master

track, which I love the master track in Hindenburg. It's cool to hear that it

came to Audacity. But I'm a big Hindenburg fan. And in the

end, anything that makes the process easier, saves

me time, or saves me money, I will do it. And you're

like, but, Dave, you just said you pay $13 a month. It's not saving

you money. Yeah. But it's saving me headaches. And that is worth $13

a month. For interviews, I use SquadCast,

which is part of Descript, which is a bonus, and I'm paying the

monthly fee on that. I believe they're the public fee right now is

35, but I bought it back when it was 30. So I think

I'm paying 30 a month for that. And I used that to record

the future of podcasting with Daniel j Lewis and any interviews like that.

And then I used Descript for Ask

the Podcast Coach. So, technically, I do use it for the school of

podcasting when I do interviews, but that's that is something that I

need. And then I use Ecamm. And

this is one where I was like, I don't really use Ecamm much for the

School of Podcasting when I thought about it. I have done interviews

with it for that. But in theory, if I have SquadCast,

I don't really need Ecamm. So that one's kind of a question

mark. And Ecamm is $40 a month. If that's

too much, I I just started using a tool on Ask the

Podcast Coach called Evmux. It's $25 a month, and

that's great for live streaming as well as recording interviews. So that's something

I'm playing with. And you'll notice here as we go along

that I like to play with stuff. And,

again, if I'm not moving forward in education, I am

going backwards. So if we look at that and add that

up, I am paying a $132

a month. So that's media host, web host,

Hindenburg, Descript, and Ecamm. Now, again,

if I ditched Ecamm, that's a minus 40. If I

ditch SquadCast and just use cleanfeed.net,

by the way, that is a free audio only tool,

and that will give you one file. Won't give you separate tracks. But if

you're just starting out and you wanna do interviews,

that's a way to start. And then I paid $78 a one

time fee. And so Kim had asked me, what do you consider

luxury items? Well, that's the basics right there. And, again, I would probably

lose you you know, I could if I was on the cheap, I would

lose Descript and SquadCast. I would lose Ecamm,

and I would probably use Evmux for live streaming.

And then I would use Cleanfeed for interviews because that's free, or

Zoom. You could always use Zoom. Not my favorite. But, again, you

start where you are, you start ugly, and then later, you move on. I

mean, in the early days, I was using Skype for interviews.

In fact, in the very early days, I had gone

to RadioShack. Yeah. That that doesn't make you sound old

at all. I went to RadioShack and bought a suction

cup that you stuck on your actual rotary

phone and then plugged that into your computer.

And it was absolutely horrendous audio quality.

But, hey, I was recording the phone call, and I got to interview some,

kinda quasi celebrities at the time, which was cool.

But what is a luxury podcast item?

And so thank you, Kim, for the question. And so here are some things that

you don't need but make things maybe a little easier.

So one is that I use now. And when I say use,

can we put up quotation marks about that? I use

Castmagic. And Castmagic is one of the many,

many AI tools where you upload the

file, It transcribes it, and then it basically

it slices it, dices it, even julienne's. And

I rarely use any of the stuff it spits out. I on

occasion, I'll use the opening paragraph if it's not too hey, everybody.

Look at me. Blah blah blah. You know? Even though it's supposed to be

writing in my voice, it rarely does. But that is something and you'll

hear me mention I've mentioned AppSumo before with ZenFox and

TidyCal. I got a lifetime deal for Cast Magic.

And so I'm not paying $23 a month. But if you got it now,

you would be. And so I keep my eye on

AppSumo, but that is a scary place because you end up

buying lots of stuff that you don't need. You have to be very disciplined around

AppSumo. Right now, I am testing

a tool by Ray Edwards. I'm a big fan

of It's a basically, an AI tool

that helps you write copywriting stuff because Ray is a world

famous copywriter. It's called ClarityScribe. Right now, that's

a $100. Now my book, that's not a little bit of money.

That's that grabs my attention. But I love Ray,

and I like AI tools, so I'm playing with it right now. And once I'm

done playing with it, unless it's worth a $100, I'm probably gonna turn

that off. I have an 11 Labs account.

That is a whopping $5 a month. And I use that on occasion

if I need some sort of AI voice, or I know they

just introduced a noise removal tool. And so

11 Labs is kinda fun. I cloned the voice of my

grandfather, which was interesting. But just because you can do

something, doesn't mean you should. And, I can now

make any member of my family cry just by typing in, what do we

want grandpa to say? And then send it to them, and they all cry. So

it's a really weird tool, but I consider those

luxury AI tools. I I am I'm not

anti AI. I just to me, it's assisted intelligence,

and I can type, and I can think. And I do have

an episode coming up that I will explain how AI did save

me a lot of time and money. But some of these tools, I'm like, yeah.

Look at it. It's got AI. And I'm like, okay.

Plus, in the time I've recorded this episode, I mean, we're what

about, so I look up. We're 22 minutes in. I'm sure at least 4

new services that will help you with AI have already launched.

Now some other things, again, we look at luxury, but this

isn't really for me. I've bought 4 plugins over the

years. Actually, 5. One is dRoom. That's

from a a company called Accentize. That was $50.

Then I got d Revive Pro from Accentize. That was

$300. But I started

doing audio editing for people, which I do a little bit

of but not a ton. And if you do audio editing,

half the fun is cleaning up really bad audio. I mean, even the question of

the month, I get some audio that I'm like, you're a podcaster? Not you, of

course. But there are other people that I'm like, wow.

They're recording from a, you know, standing next to a jet engine

apparently. So D Revive to, Pro is

$300, but it saves me so much time. So much time. And it

was worth the $300. I then used Shep's omnichannel.

That replaced a piece of hardware that used to sit on my desk. That's a

$50 plug in. Well, I'll have links to these out in the show notes. And

then I use dialogue enhance, which is a cool tool

that basically can adjust the tone

of a track. So I use that a lot on the question of the

month because some people are super bassy, some people are kind of a

little harsh. It's a little harsh. And so that kinda dials

the tone knobs automatically, and that, again, saved me a

ton of time. All those saved me a ton of time. Now the

other tool that I bought at the time is

called iZotope RX. And it was, I wanna say,

$800. And I'm slowly finding

a plug in here and a plug in there because I think I

use the De plosive part of

iZotope. I used to use the noise reduction, and that's now been reduced

by other ones. And I found a Debreath

plugin that might do because that's really all I use it for. Debreath,

de plosive, and removing some noise. But there

are other tools now that remove noise that are just amazing.

So, those are some tools that I've done that, again,

if you're not editing audio, you don't need.

But if you're interviewing people who have horrible audio,

I'm here to tell you they can save you a lot of time. My

favorite out of all those well, I have 2. I I will

if I don't have my Shep's omnichannel plug in, I

I'm I fall into that trick of, oh, I hate the sound of my

voice. I love it. And then D Revive Pro saves

me, I mean, mountains of time because some of the people I edit for

send me they're brilliant people. They're brilliant people. They're

actual, like, brain surgeons, but the audio they send me is horrendous.

So that's, you know, another if we put all those together

now those are one time fees. Those are

$466, but I have definitely got my money back from

those by doing audio editing. So you don't need those.

But if you're doing audio editing, what did it do? It saved me headaches.

It saved me time. And so I put the money out

there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now as we move on

to coaching, this is where I set out to be

the guy. I wanted to be the podcast coach. If you wanna

know it, that guy knows it. And so I

have podcasts. Some of them are just test shows

on many, many services. So I still spend $7 a month with Libsyn.

I spend $18 a month on buzzsprout. I spend $12 a month on

blueberry. And blueberry is the one I need to circle back on

blueberry. They've added so much stuff over there. And I

was I used to have a class on Blueberry, and the course

would go over everything. And they added so much stuff, it became outdated. And I

need to circle back and add my blueberry course back. I spent a

$180 for the year on Red Circle.

And Red Circle is a media host that not many people talk

about. I only have them on my radar because if you really,

really, really need free, to which I go, you don't need

what you need is a job. But instead of Spotify,

I would recommend Red Circle. And they've made their free service kinda hard

to find now because they figured out, free is not a good

business model. Yeah. I know a lot of people that have gone out of business

about that. Now some other things for me,

now this I guess, we would call these luxury. But to me,

again, my goal as a consultant is to stay up

on what's going on. And so I have I spend

$40 a month on a mastermind that's all about

building community. I spend $99 a month

in Capt Show. Now Capt Show is a really cool AI

tool. And compared to the other ones, it's a

little pricey. But I actually don't use CapShow that

much. I should. It's a great product. But I like

their training that they do. They have a lot of experts come in and

talk, and that's where I was kinda like, So I'm not so much that

kind of stuff, but I I do like podcast or happy hour. And that is

actually a holdover from the days of

COVID, and I wanna bring that back. So, again, links to that in the show

notes. But that's $99. I kinda consider that a luxury, but kinda

not. Then I have already mentioned ClarityScribe.

I'm using that now. That is a tool that if you ask me in 3

months, I'm probably not gonna use unless it's amazing. But I'm doing it just to

stay up to date on what is out there. I use a coaching tool

that I spend $60 a year to kind of talk back and forth with

people. I use a CRM that's $15 a month. I

use another tool for processing invoices and such. That

is $16 a month. That's called WAVE. I use

Camtasia to do tutorials. Now I realized there are

cheaper things than Camtasia. It's a $180 a year. But here's the

thing, I've been using Camtasia for at least 30

years. Yeah. That's about right. 30. And, like, right

now, Buzzsprout just redid their whole back end, so I've gotta

redo my Buzzsprout course. And I know

Camtasia like the back of my hand. And so I can rip through these

tutorials because I know the tool, and that's worth

you know, what's what's more, painful? Spending a

$180 or going through yet another learning curve? Because I know there's things like

DaVinci Resolve and all these other tools. And I'm like, you know what? I know

this. And, yeah, a $180 is a lot of money. But

for the year, it's a little over, what, $10, something like

that. I still spend $69 a year

on Microsoft Office, which, again, I could probably lose because I just

use Google Docs and Google Sheets now. For my community

for The School of Podcasting, there are 2 tools I use. I use

Zendler for my courses. So when you look at

the if you go to learn.schoolapodcast.com, that is

Zendler. It makes my front page for that, handles all the video hosting, all

that stuff. That's Zenler. That's 67 a month. And then for the

community, I use heartbeat. And I love heartbeat.

It's amazing. It's $49 a month, but

you guessed it. When I got heartbeat, it was on AppSumo. I got a

lifetime deal, and so I'm really not spending any money on

heartbeat. And you might say, but, Dave, why don't you just use

Facebook? And I realized it's free, and there are people. My

buddy, Mark, over at practicalprepping.info has 31,000

people in his Facebook group. And I get that.

The thing that always makes me worried about Facebook is they can change

what you can and can't do in your group. Like, I'm pretty

sure I'm, like, 99% sure you can no longer stream

live video into your Facebook group. So if you're on Ecamm

or Evmooks or whatever, you're doing some sort of thing, I you

they blocked it. Because why? Because it's Facebook. And for me, when

I went, not gonna use that, I was

locked out of my own community. Yeah. So I went into the

school of podcasting, and I said, hey. Lunch with Dave starts in 10 minutes,

which is a thing I do every Friday. And we all kinda gather together

and share and, talk about what's working and what's not.

And Facebook labeled that as spam,

and I was kicked out. And I literally had to come

here onto this microphone and say, does anybody know someone at

Facebook? Because I had gone through all the steps to contact

Facebook and wasn't getting anywhere, and I had been cut off from

my community. And I just went, yeah. Never happening again. So

when a heartbeat came up on AppSumo, I was like, yeah.

Let's use this. And it's something that, a, is not free, so

I have some say in it. Now it's free for me be well, it was

it was a one time deal, but I am not, I

I know people that have tremendous success on Facebook.

I don't trust them. You know, they they they did me wrong. And

they did my buddy, Mark Johansen. He got, I think he got

suspended for 5 days or something. The like, he got a

detention because and what was interesting, Mark shared a link to

something on Facebook Marketplace. So he was promoting another

Facebook product, and they're like, hey. Stop doing that. It's it's

real. So that's why I use heartbeat for that. So if we put

those all together on a, let's let's see if I

can add these all together.

Monthly, I'm paying $422 for

that. And yearly, I am paying

$489. So if you can buy

yearly, I typically especially, like, right now, I'm paying monthly for

Zenler, and that's kinda dumb because I'm not moving from Zenler. I know there are

cheaper places. There's a really interesting website called Penn

site, and it's so cheap. It makes you think, oh, that can't be any good.

It's $29 a month. So if you wanna do courses and such,

I I would if I was starting today, I'd kick the tires on that.

I'd have to check a couple other things, but it is so cheap that you're

like, yeah, that can't be any good. So I do spend a fair amount

of money. If I put all these together now, for

monthly,

it is, drum roll, $813. So I have to

sell a few members to cover that. And then

yearly, I am spending, the

survey says, $489. So it's if you ever

wonder why is the School of Podcasting, how much do I

charge, and I have multiple people that still

say you're not charging enough, especially when I added the unlimited consulting.

People are like that. No. No. No. You need to charge more. And so that

might be something I do in the future. But that is behind the

scenes. Now let's get to Kim's question right

after this. Let's talk about gear. Shall

we? So I said I started off with a very dented Shure

SM 58. By the way, you can just buy the little ball that goes on

to the top of the microphone to fix that. And I did that,

and then I heard Scott Fletcher who just sounded amazing. You

may have heard Scott if you ever listen to Building A Better Dave. He sounds

like this. Hi. Hi there. Hi, Dave.

Hi, Dave. Hi, Dave. Hello,

Dave. Dave Jackson. Dave Jackson.

Dave Jackson. Alright. Enough of that shenanigans. But I

asked Scott, what microphone are you using? And it was some

AKG thing, and I ended up

buying it. And it turns out it didn't make me sound like Scott

Fletcher. And then I bought somebody else had a microphone. It was green

and yellow, and it said MXL on it. And it was expensive,

and it was a condenser. And I, again, was in the basement next to the

water heater. Like, not a good place for a condenser microphone, so it's

not the gear. I got an ElectroVoice

RE 3 20, and I got that through a

barter. I actually got a sponsor for my show for ElectroVoice

microphones, and they sent me one. And this here's a

fun learning thing. They sent me the bullet points. It was like, oh, they

use biunium magnets blah blah blah. It was all

this like the the total nerd engineer had written the bullet points, and

I was like, and my even my audience wrote in and said, why don't you

just tell us about the microphone, Dave? And I was like, hey, it looks

cool, It sounds great. And there's no plosives, and

there's no proximity effect, which means you can get close to it without it just

being giant, you know, balls of bass. And, that made much

more sense. But in the end, I went to ship the microphone back, and they're

like, well, what if you just, you know, talk about it for a couple

months? And I was like, okay. So I got that microphone

for kind of free, but I didn't pay any money for it. I paid

for it with sponsorship. And then I used

that forever. And then the SM 7 B, the you

know, everybody knows that as the Joe Rogan microphone. And I used

that for years. And then when the

RODE PodMic came out, I used to have a rep at RODE, and I would

get free stuff. And you always, always, always have to

disclose when you get free stuff. And I must have said something. I

remember when the Rode caster came out, the first one. And I said, here's

what I like about it, and here's what I don't. And I don't think I

don't know what happened, but I don't get free stuff from RODE anymore. So all

the microphones I use now, I pay for. So I'm talking right now into the

RODE PodMic USB, and I like it. I just I don't know.

I put on the SM 7 B because, you know, it's the Joe Rogan microphone,

and then my ears went, I kinda like that other one

better. And that's really what's the best microphone? The one that

works for you as long as it's not a Blue Yeti.

Blue Yetis are not a bad microphone. You just there's so much. You have to

do this. Don't talk into the top. Make sure the gain is right. I'm just

here to tell you it's overpriced. Get yourself a Samsung q 2u is a great

place to start. But, 1, here's a quick side

tangent about how it's not the gear. Nuno

Bettencourt is the lead guitar player of the band

Extreme, and he actually was lucky enough to go to Eddie Van

Halen's house. And Edward was there

sounding like Edward with his guitar and his rig, and it was, wow,

there's Eddie. And they took a break, and Ed looked

at Nuno and said, yeah. Go ahead and play my rig. I wanna kinda tweak

some knobs while it and the Nuno was like, I'm

finally all these years that I've been trying to play the guitar,

I've been trying to sound like Eddie Van Halen. I'm using his

gear. I'm going to finally achieve my dream

and sound like Eddie Van Halen. But when he was asked about it,

well, it crushed. It sound like, though, when you're playing through his riff? It sounded

about just like you. It sounded just like me. It's I'm telling you. I I

I was literally like you could've it sounded like me. Were you disappointed?

Super disappointed. I was like I was I was like, I'm never gonna sound like

Edward ever. Ever. You know what that that kind of awakening is? Like,

that you're never gonna get there? And, but then it made me realize that was

the big bitch slap of all times where you realize, holy

shit. Shit. It's all about you. It's all about your fingers.

So as we talk about gear, realize

that in 99.9% of the situations,

different gear isn't going to result

in a bigger audience, unless your audio is horrendous,

unless your video looks like it was done in crayon,

that's when equipment really can help.

But I thought I would talk about that. So I started off with a $99

microphone, eventually switched to a $300 microphone,

eventually switched to a 400 or whatever a SM7b is these

days. And, really, the only reason I bought that microphone,

the s m 7 b, is because it was on sale, and I've always wondered

what I would sound like on them. Now here's the

thing. The the reason you pull out money is

because you're trying to typically solve a problem. Again, it's gonna make you

more confident, sound better, save you time, save you

money. So when I finally started doing video, I

bought these, kind of key lights that I put on

stands. And because I had them where they were very, very tall and at the

time when I did this, I was actually in an office. I had an

office for the school of podcasting, and these

stands had to be very wide because the

the height of these lights. And they were fine, and

it worked, and they were cheap, and I you know, you could see me. Yay.

And for a video camera, I used the

Logitech C920 because everybody did. And

it was a great camera for the time, and I used that for many,

many years. Now I moved from Cleveland,

and I go into an apartment, and these

giant stands are taking up half my office. And so

every time I want to go open the window or

anytime I'm literally tiptoeing around the desk,

and those lights got almost knocked over so many times. And I was like,

okay. This this is annoying. And so

I got into the El Gato system. And if you've

ever heard people talk about the Apple tax, Elgato

is a cool system. They have a Stream Deck, and that is oh, look

at all the buttons. Holy cow. And if you're doing video, you can have it

buttons. Holy cow. And if you're doing video, you can have it change scenes. Like,

I can I, right now, can turn off my Elgato key lights with a button?

And you feel like, you know, look at I, I'm

with a button, and you feel like, you know, look at I

I I said, let there be light. Push the button, and there it

is. I am the keeper of light. And I can also dim

them. You know, you get the idea. And so I got those. Now they're a

little more expensive, and I got them with these poles that

clamp onto my desk. And as I look right now,

those poles are still on my desk, but the lights aren't on there. And it

was just one of those things where I saw something and went,

oh, that looks cool because

I got a RodeCaster, the original one, then I had the

RodeCaster 2, and those things take up half my desk.

And so then I got the RodeCaster Duo, and I thought I could get

these lights off my desk if I bought what's called a

Varipole. And a Varipol is

kind of this pole that you stick up, and you can also go vertical.

You could go from the ground to the ceiling, but I went from wall to

wall, and you basically push it out, and then you

clamp this thing, and it's it's pressure. It's like a really if you ever seen

a pressure rod for, like, your shower, it's kinda like that only it's made for

lighting. And I was able to put some clamps.

So my lamps are now almost in the ceiling, my in my lights.

And I don't have to tiptoe around poles. I've got

more room on my desk, and that is a luxury item. I

wanna say it was a 150 dollars. Now, why would you spend a

$150 on it when the pain of marching around these

stands drives you so much nut you know, just so nuts.

They're like, man, I would do anything if I could just not have to

tiptoe and knock these over for the 8 millionth time. Really? Would you spend

a $150? Yes. Yes. I would. That's when you do

it. You don't need these things. It's a luxury

item. The other day, I was on the way to church,

and I'd hit McDonald's. So I had Mcmouthed, you know, not the best

smell and breath in the world no matter how when you brushed your teeth. And

I was like, oh, wait a minute. There's a drug store up here, but it's

a drugstore that's going out of business. And I was like, I just need a

little thing of mints. And they didn't have many, and the

ones that were there were $4 for this little thing of

mints. They weren't even curiously strong, not those mints. It was, like,

whatever. And I was, like, but I needed my breath to

not smell like, I didn't wanna be like a dragon, right, and just be melting

people's faces with my breath. So I spent $4 on

a tin of mince. Why? Because the pain and the embarrassment of

having bad breath was greater than the pain of

taking $4 out of my wallet. That is often what

I kinda say a luxury item. Something you don't need, it's

something you want. Could I still produce videos with those

stands? Absolutely. Could I still produce videos with those? I think they

were newer lights or something like that. Yeah. They worked. You could see

me. So a lot of this stuff is not something

you need, but it's something you want. And almost all of those things,

I usually save up for. Before we get out of video,

I do recommend the Elgato cameras. There are a couple. And the

reason I like them is there's no microphone. Because when you

get a camera that has a microphone, it never fails. The more important

the interview, that's the time that the microphone that was

used to record your side of the conversation was the crappy one

on the camera. So that's why I like the Elgato cameras.

And if what you have is working for what you're doing,

there's no need to upgrade to anything. I'll give you an

example. On Saturday morning, my cohost, Jim

Collison, uses a Samson q two u microphone. It

is probably 10 years old, if not older. And you know

what? He sounds amazing. It's probably $60

for the microphone. He's never really had gear envy where it's

like, oh, I need to I need the Joe Rogan microphone. For

years, Leo Laporte was the first big

guy that got the Heil PR 40 microphone, and Lee Leo

was super popular. So if I just get Leo's microphone, I'll be super

popular. And, again, that's not the way it works. But

for a while, everybody and their brother was using a Heil PR 40 microphone. And

then Joe Rogan came on the scene, and everybody's like, well, I gotta get the

microphone that Joe's using. It's not the gear.

So how do you know which is the best mic? The one that when you

put your headphones on and you start talking into it, you go, hey, I like

the way my voice sounds with this. That's when you know you have the right

microphone. Yaggy, yaggy, yeah. Yaggy, yeah,

yeah. And so, you can start off. Remember, we

said start ugly and you don't have to be ugly. You could start off with

a Samson q 2u microphone. You could do just

audio only. Use Audacity to edit it and use

whoever, Captivate, to host your your podcast. You're out

$69 one time for your, microphone

and $20 a month. Now every media host has a website.

I typically don't recommend them because they're very basic. But when

you first start off, what do you need? I need a place for people to

find me. I need a place for people to follow the show. That's

really all you need when you first start off. And I would get I'd spend,

whatever, $20 on a domain name. Those are the bare minimums

when you first start off. And, again, I would start off with that email list.

That would get you going. And then, eventually, the first thing I

would update in that scenario would be the website. I'd move the pod page, make

it look good, integrate your email with that. It would work great. And

then from there, depending on what you're doing,

you know, do what can I stay with Audacity? Again, there are lots of people

that edit their podcast in Audacity. I would probably move to Hindenburg.

But if it's not a pain for you, if you're like, no, I learned Audacity.

I love it. Then stay there. Just realize that

most of that gear, that envy, comes from

comparing yourself to others. And that's always a bad

idea. I got stuck in that this week, had a little

snarky comment on my Facebook, and I was like, wait a minute.

Hold on. You're looking at somebody else. That's not your

customer. That's not your listener. It's not your audience. Like, let's

go back to looking at the audience and seeing what they want. And Stephanie and

Kim threw on those questions, and I'm like, alright. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but I'm

gonna talk about me for 47 minutes. Have I really been talking that

long? Holy cow. I've got my notes here in front of me. And

so with that, I will say thank you so much for tuning

in. Just a couple quick reminders. If you haven't gone to

podcaster happy hour.com, you wanna sign up for that. Next

week, I still you know, we're still doing question of the month,

and so that deadline is still there, but we're not doing question of the month

next week. Normally, we do that the last Monday of the month, but I

will be redoing the big reveal of where I'm working. And I might

do kind of a similar to this one, kind of a because of my podcast

story to then say, and the last part of this piece is this.

Like, that's what's going on in my head. We'll figure that out by next Monday.

But thank you so much for listening. If you have any

questions, feel free to go to school of podcasting.com/contact.

And if you're listening to this on your phone or if you're on the website,

there's a link right there in the episode. I would love to get your feedback

on this because there was a I like I said, I was just like, oh,

talk about me. So, hopefully, you found this useful,

got some insights. If not, let me know what what how you would have

made it better. And, I'm always open to suggestions.

Again, constant improvement is my mantra.

I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do, and

I'd love to see what we could do together. So until next

week, take care. God bless. Class is dismissed.