Darrell Darnell's Journey to Build a Podcast Editing Team

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Uh, so--

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How much is that?

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Um, um, um.

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Welcome to the live stream of Podcast Editor Mastermind, everyone.

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This is the business podcast for the podcast editor.

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The podcast editors have a podcast about podcast editing business who don't edit their own podcast.

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Thanks, Alejandro.

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Wow.

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[LAUGHTER]

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If you're joining us live, we'd love to have your thoughts, questions, and comments in the chat.

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So let StreamYard know who you are so we can know who you are and say hello.

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Patrick, Steve, Mike, thanks for all being here already.

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And we have a special guest tonight that we'll be introducing in a moment.

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But first off, I'm Jennifer Longworth of Bourbon Barrel Podcasting. You can find me anywhere at Bourbon Barrel Podcasting.

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And below me is--

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Daniel Abendrath. You can find me at Roth Media.

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Don't bother looking at social medias because you'll be disappointed.

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And I'm Bryan Entzminger. You can find me at Top Tier Audio, although you might be disappointed if you go there too.

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So we'll just follow that up.

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Jennifer, who's our guest? Get me off the mic.

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Today we have Darrell Darnell, the one, the only, the legend, Pro Podcast Solutions.

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Thank you for being here.

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Thanks for having me. Yeah, Pro Podcast Solutions is where you can find me online.

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I don't know if that's dangerous or not, but it's awesome to be with you. Thanks for having me.

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So the reason I asked you on this kind of selfish is because I know you've been running a very successful team for quite a while.

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And I just started a team like within the last two months after fighting it for six years.

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So it's like, all right, who can we talk to? Who can we bring on who would provide value to Jennifer and the listening audience?

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And you, of course, came to mind. So tell us your story. Tell us about Pro Podcast Solutions, how you got into this and what you're doing.

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Well, sure. So I got into podcasting as a listener in 2006. I was obsessive fan about the TV show Lost.

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And I was on some chat rooms forums one day and somebody mentioned that they were listening to some podcasts about Lost.

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And I was like, what's a podcast? Let me go check that out. So I subscribe to like every Lost podcast I could.

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And Lost introduced me to J.J. Abrams. So when he launched his next TV show, which was called Fringe, I started a podcast about that.

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Because I'm so clever, it was called The Fringe Podcast and that we had a nice bit of success with that podcast, but it really ignited the podcast bug at a whole new level.

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And at the time, I was working at a regional chain of bookstores as the e-commerce director. And my passion for that started to wane and my passion for podcasting began or continued to grow.

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And so I left that job in 2013 to go into full time doing podcast production in large part through a connection with Cliff Ravenscraft, who had connected me with a guy who was starting a podcast network about really short form TV show podcasts.

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So my podcasts, like Fringe, those suckers are like an hour and a half, two hours long. These podcasts were like 10, maybe 15 minutes long.

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And they were looking for hosts initially, which I was happy to do. But I was like, you know, Stuart, I think maybe you need someone to edit all these shows.

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And he's like, as a matter of fact, I do. And so I threw my hat in the ring and I got that. And so it was a good enough gig where I was able to quit the corporate job six months later.

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So on May 4th is my entrepreneurial birthday. This happens to be that was like my first full time entrepreneur day was May 4th or is May 4th.

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So I get to celebrate that day in a couple of fun, geeky ways. So anyway, that was 2013. In 2014, I formed Pro Podcast Solutions.

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For the first year, I was trying to do everything under my podcast network brand name, which is Golden Spiral Media.

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So that's where I podcast about all things geeky and sci fi and stuff like that. And then finally, one day a lady named Linda came to me and she said, you know, I'm looking for an editor who's doing this full time.

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I'm looking for someone who's serious about this. And I just go to your website, I see a bunch of sci fi stuff. And there's like one page that says you edit podcasts for other people.

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And I was like, oh, this is how I provide for my family. I've got two young kids and this is how we put food on the table. I'm very serious about it.

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And fortunately, she did become a client. We worked together for several years until she retired her podcast.

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But it showed me the importance of having my own dedicated website that just focused on what I do for other people.

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So that's when I started Pro Podcast Solutions. And that was a huge turning point. The business really took off after that point. So anyway, that was 2014. And that's how Pro Podcast Solutions came to be.

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So did you teach yourself editing? Do you have audio background anywhere in there?

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I have no audio background other than running the board at church, which even that was like self-taught on a not even self-taught on a Saturday afternoon, probably on a Sunday morning.

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You know, I'm in an hour early. We'll show you how to run the board. And so that's how my knowledge of audio production of any kind came to be.

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And then my background podcast editing is just editing my own podcast. I remember the first podcast episode we recorded for the Fringe podcast and it was like two hours long.

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And it took me all weekend to edit it. And I thought, you know what? I'm on a Windows computer and I hear people talk about GarageBand for their podcast.

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So I need to get a Mac and switch to GarageBand. So I bought a MacBook and got GarageBand. And I'm like, I had been using Audacity prior to. And I was like, man, GarageBand is terrible.

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But it got me into the Mac ecosystem, which I quite like. But I ditched GarageBand and went back to Audacity for the Mac. And you know, it was just all self-taught.

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I finally got to where I could edit an episode more quickly than an entire weekend. So I'm a little fast now, but it's all self-taught.

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We're coming up on the one year or the anniversary then of your podcast editor's birthday, right?

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That's right.

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You said you celebrate a couple of geeky reasons. What's the other one?

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Well, Star Wars Day, of course.

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Made the Force.

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So usually we'll go out to dinner at my favorite restaurant, which is a Mexican restaurant here in town called Ted's. And we'll celebrate Star Wars Day. But really it's celebrating my entrepreneurial birthday.

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Awesome. So this is going to be your 10 year anniversary?

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11 year because 2013 is when I left the job. 2014 is when I started PPS. So we usually celebrate the day I left the other job.

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Quite a feat.

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So what point did you realize that you didn't want to be a one man show anymore?

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Well, honestly, that was my goal from the very beginning. When I worked at the bookstore, I started in college as a part time cashier.

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And then once I got to college, I was like, oh, shoot, I was a graphic artist major. And pretty quickly I decided this isn't what I thought it was because I went to a very tiny high school that had no art classes.

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My first art class was in college and it was completely different than what I expected it to be.

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So I dropped out of college and pursued the bookstore full time and worked my way up to the ranks there.

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So I had experience managing groups of people from, say, six to 10 when I was at corporate all the way up to 30, 40 when I when I was running my own store.

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So I was comfortable managing people from the inception of the idea of this company.

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So I always was thinking about that in the background, like, how can I structure this in such a way that it will grow beyond me?

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And I've got a team of people that are kind of doing this together.

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Unlike me, who said I'm not going to hire anybody ever until I did.

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But that's OK. Like, you can go about it. There's no right or wrong way to do this line of work that we're in.

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Like, if you're a solo person and you only want to be the only person in your business because of any number of reasons, that's completely OK.

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Because to do what I do is a different skill set.

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I just said I don't have a background in a trained background, a formal background in audio editing. I do have lots of training and background in managing people.

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But that managing people and all that comes with that is a completely different thing that a lot of people don't want to have any part of or it freaks them out or whatever.

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Or maybe they did that and they're done with that. So there's no you know, if you choose to go solo, there's nothing wrong with that.

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So Steve is chiming in. He says he's about to bring on a new contractor specifically to do video editing.

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And this way, the first contractor he brings on who he didn't train. So it's kind of scary.

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That makes me think, right? Bringing somebody on. And this was my experience as well, because I brought in on a couple of contractors for a little while.

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And there can be a certain amount of fear in giving the reins over to somebody and saying, my name is going to go on this, but I'm going to pay you to do that.

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How did you know that you were finding the right people to do the work for you?

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Yeah, that's it's very scary. And this is your baby, your brand, not theirs. You know, so it's very scary.

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For me, it's very much the hiring process. I do a few things when I go through the hiring process. We're talking about an editor here.

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So for one, they have to be on Adobe Audition. That's a deal breaker for us.

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A couple of reasons, but every client starts with what we call our lead audio editor, Mike.

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And so every client starts with Mike. And then as Mike's plate fills up, he comes to me and says, hey, I'm ready to hand off these clients to our other team.

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So he just zips up his Adobe template files and sends them over to the new editor. The new editor unzips those, opens it up and everything's ready to go.

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And if we were on different DAWs, then that just wouldn't work. So or someone's sick or on vacation.

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Same principle. Someone leaves, we need to replace them with a new editor. Same principle. So everyone has to be on Adobe Audition.

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If they're not, I have a form they fill out on my website. And so when I need to hire someone, I just pull up that folder that those all go into and I start looking through those.

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But they don't even make it into that folder if they don't have Adobe Audition. So that's the first thing.

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But the other thing is that when I'm talking to them, I'm trying to get an idea first most of their heart.

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What type of person are they? What type of character do they have? What's their demeanor?

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And then we also look at their skill set. Obviously, that's important, too.

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So I have a project that I know is particularly challenging in a couple of different ways. It's got some edits that are hard to clean up.

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But it also has one or two spots in there that show me what you're thinking about when you're editing.

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For example, the guest, when the host says, "Jennifer, it's great to have you on the show today."

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And Jennifer says, "Thank you. I'm glad to have you on my show."

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And then they kind of get into it. So it was just a little brain fart moment. I'm listening to see, did they fix that or did they leave it in?

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It's a little bit cleaner than what I just described. There's no "um" there or filler word.

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It makes the guest look a little bit like a doofus. And so you want to clean that out, make the guest look better.

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Did they catch that or did they miss that? And so this project has some different challenges.

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Some of them are more philosophical in nature like that one. Some of them are definitely testing your skill set.

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And then I always pick it apart. I nitpick it. And I send it back to them and I just give them a list of timestamps of all the things that they messed up.

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And some of them, like I said, they're nitpicky. And the reason I do that is I want to see what their response is to criticism and how are they going to handle that.

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What words do they choose to respond to me when I'm picking apart their work?

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Something that they were obviously very particular with and careful with and all that stuff.

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So again, I'm trying to hire for their mindset, their heart, their character, and their skill set.

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And so if I can find the right person, which is difficult, but it pays off in the end.

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So if you do the work to do that stuff up front, then you've got the right person for your team.

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And that has just always proved itself to be the case. Not that I think there's been one bad hire, but it's been a really good process for me.

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One thing that you mentioned just kind of stood out to me around being hard to find the right person. Do you have like a general sense of what percentage of people that make it to the interview process actually make it through the interview process to being part of the team?

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I would say making it to the interview process is the more difficult process to make it through.

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So I might have 50 people that I start out with, and I might narrow that down to 10, and then I might interview three of them.

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And then sometimes it's hard to choose between the three because I only have one spot open.

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But you know, of the three, maybe all three are qualified. Usually at least one of them is. So it's a pretty good screening process to get down before the interview process starts.

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So Steve asks, how much of your decision is made on raw skills versus how well they present themselves during the interview process?

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It's 100% of both. If they fail one, then they're not qualified. They need to pass both equally.

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I'm not saying they have to be perfect at each because none of us are. But you know, if they're a great editor, but their demeanor and attitude was bad.

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Honestly, I've had it before where the interview process, just their demeanor was so not what I'm looking for. I didn't even give them the test.

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I just thanked them for their time and that was the end of it. So they've got to have both.

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So how do you like advertise or how do you get the word out that you are looking for people and like how do you get people to apply?

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I just have a link on my website and join our team. And then it's happened before where I've gone through that folder where all the applicants go and I still am not finding what I'm looking for.

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So at that point, I'll go to Steve and I'll say, hey, can I post something in the podcast editors group on Facebook?

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And he's always gracious enough to allow me to do that. So I'll post something there if I'm still finding what I'm looking for.

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And when I was looking, I posted in my Reaper for Podcasting Facebook group. And that way it kind of really narrowed it down to the people who actually use Reaper specifically for podcasting.

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We got another comment. This is from Mike, Two Guys Talking Podcast Network. I currently have a five person team / Academy of editors.

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I love the heart comment, but I eventually had to add an illegal element to avoid ongoing poaching activity. Any thoughts there?

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I have not had to add that, but I think I'm lucky. I don't know. I can't give you any example as to why I've been lucky there.

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There was I mentioned Mike earlier. So Mike has been with me six or eight years, been quite a while.

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And I'm not as close with them now just because I don't see them in events anymore, but the guys from Podfly and I were fairly close there for a while.

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And when we go to podcast conferences, we'd usually have a meal together and just chat. And, you know, we were kind of frenemies and that sort of thing.

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And I remember Corey from Podfly emailing me one day and he says, hey, we got an applicant that we really like. We'd like to hire.

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But he tells us he's currently working for you. His name's Mike. He's working for me part time. And so he needed some additional income.

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And I was at a tipping point with Mike where my business was growing and I was just about to offer him an incentive to just work with PPS and be that head editor girl that I mentioned earlier.

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And I said, would you please, would you please not? You know, that was nice of Corey to come to me and ask me ahead of time.

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That was what he called a professional courtesy, I suppose, which I really appreciated. And he didn't. And I was able to offer something more substantial.

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And so it worked out for me. That's the only poaching type of situation I have faced. And so I don't have any good advice of why that's the case.

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It's just that's been my experience for some reason.

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I think we were talking there about poaching talent, maybe. Do you have anything in your agreement with your editors about not poaching clients?

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Oh, that no, I don't have that either. And I should that we can I have not been bitten there. Maybe it's because I look so hard at that character thing before I heard somebody that has not been an issue either.

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It's a good practice to have. I should probably because I haven't had it. I've just taken for granted and haven't put that language in there. But I don't have it.

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Patrick's got a question. He says, What's the process for describing or instructing how detailed or not your editors work?

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Well, we have two services or two levels of editing that we offer. One we call standard editing, one we call pro editing.

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So I have a kind of an itemized bulleted description of what each of those services include for our editors.

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When they go through that test example, they do the pro level. That's the more difficult level of editing. If they can do a pro edit clean, they can certainly do a standard edit clean.

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So I have a description of what each one of them includes so that they've got that information from the get go.

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So I kind of want to take a step back. When you get started, you said that you were planning from the get go to have more of an agency model and have people under you. Is that right?

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That's right.

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When you're thinking about that, like, what did you do differently to make sure that you are, like, prepared for that versus somebody who's like just getting started and having to transition from the get go? Like, what did you do to make sure that you were set up to be able to easily bring on employees?

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Yep. Two things. And they're both super important. One is systems and the other is communication. And communication covers a lot of different things. How are you going to communicate with clients? How are you going to communicate with team members?

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And what are you going to communicate to them in regards to standards? So I mentioned the sheets that I've put together so that they know what comes in a standard edit, what comes in a pro edit.

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Every new client we put together, after we've kind of got them ironed out and smoothed out, we put together an SOP so that if someone fills in for the team or, you know, we have a changeover in staff, they can pull up that SOP and try to make it as seamless of a transition as possible or seamless of a fill in as possible.

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So those are really important. So trying to think of what documentation I would need to have in order to properly train my staff and what systems would I need to have in place so that communication and files and all that data that goes back and forth with the team would work smoothly.

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And those systems change over time. That's just the nature of, you know, Dropbox and Google spreadsheets worked for a while and then they didn't. And so what was the next step? And so we, you know, we moved into things like Asana and then we ran into trouble with that.

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So we moved to Basecamp and now we're about to outgrow Basecamp and so we're actually in the process of developing our own custom built backend software for all of our client file sharing communication and all that stuff that we're building from the ground up.

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But I didn't need that day one. I thought I did. I, you know, I have a software development background.

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I did eventually go back to college and got a degree in computer programming and built a lot of WordPress stuff.

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And so I thought from day one, oh, let me build this whole backend system for all this. It turned out I didn't need all that was too much. It was really taking me away from the essentials.

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And so now we're at a spot 10 years later where we're needing that stuff. But look at just the simplest systems that you can use to be effective.

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And, you know, at first that was email and Google spreadsheets and Dropbox and that worked great until it didn't. And then we just kept, you know, taking it in the next best step for us.

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But those are the things you've got to have communication and systems without communications and systems you can't possibly scale. And a team just compounds that.

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Does your team work by communicating directly with the clients or do you have like a filter kind of funnel or anything?

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Nope, they all have direct access to the clients through Basecamp.

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Awesome. So Jesse is chiming in with a question. How do you handle the various state laws surrounding contractors versus employees?

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Do you have employees, contractors? What are you doing?

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Everybody's contractor. The only employees of our company are me and my wife. And that's good enough to get us, you know, the insurance that we need and stuff like that.

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But everyone else is a contractor. Most of them are in the States. So I do 1099s. Those that are international don't have to worry about that.

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But yeah, I don't worry about state laws, state to state laws. It's just maybe that's because the employees are here in my state. So not sure if that's an issue otherwise.

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Yeah, I'll say that that's something that gives me pause. I was working with contractors before I've had to scale back over the last year or so.

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But that's always something where I'm going. What if I have somebody in the wrong state and the ABC language in their state is different?

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And all of a sudden I discover that I've had an employee for a couple of years and now I've got to do some kind of make good on that.

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Currently not an issue for me because I don't have any. But that was that was always my fear too.

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I lean into my into my tax advisor and my CPA for that podcast. With this last year, I did a panel with Steve Stewart and a couple of other folks.

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But Steve asked us at the very end, you know, what is it we outsource? And I had a hard time understanding his question. I was like, what do you mean?

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What do I ask? And he explains, like, don't you outsource your taxes? Oh, yes, yes, I do outsource my taxes.

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And so stuff like that, I lean heavily on my my CPA. It's a whole firm. It makes it sound bigger than it is.

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But it's it's not just one. Like I started out with just one person. She does taxes for people.

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And now I'm with, you know, it's a small it's a small business here in Oklahoma City where I live.

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And they have a team of, I don't know, 10 or 12 on their team. But, you know, I lean on them for stuff like that.

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I don't I'm not an expert on that. Did you say that all your contractors are in your state? Not in my state, but in the U.S.

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Most of them are in the U.S. Yeah.

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Mike wants to know what kind of volume are you currently handling and how do you handle spot checking content generated by your team?

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So currently we're at about 150 clients, I think. It's been a little it's been a little while since I ran that number.

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I don't have a great system for keeping that easily accessible, but it's around 150.

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And spot checking is we don't have a system for that. I've tried different things over the years with some success.

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We've got a super good team. But things do get out sometimes that, man, I wish they didn't get out.

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But it's super rare. We had a really bad January where three episodes got out that we had to fix.

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And that was probably the same number of mistakes as we had all of last year, which is a lot of content that we put out.

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So we've got a great team that just puts out great episodes week after week.

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And but when there's something like that, you know, we we have a chat. What happened?

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Well, what do we need to do to make sure that didn't happen again? But I don't have a formal system for spot checking things.

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That is impressive. That kind of like high quality, no mistake kind of thing.

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But that's that's really something. It's the team. They're great.

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Yeah. And goes back to like your interview and kind of hiring process and make sure you really get the person you're looking for.

Speaker: 00:22:52

Right. So Bryan touched on this and I'm kind of going through it as well.

Speaker: 00:22:56

We're like, I've had to scale back my contractors just because I've had several clients take a break or reduce what they're putting out.

Speaker: 00:23:04

And so I've just had to scale back. So like, have you ever had to deal with that? Like, what's your process for that?

Speaker: 00:23:11

I haven't necessarily had to do that. We've seen that decrease as well. It's concerning.

Speaker: 00:23:17

I mean, we were over 200 clients at one point. Now I told you we're somewhere between 100 and 125 or 150.

Speaker: 00:23:23

So that's a significant decrease in the number of clients that we've seen as well.

Speaker: 00:23:28

No one's on salary at our company. They're all just on client by client basis.

Speaker: 00:23:33

We all hurt when we lose clients. But I think we've all kind of accepted that's that's the way it is.

Speaker: 00:23:39

As sucky as that is, sometimes I've had people leave maybe because they weren't getting what they had hoped or they've got a better opportunity somewhere else.

Speaker: 00:23:47

And I don't fault them for that one single bit.

Speaker: 00:23:50

There was one time early, early on in late 2014, in fact, that I was going to have to I had one person I had hired and I was going to have to let him go because it was just there was just no way I could pay him.

Speaker: 00:24:02

I think I was about one or two weeks away from having that conversation with him because I was paying him out of my savings account and my savings account was about to run dry.

Speaker: 00:24:12

And he came to me and said, hey, I need to move on. I'm going to do this other thing. And I was like, oh, thank God.

Speaker: 00:24:19

That's what's best for you.

Speaker: 00:24:22

I'm so sorry.

Speaker: 00:24:25

Yeah, sure.

Speaker: 00:24:27

That problem kind of worked itself out. So I haven't had to to deal with that much.

Speaker: 00:24:33

Yeah. I mean, to that point, fixed expenses just scare the snot out of me. Right.

Speaker: 00:24:37

I might have somebody that I've committed to. Well, that's the reason I started with contractors is because I was super scared of doing that. I can totally feel that for you.

Speaker: 00:24:46

Absolutely. And that's why I structured the way that I did. I mean, everybody's contract labor.

Speaker: 00:24:51

And, you know, the way that we build clients and pay our team is not the way most people do it. And I don't know that I would advise, you know, if I could go back 10 years, I might do it differently because as I scaled, it did not scale.

Speaker: 00:25:04

And so the way we build clients is by the number of episodes that we did for them during a calendar month.

Speaker: 00:25:12

And so this first week of April, so we just finished our billing cycle for the work we did in March.

Speaker: 00:25:18

And so I never know from month to month what my revenue is going to be. It's largely close, but it could vary.

Speaker: 00:25:26

Certainly it's not consistent each month. And team members are paid accordingly. So they bill me at the beginning of April for the work that they did in March.

Speaker: 00:25:35

And so the cash flow is compensatory. You know, it's clients are billed after the fact and team members bill me after the fact.

Speaker: 00:25:44

And so it works well that way. But, you know, a lot of folks have a package that they sign people up for and you get billed that regardless of how many episodes you do.

Speaker: 00:25:55

You know, you're reserving my time on my schedule and I get all that, those arguments and stuff.

Speaker: 00:25:59

And that's why I said maybe I would do it differently because that would certainly help me know consistently what my cash flow is going to be from month to month and be able to predict that in a better way.

Speaker: 00:26:09

But they do mirror each other pretty well. So there's not usually it can get pretty tight, especially if people aren't paying their invoices at any given time.

Speaker: 00:26:17

The amount of money that clients owe me is ridiculous. And sometimes it gets frustrating.

Speaker: 00:26:23

But the new portal that we're building is going to take care of that. So that's something that we we've found the solution for.

Speaker: 00:26:31

It still bills in per episode, but does it in a way that's much better. And so, but yeah, it's a challenge for sure.

Speaker: 00:26:39

But the team, you know, that's what they sign up for. That's the way that they agree to be compensated when they come on.

Speaker: 00:26:45

And so it's part of our structure.

Speaker: 00:26:47

Patrick wants to know if you've had anybody with you the whole 11 years.

Speaker: 00:26:51

No, the guy named Bryan was my first hire that I just mentioned that he quit. So I hired him in like August of 2013 and he left in like November or December of 2013.

Speaker: 00:27:03

And then in, I want to say like March, February, March, April of 2014, I hired Karen and she's still with me. So.

Speaker: 00:27:12

OK, so almost. And I noticed on your website you don't just have editors, you have other service providers too, correct?

Speaker: 00:27:20

That's right. Our primary team consists of project managers, editors and writers. Those are the team members that are interacting with clients on an episode to episode basis.

Speaker: 00:27:29

So editor and writer, probably pretty self-explanatory. The project manager is the main point person for a client.

Speaker: 00:27:37

So when a client comes on board, we if we're launching them, they work with our launch specialist.

Speaker: 00:27:41

And then once they get into production, we introduce them to their project manager and their project manager oversees all of the day today or week to week ins and outs of their podcast.

Speaker: 00:27:49

When they get new content from the client, the project manager receives that, confirms it, gets it set up in the system.

Speaker: 00:27:55

When those assets are completed on our end, they go back to the project manager so they can get them over to the client.

Speaker: 00:28:00

And then ultimately the project manager publishes them. So that project manager is a very important role for our team.

Speaker: 00:28:07

That's what Karen is, for example. That's really cool. With that team, do you manage everyone directly?

Speaker: 00:28:13

Do you delegate some of that management? How does that work from a structural standpoint?

Speaker: 00:28:17

I manage everyone directly. Karen is kind of our lead project manager.

Speaker: 00:28:22

That just means that when other project managers have a question, they can go to her first.

Speaker: 00:28:28

She's been with us the longest. She knows everything for the most part. And she's most likely going to be able to answer their question.

Speaker: 00:28:34

And they're in the throes of it every day. And so there are things that they know.

Speaker: 00:28:38

I met with a prospect today and we were talking about the various media hosts that are out there and they asked me about Art 19.

Speaker: 00:28:45

And I'm like, I personally have not worked with them, but I have team members who have. And that's what I mean.

Speaker: 00:28:49

Like they know things that I don't. So Mike is our lead editor. Karen is our lead project manager.

Speaker: 00:28:56

But I'm involved with every person on a personal level to say they can come to me at any time I go to them.

Speaker: 00:29:01

So they're also welcome to go to their respective lead that they have.

Speaker: 00:29:06

I think we had a question from Mike about the scale and vital importance of communication.

Speaker: 00:29:11

They use a sauna instances as a thundercloud for ideas and discussion. And what are you using?

Speaker: 00:29:16

Sauna instances as a thundercloud for ideas discussion.

Speaker: 00:29:21

I was hoping this made sense to somebody here. I don't fully understand.

Speaker: 00:29:26

I don't know what they mean by thundercloud.

Speaker: 00:29:28

Yeah, I would think like brainstorming.

Speaker: 00:29:31

Maybe. Maybe. Mike, you can always give us some more detail in the comments. We get completely wrong.

Speaker: 00:29:37

I'll say that we use Basecamp for our central hub for things, as I mentioned earlier.

Speaker: 00:29:43

And so client communication happens there. We also use Slack for internal communication.

Speaker: 00:29:50

So we've got our own Slack channels. We've got a channel for writers. We've got a channel for editors.

Speaker: 00:29:54

We've got a channel for project managers. We've got a channel for the full team. We've got that random channel so we can have fun.

Speaker: 00:30:00

You know, all that stuff. We can bring in, you know, conversations to if we've got something going on with a client.

Speaker: 00:30:06

Let's bring in the editor, the writer, the project manager, and have a private discussion.

Speaker: 00:30:10

You know, all that stuff that Slack allows you to do.

Speaker: 00:30:13

So we're using Slack for team communication and Basecamp for client communication.

Speaker: 00:30:19

What kind of, not sure what else to call it, but penalty chain do you have in place?

Speaker: 00:30:24

I.e. first mistake, this happens. Second mistake, that happens, etc.

Speaker: 00:30:30

Yeah, it depends.

Speaker: 00:30:32

Going back to my corporate days and working at a store where I was supervising, you know, 30 people on average, sometimes higher.

Speaker: 00:30:41

But my attitude has always been people show up to work every day with the desire to do a good job, to do their best.

Speaker: 00:30:48

And none of us are perfect. And so that's never going to happen every single day.

Speaker: 00:30:53

So when a mistake happens, what's the heart of what happened? Was it because of negligence?

Speaker: 00:30:59

Was it because of carelessness? Was it because you had too many things assigned to you?

Speaker: 00:31:05

What this happened recently, was it because your mom was in the hospital?

Speaker: 00:31:08

So we really looked at what the root of what happened. I don't have a scorecard where like, I'm sorry, Luke, this is your third mistake in January.

Speaker: 00:31:16

Sorry, just called out Luke. Sorry, Luke.

Speaker: 00:31:20

It wasn't Luke, it was...

Speaker: 00:31:22

Luke was listening to this, being like, what?

Speaker: 00:31:24

In the odd that Luke is listening, I'm very, very sorry.

Speaker: 00:31:27

But no, I mean, okay, so it was Luke that had three mistakes in January.

Speaker: 00:31:31

But we looked at each of those individually and what happened on each of those.

Speaker: 00:31:36

And so, you know, three is a lot for anyone.

Speaker: 00:31:39

And I mentioned we had three mistakes in January. I didn't tell you they were the same person, but they were.

Speaker: 00:31:43

And it's like, this is, Luke's one of my best editors.

Speaker: 00:31:45

Like when I hand, I had a very challenging client that I worked with for years that I handed off to Luke and Luke has done a great job with.

Speaker: 00:31:52

So I know that Luke is very capable. So what's going on here?

Speaker: 00:31:56

And we did, we talked about what was going on, what was the cause of each of those mistakes.

Speaker: 00:32:00

And so I just take that approach to it.

Speaker: 00:32:02

If I had someone, you know, I told you I had a bad hire one time and that was because there was a person that I hired and they were really skilled.

Speaker: 00:32:11

But, you know, there was a mistake made and their attitude about the mistake was really not what I needed to receive in that situation.

Speaker: 00:32:19

And I mean, I needed to receive it in any type of egotistical way.

Speaker: 00:32:23

I mean, in the way that we need to handle that situation for the sake of our team and the sake of our client.

Speaker: 00:32:29

And so their response to the mistake was such that they weren't with us much longer after that.

Speaker: 00:32:36

I think it was a week. And so we're looking at the root of the reason and what their response is when the mistake happens more than a, hey, this is your third demerit this year or month or whatever it is.

Speaker: 00:32:49

I really like that. Similar to how I approach it with my contractors. It's like, I assume that there is an honest mistake and I try to approach it because my initial reaction is like, how could they let this happen?

Speaker: 00:33:03

Why did they do this? My frustration. But then when I bring it up to them, I try to switch. But what did I do as the leader to not prevent that?

Speaker: 00:33:15

And so I try to push like, hey, what happened here? What can we do to prevent it in the future? Or is there something I can do to support you to make sure that you're able to do whatever it is?

Speaker: 00:33:25

And that's a great way to look at it, because as a leader, you looking at yourself and your systems and other things to find out what could like we lost one of our biggest clients last year.

Speaker: 00:33:36

It hurt bad. We didn't lose her because of poor work or negligence. We lost her because she was looking to expand her services.

Speaker: 00:33:46

I was working on some of those things behind the scenes, and I hadn't told my team. She came to her project manager and was asked about some things.

Speaker: 00:33:54

And the project manager needed to communicate better. And we talked about how that could be done differently in the future.

Speaker: 00:34:00

But I hadn't told the project managers, hey, these are some things we're working on. I was just completely silent and leaving them out of that communication loop.

Speaker: 00:34:08

So I was definitely at fault for that as well. We both own some of that mistake to lose that client.

Speaker: 00:34:13

And so we should always be looking at yourself to find out what you could do differently to better position your team for success.

Speaker: 00:34:21

Yeah, I know like one thing that I try to switch up is like having more clear, concise expectations as opposed to like, here's what I want you to do.

Speaker: 00:34:32

And then just kind of like letting them figure it out, as opposed to like, here's like the reasons why. Here's like the outcome.

Speaker: 00:34:37

Like just kind of like giving them more of like my thought process behind it, as opposed to just like thrown to the wolves and expecting them to know exactly what I want without telling them what I want.

Speaker: 00:34:46

So Patrick says, have AI developments changed your company? Are you excited about this? Are you scared or has it not made any impact at all?

Speaker: 00:34:57

I'm sure it's made an impact, particularly on the writing side of things. We've seen, you know, some clients, I can think of like three clients that we've lost writing to over the last six to eight months.

Speaker: 00:35:09

And I don't know if AI played a role in that or not. With AI, even with the writing, it still needs a human to intervene.

Speaker: 00:35:16

So, you know, clients who have hired us to do writing, you know, if they're going to take that back, I mean, I sure hope they're not just going straight up AI because it's not great.

Speaker: 00:35:25

But it's definitely an issue on the editing side of things. You know, there's these scripts that does some things.

Speaker: 00:35:32

I'm kind of a fan of Adobe's podcast, AI tool. It does amazing things. It speeds up my workflow a lot of times.

Speaker: 00:35:41

You know, it seems like the dirtier the audio is, the better it does. You know, the cleaner the audio, it doesn't do so great, which is great for me.

Speaker: 00:35:49

So if I get dirty audio, I usually upload it to Adobe and use that little percentage slider to find that sweet spot because it goes too hard and it sounds robotic, you know, and so you have to be really careful with that.

Speaker: 00:36:03

But we try to leverage AI to help us in our workflows, to help us offer new services that we couldn't offer to clients before, offer them in a better way.

Speaker: 00:36:13

So I think we've lost some clients to it, but I think we've benefited from it just as much as that, if not more.

Speaker: 00:36:21

Yeah, I was talking to Steve and my wife a little bit about it, just like how cringy and like really bad, like some of the titles that AI comes up with or like some of the copywriting.

Speaker: 00:36:31

It's just like, what are you doing? Yeah, so it definitely needs a fair bit of a human touch in there, but it's a great starting point.

Speaker: 00:36:39

A comment from Mike, AI is and will continue to be a primer for the skill sets that we all have. Everyone needs a little internal red flags, but we'll be just fine.

Speaker: 00:36:48

I think there is also the element that Darrell touched on where we as professionals that know what we're doing, there are ways that we can use AI to speed up our workflow to deliver things we couldn't do before.

Speaker: 00:36:59

We're not taking the human out necessarily, we're using a new tool.

Speaker: 00:37:03

I think that AI by itself will probably always, well for the future that I can foresee, play at the bottom of the market if you're not wanting a human, you know, some kind of human intervention.

Speaker: 00:37:14

But I use AI tools to help me with EQ and compression. Not that I don't go back and tweak it, right?

Speaker: 00:37:20

But I get that first pass of just let's fix the resonances in like 15 seconds where before I'd have to, you know, do the magic.

Speaker: 00:37:27

And now I can just go, this is the shape I think I would like. It's very helpful.

Speaker: 00:37:32

Yeah, I go back to, I often think about when we had Jesse on the show and he made a comment, it's like, we're not going to lose out AI, we're going to lose out to people who know how to use AI in their business.

Speaker: 00:37:45

And it's like the key is like being on the forefront of using AI to boost what you're already doing and kind of give you a leg up.

Speaker: 00:37:53

Mike says he started generating a portfolio enhancement that showcases the peril of AI in editing.

Speaker: 00:38:01

I'll share that out to the group when it's set.

Speaker: 00:38:03

Yeah, that'd be great. So Jennifer, we started this because you're expanding your team. We've gotten a lot of comments from the chat and that's great.

Speaker: 00:38:12

Like, we're super happy you're here and asking but we also want to make sure if Jennifer has any lingering questions, she gets to ask them.

Speaker: 00:38:19

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I'm like, just trying to take it all in.

Speaker: 00:38:22

Because right now I am just using Dropbox and a Google Sheet and email and then one of my editors, we Facebook Messenger all the time and I know her in real life and I saw her the other day.

Speaker: 00:38:36

So that's kind of nice. She's my key editor right now if I'm like going to think about these things.

Speaker: 00:38:41

And I guess I'm doing more project management based on I'm the one downloading the files and uploading the files and getting the files so there's no direct client to contractor communication yet.

Speaker: 00:38:54

But that's probably something that's going to end up having to happen or...

Speaker: 00:38:58

Here's the way I look at it.

Speaker: 00:39:00

What is it that, you know, like there's a great book, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks and he talks about your zone of genius. Like what are those things that you really hate doing?

Speaker: 00:39:11

He takes a different approach. He uses different vocabulary, I should say. But this is the way I internalized it.

Speaker: 00:39:16

Like, what are those things that I'm not good at? I'm not skilled at? Like I look and I'm the bottleneck. I'm the problem. Okay.

Speaker: 00:39:23

Or that I hate doing like invoicing, you know, and so I still I'll do about seven or eight clients a month.

Speaker: 00:39:30

The rest are all done by one of our other team members on the invoicing side.

Speaker: 00:39:34

And so if you like that project management side of things, that those touch points and those tasks that go along with it, you don't have to follow the model that I did.

Speaker: 00:39:43

The other analogy I use is like the five love languages and I use this with clients too.

Speaker: 00:39:47

Like when they're trying to decide what to outsource or what to keep internally, I say what, you know, what fills your love tank?

Speaker: 00:39:55

When you're thinking about all the things that are part of your podcast, generating content ideas, recording the episodes, editing the episodes, creating the show notes, doing the social media stuff, all the stuff that goes along with it, you know, all those things and more.

Speaker: 00:40:10

Guest booking, you name it, whatever. What is it that you love doing? Interacting with your audience, whatever.

Speaker: 00:40:16

What's just filling your heart and rejuvenating that passion for your podcast or your business or whatever it is?

Speaker: 00:40:22

Do those things. Spend your time on those things and whatever those things you like, this sucks. I hate this or whatever.

Speaker: 00:40:30

Then outsource those things. And so that works at a client level, that works at a team member level, that works at a you level, Jennifer.

Speaker: 00:40:36

And so always be thinking about what is it that sucks your energy and what is it that where you're the bottleneck? Because maybe you like doing it, but maybe your business has grown to the point where you're the bottleneck.

Speaker: 00:40:49

And so that's another challenge that you've got to make a solution for. But those are the ways I approach it.

Speaker: 00:40:56

I love editing, but I realized a while ago that that doesn't give me the time and the energy and stuff that I need to work in the business to grow the business.

Speaker: 00:41:06

And so I only edit one client now. That scaled. It was 20 clients and then it was 10 clients and then it was eight clients for a long time and then it was five, you know, whatever.

Speaker: 00:41:15

So just always be thinking about what your role is going to look like when and whatever that next milestone marker is for you so you can be prepared for that.

Speaker: 00:41:24

And I also want to kind of like comment on it because you said somebody needing to kind of open up who's communicating with their clients.

Speaker: 00:41:30

One thing like my policy has been like my contractors don't talk to the clients. It's just like me and my assistant.

Speaker: 00:41:38

The main reason for me was I didn't want my client to have to figure out one who they need to reach out to have a question like which one of like the four people on the team do I reach out to?

Speaker: 00:41:51

That way they know it's like either me or my assistant and then we'll figure out like where the question needs to go and kind of get it solved.

Speaker: 00:41:56

That way there's not just like a whole bunch of communication going on. It's kind of like filter it down so it's easier on the client.

Speaker: 00:42:02

All right. Well, it's that time of the show where we used to get out the pod decks question, but we used up all the pod decks questions and now is our powered by AI portion of the show.

Speaker: 00:42:15

Where we go to chat GPT and I type in, ask me a random question.

Speaker: 00:42:20

So get ready to have your drink. I've got my bottle of water right here.

Speaker: 00:42:23

If you could have any superpower, but it came with a strange and unexpected side effect.

Speaker: 00:42:33

What power would you choose and what side effect would you be willing to deal with?

Speaker: 00:42:39

And this sounds like a great one for Gerald because you've got all your little superhero figures and everything.

Speaker: 00:42:45

So any superpower, but it comes with a strange, unexpected side effect. What do you think?

Speaker: 00:42:51

Oh my. Wow. I think I would take the power to wield the force and the side effect would be I had to speak in limerick.

Speaker: 00:43:08

It's like Yoda, but it's a little bit different.

Speaker: 00:43:10

Oh, just a little different.

Speaker: 00:43:12

I don't know. Batman is my favorite in case you can't tell. And he doesn't really have any superpowers.

Speaker: 00:43:18

I like him so much, but I would love to be able to teleport places and just bypass airports and train stations and sitting in traffic and just teleport places.

Speaker: 00:43:31

What would I be willing to like deal with for that?

Speaker: 00:43:34

I mean, I guess if that's a time saver, then it's got the opposite of that as a time suck.

Speaker: 00:43:40

So maybe like zaps all of my energy for 24 hours. Like I can't like I have to go immediately to bed for 24 hours or something like that.

Speaker: 00:43:49

So I'd be I'd be willing to trade that off. Like, you know, go to podcast movement.

Speaker: 00:43:53

Boom. I'm there. But I'm like stuck in my hotel room for 24 hours. No problem. Just come in a day earlier. It's all good.

Speaker: 00:44:02

That's a good one for me.

Speaker: 00:44:03

Like the power to fly. But maybe like I can no longer run or like I have a weird walk, a wobbly my walk.

Speaker: 00:44:10

You can fly but you can't.

Speaker: 00:44:11

But can't walk well.

Speaker: 00:44:14

Like an albatross?

Speaker: 00:44:15

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:44:16

Yeah. And then Patrick says the power to not be fat and crippled. And the side effect is that I'm pizza deficient.

Speaker: 00:44:26

And I always like to think of invisibility as my favorite superpower. And I'm like, what what if you cast a shadow?

Speaker: 00:44:33

Oh, tricky.

Speaker: 00:44:34

That'd be scary to see the shadow.

Speaker: 00:44:39

I don't know if I'd want to deal with it. But it's like, that's the only thing I can get on my own invisibility.

Speaker: 00:44:45

But but what if you got stuck with the shadow?

Speaker: 00:44:48

So before we go, Mike did have one comment that I wanted to hit because we were talking about things that you might be giving up.

Speaker: 00:44:55

And he just mentioned that this key editor might also be or should also be able to talk to you and share that you might be the reason that you're having problems.

Speaker: 00:45:03

Right. So having that feedback loop and being open to that, I think that's a very key piece as well.

Speaker: 00:45:09

Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Darrell.

Speaker: 00:45:11

Again, where can people find you? What's the best way to keep up with you if they want to pick your brain or learn more?

Speaker: 00:45:17

Well, the website is propodcastsolutions.com.

Speaker: 00:45:21

I am mardarrel, M-A-R-D-A-R-R-E-L-L on X and Facebook.

Speaker: 00:45:28

I'm not really active there. I don't care that much for social media. I don't have a social media account for Pro Podcast.

Speaker: 00:45:34

I mean, I have a Facebook page, but that was just so nobody else would take it. We're not really active there.

Speaker: 00:45:39

So the website's propodcastsolutions.com.

Speaker: 00:45:42

And I'm Jennifer Longworth. You can find me at bourbonbarrelpodcasting.com.

Speaker: 00:45:46

Below me is?

Speaker: 00:45:47

Daniel Abendrath. You can find me at Rothmedia.audio.

Speaker: 00:45:50

I'm Bryan Entzminger. I wield the force and I speak in Limerick and you can find me at toptieraudio.com if you ever want to hear from me again.

Speaker: 00:45:59

And not appearing is Carrie and she is at carrie.land.

Speaker: 00:46:03

And we thank all the folks in the comments for joining us. Shout out to Alejandro who will be editing this and we hope to see you all in a couple weeks. Thank you.

Speaker: 00:46:12

And oh, wait, I forgot. Daniel, if someone wants to be a guest, what do they do?

Speaker: 00:46:16

Just go to podcasteditorsmastermind.com/beaguest. Fill out the form and someone will be in touch with you.

Speaker: 00:46:24

All right. And now I get to hit the big red button. Right, Bryan?

Speaker: 00:46:26

Good luck.

Speaker: 00:46:27

All right. Thanks.

Speaker: 00:46:29

So how much is that?

Speaker: 00:46:34

Uh-huh.

Speaker: 00:46:41

So, uh-huh.

Speaker: 00:46:42

No.

Speaker: 00:46:45

No.

Speaker: 00:46:50

[music]

Speaker: 00:46:52

Burgers, get ready.