0:00:08 - (Matt): Welcome to podcast awesome, where we chat about icons, design, tech business, and nerdery with members of the Fawn awesome team awesome. I'm your host, Matt Johnson, and we've heard from a few of you that you'd like to get some pointers on how to start a podcast. And while I'm definitely not an expert, I took this podcast project on last year and we released about 20 episodes. So I'm definitely a newbie at this. But today I'll give you a behind the scenes look at what it took to get podcast awesome off the ground, and I'll share the lessons that I've learned along the way and point out some of the pitfalls that I wish I had avoided.

0:01:04 - (Matt): So here's the deal. We had this wish list of cool stuff we'd wanted to do for years buried in an old base camp thread, and one of those items included some initial brainstorming about a podcast. I've never produced a podcast, and I didn't really know what I was doing. I'm definitely a fan of about half a dozen podcasts myself, but as far as producing and editing, I was totally clueless. I had a ton to learn, but I did get the impression that I'd get the support I needed, so I just went for it.

0:01:35 - (Matt): Initially, I added more ideas to the base camp Brainstorm I found for the podcast and sent it along to the bosses for consideration, but it sort of went into a black hole of the other nice to have projects. Honestly, I never heard back, but I wasn't offended. Von awesome was a pretty busy place, so I opted to just start recording episodes and just see how it went. Besides, I figured if the podcast sucked, it was better to ask for forgiveness later than to sit on my hands waiting for the green light from the boss.

0:02:04 - (Matt): It so first things first. Capturing the podcast awesome vibe and subject matter was crucial. We settled on theming our content around icons, design, tech, business, and nerdery because that's what we put out into the world. And as for the style and format of the podcast, I opted to loosely plan the conversations and try to capture an informal, conversational feel. Kind of like how the tone and voice of our fun, awesome blogs and marketing materials come across.

0:02:49 - (Matt): Kind of curious, funny, knowledgeable, and playfully nerdy. I just had a hunch that if I could capture that feel of what conversations sound and feel like when we work together in person, then it'd be mission accomplished. So far, I think it's going pretty well, and I owe that all to my interesting and knowledgeable conversation partners on the team and of course, my winning personality. The stuff we've put out on the font awesome blog and on the website has a, I don't know, kind of a vibe of, how should I say it? Like a celebratory nerdery. Yeah, we're nerds about a good many things, like tech and design, but it goes way beyond that.

0:03:33 - (Matt): If you've spent any time with developers and designers, then you know they're really into the stuff that they're into, and it tends to be pretty dorky. At Fawn awesome, things are no different, and we're all about what Dave Gandy calls sharing our nerd. The nerdery could include all the usual stuff like video games, movies, collectible toys and all that kind of stuff, but it goes way beyond that. It's that compulsion that we have to dive deep down into a rabbit hole to learn as much as we can about a given subject, to find the best, most accurate information, and to have fun while we're doing it.

0:04:08 - (Matt): So here's a prime example of fawn awesome nerdery for you. At some point, Dave tasted blue milk at a Disney Star wars themed cantina, and he was determined to track down the best recipe and figure out a way to make it at home. But that was going to involve getting a slushing machine just to get the proper consistency. So guess what he did? Yep, he bought a slushing machine, and it's in the back closet of the Fawn awesome home office.

0:04:43 - (Matt): Every time we get together in one place, you can bet that Dave is going to be slinging a new batch of blue milk. And by gum, he's getting closer and closer to perfecting that recipe. I don't know about you, but I'd call that nerdery. Anyway, the point of this tangent about company culture is to highlight the importance of communicating from the core of what your company values are and what your brand stands for. I'm lucky in this regard, because font awesome is full of personality, and the voice and tone of our brand is pretty front and center.

0:05:14 - (Matt): But not all businesses have that kind of vibe, so you may have to go digging under the surface to get clear on that. So you're going to want to ask yourself, what's the purpose of your podcast? Maybe it's to share company news, to educate your customers, or to entertain. And depending on what the subject matter is, that's going to inform that voice and tone for you. And as far as kind of getting a handle on that voice and tone, it's going to be a really good idea to meet up with the folks on your creative team and then get really familiar with your brand guidelines.

0:05:47 - (Matt): If you're a small company and you don't have brand guidelines yet, it's going to be a good time to nail that down. Once I knew that highlighting the nerdery at Fawn awesome was important to the feel of the podcast, it was as equally important to capture that tone naturally. And it was easier than I thought because I've got good rapport with my conversation partners and I genuinely enjoy everyone on the team.

0:06:25 - (Matt): So more often than not, conversations, they feel relaxed and natural. Speaking of which, now may be a good time to introduce you to a podcasting buddy of mine, Matt Carter, who I've learned a ton from. Matt's in a band called Emory, and he and I run in some of the same social circles. Matt's been podcasting weekly in one form or another for the better part of a decade. Currently, he hosts a podcast called Songs and Stories, and he's hosted many others, including break it down, Bad Christian, and the labeled podcast.

0:06:56 - (Matt): Once I knew I was going to get podcast awesome off the ground, I was going to have to pick his brain on how to make this thing happen. Initially, I had in mind to ask him about gear and tech, like how I'd record the podcast with my guests often being remote, what software I would need, microphones, stuff like that. But true to Matt's conversational style, he went on a rant about something completely different, and I'm definitely glad that he did.

0:07:37 - (Matt): So the whole idea of making sure your conversation partner feels relaxed, and so the conversation feels natural. That was all Matt's input, and I'm glad he set me off on the right path. The next thing on my list that seemed pretty important to get a handle on was the software. What would I use to capture and edit the audio? The good news is that there's a ton of tools out there, and some of them are even free.

0:08:06 - (Matt): The bad news, though, is that there's so many options that it's easy to kind of get an analysis paralysis. It's like when you're standing in the toothbrush aisle at the drugstore. There are just too darn many options. It can be a little hard to nail down how to get started, and if you'll be recording remotely online, don't be intimidated. It's totally doable. Recording in person is definitely ideal, but when you're a remote company like font awesome, you've got to rely on good video podcasting software, and after doing some searching online. I opted for Zencaster, but Riverside and Squadcaster are also really good, and they get really good reviews.

0:08:46 - (Matt): If you're looking for side by side comparisons, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube you can check out. And of the three that I mentioned, you can't really go wrong for editing the audio. I started with GarageBand because I had a basic understanding of it from years past recording music demos with friends. I also dabbled with audio hijack, which is a nice, lightweight, simple to use editing software for individual tracks.

0:09:11 - (Matt): What I'd do is that I would capture the initial conversation in GarageBand. I'd get my volume levels generally dialed in, and then I'd export it to a single track. Then I'd import that single track into audio hijack for editing. Once that was done, then I'd import that file back into Garageband and add voiceovers, introductions and the music and all that. And if that sounds confusing and unnecessary, it probably wasn't the best workflow. But the benefit of doing it that way for me is that I got better at editing because I was spending a lot of time editing in these different tools. But considering that I was bouncing those files back and forth between multiple software tools, it's pretty debatable whether I actually saved time or not.

0:09:58 - (Matt): After a couple months of using garageBand, when I'd gotten better at editing, I switched over to logic. It had just a few more functions and shortcuts that made the editing easier. And then just a few months ago, I started using descript, which has some pretty amazing functions. So if you're unfamiliar with descript, you can import an audio track and then the software transcribes it, and you can edit the audio directly from the transcript itself.

0:10:23 - (Matt): It's pretty amazing, I mean, at least in theory, because a lot of the tools are still in beta and descript, it can be a little buggy at times. I've edited entire episodes in descript, and again, considering the overall glitchiness of the program, I'm not always sure whether I'm saving time. But then again, it's possible that I have too shallow of an understanding of the software to make it work well for me. But descript is constantly improving, so maybe in the months and the years to come, they're really going to nail down that functionality. So again, when it comes to software and editing, if you're just starting out, I'd recommend starting with a simple tool like a garageband, like I did, and then you can kind of get your editing chops and get your bearings and adding lots of other software to your workflow.

0:11:09 - (Matt): It's not always going to deliver on its promises. Okay? And so when it came to gear, making decisions was way easy because Travis had already bought a nice audio setup, including four, sure, SMB seven s and a nice rode mixer. And don't worry, I'll add some of that information in the show notes if you want to reference that later. And ideally, if you can record those conversations in person, it really helps because you're kind of reading the body language and have eye contact with your conversation partners.

0:11:50 - (Matt): And that's what we initially did, which was a great introduction to podcasting. And Travis showed me the ropes with all the gear, so I got to experience how quality gear is definitely a key factor in getting a nice audio capture. And I'm also glad that he didn't spare expenses on the gear because I purchased the same gear from my own home studio setup for when I do remote podcasting. And then some of our other team members who podcast with me often have the same gear set up at home, too, which generally ensures that we're going to get like a nice quality audio capture.

0:12:22 - (Matt): But if you're on a budget, there's a ton of great options out there, and you don't always have to get top of the line gear to get a good sounding audio. So on top of that, there's lots of shortcuts to getting good audio, too, since there's a lot of AI software tools that are improving. And I've used Adobe's audio enhance and it's been pretty helpful at times when it's not being glitchy, it's helped me to clean up some pretty crappy sounding audio so it sounds close to studio quality.

0:12:50 - (Matt): And descript also has a studio sound feature which does the same. But personally, I wouldn't plan on relying on those tools too much just yet, as a lot of them are a little glitchy and they don't always produce natural sounding audio. Your best bet is always to get a good decent microphone and a good capture right up front. Oh, and another tip is you're going to want to do yourself a favor and create a checklist for yourself when you're setting up a new podcasting session and make sure you're getting a good quality signal on both sides of the conversation.

0:13:24 - (Matt): You're going to want to make the necessary adjustments on your sound menu to include the microphone input that you're recording with. I've made the mistake of rushing through that setup to only discover after the session was over that the recording defaulted to my built in computer microphone and it didn't sound that great. And that's where Adobe's audio enhance has been helpful. But I really only see that as a band aid that isn't worth depending on too much.

0:13:49 - (Matt): So always try and get that nice audio capture up front and you're going to be way better off. Okay? And then a few more words about editing there have been times that I was a little too ambitious early on about cutting out filler words and pauses in the conversation. And if you overdo the editing, it can make the conversation sound a little choppy and robotic. But after some practice, you'll get a feel for what to cut out and what to keep.

0:14:19 - (Matt): Not all of the filler ums and Oz have to fall to the cutting room floor and just use your best judgment and listen back as you go to ensure the edits sound natural. And another thing, it's always good to have a friend or a colleague listen to it first. Listen to that first edit so you can get some feedback, because there's always going to be things you'll miss. And it's not uncommon to be so wrapped up into the project that you start losing objectivity.

0:14:44 - (Matt): So as for the theme music, this was a really fun part for me as a musician. There's a lot of really great options out there. You can just do some general Google searches and you can come up with all kinds of great resources. The Pixabay site is a really good example, and I've also found some really good stuff on freesound.org. And again, I'll leave some information in the show notes about that. But just make sure if you're choosing music from these sorts of sites, make sure that you understand the licensing agreements before you just use it. As for podcast, awesome, we really wanted to make sure that we had a custom composition, and I knew that I wanted to use a song that had sort of a video game soundtrack vibe. I searched around for some style options and I got some feedback from Dave Gandhi when he mentioned that he'd love to commission his favorite band from the 90s, Joy Electric.

0:15:37 - (Matt): And as luck would have it, because of my connections in the music biz, I just so happened to be acquainted with none other than Ronnie Martin, the guy behind joy Electric. So I reached out to Ronnie. He was totally game to compose something for us, and so we agreed to terms. I gave him some basic stylistic parameters and he just went to town. He sent back two awesome theme music options, and one of them was chosen as the intro music that you hear in each of the episodes in the opening.

0:16:07 - (Matt): So thanks to Ronnie for that. I also had plans to include these musical interstitials between the episode segments, so I hired Zach Mahalm, who I'd heard had composed eight bit chip tunes. And having these music interstitial bits on hand was definitely by design too, because I wanted to include some interest when the conversation naturally changed from subject to subject. But the formatting decision is definitely a practical one too, because not everyone loves having a microphone in front of them, and it can feel a little bit intimidating at times.

0:16:42 - (Matt): You feel like you have to have this well thought out response on the spot, and it can feel kind of stressful, and when people feel a little bit under pressure, then the conversation isn't going to feel natural. That's exactly why I cut up our episodes with these interstitials. So before I press the record button, I always tell my guests that there's no pressure in the conversation, and if they want to back up and restate things a little bit more clearly, or even if they want to take a minute to pause so they can think before they respond. And the way that I edit the episodes with these little interstitials is kind of conducive to that kind of tone and how I approach the recording of it.

0:17:20 - (Matt): So the guests aren't under any kind of pressure because of the way that I edit and format the episodes. You okay? So when it comes to marketing, promotion, and content planning, I'm probably not the best source of wisdom. At least not yet. My goal for the first season of podcast awesome was just to get the darn thing off the ground and get some episodes out there into the wild, which I did, so mission accomplished. But you can definitely find a lot of really good marketing and content planning stuff out there on YouTube, and there's a lot of good stuff worth checking out. In our situation, when it came to content planning, aside from just getting episodes out there, I had the main goal of introducing the font awesome team so we could kind of humanize our brand.

0:18:10 - (Matt): And if you can believe it, we're only a 24 person team, and I wanted the listeners to get a chance to get virtually introduced to everyone. So this kind of approach might not work for your brand, and heck, it's possible it doesn't even work for ours. But knowing how loyal and excited our users can be, I figured they might like to know a bit more about our team and who they are and what makes them tick. That's why every other episode of season one was what I called our Nerd show and tell.

0:18:37 - (Matt): And these podcasts were short episodes that featured several folks on the team, and I'd talked to them about what they'd been working on lately and built and what they were learning, problems that came up and how they solved them. I also got them to riff on their outside work interests, too, which, as I was saying earlier, is definitely key to fawn awesome culture. So as time goes on, I hope I get better at editing and hosting and planning the content marketing, and then connecting with the audience.

0:19:08 - (Matt): And then one more thing. I don't know a single soul who likes to hear the sound of their own voice, and I'm definitely no different, but it's just something you have to get over. And in fact, I hadn't even planned to be the host of the podcast until I kind of got cajoled into it, actually. But it's sort of like getting into cold water. Don't overthink it, just dive in and you're going to get used to it over time.

0:19:32 - (Matt): So there you go. There's the quick and dirty tips I have for those of you interested in starting your own podcast. And I'm definitely a newbie when it comes to this stuff, and my approach probably has a ton of holes in it. But hey, season one went better than I'd anticipated, and I'm excited to learn more and get better at the craft of podcasting. Okay, so here's another formatting thing you might want to consider.

0:19:57 - (Matt): This is the part where we roll the credits at the end. So thanks to my generous workmates for encouraging me in this endeavor and for being great conversation partners, and thanks for giving me lots of freedom and advice along the way. This here podcast was edited and produced by yours truly, Matt Johnson, and as I mentioned before, the podcast awesome theme song was composed by the talented Ronnie Martin, and the music interstitials were composed by Zach mom.

0:20:32 - (Matt): The audio mastering was done by Chris ends at Lemon Productions.