December 1, 2021 • 47 mins
Choosing the right recording platform is critical when recording a podcast. Which platforms work best? How should you decide who to choose?
On this episode of The Podcast Club, Molly, Marcus and Adam discuss why Riverside is their favorite.
“We’re literally producing podcasts around the world right now because of Riverside,” Molly says.
The audio quality, ability to record video, customer service and its mobile app are some of the reasons why Riverside is a great option for podcast recording.
But it’s not all fairy dust and roses. As a venture-backed company, Riverside is incentivized to continually introduce new features and sometimes the changes can feel too rapid for users.
Speaking of problems, you will encounter them no matter which platform you use, and Marcus cautions podcasters to recognize this instead of abandoning one platform only to encounter the same issue with whichever one they opt for next.
The crew shares the tools they like and what’s worked for them, but ultimately, it’s about finding what works for you.
Tune in to hear their thoughts on how the mindset you need to adopt in less than optimal recording environments, the importance of not allowing yourself to become beholden to a single platform, and why it’s essential that customers know what the work you’re doing for them truly involves.
Tools and tech mentioned in this episode:
✔️ Riverside
✔️ Cleanfeed
✔️ SquadCast
✔️ Podcast Business Journal
✔️ 5x5
Podcast Pro: Molly Ruland
🎙️ What she does: Molly is the founder and CEO of Heartcast Media, a full-service podcast production company and content creation lab based in Washington, D.C.
💡 Key quote: “I love Riverside. (It) changed the game for me, and (with) Heartcast Media not having a brick and mortar studio, this is the next best thing. It's opened up our client base.”
👋 Where to find her: LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
Podcast Pro: Marcus dePaula
🎙️ What he does: An audio engineer, podcast producer and website designer, Marcus runs Me Only Louder, a podcast production company in Franklin, Tenn.
💡 Key quote: “The big differentiator with Riverside is they have always been recording video first. … Riverside was the first one to offer the video recording aspect for each individual person.”
👋 Where to find him: LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
Podcast Pro: Adam Levin
🎙️ What he does: Adam is the manager of Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center and is the founder of Podcast Outfitters, which specializes in podcast equipment.
💡 Key quote: “Find the tool that works for you and know how to use it. But you can't be beholden to the tool.”
👋 Where to find him: LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
Tips for Podcasters
⭐ Riverside offers several advantages over other podcast recording platforms. The Podcast Club hosts like Riverside’s local recording (vs. cloud) approach, mobile app, branding options, as well as the company’s excellent customer service.
⭐ No podcast platform can transcend a bad internet connection or hardware issues. These are baselines no matter which platform you’re using or who’s producing your podcast.
⭐ Be aware of drift issues. These occur when multiple tracks are being recorded by different users on different devices at slightly different sample rates. Riverside has settings to minimize this.
Episode Highlights
00:01:16: A recording platform to rule them all: Glitches occur on all recording platforms. But Molly explains why she thinks Riverside is the next best thing to recording in a brick and mortar studio.
00:06:00 Catching the drift: Stories about drift issues have caused Marcus to steer clear of other platforms. Riverside’s mobile iOS app prevents this common problem, in which tracks recorded on multiple devices don’t sync properly because they have slightly different sample rates. It will be available for Android soon.
00:09:24 (Not) lost in the cloud: Another major advantage, Adam says, is that local records are integral on Riverside. (It records locally and then uploads to the cloud, instead of starting in the cloud for users to download.) In the event of a crash of some kind, the individual recordings are preserved this way.
00:12:00 The quick fix: Molly recalls reaching out to Riverside when their studio was out of sync and the rapid adjustment that Riverside made to repair the issue. The rapid support is a benefit of having an enterprise account with Riverside.
00:14:13 Recording prerequisite: You have to make sure your hardware and internet connection are up to the task when you record, Marcus explains. This should be your first consideration. That said, no matter which recording p
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:13):
Are we here? Are we live? Is on? Okay? Is this
thing? I'll be here all weekpeople. I'm not in my studio today.
I got kicked out by my wifejust goes to show. Yeah.
So I'm trying the mobile app againfor Riverside with my setup. I'll take
a picture so that John can putit up on the screen of my stand
(00:35):
all in one thing, my light. Oh, I have a little inside
Riverside. Oh, do tell butdon't. Let's go. I don't know
if I can. I have emailreal quick. Let's let's jump right in.
What happened last week? What's goingon? Yo? What are we
doing? What's the news? Well, I had my first Riverside glitch.
It was yeah, So I've beenwaiting for it because I've been very fortunate
(01:00):
knock knock on wood that I havenot lost any recordings because and this is
something I wanted to talk about becausethere have been a few discussions come up
in some of the groups and multiplegroups I'm a part of online about people
being upset with their recording platform becauseit doesn't work is expected, and I
(01:22):
figured that would be a good thingto discuss. Anyway, Let's do it.
Well, right, it's all boilsdown to like technology moving super fast,
trying to expand, right doing,doing more and maybe not better,
I don't know, right, LikeI love Riverside, just full disclosure,
A love Riverside changed the game,you know for me and this, you
(01:46):
know, hardcast media not having abrick and mortar studio, this is the
next best thing. It's opened upour client base. We're literally producing podcasts
around the world right now because theRiverside's like, so, well, let's
let's go deeper, because like there'sa lot of things out to let you
do stream like that's but what makesRiverside different? First, well, okay,
I might be a little petty forthis, but this gray background.
(02:06):
Love that shit Like, I loveit. I did I pay my bed
room this color. I've painted everystudio I've ever had this same color,
because you know it, video looksbetter on charcoal gray, which is why
their backdrop is not black. It'scharcoal gray. Right. I love that
I have the ability to put alogo at the top, which nobody can
see right now. But for allof my clients, I'm able to create
(02:27):
a studio for them, put theirlogo at the top, and most importantly,
it's not Zoom, it's not streamYard, it's not anything that most
people have access to, even thoughanybody can get a riverside account, but
like you have to have an enterpriseaccount to be able to put the logo.
So for them, it just reinforceslike why it's valuable to work with
hardcast Media, because like they havetheir own branded studio and when their guests
(02:50):
come to be on their show,it's like something different they've never seen before,
and their logos at the top,and so it's like the whole trailoboard,
right, It's like just reinforcing thatyou made a good decision by working
with us, because we have anenterprise account, we have like special support
there, and so anytime we've emailedthem, we've gotten a response super quickly,
(03:13):
you know. And anytime we've hadan issue with a file, you
know, Walkee stuff has happened,we've been able to recover every single one,
even the ones that we thought werelike impossible, they somehow recovered and
we were good. Yeah, butI understand that my experience is not the
same with everybody. I don't knowwhat it is, because we've done hundred
I mean, you know, Mattcan't respond. But I feel like we've
been with Riverside for a year now, probably yeah, for sure years with
(03:38):
the recordings, doing lots of clientcalls. I mean, we've done hundreds
of recordings with them, and wehave like twenty five studios in our lineup,
you know, many studios, Boris, many clients to you. But
I've done hundreds and hundreds of recordingswith them so right, and had no
issues. So I'm like, youknow, of course my opinion is going
to be a little bit biased,right because they've all come through now.
(04:01):
At the same time, I've alsotold them, you guys are moving too
fast, and like you're killing myfucking labor costs because you keep changing stuff
and you're not giving us the timeto react to it. And so we're
trying to use the tools that we'reuse in our business every week, but
they change and then there's like anadjustment period and you guys are rolling out
too many things too fast, youknow, And so I guess that's part
(04:23):
of the challenge, is like whenyou get to millions of dollars, right
or whatever, they got funded bythe instinct. The instinct is to grow,
which is great, but if you'regrowing too fast. You got to
think about how that's impacting the peoplethat are using your platform, and if
you're changing the way that that platformworks, and everybody who's using it for
business has to retrain their staff everysingle time you do that, and it's
(04:46):
brutal on the end user. Sowhile innovation and all of that seems amazing,
it's also exhausting for the people whoare actually using it day in and
day out heads up and build systemsfor it. And then also it doesn't
work that way. Like when theytook the timer away for a few weeks,
they're a huge deal, like,bro, what are you doing?
They put it back because they probablyhad enough people. Well I mean,
(05:10):
I'm sure a lot of people did. But I'm like, you do him
a labor cost, dude, Thisisn't impacting my bottom line at the end
of the day. It's a businesstool, you know. So I don't
know. I think there's a lotof lessons in there. I think everybody
there's super nice. I think they'reall really good, well intended people.
There's a great guy named Gabe therewho's the success director, but I called
him the happiness manager, and hewas like I'm asking them to rename my
(05:34):
title to the happiness Manager, andI was like, whatever, that's cool.
But you know, like he's oneof the nicest people I've ever met.
He talked to Paula from just Bustersand like dove into her account and
trying to fix it, and likewhat they've learned from what happened there,
they're actually able to make a bunchof changes because a lot of people are
(05:54):
being impacted that way. So yeah, I mean, it's technology right at
the end of the day. It'stechnology. It's like, there's the markets
from you, from your side ofit. What makes Riverside different than the
other There's a ton of these thingsout right. So being an audio engineer,
(06:15):
obviously the quality of the audio mattersto me. And there are other
services that I steered away from becauseI tried it myself. But I also
heard lots of stories about drift issues, which means like each person ends up
with a different length file when youcould put them all together. But I
(06:36):
don't know how technical we want toget with the way these type of platforms
work. But basically what we're doingright now, which we are using Riverside.
I'm on my phone, you guysare on your computers because I'm on
my phone because I got kicked outof my normal setup because my wife's event
thing. But Riverside is the onlyone as far as I know, that
(06:56):
actually has their own app to dothis with, which, by the way,
yeah, team Android saying yes,yes, and it works. Yes,
so it's right. It's only aniPhone, but it is coming for
Android, which that's a whole otherthing too, Like just send Microsoft teams
nice? Is that thin? Gang? Let me make sure no Microsoft Edge
(07:20):
Edge Okay, so it will workin another browser. That's fine whatever.
Microsoft Edge still is not the bestbrowser. But anyway, the only other
service I could use on an iPhoneis clean Feed. Clean feed works on
Android or iOS whatever, It justworks in your web browser. But I
(07:40):
clean Feed to me has the bestaudio, but it does not have video.
They prioritize audio, which is greatfor me, but none of my
clients want that. All of myclients want to be able to at least
see even if they're not recording video. But the big differentiator with Riverside is
they have always been recording video first. Like other platforms, you've been able
(08:01):
to see the person, but Riversidewas the first one to offer the video
recording aspect for each individual person.Other people have now added that Riverside is
still the cheapest, and from anecdotallyfrom the people that I know that I've
interacted with and from my personal experience, it seems like they are also the
(08:26):
most reliable. I cannot quantify that, definitely. I just seem to have
here more problems with certain other platformsthan Riverside. And I love the people
at all these places are great,Like the Squadcast people, huge shout outs
to them. They're also they've gota great Yeah, they've got a great
community manager, Ariel nissenblatt Um interactwith her a lot on social media and
(08:50):
zach and um uh Rock is thathis name? I can't anyway. The
guys at Clean Feet are awesome.I've talked to them events. They're all
good people. Their service is alsofantastic. But if you want to record
video, it is significantly more expensive, and they own up to that when
(09:11):
they didn't even have it at first, because we tried. We looked at
all those because when we closed downour brick and mortar studio, that was
a whole thing because we were usingSwitcher studio with the iPhones and switching cameras
that way, and then we hadto go to remote and zooms like the
best gig in town. And thenwe heard about clean feed and squadcast,
but they just didn't do a video, and so they just weren't an option
(09:31):
for us. Right, all ofour clients do a video. What neither
of you mentioned. I'm surprised becauseI thought this was the thing, but
maybe there's other platforms that do it. Was the fact that it records everything
that each one of us is doinglocally on our ends, right, and
it uploads it later. So that'sthe technical you feed goes down, audio
feed goes down, gets a littlewonky, whatever the end result is being
(09:56):
recorded here, not locally sell onthe cloud, but it's doing each one
of our streams individually on our ownnetwork and then beams it up instead of
the stream being the integral record.Right. So this this is the thing
that I wasn't sure if we wantedto get technical on. But it is
important to understand, especially people thatare using it and the people that are
getting upset because it's not functioning howthey thought, like you're saying, this
(10:20):
actually is recording on each of ourdevices. Now is that unique? Is
that? Does no one else do? Though? It is not unique?
Do it too? No? CleanFeet does not, squad Cast, does
Zencast, or does Ringer does.Like all of the other services except for
clean Feed work this way where they'rerecording on each of our devices and uploading
(10:43):
as we're talking, they're uploading thefiles to the cloud and so that we
can your team can download them laterto edit them and each person has their
individual track. With Zoom, Uh, you know, it's really really and
it's it's uncompressed audio wave files.It is high quality, high definition of
(11:03):
whatever your camera is giving is whatit records, you know, the highest
fidelity. So like I've got afour K camera. I don't know if
it's recording in my iPhone, butyou know most internal laptop cameras are seven
twenty P but it's high definition,whereas Zoom it's dominant way down like it's
it's compressing the signal and the audiois like very very very bad in Zoom.
(11:26):
Yeah. So these services, andthat's where the drift issue comes on
that I mentioned earlier, where sinceit's recording on each our devices, each
of our devices might record it aslightly different sample rate or whatever. You
know, it's not exactly the same. So they might just be a couple
of seconds off after about forty fiveminutes, which is usually isn't a big
deal and you can compensate for.But some of the other services I have
(11:48):
heard there are glitches where it's likea minute difference by the end, like
it's yeah, and I won't mentionthis. It's not squadcast. They haven't
had that big of a problem asfar as I know, but some of
the other ones I've heard that,and so I have avoided those. Well,
we definitely have had issues with likeour videos and audio like being slightly
(12:09):
off sync. But then what wedid is we reached out to them and
they like resyncd our studios, theylike did something to our studio, and
then our recordings were okay. Andso I know that other people have had
those same issues, and so Ithink what it is is when they're doing
all these updates like that, youhave to it's like, you know,
you have to reboot your computer.Did you turn it off and back on?
(12:30):
Right? But it's like there's truthto that, but it's something that
they have to do. It's kindof like when Comcast or whoever resets your
modem from their end YEP. Theyhad to do that and it was like
reactivating these new settings. But Ithink a lot of people got lost in
the lurch if you were lost inthe sauce, because they weren't. They
weren't able to get their studios zappedlike that, and so they were having
(12:52):
ongoing issues. Because Matt was havingissues for a couple of weeks and he
told me about it, and Iwas like, well, let's reach out
because that's got to be a thing, and they were able to fix it.
So I think part of that islike being fortunate enough to be able
to reach out to them and havingwith an enterprise account, you have a
dedicated support team. I don't havethat with my just twenty dollars month or
(13:13):
fifteen. I will say this.I will say this in talking with Gabit
riverside, he was like, hey, like, we love you, we
appreciate you, but like, wedo not prioritize enterprise accounts, and you
guys are few and far between,and the majority of our users are the
regular users, and so those arethe ones we're trying to satisfy. And
I was like, that's cool.I like to hear that that you're not
giving us special treatment. I justthink that maybe we're getting closer to the
(13:37):
front of the line by having anenterprise account where other people might be ten
thousand people deep or whatever. Butthey, you know, I found it
very impressive that they were like,hey, you know, we're not like,
we're not treating the enterprise accounts differently. We did not build this system
for enterprise accounts. We built itfor the average user, and that's who
we want it to be effective for. So I respect that for sure.
(13:58):
Yeah. And to your point,Marcus, so what was your what was
your experiences past? Right? Sothis I think is an ongoing problem with
a new client of mine who eitherhas a bad internet service because he did
like a speed test thing, andso this is this is this is what
I was getting at earlier with understandinghow these systems work with their uploading the
(14:20):
you know, recording locally uploading thevideo files. No matter what which one
of these systems you're using, evenclean feed, you have to have a
healthy computer, you have to havea healthy Internet connection, and the chances
of that happening one hundred percent ofthe time. Even in my house where
I pay attention to this stuff andunderstand it more than because I'm a nerd,
(14:41):
you know, more than most otherpeople, especially a lot of the
guests I deal with. It stillis not going to happen one hundred percent
of the time. So my client, uh, he has a Comcast Internet
connection outside of Philadelphia and you know, home home basic Comcast. So you
think you'd have a good connection twoand fifty megabits down on five megabits up.
Something is not numbers right there,right, So something is not right
(15:07):
with either his wiring or his modemor something. So that's the first problem.
The second problem is I think there'ssomething up with his computer because it
just kind of freezes and that wedid three of them, and then of
course the one where I wasn't there. They did two recordings on the second
one didn't upload and it got lost. But we still have the backup because
it records riverside records the actual streamin the audio and the video. I'm
(15:31):
only worried about the audio for thisguy. He's not using the video,
so the audio stream was actually fine, but you know, I don't I
don't have discrete tracks. Both heand his guest are on the same thing,
so I'll have to, you know, fix it. But it's not
lost for eternity. I mean,at the end of the day, if
you're using technology, you gotta makesure your technology is up to part.
(15:54):
Yeah, you can't be going intoyour battle with the lightsabers. It's not
fully charged exactly exactly, And Iyou know, I think he's done everything
right as far as the system.He might just have a process that's hngue
on his Mac or you know,there's no telling too much because the other
thing is you have to have aspecific amount of memory on your computer because
it is saving your files onto yourcomputer while you're talking. And so if
(16:15):
you don't have a bunch of ifyou don't have enough sufficient datas memory,
it's just going to stop. It'sand that has happened to me. There
was an old elderly couple in theUK and their MacBook Air was maxed out
and in the middle of the recordingit just stopped. And it gave us
a big alert on my producer's screenthat they're the guest ran out of rams.
(16:37):
So luckily we got they had anIT person that could remote in and
deleted some stuff and we could finishthe interview and I could piece it together.
But yeah, again, that's notRiverside's problem. That's the end user
thing. And there's a lot ofthese people to get frustrated about the system
because they don't understand how complicated itis. And it's amazing that it works
so well as often as it doesand doesn't die as often you know it
(17:00):
should, or that it produced issuch a good result for so many people
not using microphones and not using headsand not you know. And this isn't
just Riverside, this is all ofthese services. Yeah, and no matter
what service you go with, youare going to encounter problems. And there
are going to be some people thathave more problems on one service than another,
and another service is going to work. And that's what I wanted to
get at with this, is allthese people that are choosing to abandon these
(17:23):
systems without understanding all of the problemsthat are going on that are causing it.
They could end up just taking thatsame problem to the next service,
and it's not specifically the service,or they could just end up having better
luck with the other service. WhereasI hear other people have worse luck with
you know, so none of thesesystems I feel like are necessarily better like
(17:45):
reliability wise, it all comes downto the producer or the person running the
show, you know, being ableto deal with problems as they arise well
and setting expectations right like you gotta. I'm always amazing at how much people
are willing to spend for a Brandonpodcast and then don't invest in a microphone.
I'm like, why are you spendingten k on this thing if you're
(18:07):
not going to buy a micup?Is there also an argument that be made
where you can I know that Icould record like myself going in into like
a like you are probably Marcus intoa mix prix or the roadcast or whatever.
And are you're recording me and Mollyon the same track coming back exactly
as a backup? Is there?So that's worth That's definitely worth something,
(18:30):
you know, having that extra backupin case all hell breaks? Yes?
Is there anything? Is there anyway to record each one of our three
on separate channels? There is,but that requires me telling you how to
open an app on your computer.If you don't already know how to do
(18:52):
that and record, you record,you have to hit record on your end
and then send me the files,and Molly has to hit record on her
end and send me the file,and then I have to make sure everything
lines up. But there's no there'sno hardware device, there's no outside of
your computer device. No, no, no, you can't do The only
way I've heard is somebody doing it. Dan Benjamin at five by five dot
(19:12):
TV network, podcast network. Heused to have separate Mac minis into a
mixer and he would input on exactly. He doesn't do that anymore, but
that's how he used to get discretechannels when he'd have more than two people.
Because if it's just me and you, you know, me and one
person, that's no problem. There'stwo discrete channels right there. But as
(19:33):
soon as you get more than oneperson, somebody's gonna end up being combined
on the same channel via Internet orotherwise unless you bring them in on a
separate computer and all this stuff.And he was using skypeack then. This
was before Riverside. This was like, you know, ten years ago.
Well, in other news, Ijust came up as a new dating app
for truckers. It's called two DiscreteChannels dot com. That's a big tent
(19:56):
for big tent for d your dulter, what's your twenty two discrete channels?
I love that. I'm I'm herefor it. Seriously, that's great.
Oh, Molly, Adam looks likehe hates both of us. He's probably
I was gonna say, we shouldjust change the whole just shift the whole
(20:18):
idea of the podcast, Like,should just be about developing this app?
Now it should be what a whatjust about developing this this app to channel
channels. There's a good podcasting comeout, del I mean, truckers are
lonely, you know, yes,they are out there down the road on
the road. Speaking of truckers,Like, since since we deal with audio,
did you guys realize that the soupedup radios they use have like echo
(20:45):
and reverb and stuff you can addto your voice, so that like,
yeah, all they liked all theseabout the whole trucker life's one. I
mean, when I found out thatthere's a whole bedroom in the back of
these cabs blew my mind. No, I was gonna make it really inappropriate.
(21:06):
Yeah, we don't even go toodeep into that, but it's remarkable.
Yes, it is a trucker lifestyleout on the road. It is
so I used to have in nineteeneighty five Chevy Blazer K five Silverado Edition
where you could take the top off. I think I told you about this
before and it's not me what color? Probably in one of these mushroom infused
(21:26):
adventures. Yeah, yeah, sono, it was like I had this
fiberglass top you could take off theback, but it took like five people.
But like you would always get likefiber glass in your hands because it
was sold. But it had ait had a CB radio winning I drove
across country with my boyfriend and wewould be like break a breaker one and
(21:47):
this is Lincoln Logs coming in.You know. We were trying to get
people to talk to us, andno one would ever talk to us.
It was never I was like,can you hear me? Could you hear
what was happening? Yeah? Sothey had just ignored reply. They just
wore, they just they were theywere they were like ghosting me like it
was tender you know what I mean. They were like, yeah, nope,
not happening audio tender man. Butyou know what you're going to do
(22:11):
story of my life guys. Butyeah, I mean I don't know.
I think, uh, I thinkI think technology is a real mickey flicky
and I think you just got toroll with the punches and not get too
hemmed up on it, right,because I feel like all these things were
saying you can say about this,about all this equipment in your space.
Right, there's people who are probablylike hardcore, like no, this this
mixer or this keyboard or this yeall day, this DJ you don't have
(22:34):
this microphone and you're an idiot,right bearing your stuff is the best,
right at them? They got theshelf life of an orange. I got
people, that's all. This isthe best thing ever for fifty nine days
until the warranty runs down. Yeah, I mean yeah, it's a crazy,
(22:56):
crazy thing. Yeah. Okay,so totally off topic. But there's
this show lot I was watching onNetflix last night called swap Shop. I
have not seen that. Super obsessedwith this show. Okay, So it's
a radio show that's been going onsince the nineteen fifties. We're talking about
CB radios communication, right, thisis all kind of irrelevant, but it's
(23:19):
called swap Shop, and it's thisradio show that's been going on for fifty
years. It's in like Tennessee orsome shit, and it comes on every
morning at nine thirty and it's brilliant. Okay, So people call in and
they say, I got it.I got a nineteen eighty seven trailer hitch,
you know whatever, I got clothes, I got, you know,
old radios, I got whatever.I'm trying to sell, swap or trade
(23:44):
whatever whatever. The deal is,right, And so they air this thing
every morning. People call in andthen then people rush around and they go
buy stuff, old wars, oldwhatever. Got to send Marcus on the
adventure if it's here in Tennessee.Yeh, listen, we want you to
give us on the road real timereporting some weird shit you could probably find,
like all kinds of crazy like mixersand or like you know, two
(24:08):
radios right, like camera stuff.I'm getting the camera stuff now too,
camera suff but you should check itout. But I just love the power
of the communication. It's so simple. Right. People call in and they're
like, I got this tractor onmy property for twenty years and some asshole
will come by it, you knowwhat I mean. But I'm like,
this is this low key tech that'sbeen in existence for fifty years. Power
(24:30):
of voice audio man you know,it's it's you guys got to check out
the show. The show itself isnot that great, but the fact that
the existence of this like swap shopradio show that's been around for fifty years.
So I'm like fascinated by it.Man, it's really it's it would
only work on a small town otherwisepeople be getting shot, which I was
like, we'll just working, doyou see. I was like, no,
(24:51):
you have to live in a townthat has like four hundred people and
taking stuff. Yeah, You're like, I got this, and they're like,
you hear someone banging on the door, like, immediately give me how
your step. I heard jobs outsideyour house. I heard this on the
radio. You can hear the Swapshotradio coming through a transistor on your front
portrait. Honey, they're here,you know. But yeah, man,
(25:14):
the power of the power of radio, the power of voice book technology.
I think technology is just whacko.And like, I'll tell you what.
When I got on Facebook, Ionly did it because I was doing social
media for a company and they wouldchange the rules all the time, and
I just got really good at adaptingto how Facebook worked all the time.
And people were like, oh,Facebook sucks. I'm like, no,
it's just different than it was aweek ago. You just got to stop
getting pissed off about it and justfigure out how they're doing it this week.
(25:37):
Shut the hell up. And Ijust think, no disrespect to anybody's
having problems on Riverside. But it'slike, yeah, I don't think,
you know, I think they're thebest out of everybody out there, right,
But I think that at the endof the day, that technology is
ultimately the same. It's about howmuch funding they have to hire more employees
or investigate more opportunities, but atthe end of the day, the technology
(25:57):
is the exact same. Nobody's reinventing the wheel here, right, I
don't think I think, you know, it comes back to like a lot
of things we talked about, butlike you just gotta be able to you
gotta be ready to do and likeRiverside might not exist tomorrow, yeah,
you know, like you can't youcan't bank. Like you can like find
the tool that worked for you andknow how to use it, but you
can't be beholden to the tool.Look at I was. I was thinking
(26:18):
about this because someone brought it outthe other day and I was like,
oh, that's still a thing.Uh clubhouse? Yeah, Like I saw
somebody tweeted that we had whole sessionsexclusively just talking about about clubhouse. When's
the last time anyone mentioned clubhouse?Well, if you bank your business on
it, you know what I mean. Like, so just to say,
like, you've got to be readyto move. Okay, it's a Facebook
(26:40):
is okay, Sam Riverside squadcast,Like you gotta you gotta know enough about
all these different things to like ifit shifts, if the world goes back
and you know we're not streaming,you know, we're doing something else,
or it doesn't accept the new cameraor doesn't work with the new chip and
the computer. Like, you gota job to do, and you got
people that rely on it, Likeyou gotta be ready to do something.
(27:02):
This is super valuable, I feellike for a lot of people because there
are so many people like Evo.Tera just did this whole thing on how
he paid somebody money to do Facebookad campaigns for him and he doesn't even
he's not even I mean he's onFacebook, but he doesn't spend any time
there. It was a disaster,of course he knew it would be.
But he's like just did it toshow this guy. You're what you're saying
(27:27):
is not valid for everybody, anybodywho's invested into one platform like this.
And if you know, I Iuse Riverside as a tool. But but
when it comes to like meeting withpeople and stuff like that, you're right,
Like, I can switch to cleanfeed today, I can switch to
his incaster, I can switch tosquadcast whatever. I can do it on
Zoom if I needed to you yourZoom and then you went to Google meets
(27:52):
like, you just gotta be yougotta be able to adapt to any of
these things because the business is goingto exist beyond the plat, right,
but especially when you're dealing with thesocial media place where you're reaching out to
people the broader audience to grow yourbusiness. If you were invested in one
thing and and you're like if,especially if your business is helping people buy
(28:15):
ads and stuff just on Facebook,that's gonna that's not sustainable long term.
They make the money while you canyou know, they just burned. They
just burn that whole thing because youcan't track anyone anymore. It's like the
whole it always change out. Youcan't be beholden to one thing. You
gotta be ready to move. Yougotta know how to record local, you
gotta go to go online. Yougotta know how to do it here and
there, and you gotta know howto do it in a corn field or
(28:37):
in your base. Like you gottaknow shit's gonna go down. And who
are you're gonna call Ghostbusters which comesout this Thursday, and I'm going to
be seeing that. Oh wait,there's a new Ghostbusters. Yeah, all
the haters are like criticiding it's notgonna be good. Yeah, it's gonna
be fun. Well, it can'tbe as bad as the last Ghostbusters.
Everybody was like, wait, youknow the ghost is the same damn movie
(29:02):
as the first two movies, thesame fucking movie, same lines, karate
Kid remix on Netflix, like,just gonna be a better produced version of
it, damn better special effects.They all came back for it and everyone
respects it, and that's why it'sgoing to be more money. But I'm
in Yep, Sex and the Cityis coming back, but I'm not sure
all coming back. There are nonew ideas anymore. My client who had
(29:23):
the problem was on Sex and theCity. I'm trying to live my life
like, what's her name, theslighty one? That's my cold nice amanthas.
Why do I know that? Andthat's all we got, people,
And here we are CNX week.Next week there'll only be one piano again
(29:47):
instead of two pianos. Oh Iknow what the fuck? Oh no,
that's actually a hurlitzer in the backthere. You have a wurlitzer, No,
I said dueling pianos. Yeah,it's the generic worlizerd's hidden behind these
drawers. That's it's the shirlitzer.Because yeah, um, that's hilarious.
(30:10):
Yeah, what a what a life? Man? What a life? But
I mean, it's all about bobbingand weaving. Man. If you don't
have a plan B C D Eand F man, you well you you
can stop at E. But thenyou're gonna be ft okay because if kay
at this point, right, Imean, that's the line. You ain't
you ain't got a B C DE. You're gonna be frena. You
(30:32):
can write that sound bite right there. Take that sound bite. That that's
the sound bite. Roll it,run your ads on that. That is
the whole jam. I'm the funny. It's when I sound like I'm from
the South it's it's my stick.You know, you're gonna be if you
don't have ABC D Annie, you'regonna be ft, you know. But
(30:52):
but for real though, right,like, if you don't, you gotta
you gotta know how to bob andweave. And you're like, Okay,
that shit's not working. We're notgoing to focus on what's not working.
We're gonna focus focus on how tomake it work. Yep. Well,
I mean how many times have Icalled Adam from under the table like hey,
yo, way back in and You'relike, everything, I plug this
instead, and I'm like, gottago. You know, know how to
(31:15):
do shit? I don't know howto do any of these things. You
just gotta figure out a way allof all the time. Love it,
that's it, right, And yougot to have somebody you can call when
you don't when you can't figure itout, even if you know it,
even if you got to wing it, right, like I just know enough
to wing it, yeah, no, enough to wing it or bring the
right equipment. That's why you shouldalways bring two of every chord, and
you should bring two of everything andyou're bringing on the job, bring two
(31:37):
of them. Bring extra batteries,extra batteries. Fresh batteries should always be
in your supply pack. And likeI was just saying about this because we're
doing a gig for the government thatyou know, tomorrow for d Oees,
and you know, we were talkingabout where it is and I'm like,
yeah, the Rayburn Building is aperfect example. It's like downtown DC's where
everything happens, and there's certain roomswhere they have like the d IBox and
(31:59):
you can right in so you canbe in the back of the room with
audio going in your feed and likeyou're good to go other rooms. You
got to have like a CNN presspass and ship and get pre approval and
you're like, but I was justhere last week and they're like different room
today. Sorry. And so thathappened to me. I was filming something
for the Iranian Council and I waslike trying to get in and the guy
was trying to help me, andI'm like, where's the dyebox. He's
(32:21):
like, as, I don't know, and then he called He's like,
oh, it's because you're supposed tobe You're not even supposed to be here,
and I was like, uh,oh, my bad, you know,
and he let me stay but Ijust had to pull out my zoom
pe whatever you know what I mean, and throw it on the table.
And the audio recording wasn't great,But at the end of the day,
I was still able to deliver tothe clients something that wasn't just video with
(32:42):
no sound. Was it perfect?No? Did I still get paid?
Yes? See you know what Imean, Like, did they have a
recording they could use? Yes,And that's all that mattered, you know.
So I think that's the lesson,right, Like you can never get
too hung up on anything because it'salways going to change, especially now with
the way tech anology. I mean, come on. Yeah. Well,
and I think I that whole mindsetof doing having backups for the backups and
(33:07):
all that stuff comes from probably yourstwo, because we both come from the
same events space, like doing musicbusiness stuff. Yeah. When I'm touring,
everything goes wrong, yeah, cat, and I'm on the other side
of the country. If I don'thave a spare cable, I'm screwed.
And so radio Shack closed down,So we're double screwed because radio Shack you
(33:28):
could always pull of flimflam out ofthat Jammie jam, but you have to
have spend fifty bucks on a fourdollar cable, doesn't matter. You could
get it, could get it tips. That's why I sell, That's why
that has the selling point on allthese like you can of course you can
always go USPNS your computer and sureyou can get it done. Or you
get a P four, you geta roadcast so you can turn on recording
(33:51):
mixed per you have to have somethingelse for that backup recording for that rainy
day when all hell breaks loose andthe computer wasn't turned on, your internet
sucked and everything was shitty. Yougot what you needed because you ain't going
to get that person on the phoneor whatever the next time around, you
know what I mean, Like,you can't bank, You can't bank on
the one if you're in it forreal, you've got to be you got
(34:12):
you want to get one shot toblow and something mom spaghetti. And along
with what you were saying before toMolly with you delivered part of the appeal
for hiring people like us, andfor working with retailers like Adam, and
for using these services that we chooseto stay with is that feeling of trust
(34:38):
and that we're supported and so anyof the services I don't care how good
the services itself, if if thecustomer support whenever something does go wrong,
if if they don't help me insome way or at least give me a
reason to continue to trust them forthe next time I'm out. And that
goes for my clients too. PartLike the reason one of the reasons why
(35:00):
I can charge so much is becauseI give them peace of mind, Like
when I'm in the room, theyknow that it's taken care of. They
don't have to worry about it all. They have to worry about it the
words coming out of their mouth,which is a struggle sometimes for me for
sure personally. Yeah, I mean, you get what you paid for,
(35:22):
right, And I think and Ithink this is a lot about Riverside too,
because every time I've reached out,they've been helpful. And then like
the Happiness director hit me up Gabeand I was like, hey, you
know, I set a meeting withhim, and I really my only feedwack
was like stopped moving so far asyou kill my labor costs. Yes,
But then I advocated for some ofthe women in the Jessbusters group and I'm
like, there's this woman named PaulaJenkins, who's been having a hell of
(35:44):
a time and she wants to beloyal, but like, can you help?
And he hit her up right awayand they got on a call and
she hit me up and I waslike, thank you so much. And
he followed up with me and waslike, thank you so much for connecting
us, and like it's given usso much information that we really needed to
know. And I've been taking thisto the team and so but like for
Adam, for you, there areso many other places to go buy stuff.
(36:06):
Your support and who you are,the people you have in the building
is probably one of the biggest differentiatorsfor you. Right, that's the deal.
Yeah, it's a deal. Mike'sa Mike. But you know who's
gonna help you plug in the cable? Right? You're not getting Adam leaving
a guitar center, I'll tell youthat right now. Never, not ever,
(36:30):
not or Amazon especially, no indeed, indeed, So I think the
moral of the story is customer experience. Customer experience, right, because there's
no musical note, there's never beenplayed, there's no words, never been
written, there's no microphones has neverbeen so well, that's none. That's
(36:51):
really true. There's no microphones hasnever been spoken on, you know what
I mean, Like it's all it'sall the same bag, but it's how
the how the people feel working withyou, right, like in business,
in life and everything. It's like, how are you showing up to deliver
whatever it is you got to deliverwith it? That's personally you know,
uh right, same thing for yourpodcast too, How are you showing up
(37:12):
for your listen? Yeah, gems, gems, I tell you, I'm
just dropping gems. Right. Dowe have any new equipment to talk about
this week? Anything happening and runup a book? Yeah? Well maybe
(37:34):
next week. Well, we shippedour first microphone kid out this week,
Adam Levin to the Atlantic Council,and they are super fumed about it.
Sweet. Yeah, man, it'sgoing to be good and it's actually getting
sent to Abu Dhabi. Good stuff. So podcast offerers Nabu Dhabi, that's
awesome. I know, let's goworld worldwide, that's right, global operations.
(38:01):
Indeed, I feel like there wassomething that I wanted to talk about,
but I can't think about what itis right now. How come the
podcast Business Journal hasn't put anything outor pod news? This pod has gone
dead air on us. No,I could haven't an email today. Oh
maybe I just deleted it too soon. Anyway. Oh, here's one that
(38:23):
we might have missed. Oh thisis super old pod site says it has
determinated has terminated its contract with Libson'sadvertised cast. That was from Yes,
this was why during the break thatwe took there was a lot of choosing
and forty seven thousand dollars penalty afterafter failing to file a statements with the
(38:45):
SEC. Yeah. Yeah, wemissed all that stuff. But we can
put links to the stories in theshow notes. Lipson is like the Dallas
of you know what I mean?Like that that really bad? Uh?
Like what's going on lives in thisweek? Who's getting arrested this week?
(39:07):
Who shot rob? Oh? Mygoodness, ridiculous. Well, guys,
I'm excited about I mean, there'sa lot going on right now. There's
a lot of new clients, there'sa lot of new stuff happening. I'm
launching U. I sent out anemail. Did you guys get my email
today? Yeah? I did.I didn't read all of it yet.
(39:28):
Maybe you should hear my voice inyour head. You should just hear it
when you read it. Did youget it, Adam? It was long,
are you not on my I sentout an email that said, hey,
it's me. Sorry I disappeared.I said, sorry, I disappeared
on you. Yeah you must.I will add you illegally to my email
list igally trying to hear people.When Adam sues me next year for adding
(39:54):
me adding him to his heard Sono. So I've you know, launched
the person brand. I'm building allmy funnels, and so I wrote this,
this, this engagement email. It'slike, hey, it's been a
while. Actually I've never emailed youbecause since I formed Hardcast Media, I've
been collecting email addresses and I've neveremailed them. I ought to have been
(40:17):
collecting emails, and I think I'veemailed them once in the past twice.
That's the thing if you if you'regoing to collect emails, you got to
staying communication and so okay, socheck it out. So yeah, so
that's a good way to So Isent up this email just being like,
hey, I you know, Idon't want to be one of those people
in your email inbox, like abusingthe privileges of all of that, you
(40:37):
know, But I'm starting this newnewsletter and long story show. I said,
it's like fifteen hundred people. I'vehad seven hundred and fifty opens.
Nice, that's huge, especially forafter that long normally open rates like I've
had like twelve percenters and been likemy back and I'm gonna go um and
(40:59):
so what I as I send outan email saying, hey, you know,
I've never actually done this and Ididn't want to be one of those
Yahoo's in the pandemic, because Ifeel like in the pandemic, I got
added to every mailing list on theplanet. And so I spent half my
day. If you lose Adam oryou oh, you're just not wow,
you're just naturally loving and all thatwas weird. You were like for a
long time. And so I sentout this email just saying like, hey,
(41:22):
you know, I didn't want tobe on those people, but like
I launched personal brand. And ifyou'd like to join the Hardcast Media newsletter
click here. And if you'd liketo join the Molly Ruling newsletter, click
here. And if you'd like both, they won't they'll be different contact click
here. And if you want noneof this, click here. And a
majority of the people subscribed to both, which I did not again, it's
(41:45):
because of who you are. Well, it's awesome, but it sucks because
now I got to write two differentnewsletters all the time you set you put
it out there, got to copypaste from both. But it's pretty cool,
man. I just change the fun, Just change the fun. Yeah,
I said it would be different looking. But I'm pretty stoked because I
(42:07):
wrote all these like nurturing campaigns,like for the for the people that haven't
um and opened any of my emailsand I'm like, it's not you,
It's me just getting at you,Like I wrote some really snarky shit.
I can't wait for those things tocome out, you know. But it's
kind of interesting to see, right. It just goes to show you'd ever
know what you got. And Ithink the customer journey is so important,
(42:30):
and I think actually opening these linesof communication and talking with people every week
is going to be really good foreverything, for business, for that personal
connection with the company, all ofthat. But who knew? Who knew?
Email is still one of the bestways to stay in touch with people,
(42:51):
as long as you don't spam them. That means sending them emails without
their permission because they signed up foryour stuff at some oh yeah, I
know these or not. And well, this is why I sent the initial
email. I'm not putting you ona list. This was the self sort
option because I don't want to beone of those people, you know what
I mean, So like, I'mgiving everybody a chance to opt out,
(43:14):
and then of course there's a bunchof unopened ones, you know. And
then I'm going to craft a similarpost for social media, and I'm going
to put that out on my personalFacebook page and put the links to subscribe
to the different list. And thenI'll be curious to see from like the
fifteen hundred emails compared to the likeseven thousand people on my Facebook page,
(43:37):
you know who. Like you know, I wonder how many more subscribers all
get from that versus you know,it would just be interesting to look at
all. I love all that data, all the analytics, you know.
But I think it's good, right, I think it's a good reminders right
to focus on your customer journey.Make sure that people understand the work you're
doing. They're glad, you know, they're excited to work with you.
(44:00):
Even like Adam, the equipment Iordered from you, there was like,
hey, we got the order.Hey it's been shipped. Here's the tracking,
Hey it's been delivered. So likewhen I ordered, I was able
to forward that to the client.They saw what they were getting and how
much it costs and when you expectedand all that and like that stuff really
matters, right, Like it really, it really really matters. So I
think that's I think my biggest takeaway, right is like GI, give Riverside
(44:25):
almost said lips and give lips ina break. Don't give lips in a
break, you bust their chup.Give Riverside a chance, you know what
I mean? Like, and focuson your customer journey, right, and
how many times? Right? Ihad a kind of a really negative experience
recently. But what you know,I'm at the point in my self discovery
journey that when something irritates me now, the very first thing I do is
(44:46):
think to myself, do I dothat too? And the answer is always
yes, which is super annoying sodeep. A friend of mine once said
that if you find that everyone aroundyou, or if you feel that everyone
(45:07):
around you is an asshole, you'rethe exactly well, and not to say
that, like, you know,if you're pissed off at a Riverside that
you're doing the same thing. ButI do think it's an opportunity to look
at your you know what I mean. Like when I was feeling really messed
up about spending this money and therewas no onboarding and I was just be
and I was like, Man,I wonder if my clients have ever felt
(45:27):
this way. I wonder how Ican improve upon the situation. I wonder
how more communicative I can be,you know, with my clients about what
to expect in the process. AndI think that's the lesson, right.
It's not how you can fix yourinternal recording system, but like what is
Riverside doing or what vendor are youusing that you're not happy with? And
then how can you implement that intoyour own business practices or your own personal
(45:50):
life? How? You know whatI mean? Because I really think,
at forty six years old, everythingthat pisses me off, it's because I
do the same shit people who interruptme. The thing is interrupt our ember
dude. You know, same stuff, man, It's all the same stuff.
So yeah, sharpen those pencils,man, that's it. Take a
(46:15):
LASSIM from Adam eleven. He's gotthe customer journey dialed in. It still
works sixty years later. That's thething. It's a constant process, right,
it's never because there's new technology andshould changes all the time, and
there's new people all the time wherethey're like, you're doing like little quirky
(46:36):
pandemic hits yea, and the shippingcontainers are now yeah, yeah, I'm
gotta figure out figure it out.Well, on that note, here's figuring
it out on the next episode ofthe podcast Club. Oh, we should
do some language, right, likeAdam you should do like tea, and
(46:58):
then Marcus you should do the peeand then I'll do the see because it's
the easiest one. I think we'rebackwards. Well, my bad. I
don't know. M
Are we here? Are we live? Is on? Okay? Is this
thing? I'll be here all weekpeople. I'm not in my studio today.
I got kicked out by my wifejust goes to show. Yeah.
So I'm trying the mobile app againfor Riverside with my setup. I'll take
a picture so that John can putit up on the screen of my stand
(00:35):
all in one thing, my light. Oh, I have a little inside
Riverside. Oh, do tell butdon't. Let's go. I don't know
if I can. I have emailreal quick. Let's let's jump right in.
What happened last week? What's goingon? Yo? What are we
doing? What's the news? Well, I had my first Riverside glitch.
It was yeah, So I've beenwaiting for it because I've been very fortunate
(01:00):
knock knock on wood that I havenot lost any recordings because and this is
something I wanted to talk about becausethere have been a few discussions come up
in some of the groups and multiplegroups I'm a part of online about people
being upset with their recording platform becauseit doesn't work is expected, and I
(01:22):
figured that would be a good thingto discuss. Anyway, Let's do it.
Well, right, it's all boilsdown to like technology moving super fast,
trying to expand, right doing,doing more and maybe not better,
I don't know, right, LikeI love Riverside, just full disclosure,
A love Riverside changed the game,you know for me and this, you
(01:46):
know, hardcast media not having abrick and mortar studio, this is the
next best thing. It's opened upour client base. We're literally producing podcasts
around the world right now because theRiverside's like, so, well, let's
let's go deeper, because like there'sa lot of things out to let you
do stream like that's but what makesRiverside different? First, well, okay,
I might be a little petty forthis, but this gray background.
(02:06):
Love that shit Like, I loveit. I did I pay my bed
room this color. I've painted everystudio I've ever had this same color,
because you know it, video looksbetter on charcoal gray, which is why
their backdrop is not black. It'scharcoal gray. Right. I love that
I have the ability to put alogo at the top, which nobody can
see right now. But for allof my clients, I'm able to create
(02:27):
a studio for them, put theirlogo at the top, and most importantly,
it's not Zoom, it's not streamYard, it's not anything that most
people have access to, even thoughanybody can get a riverside account, but
like you have to have an enterpriseaccount to be able to put the logo.
So for them, it just reinforceslike why it's valuable to work with
hardcast Media, because like they havetheir own branded studio and when their guests
(02:50):
come to be on their show,it's like something different they've never seen before,
and their logos at the top,and so it's like the whole trailoboard,
right, It's like just reinforcing thatyou made a good decision by working
with us, because we have anenterprise account, we have like special support
there, and so anytime we've emailedthem, we've gotten a response super quickly,
(03:13):
you know. And anytime we've hadan issue with a file, you
know, Walkee stuff has happened,we've been able to recover every single one,
even the ones that we thought werelike impossible, they somehow recovered and
we were good. Yeah, butI understand that my experience is not the
same with everybody. I don't knowwhat it is, because we've done hundred
I mean, you know, Mattcan't respond. But I feel like we've
been with Riverside for a year now, probably yeah, for sure years with
(03:38):
the recordings, doing lots of clientcalls. I mean, we've done hundreds
of recordings with them, and wehave like twenty five studios in our lineup,
you know, many studios, Boris, many clients to you. But
I've done hundreds and hundreds of recordingswith them so right, and had no
issues. So I'm like, youknow, of course my opinion is going
to be a little bit biased,right because they've all come through now.
(04:01):
At the same time, I've alsotold them, you guys are moving too
fast, and like you're killing myfucking labor costs because you keep changing stuff
and you're not giving us the timeto react to it. And so we're
trying to use the tools that we'reuse in our business every week, but
they change and then there's like anadjustment period and you guys are rolling out
too many things too fast, youknow, And so I guess that's part
(04:23):
of the challenge, is like whenyou get to millions of dollars, right
or whatever, they got funded bythe instinct. The instinct is to grow,
which is great, but if you'regrowing too fast. You got to
think about how that's impacting the peoplethat are using your platform, and if
you're changing the way that that platformworks, and everybody who's using it for
business has to retrain their staff everysingle time you do that, and it's
(04:46):
brutal on the end user. Sowhile innovation and all of that seems amazing,
it's also exhausting for the people whoare actually using it day in and
day out heads up and build systemsfor it. And then also it doesn't
work that way. Like when theytook the timer away for a few weeks,
they're a huge deal, like,bro, what are you doing?
They put it back because they probablyhad enough people. Well I mean,
(05:10):
I'm sure a lot of people did. But I'm like, you do him
a labor cost, dude, Thisisn't impacting my bottom line at the end
of the day. It's a businesstool, you know. So I don't
know. I think there's a lotof lessons in there. I think everybody
there's super nice. I think they'reall really good, well intended people.
There's a great guy named Gabe therewho's the success director, but I called
him the happiness manager, and hewas like I'm asking them to rename my
(05:34):
title to the happiness Manager, andI was like, whatever, that's cool.
But you know, like he's oneof the nicest people I've ever met.
He talked to Paula from just Bustersand like dove into her account and
trying to fix it, and likewhat they've learned from what happened there,
they're actually able to make a bunchof changes because a lot of people are
(05:54):
being impacted that way. So yeah, I mean, it's technology right at
the end of the day. It'stechnology. It's like, there's the markets
from you, from your side ofit. What makes Riverside different than the
other There's a ton of these thingsout right. So being an audio engineer,
(06:15):
obviously the quality of the audio mattersto me. And there are other
services that I steered away from becauseI tried it myself. But I also
heard lots of stories about drift issues, which means like each person ends up
with a different length file when youcould put them all together. But I
(06:36):
don't know how technical we want toget with the way these type of platforms
work. But basically what we're doingright now, which we are using Riverside.
I'm on my phone, you guysare on your computers because I'm on
my phone because I got kicked outof my normal setup because my wife's event
thing. But Riverside is the onlyone as far as I know, that
(06:56):
actually has their own app to dothis with, which, by the way,
yeah, team Android saying yes,yes, and it works. Yes,
so it's right. It's only aniPhone, but it is coming for
Android, which that's a whole otherthing too, Like just send Microsoft teams
nice? Is that thin? Gang? Let me make sure no Microsoft Edge
(07:20):
Edge Okay, so it will workin another browser. That's fine whatever.
Microsoft Edge still is not the bestbrowser. But anyway, the only other
service I could use on an iPhoneis clean Feed. Clean feed works on
Android or iOS whatever, It justworks in your web browser. But I
(07:40):
clean Feed to me has the bestaudio, but it does not have video.
They prioritize audio, which is greatfor me, but none of my
clients want that. All of myclients want to be able to at least
see even if they're not recording video. But the big differentiator with Riverside is
they have always been recording video first. Like other platforms, you've been able
(08:01):
to see the person, but Riversidewas the first one to offer the video
recording aspect for each individual person.Other people have now added that Riverside is
still the cheapest, and from anecdotallyfrom the people that I know that I've
interacted with and from my personal experience, it seems like they are also the
(08:26):
most reliable. I cannot quantify that, definitely. I just seem to have
here more problems with certain other platformsthan Riverside. And I love the people
at all these places are great,Like the Squadcast people, huge shout outs
to them. They're also they've gota great Yeah, they've got a great
community manager, Ariel nissenblatt Um interactwith her a lot on social media and
(08:50):
zach and um uh Rock is thathis name? I can't anyway. The
guys at Clean Feet are awesome.I've talked to them events. They're all
good people. Their service is alsofantastic. But if you want to record
video, it is significantly more expensive, and they own up to that when
(09:11):
they didn't even have it at first, because we tried. We looked at
all those because when we closed downour brick and mortar studio, that was
a whole thing because we were usingSwitcher studio with the iPhones and switching cameras
that way, and then we hadto go to remote and zooms like the
best gig in town. And thenwe heard about clean feed and squadcast,
but they just didn't do a video, and so they just weren't an option
(09:31):
for us. Right, all ofour clients do a video. What neither
of you mentioned. I'm surprised becauseI thought this was the thing, but
maybe there's other platforms that do it. Was the fact that it records everything
that each one of us is doinglocally on our ends, right, and
it uploads it later. So that'sthe technical you feed goes down, audio
feed goes down, gets a littlewonky, whatever the end result is being
(09:56):
recorded here, not locally sell onthe cloud, but it's doing each one
of our streams individually on our ownnetwork and then beams it up instead of
the stream being the integral record.Right. So this this is the thing
that I wasn't sure if we wantedto get technical on. But it is
important to understand, especially people thatare using it and the people that are
getting upset because it's not functioning howthey thought, like you're saying, this
(10:20):
actually is recording on each of ourdevices. Now is that unique? Is
that? Does no one else do? Though? It is not unique?
Do it too? No? CleanFeet does not, squad Cast, does
Zencast, or does Ringer does.Like all of the other services except for
clean Feed work this way where they'rerecording on each of our devices and uploading
(10:43):
as we're talking, they're uploading thefiles to the cloud and so that we
can your team can download them laterto edit them and each person has their
individual track. With Zoom, Uh, you know, it's really really and
it's it's uncompressed audio wave files.It is high quality, high definition of
(11:03):
whatever your camera is giving is whatit records, you know, the highest
fidelity. So like I've got afour K camera. I don't know if
it's recording in my iPhone, butyou know most internal laptop cameras are seven
twenty P but it's high definition,whereas Zoom it's dominant way down like it's
it's compressing the signal and the audiois like very very very bad in Zoom.
(11:26):
Yeah. So these services, andthat's where the drift issue comes on
that I mentioned earlier, where sinceit's recording on each our devices, each
of our devices might record it aslightly different sample rate or whatever. You
know, it's not exactly the same. So they might just be a couple
of seconds off after about forty fiveminutes, which is usually isn't a big
deal and you can compensate for.But some of the other services I have
(11:48):
heard there are glitches where it's likea minute difference by the end, like
it's yeah, and I won't mentionthis. It's not squadcast. They haven't
had that big of a problem asfar as I know, but some of
the other ones I've heard that,and so I have avoided those. Well,
we definitely have had issues with likeour videos and audio like being slightly
(12:09):
off sync. But then what wedid is we reached out to them and
they like resyncd our studios, theylike did something to our studio, and
then our recordings were okay. Andso I know that other people have had
those same issues, and so Ithink what it is is when they're doing
all these updates like that, youhave to it's like, you know,
you have to reboot your computer.Did you turn it off and back on?
(12:30):
Right? But it's like there's truthto that, but it's something that
they have to do. It's kindof like when Comcast or whoever resets your
modem from their end YEP. Theyhad to do that and it was like
reactivating these new settings. But Ithink a lot of people got lost in
the lurch if you were lost inthe sauce, because they weren't. They
weren't able to get their studios zappedlike that, and so they were having
(12:52):
ongoing issues. Because Matt was havingissues for a couple of weeks and he
told me about it, and Iwas like, well, let's reach out
because that's got to be a thing, and they were able to fix it.
So I think part of that islike being fortunate enough to be able
to reach out to them and havingwith an enterprise account, you have a
dedicated support team. I don't havethat with my just twenty dollars month or
(13:13):
fifteen. I will say this.I will say this in talking with Gabit
riverside, he was like, hey, like, we love you, we
appreciate you, but like, wedo not prioritize enterprise accounts, and you
guys are few and far between,and the majority of our users are the
regular users, and so those arethe ones we're trying to satisfy. And
I was like, that's cool.I like to hear that that you're not
giving us special treatment. I justthink that maybe we're getting closer to the
(13:37):
front of the line by having anenterprise account where other people might be ten
thousand people deep or whatever. Butthey, you know, I found it
very impressive that they were like,hey, you know, we're not like,
we're not treating the enterprise accounts differently. We did not build this system
for enterprise accounts. We built itfor the average user, and that's who
we want it to be effective for. So I respect that for sure.
(13:58):
Yeah. And to your point,Marcus, so what was your what was
your experiences past? Right? Sothis I think is an ongoing problem with
a new client of mine who eitherhas a bad internet service because he did
like a speed test thing, andso this is this is this is what
I was getting at earlier with understandinghow these systems work with their uploading the
(14:20):
you know, recording locally uploading thevideo files. No matter what which one
of these systems you're using, evenclean feed, you have to have a
healthy computer, you have to havea healthy Internet connection, and the chances
of that happening one hundred percent ofthe time. Even in my house where
I pay attention to this stuff andunderstand it more than because I'm a nerd,
(14:41):
you know, more than most otherpeople, especially a lot of the
guests I deal with. It stillis not going to happen one hundred percent
of the time. So my client, uh, he has a Comcast Internet
connection outside of Philadelphia and you know, home home basic Comcast. So you
think you'd have a good connection twoand fifty megabits down on five megabits up.
Something is not numbers right there,right, So something is not right
(15:07):
with either his wiring or his modemor something. So that's the first problem.
The second problem is I think there'ssomething up with his computer because it
just kind of freezes and that wedid three of them, and then of
course the one where I wasn't there. They did two recordings on the second
one didn't upload and it got lost. But we still have the backup because
it records riverside records the actual streamin the audio and the video. I'm
(15:31):
only worried about the audio for thisguy. He's not using the video,
so the audio stream was actually fine, but you know, I don't I
don't have discrete tracks. Both heand his guest are on the same thing,
so I'll have to, you know, fix it. But it's not
lost for eternity. I mean,at the end of the day, if
you're using technology, you gotta makesure your technology is up to part.
(15:54):
Yeah, you can't be going intoyour battle with the lightsabers. It's not
fully charged exactly exactly, And Iyou know, I think he's done everything
right as far as the system.He might just have a process that's hngue
on his Mac or you know,there's no telling too much because the other
thing is you have to have aspecific amount of memory on your computer because
it is saving your files onto yourcomputer while you're talking. And so if
(16:15):
you don't have a bunch of ifyou don't have enough sufficient datas memory,
it's just going to stop. It'sand that has happened to me. There
was an old elderly couple in theUK and their MacBook Air was maxed out
and in the middle of the recordingit just stopped. And it gave us
a big alert on my producer's screenthat they're the guest ran out of rams.
(16:37):
So luckily we got they had anIT person that could remote in and
deleted some stuff and we could finishthe interview and I could piece it together.
But yeah, again, that's notRiverside's problem. That's the end user
thing. And there's a lot ofthese people to get frustrated about the system
because they don't understand how complicated itis. And it's amazing that it works
so well as often as it doesand doesn't die as often you know it
(17:00):
should, or that it produced issuch a good result for so many people
not using microphones and not using headsand not you know. And this isn't
just Riverside, this is all ofthese services. Yeah, and no matter
what service you go with, youare going to encounter problems. And there
are going to be some people thathave more problems on one service than another,
and another service is going to work. And that's what I wanted to
get at with this, is allthese people that are choosing to abandon these
(17:23):
systems without understanding all of the problemsthat are going on that are causing it.
They could end up just taking thatsame problem to the next service,
and it's not specifically the service,or they could just end up having better
luck with the other service. WhereasI hear other people have worse luck with
you know, so none of thesesystems I feel like are necessarily better like
(17:45):
reliability wise, it all comes downto the producer or the person running the
show, you know, being ableto deal with problems as they arise well
and setting expectations right like you gotta. I'm always amazing at how much people
are willing to spend for a Brandonpodcast and then don't invest in a microphone.
I'm like, why are you spendingten k on this thing if you're
(18:07):
not going to buy a micup?Is there also an argument that be made
where you can I know that Icould record like myself going in into like
a like you are probably Marcus intoa mix prix or the roadcast or whatever.
And are you're recording me and Mollyon the same track coming back exactly
as a backup? Is there?So that's worth That's definitely worth something,
(18:30):
you know, having that extra backupin case all hell breaks? Yes?
Is there anything? Is there anyway to record each one of our three
on separate channels? There is,but that requires me telling you how to
open an app on your computer.If you don't already know how to do
(18:52):
that and record, you record,you have to hit record on your end
and then send me the files,and Molly has to hit record on her
end and send me the file,and then I have to make sure everything
lines up. But there's no there'sno hardware device, there's no outside of
your computer device. No, no, no, you can't do The only
way I've heard is somebody doing it. Dan Benjamin at five by five dot
(19:12):
TV network, podcast network. Heused to have separate Mac minis into a
mixer and he would input on exactly. He doesn't do that anymore, but
that's how he used to get discretechannels when he'd have more than two people.
Because if it's just me and you, you know, me and one
person, that's no problem. There'stwo discrete channels right there. But as
(19:33):
soon as you get more than oneperson, somebody's gonna end up being combined
on the same channel via Internet orotherwise unless you bring them in on a
separate computer and all this stuff.And he was using skypeack then. This
was before Riverside. This was like, you know, ten years ago.
Well, in other news, Ijust came up as a new dating app
for truckers. It's called two DiscreteChannels dot com. That's a big tent
(19:56):
for big tent for d your dulter, what's your twenty two discrete channels?
I love that. I'm I'm herefor it. Seriously, that's great.
Oh, Molly, Adam looks likehe hates both of us. He's probably
I was gonna say, we shouldjust change the whole just shift the whole
(20:18):
idea of the podcast, Like,should just be about developing this app?
Now it should be what a whatjust about developing this this app to channel
channels. There's a good podcasting comeout, del I mean, truckers are
lonely, you know, yes,they are out there down the road on
the road. Speaking of truckers,Like, since since we deal with audio,
did you guys realize that the soupedup radios they use have like echo
(20:45):
and reverb and stuff you can addto your voice, so that like,
yeah, all they liked all theseabout the whole trucker life's one. I
mean, when I found out thatthere's a whole bedroom in the back of
these cabs blew my mind. No, I was gonna make it really inappropriate.
(21:06):
Yeah, we don't even go toodeep into that, but it's remarkable.
Yes, it is a trucker lifestyleout on the road. It is
so I used to have in nineteeneighty five Chevy Blazer K five Silverado Edition
where you could take the top off. I think I told you about this
before and it's not me what color? Probably in one of these mushroom infused
(21:26):
adventures. Yeah, yeah, sono, it was like I had this
fiberglass top you could take off theback, but it took like five people.
But like you would always get likefiber glass in your hands because it
was sold. But it had ait had a CB radio winning I drove
across country with my boyfriend and wewould be like break a breaker one and
(21:47):
this is Lincoln Logs coming in.You know. We were trying to get
people to talk to us, andno one would ever talk to us.
It was never I was like,can you hear me? Could you hear
what was happening? Yeah? Sothey had just ignored reply. They just
wore, they just they were theywere they were like ghosting me like it
was tender you know what I mean. They were like, yeah, nope,
not happening audio tender man. Butyou know what you're going to do
(22:11):
story of my life guys. Butyeah, I mean I don't know.
I think, uh, I thinkI think technology is a real mickey flicky
and I think you just got toroll with the punches and not get too
hemmed up on it, right,because I feel like all these things were
saying you can say about this,about all this equipment in your space.
Right, there's people who are probablylike hardcore, like no, this this
mixer or this keyboard or this yeall day, this DJ you don't have
(22:34):
this microphone and you're an idiot,right bearing your stuff is the best,
right at them? They got theshelf life of an orange. I got
people, that's all. This isthe best thing ever for fifty nine days
until the warranty runs down. Yeah, I mean yeah, it's a crazy,
(22:56):
crazy thing. Yeah. Okay,so totally off topic. But there's
this show lot I was watching onNetflix last night called swap Shop. I
have not seen that. Super obsessedwith this show. Okay, So it's
a radio show that's been going onsince the nineteen fifties. We're talking about
CB radios communication, right, thisis all kind of irrelevant, but it's
(23:19):
called swap Shop, and it's thisradio show that's been going on for fifty
years. It's in like Tennessee orsome shit, and it comes on every
morning at nine thirty and it's brilliant. Okay, So people call in and
they say, I got it.I got a nineteen eighty seven trailer hitch,
you know whatever, I got clothes, I got, you know,
old radios, I got whatever.I'm trying to sell, swap or trade
(23:44):
whatever whatever. The deal is,right, And so they air this thing
every morning. People call in andthen then people rush around and they go
buy stuff, old wars, oldwhatever. Got to send Marcus on the
adventure if it's here in Tennessee.Yeh, listen, we want you to
give us on the road real timereporting some weird shit you could probably find,
like all kinds of crazy like mixersand or like you know, two
(24:08):
radios right, like camera stuff.I'm getting the camera stuff now too,
camera suff but you should check itout. But I just love the power
of the communication. It's so simple. Right. People call in and they're
like, I got this tractor onmy property for twenty years and some asshole
will come by it, you knowwhat I mean. But I'm like,
this is this low key tech that'sbeen in existence for fifty years. Power
(24:30):
of voice audio man you know,it's it's you guys got to check out
the show. The show itself isnot that great, but the fact that
the existence of this like swap shopradio show that's been around for fifty years.
So I'm like fascinated by it.Man, it's really it's it would
only work on a small town otherwisepeople be getting shot, which I was
like, we'll just working, doyou see. I was like, no,
(24:51):
you have to live in a townthat has like four hundred people and
taking stuff. Yeah, You're like, I got this, and they're like,
you hear someone banging on the door, like, immediately give me how
your step. I heard jobs outsideyour house. I heard this on the
radio. You can hear the Swapshotradio coming through a transistor on your front
portrait. Honey, they're here,you know. But yeah, man,
(25:14):
the power of the power of radio, the power of voice book technology.
I think technology is just whacko.And like, I'll tell you what.
When I got on Facebook, Ionly did it because I was doing social
media for a company and they wouldchange the rules all the time, and
I just got really good at adaptingto how Facebook worked all the time.
And people were like, oh,Facebook sucks. I'm like, no,
it's just different than it was aweek ago. You just got to stop
getting pissed off about it and justfigure out how they're doing it this week.
(25:37):
Shut the hell up. And Ijust think, no disrespect to anybody's
having problems on Riverside. But it'slike, yeah, I don't think,
you know, I think they're thebest out of everybody out there, right,
But I think that at the endof the day, that technology is
ultimately the same. It's about howmuch funding they have to hire more employees
or investigate more opportunities, but atthe end of the day, the technology
(25:57):
is the exact same. Nobody's reinventing the wheel here, right, I
don't think I think, you know, it comes back to like a lot
of things we talked about, butlike you just gotta be able to you
gotta be ready to do and likeRiverside might not exist tomorrow, yeah,
you know, like you can't youcan't bank. Like you can like find
the tool that worked for you andknow how to use it, but you
can't be beholden to the tool.Look at I was. I was thinking
(26:18):
about this because someone brought it outthe other day and I was like,
oh, that's still a thing.Uh clubhouse? Yeah, Like I saw
somebody tweeted that we had whole sessionsexclusively just talking about about clubhouse. When's
the last time anyone mentioned clubhouse?Well, if you bank your business on
it, you know what I mean. Like, so just to say,
like, you've got to be readyto move. Okay, it's a Facebook
(26:40):
is okay, Sam Riverside squadcast,Like you gotta you gotta know enough about
all these different things to like ifit shifts, if the world goes back
and you know we're not streaming,you know, we're doing something else,
or it doesn't accept the new cameraor doesn't work with the new chip and
the computer. Like, you gota job to do, and you got
people that rely on it, Likeyou gotta be ready to do something.
(27:02):
This is super valuable, I feellike for a lot of people because there
are so many people like Evo.Tera just did this whole thing on how
he paid somebody money to do Facebookad campaigns for him and he doesn't even
he's not even I mean he's onFacebook, but he doesn't spend any time
there. It was a disaster,of course he knew it would be.
But he's like just did it toshow this guy. You're what you're saying
(27:27):
is not valid for everybody, anybodywho's invested into one platform like this.
And if you know, I Iuse Riverside as a tool. But but
when it comes to like meeting withpeople and stuff like that, you're right,
Like, I can switch to cleanfeed today, I can switch to
his incaster, I can switch tosquadcast whatever. I can do it on
Zoom if I needed to you yourZoom and then you went to Google meets
(27:52):
like, you just gotta be yougotta be able to adapt to any of
these things because the business is goingto exist beyond the plat, right,
but especially when you're dealing with thesocial media place where you're reaching out to
people the broader audience to grow yourbusiness. If you were invested in one
thing and and you're like if,especially if your business is helping people buy
(28:15):
ads and stuff just on Facebook,that's gonna that's not sustainable long term.
They make the money while you canyou know, they just burned. They
just burn that whole thing because youcan't track anyone anymore. It's like the
whole it always change out. Youcan't be beholden to one thing. You
gotta be ready to move. Yougotta know how to record local, you
gotta go to go online. Yougotta know how to do it here and
there, and you gotta know howto do it in a corn field or
(28:37):
in your base. Like you gottaknow shit's gonna go down. And who
are you're gonna call Ghostbusters which comesout this Thursday, and I'm going to
be seeing that. Oh wait,there's a new Ghostbusters. Yeah, all
the haters are like criticiding it's notgonna be good. Yeah, it's gonna
be fun. Well, it can'tbe as bad as the last Ghostbusters.
Everybody was like, wait, youknow the ghost is the same damn movie
(29:02):
as the first two movies, thesame fucking movie, same lines, karate
Kid remix on Netflix, like,just gonna be a better produced version of
it, damn better special effects.They all came back for it and everyone
respects it, and that's why it'sgoing to be more money. But I'm
in Yep, Sex and the Cityis coming back, but I'm not sure
all coming back. There are nonew ideas anymore. My client who had
(29:23):
the problem was on Sex and theCity. I'm trying to live my life
like, what's her name, theslighty one? That's my cold nice amanthas.
Why do I know that? Andthat's all we got, people,
And here we are CNX week.Next week there'll only be one piano again
(29:47):
instead of two pianos. Oh Iknow what the fuck? Oh no,
that's actually a hurlitzer in the backthere. You have a wurlitzer, No,
I said dueling pianos. Yeah,it's the generic worlizerd's hidden behind these
drawers. That's it's the shirlitzer.Because yeah, um, that's hilarious.
(30:10):
Yeah, what a what a life? Man? What a life? But
I mean, it's all about bobbingand weaving. Man. If you don't
have a plan B C D Eand F man, you well you you
can stop at E. But thenyou're gonna be ft okay because if kay
at this point, right, Imean, that's the line. You ain't
you ain't got a B C DE. You're gonna be frena. You
(30:32):
can write that sound bite right there. Take that sound bite. That that's
the sound bite. Roll it,run your ads on that. That is
the whole jam. I'm the funny. It's when I sound like I'm from
the South it's it's my stick.You know, you're gonna be if you
don't have ABC D Annie, you'regonna be ft, you know. But
(30:52):
but for real though, right,like, if you don't, you gotta
you gotta know how to bob andweave. And you're like, Okay,
that shit's not working. We're notgoing to focus on what's not working.
We're gonna focus focus on how tomake it work. Yep. Well,
I mean how many times have Icalled Adam from under the table like hey,
yo, way back in and You'relike, everything, I plug this
instead, and I'm like, gottago. You know, know how to
(31:15):
do shit? I don't know howto do any of these things. You
just gotta figure out a way allof all the time. Love it,
that's it, right, And yougot to have somebody you can call when
you don't when you can't figure itout, even if you know it,
even if you got to wing it, right, like I just know enough
to wing it, yeah, no, enough to wing it or bring the
right equipment. That's why you shouldalways bring two of every chord, and
you should bring two of everything andyou're bringing on the job, bring two
(31:37):
of them. Bring extra batteries,extra batteries. Fresh batteries should always be
in your supply pack. And likeI was just saying about this because we're
doing a gig for the government thatyou know, tomorrow for d Oees,
and you know, we were talkingabout where it is and I'm like,
yeah, the Rayburn Building is aperfect example. It's like downtown DC's where
everything happens, and there's certain roomswhere they have like the d IBox and
(31:59):
you can right in so you canbe in the back of the room with
audio going in your feed and likeyou're good to go other rooms. You
got to have like a CNN presspass and ship and get pre approval and
you're like, but I was justhere last week and they're like different room
today. Sorry. And so thathappened to me. I was filming something
for the Iranian Council and I waslike trying to get in and the guy
was trying to help me, andI'm like, where's the dyebox. He's
(32:21):
like, as, I don't know, and then he called He's like,
oh, it's because you're supposed tobe You're not even supposed to be here,
and I was like, uh,oh, my bad, you know,
and he let me stay but Ijust had to pull out my zoom
pe whatever you know what I mean, and throw it on the table.
And the audio recording wasn't great,But at the end of the day,
I was still able to deliver tothe clients something that wasn't just video with
(32:42):
no sound. Was it perfect?No? Did I still get paid?
Yes? See you know what Imean, Like, did they have a
recording they could use? Yes,And that's all that mattered, you know.
So I think that's the lesson,right, Like you can never get
too hung up on anything because it'salways going to change, especially now with
the way tech anology. I mean, come on. Yeah. Well,
and I think I that whole mindsetof doing having backups for the backups and
(33:07):
all that stuff comes from probably yourstwo, because we both come from the
same events space, like doing musicbusiness stuff. Yeah. When I'm touring,
everything goes wrong, yeah, cat, and I'm on the other side
of the country. If I don'thave a spare cable, I'm screwed.
And so radio Shack closed down,So we're double screwed because radio Shack you
(33:28):
could always pull of flimflam out ofthat Jammie jam, but you have to
have spend fifty bucks on a fourdollar cable, doesn't matter. You could
get it, could get it tips. That's why I sell, That's why
that has the selling point on allthese like you can of course you can
always go USPNS your computer and sureyou can get it done. Or you
get a P four, you geta roadcast so you can turn on recording
(33:51):
mixed per you have to have somethingelse for that backup recording for that rainy
day when all hell breaks loose andthe computer wasn't turned on, your internet
sucked and everything was shitty. Yougot what you needed because you ain't going
to get that person on the phoneor whatever the next time around, you
know what I mean, Like,you can't bank, You can't bank on
the one if you're in it forreal, you've got to be you got
(34:12):
you want to get one shot toblow and something mom spaghetti. And along
with what you were saying before toMolly with you delivered part of the appeal
for hiring people like us, andfor working with retailers like Adam, and
for using these services that we chooseto stay with is that feeling of trust
(34:38):
and that we're supported and so anyof the services I don't care how good
the services itself, if if thecustomer support whenever something does go wrong,
if if they don't help me insome way or at least give me a
reason to continue to trust them forthe next time I'm out. And that
goes for my clients too. PartLike the reason one of the reasons why
(35:00):
I can charge so much is becauseI give them peace of mind, Like
when I'm in the room, theyknow that it's taken care of. They
don't have to worry about it all. They have to worry about it the
words coming out of their mouth,which is a struggle sometimes for me for
sure personally. Yeah, I mean, you get what you paid for,
(35:22):
right, And I think and Ithink this is a lot about Riverside too,
because every time I've reached out,they've been helpful. And then like
the Happiness director hit me up Gabeand I was like, hey, you
know, I set a meeting withhim, and I really my only feedwack
was like stopped moving so far asyou kill my labor costs. Yes,
But then I advocated for some ofthe women in the Jessbusters group and I'm
like, there's this woman named PaulaJenkins, who's been having a hell of
(35:44):
a time and she wants to beloyal, but like, can you help?
And he hit her up right awayand they got on a call and
she hit me up and I waslike, thank you so much. And
he followed up with me and waslike, thank you so much for connecting
us, and like it's given usso much information that we really needed to
know. And I've been taking thisto the team and so but like for
Adam, for you, there areso many other places to go buy stuff.
(36:06):
Your support and who you are,the people you have in the building
is probably one of the biggest differentiatorsfor you. Right, that's the deal.
Yeah, it's a deal. Mike'sa Mike. But you know who's
gonna help you plug in the cable? Right? You're not getting Adam leaving
a guitar center, I'll tell youthat right now. Never, not ever,
(36:30):
not or Amazon especially, no indeed, indeed, So I think the
moral of the story is customer experience. Customer experience, right, because there's
no musical note, there's never beenplayed, there's no words, never been
written, there's no microphones has neverbeen so well, that's none. That's
(36:51):
really true. There's no microphones hasnever been spoken on, you know what
I mean, Like it's all it'sall the same bag, but it's how
the how the people feel working withyou, right, like in business,
in life and everything. It's like, how are you showing up to deliver
whatever it is you got to deliverwith it? That's personally you know,
uh right, same thing for yourpodcast too, How are you showing up
(37:12):
for your listen? Yeah, gems, gems, I tell you, I'm
just dropping gems. Right. Dowe have any new equipment to talk about
this week? Anything happening and runup a book? Yeah? Well maybe
(37:34):
next week. Well, we shippedour first microphone kid out this week,
Adam Levin to the Atlantic Council,and they are super fumed about it.
Sweet. Yeah, man, it'sgoing to be good and it's actually getting
sent to Abu Dhabi. Good stuff. So podcast offerers Nabu Dhabi, that's
awesome. I know, let's goworld worldwide, that's right, global operations.
(38:01):
Indeed, I feel like there wassomething that I wanted to talk about,
but I can't think about what itis right now. How come the
podcast Business Journal hasn't put anything outor pod news? This pod has gone
dead air on us. No,I could haven't an email today. Oh
maybe I just deleted it too soon. Anyway. Oh, here's one that
(38:23):
we might have missed. Oh thisis super old pod site says it has
determinated has terminated its contract with Libson'sadvertised cast. That was from Yes,
this was why during the break thatwe took there was a lot of choosing
and forty seven thousand dollars penalty afterafter failing to file a statements with the
(38:45):
SEC. Yeah. Yeah, wemissed all that stuff. But we can
put links to the stories in theshow notes. Lipson is like the Dallas
of you know what I mean?Like that that really bad? Uh?
Like what's going on lives in thisweek? Who's getting arrested this week?
(39:07):
Who shot rob? Oh? Mygoodness, ridiculous. Well, guys,
I'm excited about I mean, there'sa lot going on right now. There's
a lot of new clients, there'sa lot of new stuff happening. I'm
launching U. I sent out anemail. Did you guys get my email
today? Yeah? I did.I didn't read all of it yet.
(39:28):
Maybe you should hear my voice inyour head. You should just hear it
when you read it. Did youget it, Adam? It was long,
are you not on my I sentout an email that said, hey,
it's me. Sorry I disappeared.I said, sorry, I disappeared
on you. Yeah you must.I will add you illegally to my email
list igally trying to hear people.When Adam sues me next year for adding
(39:54):
me adding him to his heard Sono. So I've you know, launched
the person brand. I'm building allmy funnels, and so I wrote this,
this, this engagement email. It'slike, hey, it's been a
while. Actually I've never emailed youbecause since I formed Hardcast Media, I've
been collecting email addresses and I've neveremailed them. I ought to have been
(40:17):
collecting emails, and I think I'veemailed them once in the past twice.
That's the thing if you if you'regoing to collect emails, you got to
staying communication and so okay, socheck it out. So yeah, so
that's a good way to So Isent up this email just being like,
hey, I you know, Idon't want to be one of those people
in your email inbox, like abusingthe privileges of all of that, you
(40:37):
know, But I'm starting this newnewsletter and long story show. I said,
it's like fifteen hundred people. I'vehad seven hundred and fifty opens.
Nice, that's huge, especially forafter that long normally open rates like I've
had like twelve percenters and been likemy back and I'm gonna go um and
(40:59):
so what I as I send outan email saying, hey, you know,
I've never actually done this and Ididn't want to be one of those
Yahoo's in the pandemic, because Ifeel like in the pandemic, I got
added to every mailing list on theplanet. And so I spent half my
day. If you lose Adam oryou oh, you're just not wow,
you're just naturally loving and all thatwas weird. You were like for a
long time. And so I sentout this email just saying like, hey,
(41:22):
you know, I didn't want tobe on those people, but like
I launched personal brand. And ifyou'd like to join the Hardcast Media newsletter
click here. And if you'd liketo join the Molly Ruling newsletter, click
here. And if you'd like both, they won't they'll be different contact click
here. And if you want noneof this, click here. And a
majority of the people subscribed to both, which I did not again, it's
(41:45):
because of who you are. Well, it's awesome, but it sucks because
now I got to write two differentnewsletters all the time you set you put
it out there, got to copypaste from both. But it's pretty cool,
man. I just change the fun, Just change the fun. Yeah,
I said it would be different looking. But I'm pretty stoked because I
(42:07):
wrote all these like nurturing campaigns,like for the for the people that haven't
um and opened any of my emailsand I'm like, it's not you,
It's me just getting at you,Like I wrote some really snarky shit.
I can't wait for those things tocome out, you know. But it's
kind of interesting to see, right. It just goes to show you'd ever
know what you got. And Ithink the customer journey is so important,
(42:30):
and I think actually opening these linesof communication and talking with people every week
is going to be really good foreverything, for business, for that personal
connection with the company, all ofthat. But who knew? Who knew?
Email is still one of the bestways to stay in touch with people,
(42:51):
as long as you don't spam them. That means sending them emails without
their permission because they signed up foryour stuff at some oh yeah, I
know these or not. And well, this is why I sent the initial
email. I'm not putting you ona list. This was the self sort
option because I don't want to beone of those people, you know what
I mean, So like, I'mgiving everybody a chance to opt out,
(43:14):
and then of course there's a bunchof unopened ones, you know. And
then I'm going to craft a similarpost for social media, and I'm going
to put that out on my personalFacebook page and put the links to subscribe
to the different list. And thenI'll be curious to see from like the
fifteen hundred emails compared to the likeseven thousand people on my Facebook page,
(43:37):
you know who. Like you know, I wonder how many more subscribers all
get from that versus you know,it would just be interesting to look at
all. I love all that data, all the analytics, you know.
But I think it's good, right, I think it's a good reminders right
to focus on your customer journey.Make sure that people understand the work you're
doing. They're glad, you know, they're excited to work with you.
(44:00):
Even like Adam, the equipment Iordered from you, there was like,
hey, we got the order.Hey it's been shipped. Here's the tracking,
Hey it's been delivered. So likewhen I ordered, I was able
to forward that to the client.They saw what they were getting and how
much it costs and when you expectedand all that and like that stuff really
matters, right, Like it really, it really really matters. So I
think that's I think my biggest takeaway, right is like GI, give Riverside
(44:25):
almost said lips and give lips ina break. Don't give lips in a
break, you bust their chup.Give Riverside a chance, you know what
I mean? Like, and focuson your customer journey, right, and
how many times? Right? Ihad a kind of a really negative experience
recently. But what you know,I'm at the point in my self discovery
journey that when something irritates me now, the very first thing I do is
(44:46):
think to myself, do I dothat too? And the answer is always
yes, which is super annoying sodeep. A friend of mine once said
that if you find that everyone aroundyou, or if you feel that everyone
(45:07):
around you is an asshole, you'rethe exactly well, and not to say
that, like, you know,if you're pissed off at a Riverside that
you're doing the same thing. ButI do think it's an opportunity to look
at your you know what I mean. Like when I was feeling really messed
up about spending this money and therewas no onboarding and I was just be
and I was like, Man,I wonder if my clients have ever felt
(45:27):
this way. I wonder how Ican improve upon the situation. I wonder
how more communicative I can be,you know, with my clients about what
to expect in the process. AndI think that's the lesson, right.
It's not how you can fix yourinternal recording system, but like what is
Riverside doing or what vendor are youusing that you're not happy with? And
then how can you implement that intoyour own business practices or your own personal
(45:50):
life? How? You know whatI mean? Because I really think,
at forty six years old, everythingthat pisses me off, it's because I
do the same shit people who interruptme. The thing is interrupt our ember
dude. You know, same stuff, man, It's all the same stuff.
So yeah, sharpen those pencils,man, that's it. Take a
(46:15):
LASSIM from Adam eleven. He's gotthe customer journey dialed in. It still
works sixty years later. That's thething. It's a constant process, right,
it's never because there's new technology andshould changes all the time, and
there's new people all the time wherethey're like, you're doing like little quirky
(46:36):
pandemic hits yea, and the shippingcontainers are now yeah, yeah, I'm
gotta figure out figure it out.Well, on that note, here's figuring
it out on the next episode ofthe podcast Club. Oh, we should
do some language, right, likeAdam you should do like tea, and
(46:58):
then Marcus you should do the peeand then I'll do the see because it's
the easiest one. I think we'rebackwards. Well, my bad. I
don't know. M
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