Editing Secrets from a Pro, Sound & Flow, with Steve Stewart

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:00  
The podcast, Super Friends, five podcast pros talking tech promotion, marketing, ideas and strategy.

Jon Gay  0:11  
Hello and welcome to the February episode of the podcast. Super Friends. Very excited for today's guest, but before we introduce him, we will go around the room and introduce the podcast. Super Friends in attendance. I am John Gay from jag podcast Productions located outside Detroit, Michigan, over to Texas.

Johnny Podcasts  0:28  
Hi, I'm Johnny podcast located on the internet,

Catherine O'Brien  0:35  
also on the internet, but I'm Catherine O'Brien, and I'm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Matt Cundill  0:39  
Matt Cundill, the sound off media company Sainte-Adele, Quebec, Canada. We live beautiful.

Jon Gay  0:46  
So full disclosure to our audience, we the five of us. David Yaz from Boston is not here yet, not sure if he's joining us today, but the five of us have an offline call once a month. We help each other solve client issues and kind of run ideas by each other. And one of the things that comes up every month is, who should we have this month on the show? And Steve Stewart's name came up. Steve, I am not hesitant say, has been a bit of a mentor to me in this space. He is in charge of the podcast editors Academy, which is a group of 1000s and 1000s of edit podcast editors on Facebook. He is also affiliated in charge of the podcast editor Academy, which is a membership organization. We're going to get to all of that as well. And there was one Podcast Movement, Steve, was it Denver where it must, you must have felt like I was talking to you, because I ran into you like, 15 times in the span of, like, 48 hours, like, like, saw you on the bus, then I saw you in the lobby. I promise, Steve, I'm not. We're just kind of hanging out.

Steve Stewart  1:39  
I can only hope for stuff like that to happen.

Jon Gay  1:43  
So one of the questions that we get a lot of times from our viewers, listeners, podcast consumers, if you will, is, how do I do? What the five of you do? How do I get involved in producing and editing podcasts? So that's kind of where I want to start with you. Steve, how did you get into this space? Because you were in it before any of us were, as far as I know,

Steve Stewart  2:01  
oh, was I, I don't know, maybe, when did you get into it? Well, officially paid for doing stuff like this. Was 2016 I'd started my own show in 2010 and already had known how to use digital recording and editing software, not really well, but I was able to create my own show and put it out. And I was involved with a community called FinCon, which was it started as the financial blogger conference, but then grew into a larger media type of group. Now we're talking about podcasting and YouTube and all that stuff there as well. And I was always encouraging people to start a podcast, and a couple of well known bloggers wanted to get together in 2015 they were talking, talking, talking, saying, Hey, we should do this. They had never pulled the trigger, and so they called me up because they knew I was trying to help everybody. And by the end of the call, they're like, Steve, we just want to hit record. Will you do the rest? I'm like, sure, but I got to charge you for it. Yeah. So I was making minimum wage probably for the first couple of months there. But when other people in this community heard that I was editing for these two well known people in our community. They're like, hey, we don't like editing either, and within six months, it grew into a full time career. I wasn't really that profitable over the old day job, but that's the three year role that came into play after that, but that's how I got into it. I don't know. How about you guys? Well, you were

Jon Gay  3:16  
in St Louis when I first met you here in Colorado. Now, were you in St Louis when you started everything

Steve Stewart  3:21  
out, yes, yep, St Louis and I was starting my own show on the road because I had a job that was keeping me on the road a lot. So I'd record my show in the hotel room, and so I was able to just casually edit and learn how to use all the digital stuff.

Matt Cundill  3:37  
What were the first tools you were using?

Steve Stewart  3:40  
The first thing I had was this horrible headset which put the microphone right in front of your mouth and picked up all the mouth noises. And this is before anything like iZotope RX existed with the mouth D click. So that was horrible. And then I just use Audacity to record and then I upgraded the microphone to it was probably the ATR 2100 back then, and that helped it get a little bit better. It was still using that

Jon Gay  4:04  
microphone as a great microphone, yeah.

Johnny Podcasts  4:07  
And when it comes to the you know, audio engineering side, like you mentioned, isotope, were you self taught? Or, because I know there are programs out there, like Full Sail University, things like that, I personally am completely self taught. And then the occasional YouTube video. Was it just trial and error for you?

Steve Stewart  4:24  
Yeah, hopefully this is encouraging to everybody out there. I was self taught. I just did it myself, and was learning from some of it was YouTube videos. But then, when I launched the podcast editors Club, which jag was talking about earlier, the Facebook group, I learned from other people about other tools that were out there, and now with AI, I mean, there's so many magical tools out there that every situation that's thrown at me, almost every, I shouldn't say, every, almost every situation, I can come up with some kind of usable content. But I had one client one time send me this recording. It was with somebody who was big in their field, and. And I could not figure out I just had the audio. I could not figure out why this audio was so horrible. And I tried every tool at my disposal, AI, stuff, RX, all these things. Couldn't make it work. I went to the original recording, which had video, and found out that the guest was on his laptop, no microphone, no headphones, of course, and behind him was a men's urinal. No, kid you not. And I messaged my client. I'm like, Are you sure I cannot make this any better, and they had a video editor doing the video version. I'm like, sure you want this to go out there? Like, yes, in public, yeah. They must have, like, cropped the video or something, because it was just off the side a little bit. But oh my gosh, I was so embarrassed

Jon Gay  5:46  
wherever the conversation flows, Right.

Catherine O'Brien  5:53  
Steve, you mentioned on both sides you I'm sorry you've been on both sides. You were a creator, and then you have now are an editor and mentoring other editors. Can you talk a little bit about going making that transition? Because I've heard you in the past say that it was like a really, just like a blessing in disguise, that you the editing was really where it was at for you. So can you talk a little bit about that, and maybe also just touch on that? There's a lot of ways that people can get involved in podcasting without necessarily being the host, right?

Steve Stewart  6:22  
Right? There's so many things now that people can do in the background or the other side of the microphone. For me, I had just retired the podcast that I'd started in 2010 before I talked to these well known bloggers and started editing for them. I was actually planning on launching a new show, and it's just the timing went really well, but I was trying to grow a financial coaching business. I was in the financial blogging space. I had a blog about personal finance, and I wanted to be a financial coach full time. I was building all that when I was at the day job, and then, you know, the editing thing came up. I'm like, Well, I want to be a financial coach. I don't want to be an editor. This is just a side hustle. That's the way I treated it at first. It's like, this is just a side hustle. It's just good money on the side. And I was in a mastermind group, and, you know, after a couple months, like Steve, you always talk about the editing part. You're talking about how you love this part, drop the financial coaching thing and go full time with the editing thing. And I was convinced at that moment, I'm like, you know, you're right. Okay, so I did. I just jumped in full steam ahead and and haven't looked back. And I love it.

Johnny Podcasts  7:27  
Steve, you say you've used the word podcast editor a lot, and I think that that term, much like the word podcasting, has sort of evolved and sort of become this all encompassing thing. What with if, let's say I have a podcast, I've hired you to work on my show. What are you exactly providing? Because your original client said, we just want to hit record and you take care of the rest. That doesn't mean you're not just doing the cut and drag editing, right? You're probably providing the full suite of services. Can you just talk a little bit more about

Steve Stewart  7:56  
what that is? Right? I think I hear the question behind the question is just, what is a podcast, editor versus manager, versus director, versus all those things. And you're right. Podcast editor can encompass quite a few different tasks. Back then, I was, I really didn't call myself a podcast editor. I was just editing the show for them, and I was doing the show notes too, which I hated. I hated doing my own show notes, and I did not like doing theirs either, but they wanted me to do it. So I'm like, Yeah, okay, this is before AI was around to help and all that stuff. So yeah, podcast editing, if you want to go, is the strictest term. Is really more like the cutting, the arranging, the moving, things like that, whereas if you're going to be doing more than that, if you're going to be making content decisions, you could be a Content Editor. If you're going to be involved with the production on any site, like you're helping your client, maybe you're doing the remote recording Jag. You did this. I think you're still doing this quite a bit, getting there, coaching the guests through, getting their mic set up. That's a producer role. A manager role would be something that probably encompass the same thing, but they might also be contacting the guest and trying to set it all up, or they're trying to get the website together and put the show notes on the web and all the stuff that's included in that, whereas, again, you go back to the strictest term of a podcast editor, it doesn't include all those things. It's just editing the content. But because it's podcast editor, not audio editor or video editor, does encompass more things, and of course, we do audio engineering and stuff like that as well. Although I wouldn't classify myself as an audio editor, because I use AI for a lot of stuff, I

Jon Gay  9:34  
wouldn't call myself an engineer either. One of the things you're kind of segueing into this that I wanted to ask you about Steve is every year, and I want to come back to the Facebook group too, but every year, within the podcast editors club on Facebook, you put out a survey, and it kind of gives the lay of the land as far as what people are charging, what services they're offering. This kind of dovetails off Johnny's question just a minute ago. What were some of your key takeaways I'm putting on the spot here, but what were some of your key. Key takeaways from the most recent podcast editors survey. What were some of the stuff that you found we didn't

Steve Stewart  10:08  
do one in 2025 so I'll go off the one we did in 2024 but there was something that came out in the the data that I don't think a lot of people would see as a parent. There's a my business partner at the podcast at our academy, Mark deal. He can do a lot of that regression testing

Jon Gay  10:25  
and stuff. So he loves those what are they? Scatter charts, spray charts. What are they called?

Steve Stewart  10:29  
Yeah, whatever you want to call it. I don't know. He's the he's the math nerd when it comes to excel and stuff like that, fantastic stuff. But there was one thing that showed that. So based on what editors charge, if they have this additional skill, they can charge more for the editing piece. That's some one of the things we do, and one of those things was media host management. That's not A, not technically an editing job, but you know, if you do coaching, or if you do, you know, social media, stuff like that, you might be able to charge more just for the for your editing piece. And the reason why I think the media host part came up as a higher rate this year, or this in 2024 than previous years, is because a lot of these media hosts now you have the consumer side, dynamic insertion tools. You got Captivate. You got Buzzsprout, where you can insert mid roles, where before it used to be agencies. You'd had work with agencies and they'd put you on megaphone or something like that. Now, podcasters can do it themselves, rss.com, now I think does dynamic insertion. So when you have the ability to provide those services, along with the editing and the post production stuff like that, you could charge more. And I think that was the most surprising piece of data that I found from that survey.

Jon Gay  11:46  
So you're saying charge more, not just per edit, but you're saying charge more because you're adding in all these ancillary services on top of the actual edit.

Steve Stewart  11:53  
It's kind of both okay, I'm more valuable as a podcast editor because I know how to do this, so I might not be doing it for all my clients. In fact, only maybe about a third of my clients do I do anything with dynamic insertion, but the other ones are going to be charged. What I charge, because I am more valuable to the media than, you know, the podcast editor who just edits.

Jon Gay  12:18  
That's a fair point, yeah. How did the podcast editors club on Facebook come into being? And how many 1000 are you up to now?

Steve Stewart  12:25  
We've got over 9700 members. I think it is right now. It started on January 12 of 2017 shortly after my birthday. I was sitting there thinking, you know, there is no Facebook group just for editing or post production. It's all these podcasting groups, and I don't need to talk about microphones and mixers. I don't need to hear people talking about how to get guests or grow their audience. This is all stuff that's been answered before. Nobody's talking about this post production piece, and it's really important gonna make our show sound better. So I created the group, and then I invited Mark Diehl to be the first member, and then it grew from there.

Johnny Podcasts  13:02  
Steve, I have kind of a double question. So the podcast editors Academy, I'm sure you just have years of just data and insight and alumni that have just given you such incredible feedback on their experience. Maybe this is a three part question. I'll try. I'll just write this down when people are starting to come into the podcast editor Academy, is it total newbies, or do they have some kind of experience doing this as or is it a mixed bag? And then from there, the people who are starting, what is the biggest kind of hurdle that they have to overcome in order to get to this point where they're doing this full time? Is it a skill? Is it learning a certain type of software? And then the final part of the question would be, people in our, you know, arena, the five of us sitting here, people who are are doing this full time and wanting to learn and continue to get better. What would you recommend people in this position focus on Steve.

Jon Gay  13:57  
What's that get? All that you get all three parts. I think so,

Steve Stewart  14:01  
Johnny, you were asking about the academy. Do you mean the academy or the community?

Johnny Podcasts  14:04  
In the club, the Academy, the people that are paying, paying to learn this?

Steve Stewart  14:07  
Yeah, they are not necessarily beginners. They've been doing they might be like I was, where they've got some skills, but they haven't charged people for it. So that might be because we do offer a lot of, I'll say, business advice. You know, we'll get, we'll even get as far into, you know, like income taxes for people in the United States and stuff like that. But they do have some kind of already. They've, they got a base for it already, okay? And their biggest challenges is not the editing, it's always getting clients Okay, and sale, raising rates, things like that. Interesting. Yeah, that's answer number one. What the other two questions?

Johnny Podcasts  14:41  
I've already got those. You answered two of them. The last one would be for people that for the five of us, we have established businesses as podcast producers, editors, etc. What? What do you recommend, at least from like a skill toolbox standpoint, what do you think we should be focusing on the most

Steve Stewart  14:58  
well, I think it's going to be efficiency. Yeah, okay, profitability. Profitability comes from efficiency. So you find those processes that work. You find ways to outsource what you don't want to do make it effective for you. That's really the big thing. And then, you know, with the academy, we've got office hours once a month, so we've got the ability to mastermind some things together as well. So somebody has a problem, they could bring it to an office hours and maybe closed door type of discussion. And a lot of times, I'll show, you know, I'll show my numbers, or I'll, you know, give stories that I wouldn't necessarily want to share outside of of of the office hours. But yeah, I think for somebody who's first starting out trying to make this a business, my biggest challenge was making more money per hour, just making that hourly rate go up. And I don't charge my clients per hour, that's ridiculous. I charge them per episode, or I give them a flat rate for the month. Now I've got to be able to get more work done in those hours that I have available to me

Johnny Podcasts  15:59  
and Jack. Jack You said Steve was your mentor. He just said, outsourcing. I've been telling jack to outsource for like, five years.

Jon Gay  16:06  
I was just, I was I was just gonna say that, that Johnny and Matt especially have been like, you gotta outsource the editing so you can focus on the bigger picture stuff and

Johnny Podcasts  16:13  
outsource the things that you don't want to do. Like, it's so true. And I think, like you said, Steve, especially with the introduction of AI, the stuff that used to take me a week to do can be done in 24 hours. Like the turnaround is just so much faster. And the more that you're able to do at a really high level, a really high quality product that's going out every single time, that extra time that can be spent bringing in more clients, increasing your rate, and it's just if you're not using AI at this point for any part of your podcast production business, you're you're severely lacking. So I'm glad you hit on the efficiency piece,

Matt Cundill  16:50  
Steve, I've got a question about AI. Sure, we all use it in one form or another, but is there any part of AI that is just too much where it's like, I'm gonna put that tool away, and I'm just going to go back to editing this part by hand. And I think specifically of one example, you know, the removal of ums and you knows and likes from from tools like, like the script and other things like that, that can hinder the process. It's almost like it can add time to the workflow.

Steve Stewart  17:20  
Yeah, that's actually the answer, right? There is using something to take out the flow rewards, and then you got to go back and fix the bad edits. Sometimes it's faster. I've found that if I use a certain, well, let me start this way. I found with certain clients, I can use a certain tool so this person has a distinct crutch, where they end. They end every sentence with, right? Okay, that's an easy edit for AI, but when they're, you know, kind of, you know, liking, you know, the ums and ahs all throughout what they're saying, um, you know, that's a little bit more difficult, and that's where I'm going to keep it to myself and do it manually. And I think that's something that my clients appreciate, because they know that the product is always going to turn out to be what they were expecting. It's not getting out every Amara, they're getting a good product that's not going to become annoying, because every like, you know, like is still like in the recording. You know, like,

Johnny Podcasts  18:16  
and you want to shoot for a lot of those you would like to ideally shoot for eight out of 10, nine out of 10 on those crutch words. But something that we talk about all the time too Is this still has to sound like a natural conversation, and normal human conversations have filler words, have crutch words. And what's so beautiful about podcasting is when, from the consumer standpoint, is you feel like in the best podcast, you're just sitting at a table listening to a couple people, if your favorite people having a conversation, and the occasional um will slip in there in those episodes. Yeah.

Steve Stewart  18:46  
And pacing. Pacing is extremely important. And pacing is not, you know, like you think about a pace when you're running and jogging. No, no, no, we're talking about just keeping it so that it sounds more natural. I'll do a process that I've got a client who she'll take five second, you know, gaps like that when she's speaking, because she's thinking about the words. I don't know why. She doesn't want to mess up, because she's she can mess up. And I'm gonna edit. She's got you, yeah, she got me, but she still does this. And so I'll run a process where I'll take everything, it's over a second long, and I'll trim it to like half a second, and then I'll go through and do the detailed edit, and I'll make it maybe a little bit shorter if it feels like it. I might even make it a little bit longer if it needs it. And that's when that's with her monologs. And you might have some guests too, where they change their pace, and you just kind of leave that gap there, because they're kind of meandering through their thoughts and bringing up the conversation, and it's meaningful and it's emotional. So yeah, pacing, I think, is almost as important as you know, just not trying to get every filler word out. Because we use, we use filler words. I use filler words all the time. You'll hear me say no and I'll start sentences with so every single time.

Johnny Podcasts  19:56  
From a business standpoint, I think one of the biggest questions. Things that probably happens in the Facebook group, or, you know, people that you're privately talking to about this, especially exclusively Americans, is a potential client comes to you, interviews, you, whatever, and they ask you, why can't I just hire somebody in the Philippines to do this for five bucks? What is your response when people either ask you that question, or in, you know, in your actual business, when you're talking to clients, Has that ever happened?

Steve Stewart  20:28  
They've not actually asked me, because, again, I'm kind of in a tight knit group. A lot of my clients come from recommendations. You know, somebody wants to go, somebody in the Philippines, and they're using that as a catch all term for global marketplace. Yeah, somebody overseas because they're less expensive. I know a lot of people from quote, unquote, the Philippines who are fantastic editors. They do better than me on some projects. So I'm not going to say no, and it's going to cost me, you know, cost them less absolutely the way that probably the most important piece of business, at least for somebody like me who's on the post production side, is not how good of an editor I am. I've got people going to edit circles around me. It's the customer service piece. It's how well you treat people. It's how you communicate. You don't communicate too much, but you communicate enough so that they know, hey, I got the file. Hey, it's going to be done by tomorrow. Hey, it's uploaded. Hey, you're scheduled. Hey, everything's good to go. You know, I took care of the rest. Whatever the customer service piece is, just, it's mandatory that you do excellent customer service, and then you're going to be able to raise your rates and keep clients for longer than just, you know, a six month trial.

Catherine O'Brien  21:38  
Steve, you're in a niche, you know you were talking about, coming from FinCon and from the financial blogging world, and I think that, if not all of your clients, a majority of them, are financial talkers. That's the do you find that being in that niche does that also help what you're what you're talking about here with Johnny, where you have a reputation? Can you talk a little bit more about that. And just maybe for some people who are carving out their niche or are scared to be in a niche, any any thoughts on those lines?

Steve Stewart  22:08  
Oh yeah, yeah, the riches are in the niches. That phrase is so true. I would not be where I am if it wasn't for this fin con community. And really it's because there's a lot of technical terms in the financial world. I mean, if somebody's talking about a mega backdoor Roth, okay, does that sound kind of dirty to y'all, but that's actually, it's actually a term. It's actually a term. It's not in the IRS code, but it's a term people use for a strategic way to move money from one retirement account to another. I know what that is. I know what it means. And I've heard people I actually had to do this a couple months ago, in a round table recording for one of my shows, a guest said something that was absolutely false and could not be aired. And I messaged that person because I knew who they were. I said, Look, you said this. I'm taking it out, just so you know, Rongo, you said this, but really, I know what you meant. You meant this, but you said this, so I had to take it out. And I told the host as well, and they were cool with it. So had that gotten out, would somebody get in trouble? Probably not, but it didn't need to be out there, because it was absolutely

Catherine O'Brien  23:18  
false, but that just you have the knowledge and the experience to be an extra layer of protection for your client, which is outstanding, right, particularly

Jon Gay  23:26  
in the financial space. And Steve and I share a little bit of that. In comes. I've co hosted shows with financial advisors for a while, and you get a sense for what compliance will or will not allow it. It's different, you know, depending on who you're if you're with Raymond James, Robert Jones, or, you know, whoever you're with, but here, but knowing, hey, let's come back to that. And I think for our listeners, I'll be curious if you're taking this as well. Steve, I've got a clause in contracts that says, I forget the exact phrasing, but it's up in the lines of, I reserve the right to remove any material that is, you know, inflammatory or libelous or slanderous. You know, in my I have the final say, but I will discuss with the client prior to making that edit, if that makes sense, yeah, I

Steve Stewart  24:08  
don't have anything in my contract like that. I'm going to let them make the final decision. But if I do find something, I'm going to let them know, and that, of course, then they get to make the decision. You know, of course, we have. The problem is, if is it gonna, is there gonna be a delay in getting the answer, and that's gonna hold back the episode going live on the day they want? There's always that. But, yeah, that extra layer of knowledge definitely, again, riches are in the niches. My niche, my niche, is that personal finance, where other people may have a niche or a niche that has nothing to do with the actual content, but more in the ability to do this thing. If you have somebody who's booking guests, they're really great at communicating. Heck, that person is a lot more valuable than just using, you know, Haro or whatever services out there to try and.

Catherine O'Brien  25:00  
Guess? Well, I think that we just as podcast producers, this is sort of wisdom that we hear a lot in the podcasting world, which is a lot of people incorrectly think that if I am going to hit a wider audience, that will lead to me being more successful. And of course, we all know that a potty a podcast for everybody is actually a podcast for nobody. And so I know that that still remains an issue, where a lot of people feel a fear about defining their niche and going for it and really niching into the niche, you know, really, really going for it. So this is really, it's always nice to sort of have this conversation for people, especially if they're thinking about getting going and podcasting.

Jon Gay  25:40  
I'm going to come back to the podcast editor Academy for a second just as I logged into my account here. And I'm not, I'm not gonna take on the take from Steve, not getting any kind of commission or anything like that. But for those who aren't familiar with it, I'm looking at my Dashboard right now. In courses I've got, there's a course on podcast chapters ask a video editor, social media strategies, certain hosts and tips there cost an ROI of YouTube videos, YouTube thumbnail testing, to Steve's point about taxes for us, based editors going legit with an LLC or an S corp, and then office hours as well. I think there really is a lot to be offered in the academy that's very resource specific as you kind of get into the space. So kudos to you and Mark Steve, because you've done a great job with it. Thanks.

Steve Stewart  26:27  
Thanks. I enjoy it. So a lot of those courses I make because I need to know the answers the whole podcast chapters, the ultimate podcast chapters guide I needed to know. Because I was like, okay, when I put parentheses around the timestamps in the show notes, does that do anything? And I find out who, you know, which, which apps it does it for or not, and then for the ones that read MP threes or the RSS, you know, all that stuff had to be something that I just went through myself. I was like, Well, I can't just keep this information myself and you share with the academy.

Jon Gay  26:55  
You can't just have James krid on speed dial to answer all these tech questions.

Steve Stewart  26:59  
Wouldn't that be great?

Catherine O'Brien  27:01  
The red phone. You pick it up and you get the

Steve Stewart  27:02  
answer, no. So I asked Daniel J Lewis, and said, He's the

Catherine O'Brien  27:07  
red phone. Yeah, he's totally the red phone.

Matt Cundill  27:11  
I had a question and sort of a comment as well that for people who think, well, I don't really need an editor. I can edit it myself with some of the tools that are out there, and they're like, Yes, fine. But I find that a lot of people will come back to me and say, it doesn't quite sound the way I want. And what they're really asking for is, can you make this sound like other podcasts, minus 15 to minus 14, luffs, add some compression. And so how do you explain to people exactly what compression is, and then also, how do you get good at, at putting compression into, into a podcast, into the final product?

Steve Stewart  27:50  
Oh, like I said, I am not an audio engineer. Yeah, I've got tools that'll help me with that. So compression, you've got from compression and normalization, which a lot of people get confused, and I'm not going to be able to describe the differences here, but the bottom line is, we need to get everybody at the same volume level, and we don't want the dynamics to be so great that you've got people who are really quiet for one moment and then all sudden they're really loud, you know. So the compression kind of helps with that, to keep it all kind of steady, although you want the dynamics there as well. There's times when people just need to get a little more personal into the microphone, and they're like, Hey, check this out. Or I'm just trying to come up with some kind of example here for the audience, but that the compression will help to get those closer together. And it's most important, most important when you have more than one voice, which is almost always but even more important, when you're using some kind of a dynamic insertion tool, whether it's Libsyn adds and, you know, just say, Hey, throw an ad in here and it's gonna be produced by, you know, air table themselves. If yours is really quiet and theirs is really loud, you've got a problem. So using compression, getting the right volume or luffs is really important, because you want it to match those as well. I've got a client who, every once in a while, let me walk through this process. I'll edit 90 minutes of audio. It's multi segmented. I get like, six different recordings, and I piece it all together, and I upload it to their descript account, and they will go through it then, and they will then trim out the fat. They'll trim out the pieces that thought, Well, that might be too blue, and we don't want that getting out there, or this got a little boring. And then they'll export it out and put it up into their media host. For some reason, every once in a while, they will, I'm sending it to them left to the to the right levels. And so for some reason, their export will be quieter. And then it goes up to their media host, and the ads get inserted, and people, you know, they'll ping them, Hey, your ads are too loud. Well, it's not the ads are too loud. Is that their audio is too quiet. So it's really important, because the listening experience is just ruined when all sudden you got this ping, you know, this Sunday, Sunday, you know, big game. Are especially Yeah,

Matt Cundill  30:01  
and by the way, for listeners right now who want to know exactly what Steve is talking about with the ads coming in, it's going to be right now.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  30:13  
We love that you're listening to the podcast Super Friends. You can watch the show on YouTube, at Johnny podcasts and at sound off media,

Johnny Podcasts  30:22  
and it was the exact same level as the audio that you just heard.

Jon Gay  30:27  
Perfect. Wasn't that flawless? Great segment of the break prior to that ad, Matt,

Steve Stewart  30:34  
all right, set me up. I love it professional.

Jon Gay  30:38  
So, you know, there's a there's a bit of a cliche and in among podcast editors. I think it's been in the Facebook group. It's been in this group as well. And they say, What software do you edit on? And the and the best answer is the one you like onto the one you're most comfortable on. I know Johnny uses logic. I know I use Adobe and Steve, I gotta say you I believe correct me. If I'm wrong, you still use Audacity.

Steve Stewart  30:59  
Correct I still, well, I started using Audacity the year it came out. Okay, so you are an OG with Audacity? Yeah. So it was what I knew. So I just kept using it

Jon Gay  31:08  
existed Exactly. And I don't like Audacity because I learned on Adobe. So my brain thinks the way Adobe's ecosystem works. But you have plugins. You have. You are like the audacity wizard, as far as I'm concerned, you know how to make that thing sing?

Steve Stewart  31:24  
Yes, hot keys, hot keys, hot keys. You know, programming your own keyboard shortcuts. I mean, that is the one thing that I started doing early on that saved me time, because there's something about keeping your hand on the mouse and using your left hand on the keyboard, and your eyes are still on the screen. Yes, where, when you're going to make an edit, you don't lose any time it's select. I'm still looking at it with my hand, moving the mouse, and then hit the keyboard for D, for delete, or whatever, and it's done. And I move on to the next one. So keyboard shortcuts right there. I also have macros built for certain functions, like I have a show, they like to get blue sometimes, and they want me to bleep out the explicit words because it's funny and it keeps the show clean. Well, for me to copy a little bit of audio that's a beep and paste it in, that's a lot of work. So I create a macro, and it just creates this tone that's beep, and then I just hit this one key X, because X marks the spot, and it turns whatever I selected into this beep tone, X ray. So those things are just shortcuts that make it Yeah,

Matt Cundill  32:33  
once you learn your hot keys, it's very difficult to get away from that, because I'm using twisted wave. Oh, my, okay, oh, my, is right. And I started using that in 2015 I actually learned to ever heard of twisted weight? And I,

Jon Gay  32:50  
yeah, I have the app on my phone. I've used it on my phone, but never on a computer.

Steve Stewart  32:54  
That's what Chris Curran used. Chris Curran from the podcast engineering show.

Matt Cundill  32:59  
I also said, I think one of one of your people, Steve, a few weeks ago, I think Brian Ensminger, who also said that he used twisted waves. So I found the other person in the world who was using it. I still use it to this day. I active users. Love the hotkeys, and they just move to a subscription platform. But it's it. I got into it because of voiceover, really more than anything. I didn't really need it for mixing and masking. Mixing and mastering and a bunch of other stuff, but it came with all these stacks that really were could affect and change my voice, make it sound crisper, and then we could add in some of the other tools that we've already talked about today, including isotope. So it's again, it's tough to walk away from something that works.

Jon Gay  33:40  
The good and bad of keyboard shortcuts hold up. Camera, those on a video. So I have this gaming mouse that's got 12 buttons on the side of it, and so I have and see

Johnny Podcasts  33:52  
all in the middle there you people can just spin it really quick.

Steve Stewart  33:56  
No, no, no, no, no. Jake will not allow me to use the Blue Yeti.

Jon Gay  34:02  
We all agree on the Blue Yeti. The keyboard shortcuts that were on the right hand side of my keyboard I'm right handed, they are now on my mouse, and the left hand side of the of the keyboard is now my left hand as I'm editing. But you can get burned by this, especially those of using Adobe, because Adobe just upgraded their audition, and the Fade In and Fade Out is not as easily found. It's multiple commands. Now it's hard to do a keyboard shortcut for it, as well as a 610, and 30 decibel cut, which, oh, like I'm trying to hold on to the previous version of audition as long as I possibly can, because I got to re figure out how to work around to get those keyboard shortcuts in the new version. So if you have, as if you have a software that updates pretty frequently, it can burn you with your keyboard shortcuts.

Steve Stewart  34:49  
Yeah, and Adobe Audition is the number one DAW of audio podcast editors by far, 3x usually when we do the surveys, is it always been, always been 3x from the next one. Which was either Audacity or Reaper. Recently, Pro Tools kind of hopped up there in the in the surveys. I don't know why that suddenly got a resurgence, but

Jon Gay  35:10  
Pro Tools is like the advanced class for me, if you're engineering a band in a studio.

Johnny Podcasts  35:15  
Yeah, I didn't realize I was alone on Logic Pro X Island.

Steve Stewart  35:19  
That was like six or seventh in the what

Johnny Podcasts  35:24  
the best? Yeah, sorry, I'm frozen again. I don't know what's going on with my camera.

Jon Gay  35:29  
It's logic. Logic crashed,

Matt Cundill  35:35  
damn it. Oh, poor Johnny. Yeah.

Steve Stewart  35:38  
Well, Apple's now, I haven't looked into it deeply. But they've now some got some kind of a package, subscription package, where you get all the tools.

Johnny Podcasts  35:44  
Yeah, they, they created a creator suite, which is, you know, basically all of the apple tools. I haven't upgraded to it because I only need logic and Final Cut Pro. And I, what I loved about the Apple suite was you would just buy the product once outright, and you now have it forever, versus the Adobe Suite, which is a subscription, and so I have no reason to upgrade to it. However, apples is certainly trying. It's gotta be subscription. Yeah, gotta keep the pan.

Catherine O'Brien  36:13  
That's one of the nice things about audacity, is it's freeware. That's that's great, and they have a very active community. In fact, that was my, one of my questions I wrote down for you, Steve, because you, you are our defense. Every time somebody, anybody says, says, who you know, how could you possibly be using Audacity? Steve? Steve, Steven uses Audacity. You are, you are the the you get the the credit you share your credibility with everybody,

Steve Stewart  36:39  
because you use Audacity as well, carry the flag for you.

Catherine O'Brien  36:43  
That's right. Well, and I do think that the community around audacity is very helpful that you can if you have any problems, if most likely, somebody else has had that problem before, or there's going to be some responsive people who can come in with an answer. So that's always extremely helpful too.

Steve Stewart  36:58  
Have you tried audacity, 4.0 beta yet or alpha? It's not even beta yet. Yeah, it's, it's way under developed right now. I'm hoping it'll come out soon, but it looks kind of scary, because they're, they're changing a lot, and we'll see if, if, if I can bring my hot keys over, it'll be great.

Jon Gay  37:16  
Otherwise, they've moved your cheese. We're not done that.

Johnny Podcasts  37:22  
I it. Steve, one of the big fun toys that podcast editors love are plugins. And I was just curious, what are some of your favorite plugins to use, whether that be AI tools or actual third party plugin tools. Where do you find yours? What gets what gets your ball?

Steve Stewart  37:40  
Because I'm using Audacity, and I keep throwing money at iZotope for RX. I pretty much stick with those two. I keep hearing other people talk about clarity or clarity. Something I forget

Johnny Podcasts  37:53  
was clarity. VX, clarity, clarity, revive, or clarity out

Steve Stewart  37:58  
there that I just haven't gone to use yet, because I haven't found the need and I don't want to. I'm a creature of habit, just like everybody else here. I don't want to change. But when it comes to AI, I mean, there's, there's a new tool every week. And occasionally I'll try this one, and I'll be like, yeah, that fits what I'm trying to do. And I'm always looking for the ones that are either offering, Hey, pay us this flat right now and you keep it forever, even though I might not get the upgrade in two years, or it's free, or something like that, I'm always trying something like a lot of them are transcription, actual software. It's amazing how much as a podcast editor, I use transcriptions, and it has nothing to do with with, you know, ADA compliance or putting it out there for people to read. It's all just for me to search and find in the transcript something that I'm looking for, like this one show I have. They have a guy who does the introduction, he does the trivia, and he does the outro, and these are all short little bits that include music. So I cut those pieces out by searching the transcript, I find where they are in the original recording, because it's an out because it's an hour long recording. And I'll find it, I'll clip that out, and I'll put over the side, and then I'll get the big chunks of the thing done, and then I'll make these musical, you know, the introduction and stuff like that, just because I found it in the transcript. Transcripts for interludes, I love it, yeah, and some of these AI tools. I mean, they're so fast. I've got this one called Mac whisper. It'll do a 60 minute piece of audio in like two and a half minutes. I'll get the full transcript with names and everything. It's, it's unbelievable. Again, I'm not putting it out there. It's just for me to find. It's for me to find where they say take that out, Steve, because they said something they needed me to take out, or, you know, all those types of things. It just makes it here.

Johnny Podcasts  39:46  
Yeah, you just, you're just, you're just control. F, Steve, and jumping to everyone, that's what I tell the people that I work with too. I say, if you want something cut out, you say, Johnny, cut that. And I just, you know, control, control. F, Johnny, there it is, because they're

Jon Gay  39:58  
not related to that. So in terms of transcripts, and I may be on an island in the group here, but anybody can chime in, you know, for rough transcription, you know, just script Riverside. You know, a lot of a lot of them are good enough. They're 8090, ish percent accurate. I'd say I've actually started using a human based overseas transcription service of English speakers to for clients that want a transcript of their podcast. Once I finish the edit, I send it to the service and Google Drive, usually 24 hour turnaround. They charge me a buck a minute, which is a little bit pricier than some of the AI services. But to me, it's worth it to have something that's 97% accurate so I can scan a 20 page document for an hour podcast. Fix a few words here and there, and be good to go. Any thoughts on that from the group? Oh yeah,

Johnny Podcasts  40:48  
I've been using a human for like, the entire time I've been doing this, like seven years. I've been using the same girl, and she's just incredible. Like, it's, it was when you brought up transcription, Steve, I was it popped off in my mind. So I'm glad you brought it up. Jack is how Matt, how much clients love having the transcript. I have people putting every transcript of their episode into an LLM and using it for company training. I have people using transcripts for their websites. They they're so valuable, and taking that extra step by having an actual person basically proofreading the entire thing, making sure you know the company, the company name is spelled correctly, or Matt has a great joke about, is it pansy becoming Nazi?

Matt Cundill  41:27  
Oh, the time that we have Nancy on the show and Patsy got called Nancy. Oh, yeah, we had a guest named Patsy. And the transcription, this was early transcription days, called it nasty.

Johnny Podcasts  41:44  
It's just, it's so valuable to have. And you know, similar to the being able to do audio ad insertions, it's an extra step in your business to be like, Oh, by the way, you were getting a fully proof read by a human transcript that is spelled. All of your names will be spelled correctly. Everything is grammatically correct, delivered alongside with every other deliverable that you're getting.

Catherine O'Brien  42:06  
It's funny. It's one of those things that I don't think that until you're podcasting, you realize how much those things are valuable. Like my joke to people is, you don't know how many pictures go into podcasting? Do you know how many, how many images you need to make a successful podcast? And it's kind of the same thing. There's so many written assets, the transcript, all these pieces to make the podcast be what it can be.

Matt Cundill  42:28  
Yeah, I think every day about how much I reach for a tool. In my case, it's otter. And what I like about otter is that it learns my guess the voice, it becomes trained on it and fixated to know the companies, to know where they work. And you know, the first we have, there's a podcast we have called humans on rights, and there is a land acknowledgement at the beginning of it, and the spelling every week. For the first 10 weeks, I had to go in and edit it. And on week 11, it figured it out. And now we're up to episode 100 and something, and I don't have to touch it. So I love how the AI will will learn about each particular show as it goes along.

Steve Stewart  43:12  
Yeah, I've got a tool called whisper transcribe that does that. It'll allow you to put in keywords or word spellings that you can save and then the next time you upload it to and you can do folders for each show. So you know, if I upload rich to this one, it knows to spell this person's name this way, and it fixes it right off the bat.

Jon Gay  43:32  
Is for transcribe related to chat, GPT, or am I thinking something else too? I think you're

Steve Stewart  43:36  
thinking something else. It's a standalone app for Mac. I don't know if it's for Windows. Okay, I got it on a special deal where it's one time purchase, and it's just been fantastic, fantastic tool for getting transcripts and being able to create those titles.

Johnny Podcasts  43:53  
You're not getting charged for minutes. They do have subscription

Steve Stewart  43:56  
model where you get that same thing, you know, like the script, it's every month, or maybe they've changed their service lately, but you know number of minutes you buy and then you upload that number of minutes per month, it'll give you the option to do titles and summaries and quotes and stuff like that.

Johnny Podcasts  44:15  
I don't think descript goes 24 hours without some kind of update every time you every time you close out of the script, you just use the outdated,

Catherine O'Brien  44:25  
God help you to update while you're in the middle of something. Forget it. Steve, you you established it before that. You've been in the industry for a long time, and we're talking about these AI tools, and they're all fun, all those new things. Can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the things that are timeless about podcasting that you've learned over the years, and maybe maybe one thing that you're excited about, like all the new fangled things that are coming

Steve Stewart  44:48  
up excited about, I'll have to come back to that one later. Okay, but

Johnny Podcasts  44:54  
I have a question in the meantime, Catherine,

Steve Stewart  44:57  
first, I should answer hers. Yeah, you said. First, the first part of your question was, what?

Catherine O'Brien  45:02  
Again, you've been in the industry for a long time, and so you've seen things come and go, and I'm hoping you could just share, like, sort of one good, timeless piece of podcasting.

Steve Stewart  45:11  
Well, the way to a successful show is connecting with the audience. I think we all know that. I think the people who are watching or listening this know that it's connected with the audience. Got shows that have been around for actually, I have a show, the first show I ever worked on, had its 10 year anniversary last week. And the reason why is she, she provides excellent content, and she's personable, where you feel like you can connect with her, and she is somebody you could connect with. Another show that's been around for 12 years, and I didn't start with them, but I was a big fan from the beginning, and then they just hired me and in my niche as well. And the reason why they have success, they're connecting with their audience. In fact, they're starting to have little pop up meetup groups in certain cities now. So it's, it's only taking 12 years to get there, but they're connecting with their audience. And that's, that's a big deal. It's the reason why they can keep going. After 12 years, you think you'd run out of things to say and do, but they're still going.

Jon Gay  46:08  
You're at you. Reminded me of a question here, Steve, which is, I'm sure you get this for new clients like the four of us do. What do you tell somebody when you know they want to be making Joe Rogan money overnight, in terms of, if you build it, they will come. What do you tell somebody to assuage them of the idea that they're going to be overnight millionaires when they start their podcast?

Steve Stewart  46:27  
Well, whenever I first talk with somebody who's thinking about starting a podcast, one of the first questions I ever asked is, you know, what do you want to get from having a podcast? And they've got to have a selfish answer there. And once they come up with a selfish answer, because, oh, I want to help people, yeah, but you're gonna you're gonna pod fade, you're gonna burn out. You're not gonna do it, because you're not getting what you really want, which is some kind of impact and be able to continue this huge project. A podcast is not easy, so it usually comes down to, well, I do want to make some money in it as well. It might be a lead magnet for their business, things like that. Your question was,

Jon Gay  47:06  
was, what do you Yeah, what do you tell them when they say, I want to be I want to make it rich

Steve Stewart  47:10  
overnight, right? So then I tell them how long it's going to take, three years, yeah, and they've got to go the distance. And if they want to try it, I'll say, Okay, you got to commit to a year. Whether they work with me or not, doesn't matter. They've got to commit to doing it for a year. I have one client who did that. He and his co hosts are like, we're committed. We want to try this podcast thing out for one year. And about six months in, they got one client, and this one client who listened to the show, and it wasn't a big there wasn't like, getting tons of downloads at the time, one client brought their entire portfolio over, and now they were making like $20,000 a year for managing their assets. So was that a good experiment? I would do that in a heartbeat.

Johnny Podcasts  47:52  
You said you've been working on a show that's been going for 10 years. I'm sure your job 10 years ago looks a lot different than it does today. Where do you see the job of a podcast editor? What does that look like for

Steve Stewart  48:08  
most people? Being strictly a podcast editor is not going to work out as a career move. There's too many people who can do it. There's too many AI tools. People think they can do it themselves. They wouldn't pay the rate to be able to pay somebody like me a living wage. So you've got to be able to provide either, like I was saying, that excellent customer service, or more services that are valuable to the person you want to get, the busy person you want, somebody who's trying to do it as a business, not necessarily make money from the podcast, but make money because they have a podcast. It's feeding their brand Jag. You know all about this part. It's got to be able to fill that brand and make the money over there. Otherwise they're not going to pay you. Because a lot of podcasts think they're going to make money on advertising. But $20 CPM, you do the math, yeah, if you get 5000 downloads, 20, you know, let's say it's $40 CPM, what is that? 200 bucks, right? That's not a living wage, unheard of, yeah, to make a podcast. Podcasters aren't they're based they're barely breaking even when you think about, you know, got the media host and whatever else they might be, you know, renting the script to help with the post production. They can't hire an editor for 200 bucks a month. So, yeah, it's tough. So a podcast editor, strictly an editor, probably not, but it's a skill that definitely needs to be learned by someone who wants to do that service for somebody else, saying that they're the person just wants to hit record and you do the rest type of thing. Yeah.

Johnny Podcasts  49:39  
I mean, that's what I sell to people. Is all you have to do is figure out who you who you want to talk to, and what you want to talk about. I will take care of the rest, video, audio, everything in between, upload management, social clips, you're getting the full bag, plus the customer service. I don't even think today you could just strictly be an audio editor only and and I. Transition starting out, yeah, or have the ability to like you're you, that's your job, but you're outsourcing everything else. All of the other pieces of a great of a podcast that come together are coming from you. You're just having other I

Matt Cundill  50:16  
think an easy one for anybody who is just editing, I think a logical place to go is into the artwork, because a lot of podcasts just don't have the right packaging for it. So even after you produce the audio, what's the next thing you need? Well, Steve pointed out that he was doing show notes. Show Notes are obviously very important, but to what Steve mentioned, we can get AI to do that now, using the transcript and whatnot. The next logical place would be the artwork. And after that, it gets into, you know, hosting, and then, you know, where I started to take off was being able to manage dynamic audio insertion and being sort of a bit of a whisper to sort of tell clients, here's what you can do, here's how you can promote your business. We're going to use dynamic audio insertion in order to promote your website, your newsletter and some of the other tools that you have around you. But yeah, I mean to just be an editor. Those were the days, as the song goes and the dog is singing along in the background.

Jon Gay  51:23  
Just got home, apologies.

Matt Cundill  51:26  
Problem Jag, with the dog. You just the dog now is part of the show, and we're gonna have to get a SAG after credit for it.

Catherine O'Brien  51:32  
Associate producer credit. You have been generous with your time with us. You've always been a person I know. You've been generous with your time with me in the past. You give a lot to the community that you're involved in. Can you talk a little bit about managing communities, and you've got all these editors, you've got, you've gave us the clearing call to interact with our audiences. Can you talk a little bit about managing communities and interacting with communities?

Steve Stewart  52:02  
Just clients, you know, what do you want to get out of this? I should have asked my own question to that when I started the Facebook group and then the academy. Well, the Academy, I understood what was going on, because my business partner tricked me into doing it, but it was the right thing to do. I always say, Mark deals, the guy who makes me do things that are good for me, managing communities. I mean, as far as like the Facebook group, you know, we put, we put parameters in place so that we don't get this the people just want to come in and spam the group. We keep that tight. I'm always in there because I like to be in there. You're talking about

Jon Gay  52:33  
filtering stuff out that's not relevant to the conversation. Steve, you've actually and, I mean, and I say this with love, you've dinged me a couple times. Hey, John, that's, that's really not what we do here. We're not talking about the Patriots take your blue Yeti tirade somewhere else.

Steve Stewart  52:46  
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it's because it's a group I want to be in. I want to, you know, and since I started it, I get to make the rules. But I wanted to make sure that it was also valuable to some other people. And I've had so many people say that the Facebook group is the only reason they go to Facebook, they don't go because of anything else. They don't want to be on Facebook because the group is so specific and valuable to the post production side that they come in and they check it out and, you know, keep up the date through there, or they feel like they can ask questions

Jon Gay  53:15  
you and mark you and Mark and whatever other moderators you're employing. I mean, you're pretty good too about avoiding the inevitable infighting that happens in the comments section on any topic, sometimes, sometimes when things get a little bit hairy, I think you guys are pretty good at reining that in, yeah?

Steve Stewart  53:30  
When somebody's insulting audacity, I do it with a smile on their you know, with my comebacks your band, yeah. But then there's things like, like, just at pod fest. Now, I wasn't able to make it to pod Fest this last year, but my business partner, Mark deal did, and we have this big backdrop that you can unfold and put up and and pod fest allowed us to set it up, and it says on the banner, hashtag, ask an editor, and all that is is for people to be able to come up. And if they're an editor, they should be able to staff the booth anytime they want. They can come up, and they're the expert now, because they're the expert now, because they're in front of this banner says, Ask an editor, and they're an editor, and then podcasters who are in the hallways can come up and ask any question. It's a great networking opportunity for everyone. And hopefully from that, we get some people make some relationships that turn into, you know, working relationships. And it's something that I love to do whenever we have the opportunity, because it seems to be the right place for it and who's who's getting hurt. You know, where's the harm in setting up banner and just having conversations in a hallway?

Johnny Podcasts  54:33  
The person that gets hurt is the crappy editor? Question. It's funny. It's funny. You say that though, Steve, because that was going to be one of my big questions, I think would be really valuable, is a lot of how we get our clients is referrals. You do great work for one person, they get introduced to other. They introduce to other people. It's sort of a snowball effect outside of referrals. You. So for a podcast editor or a producer, how would you recommend the best way to go about getting more clients?

Steve Stewart  55:05  
You're saying for the podcast editor to get more clients, best way? Yes, well, I personally love in person meetups, in person conferences. I think the in person meeting is the best way to get that introduction to get that relationship going. However, it's also the most expensive, money and time. I mean, just going to a conference is, I mean, I did the math and I posted it in a we did, I did an article in pod news, posted it, but it was like $2,000 to go to pod Fest in 2025, and that's, you know, airfare, rooms, food, things that a normal person would, yeah, things that a normal person would spend. Maybe I spend a little more. I don't know everybody's gonna be have a different airfare and hotel, but that's, that's a big commitment. But when you're in a room with podcasters and they're at a conference for podcasting, who's more serious about podcasting than person who's at a podcast conference. So the serious person's at the conference, the serious provider, service providers there. It's it's instant credibility. And if you get to speak, I mean, if you get to speak, that's even more credibility. So those in person things are the best. Now, if you're going to do it on social media, it becomes a lot more difficult. Because, again, that's the easy button. If anybody can do it, then everybody's going to do it. And it's hard to make that connection online, unless you're just providing value left and right, and you become seen as the expert. And it's not going to happen overnight, it's going to take time. But everybody's talking about sliding into the DMS on Instagram, and you know, you provide really good stuff on Tiktok, if you can do it, do it. Do it.

Johnny Podcasts  56:51  
I thought I was on a podcast this week as a guest, and I think I said every client relationship that I've developed through, like Twitter DMS has I always so I have, I have not found that to personally be the best way, but I love the idea of the in person ones. Would you recommend people do like, because there's only so many podcasting events, and would you recommend people going to like, you're with FinCon, going to a conference of an industry that they're pretty focused on. Like, a lot of the podcasts I work on, are real estate, tech investing going to those conferences, and you might be the only podcast editor there, granted, not every, probably the very few people there are going to have podcasts, but that might clear out a lot of the potential competition by going and focusing on that industry. And small pods

Steve Stewart  57:38  
absolutely go to an industry conference or a local meetup, be the one in the room who does that, or of the few who do that. And as you know, of course, you got, you can't be an introvert. You got to be out there, not obnoxiously. Of course, you just got to be out there helping people again. That's why I like doing the ask an editor booth at conferences is it gives everybody the opportunity to be able to, you know, safely start a conversation. It's not like you're pitching everything, but, yeah, don't be an introvert. Go to local meetups. They're usually less expensive, and you really do get to meet people over and over again, and those relationships build up. It's going to take time to get clients that way, but maybe they give a recommend. Oh, you should go talk to Steve over there. He's really good at this, you know, and he goes to my meetups and stuff like that. Great way to build your brand, even if you don't know the person who's eventually going to call you up. Oh, I heard about you from so and so, you want people in the room who are going to

Jon Gay  58:33  
speak your name when you're not in the room, if it's the cliche, something like that, you want people who are going to advocate for you when you're not even the room. You're saying. It's this thought here is to maybe not necessarily, be a fly on the ball at a podcasting conference. Be the podcasting person at x conference of whatever industry you're in.

Catherine O'Brien  58:49  
Yeah, I'm already picturing Johnny's booth. Ask a Podcast Producer at the next real estate, the Texas Real Estate conference that you guys do, yeah.

Johnny Podcasts  58:59  
And then you know, seven people come up to me. Are you lost? Are you at the wrong

Catherine O'Brien  59:03  
though? You know they want a podcast well.

Jon Gay  59:05  
And as we wrap up here, and I'll go back to the community thing, I know one of the reasons I've enjoyed going to podcast moving over the years is running into the people in this virtual room. But then also, thanks to Steve's groups, there are probably five or 10 editors I can name off the top of my head that the minute I see them at this conference Mark deals one people like Virginia elder, Jennifer Longworth, like, there are so many. I mean, I want to leave anybody out, but, you know, you walk in, it's like, Oh, hey, how's it going? Like you're meeting up with old friends. And there's, there's that human connection piece. It's in person and on a screen, which is awesome. So Steve, thank you for all you do for the community. If anybody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to reach you?

Steve Stewart  59:44  
Well, since we're talking about podcast editing, you got two places. You got the podcasters club and Facebook. If you just do a search for podcast editors, you'll find it because it's really one of the only ones there. And then for the Academy, if you're interested, we just reopened the doors and are giving the biggest discount that we've ever given. It's at. Podcast editor academy.com

Jon Gay  1:00:02  
Excellent, Steve. Thanks so much, Steve.

Matt Cundill  1:00:04  
By the way, I just got an email. I'm on your email list, and one just arrived a few minutes ago. So yeah, so just sign up for that.

Steve Stewart  1:00:13  
Who's in my email sending stuff out? Well, I'm

Matt Cundill  1:00:14  
podcast editors. Club

Catherine O'Brien  1:00:20  
systems are working as planned.

Jon Gay  1:00:21  
Mark did it while Steve was in the call. Yeah, yeah. Let's go around the room and we'll start up North. 

Matt Cundill  1:00:26  
Matt Cundill, Santa del Quebec, Canada. I am the owner of the sound off media company.

Catherine O'Brien  1:00:32  
Big. Thanks to you, Steve for being here. I'm Catherine O'Brien Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Come see me on Twitter. No one else seems to be there. Hello, Catherine o you.

Johnny Podcasts  1:00:40  
Know. I'm Johnny from Johnny podcast calm. Thank you so much, Steve for coming on.

Jon Gay  1:00:47  
This is really, really awesome that Steve, thank you so much. I'm John Gay from jag podcast productions outside Detroit. You can find me at jag podcast productions.com thanks for joining us today and go.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  1:00:57  
Pats. Thanks for listening, For show notes, transcripts and the video version of this episode. Check out the podcast. Super Friends at soundoff dot network. You.