Jordan Blair: Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast, the show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
What happens when a numbers person trades spreadsheets for storytelling? Well, today, you're going to find out. Today I speak with Jordan Blair, a former accountant who left the corporate world to launch a bedtime podcast. Her show started as a gift for her kids, but soon it found fans amongst college students and later, adults. We're going to talk about her creative pivot, building a business around story telling, and how it gave way to a role at Buzzsprout, where she's now helping other podcasters grow and connect through tools and community, and that's where we met, hanging out in the Buzzsprout Facebook group. But today, she joins me on the show from Boise, Idaho. Before podcasting, what did you do?

Jordan Blair  0:59  
I worked for an accounting firm.

Matt Cundill  1:03  
How did you escape the accounting firm

Jordan Blair  1:05  
listening to podcasts.

Matt Cundill  1:09  
So then there would probably be, like a gateway podcast of some sort, a podcast or two or three that just said, I want to do this. I'm hooked on this. What were those podcasts?

Jordan Blair  1:19  
Oh, man, you know what it was. What hooked me is I stumbled upon multitude productions podcasts. The first one was spirits, which is a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. And I was like, that's very fun. And so I would listen to that while I was doing like bookkeeping. And then I discovered that they had another podcast in their collective called Potter list, and it was about a 24 year old man who was reading the Harry Potter books for the first time. And it was a comedy podcast, and I got super into that too. And I was like, Man, I am sold on podcasts like these are so fun. And it totally made me just completely escape the monotony of doing bookkeeping, because that's kind of a mindless task.

Matt Cundill  2:01  
So what was the escape plan? Was it to start a podcast or to go work in podcasting?

Jordan Blair  2:07  
I left my job after like, seven years at the accounting firm, and I actually left because I'd gotten into doing contract work, petitioning for visas for like, non immigrant workers, like agricultural workers coming in, so I was doing a lot of that. And it turned out I was really good at that. And so I was just like, oh, well, go explore this then. And then I started doing a little bit of, like, graphic design work over here for this. And then, like I said, I'd gotten into podcasts, and so I was trying to get my kids in a podcast too. And I was like, Hey, this is perfect for bedtime. Like they could listen to a podcast to go to sleep. So I went and looked and at that time, a lot of the children's BEDTIME STORY podcasts were just not that great at all. It was very like high energy, like, we're gonna do a little short story about a caterpillar today. And I was like, my kids are not gonna dig this. And I had a background as a children's librarian, and I also did theater. And I was like, I could just do this. It can't be that hard to make a podcast, right? Like, this is gonna be so easy. And so I Googled how to start a podcast, and I learned how to do it, and then that's how I started mine.

Matt Cundill  3:18  
So the idea was to get kids to go to sleep. And, you know, so often I think of, you know, going to sleep blue screen is just so bad. So you can't let your kid go to sleep with an iPad. You can't let them with a phone, a television. All these things are not really going to work because they're very stimulating. But in the world of audio, even like the exciting kid stuff, and I've done voice work for kids programs, and it is the second highest energy thing you have to do outside of video games, where there's fighting involved. So how did that first few months of doing a children's podcast to encourage them to go to sleep? How did that go for you?

Jordan Blair  3:55  
It went well. I think what happened was I just researched and researched and researched and I watched like all the buzz brought YouTube videos, and I listened to the like Buzz brought how to start a podcast, podcast, and I listened to a podcasters round table, and I benched all those and then I listened to like Dave Jackson School of podcasting, and I just consumed as much content about podcasting as I possibly could. And I did it for months. And then finally, my husband was like, Okay, enough is enough. I'm just gonna, like, buy you the equipment that you want, and then you have to start, and you can't procrastinate by learning anymore. And so I did it, and I think that I just, like, studied enough that it wasn't that difficult. But also I think what happened was the tools that are available nowadays for like, starting a podcast makes it so easy, and so it felt very simple to me. I felt like I could do it very easily. I think the hardest thing for me was putting it out there. And I didn't promote it at all. I just put it out there, and I was like, this is really for my kids, and if nobody listens, that's great. I. And then a lot of people did end up listening. And so it went really well, but it gave me a little bit of anxiety, because I didn't actually intend my podcast to be for other people, which is kind of silly, but, you know, it's

Matt Cundill  5:13  
great that it works out that way. I think Dave Jackson, one of the things he professes is that, you know, you spend your first year finding your voice, and you've got something pretty specific here. You've got a specific audience. What was it like in those first few months trying to find your voice? Like, did it change? Did you have to read faster, slower, change your delivery at all?

Jordan Blair  5:35  
I think what kind of the only thing that really comes to mind for me, I think I stuck to it very well. Like the way that I started is not that different from where I'm at now, like five, six years later, but what I did find is that I had to kind of adjust a little bit how quickly I read, because sometimes when you get tired and you just want to get through the chapter, you read a little bit faster. And for a bedtime story podcast, that wasn't like the best thing to do. And so what would happen is I would just, kind of like, while editing, extend it, like 2% it was just like a little kiss of like slowness, and it it helped a little bit whenever I'd get antsy to finish the story. But I've kind of quit doing that sense,

Matt Cundill  6:23  
am I right in believing that you don't need to be a child to fall asleep to these stories?

Jordan Blair  6:29  
Yeah, I actually so, as I said, I started this for my kids, and then what ended up happening was, about a year, maybe two years into the podcast, I started doing listener surveys, and I had people writing in and I had all these like, Patreon and subscription members communicating with me and stuff. And then I realized very quickly that the people listening were not children. I was really making this for kids. And then it turned out to be like, guys in college that would write me and be like, Hey, I know this is, like, kind of lame, but I really love your podcast, to go to sleep, and it really helps, or to be like a woman in her 70s that was just like, I love these so much. And my listeners were craving more mature content, like Jane Austen and Edgar Allan Poe and things like that. And I just realized, like, oh, I don't think this is for kids anymore. And so I had to kind of pivot and take it out in kids and family category, and put it into like more of a mental health space, because I realized through my communication with my listeners and the engagement that they were giving me, that I was actually serving a different purpose than what I thought initially.

Matt Cundill  7:34  
That's really cool. I think you you filled in the void that was left behind by radio millennials. I don't think really got a chance to fall asleep to radio the way Gen X and Boomers did. I myself would fall asleep listening to the baseball game or a sports show. Wouldn't often be music, because I found music was a little bit stimulating. But falling asleep to someone's voice is something that we learn at a very young age. And you know, for years, we would continue to do it. Even my grandmother at the time, she would stick the plug in her ear and listen to the baseball game. And she was in her 90s at the time, still doing that. And I think millennials didn't really grow up on that. I think they disconnected from it, and I think podcasting is a way to reintroduce audio into their sleep habits.

Jordan Blair  8:18  
Yeah, I would agree with that. I know for me, I did not grow up with like a TV in my bedroom. My husband did, and so he talks about falling asleep to the TV every night. I personally fell asleep to a cassette of Electric Light Orchestra like every night. I don't know why, but that was like my sleeping music. And so what album? Oh, gosh, I don't even remember. I mean, it was whatever evil woman and all those songs were on, but yeah, that was one of my favorite albums when I was like eight.

Matt Cundill  8:53  
Music Licensing, by the way, you've got music in the show. And I think music licensing is a very complicated part of podcasting, for many podcasters are saying, Oh, where do I get this? And they're really just looking for something for an intro, but yours goes a little bit deeper. You've got music carrying you through, you know, and transitioning throughout the show. What advice can you offer people looking for some music for their podcasts?

Jordan Blair  9:18  
I think a big thing that I learned when looking for music from my podcast was that oftentimes people conflate royalty free with Creative Commons. So they will Google royalty free music, thinking this is free music that I can use, but really, what it just means is that you don't pay royalty every single time it's played, right? And what you really want if you're looking for free, music is Creative Commons. And so I found so many resources online where you can get creative Commons music, which really just means that you download the music for free, you can use it. Sometimes you can change it or manipulate it, or add your own stuff to that music. And. And all you have to do is attribute the author in the show notes of your podcast, and that's good enough, and that's all they really want. You know, of course, you can donate, throw $1 in their tip jar or something like that, if you want to do that for the creators. But I think that that was something that I learned very quickly, was the difference between royalty free and creative comments.

Matt Cundill  10:21  
Yeah, you bringing back memories for me with the Free Music Archive.

Jordan Blair  10:24  
I love Free Music Archive.

Matt Cundill  10:28  
Yeah. You know, for years, I think a lot of our early bumpers, and when I say early, I mean the first 250 episodes, a number of those bumpers came from the Free Music Archive.

Jordan Blair  10:37  
That is a solid resource, and I think it's underutilized. It is kind of hard to navigate. But in recent years, they've updated their like genre instrument searches like that, where you can really like narrow things down. And that's kind of the other thing with like Creative Commons music is you have to set aside time to comb through there's so many great websites in compitech, I'm trying to think of like Pixabay. There's all these different places that you can go and find these Creative Commons music, jingles or full songs or anything like that. But you you do have to, like, dedicate an evening, you know, to listen to a lot of music until you find what you want.

Matt Cundill  11:17  
We're not quite at the halfway point of the show yet, but you know, and maybe you've already been served the ad, depending on where you live in this planet. But we're sponsored by mega tracks. And mega tracks does all of our music. And one of the things I would like about them is the AI components that you can use to find out, you know, songs. So I want a song that sounds a little bit like Coldplay. Here's 30 seconds of it. Do you have anything? And yes, it will be served up. Now, the Free Music Archive is free, right? So they don't, obviously have all these tools built into it, yet. It will take you a little bit longer to find the stuff, but we've used that many times before, and it's certainly well worth the time to go through to grab the necessary music. And please follow the licensing, give the credit where credit's due, and use the stems when you can and don't. When they say, Don't you took a break at one point with your podcast. Why'd you take a break? It

Jordan Blair  12:06  
was when I very first started my podcast. I think I was like five months into it. This is years ago, so I could be off by a little bit, but I think I was like five months into it. The kids were really busy in the spring with, like, school and stuff like that. And I was like, Nah, I don't really have time for this right now. I'm just gonna, like, keep life going and take like, a couple months off, do some episode planning, and I'll get back to it when I get back to it. And, you know, at that time, I had, like, I want to say, like, 100 downloads a month at that point. So it was like, whatever. But So yeah, I took, I took a couple months off for my podcast.

Matt Cundill  12:43  
We can all look at downloads and talk about downloads, and you and I can talk about downloads all the time, but I want to go back to the survey. When you started to survey your audience, I think this is fascinating. It's something that I think more people should do. We don't do it, but you did it at an early stage here to get the feedback. What did you ask and how did you get them to complete the

Jordan Blair  13:04  
survey? So what I did was I just created a Google form, because it's free and it works, and you can put it into the Google Sheets, like you can have it feed into Google Sheets and just check it as people are filling out the survey. Really, what I just asked was trying to figure out things a for getting sponsorships. So advertisers are interested in like demographics of your audience, which obviously you can get a lot of the information from Spotify. You can get a general idea, a snapshot of age, gender, locations you can get from Buzzsprout, like you can get all that kind of stuff, but what you can't get from those is like, yearly household income education. You know, are have? Are they high school graduates or bachelor's, master's things like that? I don't really know why advertisers are interested in that, but they are so you can get information like that. Do they have pets? Do they have kids? And it's it's not like the creepy analytics, where spies are figuring that information out for you. It's more just you asking, and if they want to tell you that information, they can. And I also would put something in there that serves your podcast. So for my podcast, I would say at the very end, thank you so much. Like, do you have any story suggestions for me? And that turned out to be the best thing ever. So I still have a Google Sheet with like, 400 responses, and in the all of them filled out that last box. And some of them would just say something nice about the podcast, which is always super fun, or they would send me story suggestions I could look into. And it was so great because I could get kind of obscure folk tales or something from like around the world I'd never heard of. And I look into it, I'm like, Man, this is gorgeous. And so I would do an episode of that, and it would make people very excited. So yeah, I think. But that is the easiest thing to do. You just drop a link in the show notes. If you do have a website, you can put a link on your website. So I would just have a survey link. And the first year that I did it, I would just put the survey link up for like a month, and then I realized, like, people are filling this out every time they see it. And so I just leave the survey up. It is just up in perpetuity, and people can fill it out if they want. And it just kind of like accumulates information as it goes. One year when I started, like, making enough money off the podcast to start offering up these kind of goods, I did offer up a Amazon gift card, and I said, Hey, fill out the survey, and then I will do an Amazon gift card giveaway, because you can just email it to people. You don't have to mail anything. And that did not work. Surprisingly, I did not get more submissions. And I was just like, oh, well, I'm not gonna do that anyway. But I think that is something that you could do. You could test it out and see if you get more responses that way. But a lot of my listeners were just happy to submit their story suggestions through a survey, and that was all they wanted.

Matt Cundill  16:02  
You said making money. And I know people are thinking, Oh, how did she do that? I do know you've got a premium tier with your podcast, but what are some of the other ways you've found to bring in a little extra revenue?

Jordan Blair  16:15  
Yeah, I mean, listener support is by far my biggest revenue generator. I just offer two bonus episodes a month. It's really not a big deal. It doesn't take that much time, but it's enough that people feel compelled to subscribe support the show. Obviously, I give like listener shout outs and stuff like that. Just tell them thank you and sweet dreams, and that seems to work really well. People buy it for birthdays and anniversaries and stuff like that. It's very fun. But I also have offered packages where I would hand write a holiday card and send it to them in the mail with like a sticker. Or I would do affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing worked very well, and that's super easy, because it's not like when you're trying to get a brand deal or a sponsorship affiliate, like referral codes, you can usually just go to a company's website that you really like, and it's very easy to fill out a form to become a partner, like a referral partner with them, takes two seconds, and they're more than happy to give out a code to you, and then you just use that, put it on your website, maybe do an ad, read, you know, not saying that you're sponsored by the show, but just saying, like, Hey, there's this product that I really like, and I think that you guys would like it too. And if you use the code, it helps support the show, and you get a discount on it if you use it too. And I found that affiliate codes work really well. And then also, of course, like, once my show got a little bigger, I was able to get sponsorships for the podcast, I

Matt Cundill  17:42  
could just think it must be like an endless number of companies that would line up to want to be a part of the show, to get people to go to sleep.

Jordan Blair  17:50  
Uh, you'd think so. I've been having a hard time getting bedding companies, if you can believe that.

Matt Cundill  17:57  
Oh, I was thinking pillows. I know, yeah. Do

Jordan Blair  18:00  
you know how many of those people I've pitched to? Nah, they want nothing to do with it. But, I mean, you do get a lot of when your show grows enough where you're getting like attention from advertisers and brands, you will get offers from companies that probably won't align with your podcast. And that was something that I had to really stick my guns to, because, you know, if I got like, a cell phone company or something like that coming to me, and I'm just like, oh, I can make like, 500 bucks right now, but it'll also betray my listeners, right? And so I have to turn those kind of things down, because it's just not right. It's not something that I endorse. I don't actually use that company. And so it wouldn't be honest of me to say, like, Hey, I am sponsored by this person. You'd love them, even if I didn't love them. So I make sure that I'm very, very intentional, that my brand alignment, you know, works with my audiences. So

Matt Cundill  18:58  
what about melatonin? Or, like, what I used to go to sleep was, like, magnesium.

Jordan Blair  19:04  
Oh yeah, magnesium, yeah, I will do supplements. I had a beauty company send me some supplements that were amazing. Oh my gosh, they knocked me out. And so I did some ad reads for them. And yeah, so I will all do things like that. Absolutely, I have an air purifier company that sponsors me. I have a water purifier company that sponsors me, which works because as a podcaster, I need to drink a lot of water. And so I was so happy to have this company sponsor me, and I love their water purifier. And then I also had, like the air purifier, which you know, when you sleep and you're stuffed up, it's harder to sleep. So sometimes there are things that aren't quite exactly on the nose with like sleeping, but I'm able to make it work for my audience, and those sponsors keep coming back, and so I know that it works. And

Matt Cundill  19:56  
then there was the explosion of video podcasting, and I'm thinking to my. Off. Oh boy, that's not really gonna work, because people are not watching videos, at least they shouldn't be to try to fall asleep. That's not how it works. So how did you approach the video explosion?

Jordan Blair  20:11  
You know, I when I first heard about it, I was like, Okay, let's test this out, because it doesn't make a lot of sense for, as you said, a sleep podcast, to be making video. And so I had my husband get on Adobe Premiere, and just kind of like finagle, some moving clouds in the background of a video as it played. Nothing crazy, you know, and it was just, it was just this, like static, sort of not static, but I guess this looping, cloud moving video, that's all it was. And I put it up there, and I did like 10 videos. I did 10 of my like, most popular ones, and put them up on YouTube and, like, nothing happened. And I also did the static image uploads, like, through the RSS ingestion and like, I don't know. I haven't checked those numbers in months. Who knows? It could have absolutely exploded on YouTube, but I don't care enough to check because it it doesn't populate into my podcast host. But it was so much work, and I was like, I don't even know if I want to make these, like, looping videos for a sleep podcast. It just seems kind of silly to

Matt Cundill  21:19  
me. My podcast is on YouTube. We're only here for the search. Yeah, like

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  21:25  
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Jordan Blair  21:55  
How'd you get on a buzz sprout? Okay. So as I said, I researched a whole bunch about how to start a podcast when I was learning about it. And one of the things that I came across was the Buzzsprout community group on Facebook, where we know each other from. And I got really involved in there. I think I was kind of bothering the mods a lot, because whenever I see someone breaking the rules or spamming members, I would constantly be DMing them and saying, like, hey, this person is, you know, a bot, or this person is sending, like, inappropriate stuff. And I think I did that for like, months, and then finally they were just like, do you just want to be a moderator? Yes, thank you, and then I can just remove these people myself. So that was, like, really, how I got my foot in the door with Buzz sprout was just by, like, bugging them enough and like, kind of being a person that was in the group constantly, like no other life. I was just talking to other podcasters.

Matt Cundill  22:54  
And now you're actually involved with the show that you first started listening to to get tips, and now you're providing tips.

Jordan Blair  23:02  
I know it was wild, because, okay, buzzcast was one of my favorite podcasts, which sounds so weird to say, but I listened to all their episodes probably two or three times through, like, re listened. I was a big buzzcast fan girl, and I remember when I went to Podcast Movement in Nashville, and I got to meet them, and I was, like, so excited. And yeah, and now I'm a co host of that show, which is kind of weird. I don't think if you had told me that a couple years ago, I would have even believed that. But yeah, so I'm a co host on buzzcast, and it's, it's such a fun thing to be trained in how to do something by the company that you end up working for is so cool. I was able to do that through the free resources that they provided, just online and on YouTube. How's that show come together? So what we do, it's sort of a current events show. Sort of, it is a current events show. We cover current events. So what I'll do is, throughout the week. I'll just pull stories. Sometimes, if the guys see something that they like, they'll drop it into a chat, and I'll just put together, like an outline of the stories that I want to talk about. You know, we'll have a segment of people sending in responses to us whenever we ask, like, a question about podcasting, or if you know, they want to just make a comment about something, we have a whole segment towards the end of the show where we will read those off. We'll read off the fan mail messages and respond to them. And it's quite an interesting thing to put together, because when I first started there, the guys would have their outline was literally just like a bullet point of like, Okay, we're gonna talk about this story, and then we're gonna talk about this story, and then we're gonna talk about this story. That was it. And I come from a background of scripting everything out, and it kind of like stressed me out, and so I'm trying to find, like, a balance, because Kevin, my co host, hates reading. Get so aggravated when I have, like, the longest outline ever, and I'll do screenshots, and I'll have all this, like, fancy stuff, and he just doesn't even want to look at it. He doesn't want anything to do with it. And it's kind of funny, because we've, like, balanced each other out, like he's a little bit more willing to look at outlines now, and I've kind of chilled out on the outlines a bit more, and I'm a little bit more willing to improvise than I used to be. And so we'll just record for like an hour or two, and I'll edit it and drop it that week, which is different, but yeah,

Matt Cundill  25:34  
I love all the things that buzz sprout has, which we already talked about, the Facebook group and we talked about buzzcast. And also the newsletter shows up every Tuesday. Very useful.

Jordan Blair  25:48  
It is good, yeah, yeah. Megan puts the newsletter together. And then we started the buzz throughout weekly podcast, which is a quick, she's just basically reading the newsletter out loud. Podcast, yeah, so the newsletter is great. I actually will pull stories from that sometimes for my show. So Megan does a little bit of leg work there, and

Matt Cundill  26:08  
Buzzsprout is one of the bigger podcast hosts out there. Why is it so popular? And why should anyone who's thinking about starting a podcast start there?

Jordan Blair  26:17  
Yeah, I think Buzzsprout is popular because we have been very intentional with how we have designed it. It's very much geared towards independent podcasters. We don't lose that site. I think a lot of companies will sometimes, you know, they'll start out the first one that comes to my mind, actually, Spotify used to be anchor, you know? It started out as this, like, free thing, and it was for independent podcasters that didn't have, like, recording equipment and all that stuff. And what happens is they get really popular, and there's all these people on their platform, and then they realize, ah, that's not really a good business model. And so they start taking away these features that brought these independent podcasters to them in the first place, and so they'll, like, remove the recording software, and they'll remove all these monetization features for people or whatever. And I think what has really helped Buzzsprout to grow to be such a big part of the podcasting industry is just like our unwavering laser focus on we are here to help people start podcasting and make it as easy as humanly possible. You can start a podcast in five minutes on it, and you can get listed in one click. And it is so simple, anybody can do it. And if you run any problems, we have the best customer support out there, and we are not trying to become the next like megaphone or I heart. We are just focused solely on our love of podcasting and our love of podcasters. And so I think that that is really what has maybe not outwardly set buzz brought apart, but that's what set buzz brought apart. And that's really what has helped us with innovating features to include in, like, paid plans. You know, like, we have this gorgeous podcasting website, we have fan mail, we have monetization features where, like, you don't get paid, or we don't get paid until you get paid. You know, we have all this, like, listener support, and we have dynamic content that's, like, included in it, and there's just, I can't even think of everything else, but, like, there's just so many features that are there to help an independent podcaster that doesn't have a background in podcasting to go. Wait, I can do this. This isn't that hard.

Matt Cundill  28:35  
Yeah, I think, you know, from what I've when I've spoken to, you know, Buzzsprout, whether it's a Podcast Movement. It feels like they want to keep me podcasting, and they're giving me the tools to make sure that my podcast has every opportunity to become successful and as well, solving problems for podcasters. And the one that I think is kind of general, is fan mail.

Jordan Blair  28:54  
Oh, I love it, yes,

Matt Cundill  28:56  
like all we've talked about for years in podcasting as well, how do we connect with our listeners? Well, if only they could pick up the phone and call us, and it was like a radio station. But, you know, here's fan mail. So just briefly tell people how fan mail works,

Jordan Blair  29:07  
because I think this is great. Oh man, fan mail. This was actually such a fun experiment for us to run. If you are a listener of buzzcast, then you will know this. We will often experiment with our listeners and see what works and what doesn't work. And it's really fun to do that. And like, not be afraid to fail on our own podcast. And we sort of like test the waters for the podcasters that listen. And so if it works for us, like, it's probably gonna work for you. We were doing this, oh my gosh. We were doing this crazy call to action at the end of every episode where it was like, Yeah, to send in your responses, just let us know on this thing. You can leave us a voice note. You can reach us in the Facebook group, and you can Tweet us at twitter, and you can, like, do all this stuff, or email the support. And we had all these different things, and my co host, Kevin was just like, there has got to be something different. Like, I can't draw. I came and Stan listening to you rattle off all these different ways. I can't imagine how our listeners feel. They're probably super annoyed by this. And so they started testing out a link in the show notes for a listener to click and then send us a text message via SMS. And it was such like a weird thing, but we tested it out, and we got so many responses that time, because before it was like, we'd have to ask, and then, you know, like, maybe we would like ask people in the community to also send in responses, and then we'd act like they were sending in the responses to the podcast, you know, the whole thing. And when we did that text message link, we got so many direct responses from listeners, and we went, Okay, maybe there's something here. And then so we developed that as a feature in Buzzsprout. So we have a phone number, and there's sort of like an extension that's associated with your podcast, and so it's included in all paid plans, and you just like, click and you can enable fan mail, and I'll drop a link in your show notes that you can edit. So for example, R says Text the show. My BEDTIME STORY podcast says Text me a story suggestion. And so people know when they click that link, they can text me a story suggestion. Or, you know, when we ask a question on buzzcast, people can, like, click the link, and they can text the show to give us their responses. And it's really cool because, you know, we have the Buzzsprout app, and I love it when we do get a fan mail response, because it'll just, like, pop up as a notification, like, you got fan mail with, like, a little heart, and it'll have the person's message on there. And sometimes people will just say super nice things real quick. It's wonderful. I much prefer it to getting, like, ratings and reviews and stuff like that.

Matt Cundill  31:47  
What's one podcast tool that you have in your studio could be on your computer. It could be piece of hardware or software that you just can't live without.

Jordan Blair  31:56  
Oh, this is such a hard question, because we need it all, and we want it all. I need it all. I want it all. You know what? I actually got something new last year. I got the rodecaster duo, and I got the White Edition. It's so gorgeous, and it was so funny because I had the rodecaster Pro before that, and it had a really good preamp in it. So, and I'm using the sure SM 7b which needs, like, a lot of power to it needs a lot of gain. It's very gain hungry. But when I went from the rodecaster Pro to the rodecaster duo, A, it took up so much less space on my desk, which was amazing. And then B, the preamps in it, and the audio processing is so much better. It just, I feel like my audio sounds so good now that I got this rodecaster duo. And previously, I would have said my Adobe Audition editing software, because I love that. But now that I have this duo, honestly, my audio doesn't need that much editing done, and I just love it.

Matt Cundill  33:03  
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned actually the microphone, because before you know, we went on, I said that I've got problems today with people blowing leaves in the backyard, and also the Winnipeg Jets are flying airplanes over because they've got a playoff hockey game tonight, and there's noise. And here I am with a condenser microphone that is really great and wonderful, but I'm getting outside noise all of a sudden. Since I moved I was thinking, maybe I want to assure SM 7b but then you talked about the power, and it needs a lot of juice. And as you're talking, I'm thinking, do I have enough juice in this board? I got a duet, an apple duet, but it's going through a mixing board here, which is a sound craft.

Jordan Blair  33:41  
Well, you know what? Sure actually heard the cries of help from their users, from the people who have purchased the SM 7b and I think it was also last year they came out with the sure SM dB, which has a built in preamp, and so you don't need a cloud lifter for it. So that is something that you can get. I think it's a little bit more expensive, a little bit it's probably like 100 bucks more expensive, I'm not actually sure, than the regular SM 7b but I think a cloud lifter is also like 150 bucks. So it's kind of nice having something that's like built into it. But yeah,

Matt Cundill  34:21  
well, thank you for that tip. Next time we talk, I'll probably have that microphone installed to avoid the noise issue that I might have had here today. So,

Jordan Blair  34:29  
oh yeah, that was one of the mistakes that, like I made when I first started podcasting, was I got a condenser mic because I saw that condenser mics are very kind to female voices. It's very bright and pretty. And I was like, I want that, but I live downtown, and I didn't realize that my microphone was going to pick up the lawnmower shop next to me, and it was just such a silly thing, because I had to record in like the dead of night, except for there's a bar across the street too. So even that didn't work out very well. Well. And once I got a dynamic microphone, now I can have stuff like, I mean, like I said, before we started recording, I have, I live near the airport, and I have, like, a CrossFit gym next to me, and I have, like, the police department just a few blocks that way. And so it's so wonderful because my microphone does not pick up all that stuff. It's fantastic.

Matt Cundill  35:22  
It's a must for anybody who owns a dog.

Jordan Blair  35:25  
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Matt Cundill  35:28  
Jordan, it's great to meet you. Thanks for all your help inside the Facebook group and continued success. Thank

Jordan Blair  35:34  
you so much, Matt. I loved coming on here, so I hope I get to come back again.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  35:39  
The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan serminsky, edited by Taylor MacLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai