Full Transcript: How to Start a Podcast – Equipment & Software – Pat Flynn

Full Transcript: How to Start a Podcast – Equipment & Software – Pat Flynn

: Hi my name is Pat Flynn and I'm here to help you get your podcast up and running in no time at all. And it's exciting because a podcast has changed my life in so many different ways not just with my business but also my personal life. It's helped me make a better connection with my audience. But more than that it's helped open up so many new doors and opportunities for me from speaking to writing books to selling courses and all kinds of other things too. So I'm excited that you're diving into podcasting too.

: Now to start out with in this video, we're going to talk about equipment and software and all the things you might need to get set up and running on a budget. So I'm not gonna make you spend a bunch of money on all these big random boxes which – yes, they are useful, they will help – but actually you don't need that to get started. I want to remove all the overwhelm and distractions for you and just get you going right away.

: And also make sure you stick around to the end because I'm gonna give you exactly what you need to figure out now the mandatory items for your podcast that you need or else you can't move forward. So let's just start right in with the equipment that we need.

: So obviously we're starting a podcast here and people are gonna be listening to your voice. So you want to make sure you have the right tool that can help best send that voice over to that person's ear when they're listening to your show. You can have the best content in the world but if it doesn't sound great, people aren't gonna be listening to you for that long.

: Now there's a wide range of microphones available to you to help you produce your podcasts. And you can spend anywhere between 20 dollars for a cheapo mic or even thousands of dollars for your best sounding broadcasting-type microphone. For your podcast though, again I want to make things easy for you and I want to make sure that you don't need any other external boxes and all these cords and other things that, yes, professional broadcasters use, but we live in a time now where you don't need all that stuff still to sound like a pro.

: The microphone that I would recommend that you start out with is this one right here which is the Audio-Technica ATR 2100 USB. The price of this microphone is under 100 dollars which is great. It also comes with a stand a, USB cord, and an XLR connection. Now the beauty of this microphone is that you don't need this XLR cable and the mixers and all those other things that a professional broadcaster might need. All you need is a USB connection which comes with to your computer to help you sound great. It also comes with a little mic stand which I would actually recommend replacing with this next item.

: Instead of using a stand, I would recommend using one of these boom arms for your mic. This allows you to connect your microphone, hook the stand on your desk using this little clamp here. This fits in and then you're able to bring the microphone to your face, keep it off your desk, and allows you just for more flexibility.

: Now in addition to that, I would also recommend what's called a shock mount. Now shock mount, as you can see here, allows the microphone to be suspended sort of in midair. And what this does is it allows for the vibrations from your table and your computer and any other equipment, perhaps you might bang on your microphone a little bit, it allows the vibrations to be absorbed by these little rubber bands here and have the sound not in your mic.

: Alright, and then finally the last thing you need is something that helps you reduce the plosives. What are plosives? Plosives are your B words and P words that when you blow into the microphone with those letters, it'll create a popping sound and you do not want that. So you can use what's called a pop filter or something like a wind screen to help stop the plosives from happening.

: Okay so to recap those things one more time, we have the microphone, the boom arm, the shock mount, the wind screen or pop filter, and then of course you need to plug it in. USB. And if you need a dongle, you can use this dongle too. And then finally the links of these products are below this video.

: All right so after you plug in, make sure that you fire the mic on, and then go into your systems preferences into your computer, and find the sound. And just make sure that the ATR USB microphone or the mic that you plugged in is the one that's highlighted, so that we know that the sound from our voice is going through the mic and into the computer.

: Now that we're done hooking up our equipment, we're gonna dive into our editing software so that we can record our voice, chop off these audio clips, and also create what would be eventually a podcast episode. Now to start, you're gonna watch me do a super quick and basic tutorial on Garage Band which is for Mac users. So if you're on a PC, you can use Audacity which is also free too. Alright so I'm gonna keep this super short and sweet. However if you want a more detailed tutorial about Garage Band or Audacity, I have a tutorial for each of them both below this video.

: OK so really quick, we're gonna open up an empty project here in Garage Band. And then really quick, we just want to make sure that the microphone that we have selected is the one that we want. So as you can see here, Input 1, it does say the ATR USB microphone. So we're clear there. And we are just recording using a microphone. So great.

: We're going to hit create and you're gonna now see one track. This is a single track, and tracks work like layers. If I had a second track, which I could add down here if I wanted to, by hitting that plus symbol and doing the same thing, I can hit create. And now we see two audio tracks. And depending on the one that I'm highlighted on is the one that's gonna be recording.

: Now why would you need separate tracks? You need separate tracks for different voices. Perhaps one track is just for the interview that you're recording, or maybe you have some music or voice-overs that you're just gonna drag and drop into this. Either way, it's nice to have it organized like that and not just have it all live on one line.

: Now before we get going here, remember: we are recording a podcast, not producing music which Garage Band is primarily built for. So we're gonna change the settings here from bars and beats to time. And to do that we just need to click on this drop down menu here and select time. As you can see now we have an understanding of how long we would have podcasting for. And then we can turn off these other devices here like the countdown or the metronome.

: And now we're all set to begin recording. And to record, all you have to do is hit the red button there and or R on your keyboard like this. And now I'm recording an episode. And as you can hear and see, as you're falling along you can see waveforms depending on when I speak and how loud I speak too. Now looking back here we can see a playback. We can actually drag this playhead all the way back to the beginning and hit play and we can listen to exactly what we just said.

: And now I'm recording an episode. And as you can hear and see, as you're falling along you can see waveforms depending on when I speak and how loud I speak too.

: As you can see there when I got a little bit louder, the waveforms are much higher. Now just some really basic editing tips for you. You want to make sure that when you're editing, you get as precise as possible.

: And to do that you will need to zoom into those parts that you want to delete or change or move around. So let's zoom in really quick. You can do that a couple of ways by dragging the slider over if you wanted to or you can just use the pinch zoom on your laptop if you have one of those as well.

: And what I want to do is get rid of that loud part. Let's say I just didn't want that anymore. So I'm gonna find that loud part and I know because of that waveform that it typically will start right there and if I were to play you'll hear that loud moment.

: How loud.

: But let's say I wanted to get rid of that because it just didn't fit into my episode, it maybe was a mistake, sometimes you might sneeze or cough during an episode. There are gonna be moments when you'll want to take something out.

: And to take something out, all you have to do is essentially split this recording into two and then remove that part. So to do that all you have to do, really simply, is to move that play into where you want to make that split. You go to Edit and then hit Split Regions at Playhead. The shortcut here is Command+T. So I'm gonna do that right now and you should see it split into two. And now if I want to get rid of this one, I can just delete it and there it's gone. Now let's say I didn't want to do that. But I actually wanted to insert something in the middle.

: So I'm actually gonna undo my delete there, I'm gonna slide this over, and then I'm gonna record something in the middle here just simply by pressing record like this. Hey this is the recording in the middle. Woohoo! And now I know there's a gap here so I'm gonna move this over just a little bit.

: And now I'm going to play all of it starting from before that gap and then after.

: -ending on when I speak and hey this is the recording in the middle. Woohoo! How loud I speak too.

: Now before moving on, one more really important tip. When you are recording audio, the last thing you want to do is record audio that's too loud. The technical term for this is getting too hot with your mic, meaning it is so loud that when a person listens to it on the other end it sounds distorted. And the way that you can check to see if your audio is too loud is either by looking at these waveforms – if these waveforms extend beyond the size of this track here then it is too loud – or as you're recording you're able to see this green bar move into the yellow. Yellow is OK but if it gets ever to the red then that means that you were probably too loud. I'm gonna hit record here and do a little clicking noise that I know will fire off a red a red mark here and you'll see exactly what happens and also what it looks like on the waveforms here, like this.

: You see how it bumped up to the red there. Now look at this mark here. It goes from all the way to the top to the bottom. That is too loud and it will never ever be processed in a way, even with as much editing as you wanted to do, in a way that sounds great for the user listening to your podcast. So the best practice is to play around with the audio volume before you record so that it gets as high as it can be without firing off to the red at your natural sounding voice.

: Alright and finally I want to share with you how easy it is to import audio files from elsewhere into this podcast episode. For example, voice-over work or perhaps some music. All you have to do is download that music, and if it's music make sure it's royalty free. I'm going to drag and drop that file into this second track here. There you see the waveforms pop up and if I drag this over to the beginning now when I hit play here you're probably going to hear the music at first and then my voice come in. However I can already tell that the musics can be too loud. I'll show you how to solve that in just a minute. But let me hit play and see what happens.

: You can barely hear my voice. So what do we need to do? We need to adjust the levels of both ourselves and the audio file here from the music. So to do the music really quick. Quite simply you just have to turn the volume down for all of them if you want to do that. In the more technical tutorial that I share with you, I show you how to fade out and do things like that but this one let's just turn this down maybe 15 decibels and play with that. A lot of what this is is just experimentation because you can always change things and keep keep going through to make sure it gets better and better. So let's hit play and see what happens now.

: And now I'm recording an episode. And as you can hear and see, as you're falling along you can see waveforms depending.

: It's getting a little bit better. Let's turn it down even more.

: And now I'm recording an episode. And as you can hear and see, as you're falling along you can see waveforms depending on when I speak.

: Sounds a little bit better. Now we can obviously continue on and make this perfect but we don't need to. do that right now. What we need to do is continue talking about the rest of this tutorial so we can get you set up.

: Alright. So now you understand about your podcasting equipment and your podcasting software, you can go ahead and get set up with those now. You can place your order so you can have time for those things to come in. But really quickly, I need to share with you some important things that you have to nail down before you can actually get your podcasts published.

: Alright, three things. Number one you need to pick a podcast name or a show title. Now a lot of people ask me questions about this such as, "Pat, can I use my name as the podcasts like the Tim fair show?" Absolutely. "Can I use the name of my brand to create my podcast?" Yes, like the Smart Passive Income podcasts. Or "Can I do something that's not my brand name and not my name, but it's just the name of the podcast itself?" Yes you can just like Amy Porterfield The Online Marketing Made Easy podcast. You want to pick a name that works for you. Now of course you could spend a year coming up with the perfect name and my biggest advice to anybody starting anything is that at some point you're gonna eventually have to just pick something and move on. Is it a permanent thing? No. You can always change it later. So that should help you out. Next you're gonna have to come up with some sort of show description. This is gonna be a summary and really your pitch for why people should be listening to your show.

: This is what's gonna live on iTunes and other directories and it's going to be what people read to decide. "Yes, I want to listen to this!" or "No, this is not for me." And also keep in mind what keywords to include in the show description. Don't keyword stuff, don't make it sound unnatural. remember human beings are reading this but do include certain keywords that you know that your audience is going to be perhaps typing in because iTunes is also in addition to a podcasting directory. It's a search engine and then finally really important you're gonna need to create some sort of podcast artwork meaning a cover for your podcasts. And this is what people see actually before they listen to any of your shows. It's really important that you spend some time with this and so go into the categories that you think you're going to be involved with. Look at what's there see how you might be able to stand out from the crowd and eventually you'll need to create whether on your own or you hire somebody else to do it 3000 by 3000 pixel square image that has your podcast artwork and perhaps your show name or whatever other elements you want but don't put too much in there because remember people are looking and finding these podcasts on their phones.

: You want to look great at a small scaled down level too. All right now there's a couple of things you can do from here. Obviously you can watch the next video which is going to walk through a number of recording tips how to do interviews exporting your podcasts those kinds of things. But I would highly recommend you also download the podcast cheat cheat free Gaida free. It's going to walk you through a lot of the more finer details of the start of your podcast like how to actually make sure your show stands out from the crowd. How to plan your first few episodes that kind of thing. The link for the podcast Chiki will be below. This video on YouTube here so just open up the description you'll see the podcast Shuichi right there click through you'll get access to it right away and we'll help you through a lot of these beginning stages especially here for the first video here in this mini course so awesome job. Keep up the good work and I'll see in the next video. Or if you have Dangal needed you can put those to

: Use. Darn it. Just know we do vote we can do it perfect. OK one more time USP if you need dongle you can use this dongle to.

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