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Feb. 27, 2024
How To Simplify The Building And Maintenance Of Your Podcast Website, With Brenden Mulligan From PodPage
Are you struggling to create and maintain a professional website for your podcast? If so, this episode with Brenden Mulligan is a must-listen!
Brenden Mulligan is the founder of Podpage, a platform that provides podcasters with an easy way to build, launch, and manage their website. He has a long history of building technology startups and an even longer history of supporting and working with creators.
In this episode of Podcasting Tech, Mathew sits down with Brenden to discuss the ins and outs of podcast website creation and maintenance. Brenden talks about his journey from helping music creators focus more on their craft, to working with podcasters and digital artists giving them the time to focus on strategy and growth just by providing them with an easy-to-use website platform.
We explore how PodPage simplifies website building for podcasters, its time-saving features, and its seamless integration with AI tools for SEO and content optimization. Plus, Brenden emphasizes the importance of user-focused innovations, shares his favorite podcasts, and highlights the necessity of content over technical perfection in podcasting.
This episode is important for anyone considering starting a podcast or seeking to enhance their podcast's online presence. You’ll discover how PodPage can simplify website management and provide a professional online platform for your podcast in just a few clicks.
IN THIS EPISODE WE COVER:
- (02:29) Brenden's interests and journey to creating PodPage: Brenden explains that his career has been dedicated to helping content creators focus more on creating great content rather than dealing with business maintenance. This led him to create a podcast website that hit the number 1 spot on Google in less than two weeks and eventually led him to develop PodPage.
- (05:39) The simplicity of creating a podcast website: Mathew and Brenden discuss the flow and customization of PodPage and how easy it is for a user to choose and even change the design of their podcast page without feeling overwhelmed.
- (14:02) The AI tools being utilized by PodPage: Brenden elaborates on how PodPage utilizes AI features for various tasks, including transcribing episodes to enhance website context for Google, adding advanced SEO tools, and incorporating better search using AI.
- (26:16) The importance of good and valuable content vs investing in expensive hardware: Mathew and Brenden discuss the benefits of the ATR 2100 microphone but emphasize that creators should focus more on consistency and delivering value to their audience rather than spending lots of money on fancy equipment.
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Visit the PodPage website and preview your podcast website for free
- Follow Brenden and PodPage on socials
- https://twitter.com/mulligan
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/mulligan/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/podpage/
- https://twitter.com/podpagehq
- https://www.facebook.com/PodpageHQ
- Recommended hardware: ATR-2100x
- "All the Hacks" podcast by Chris Hutchins: An informative podcast for life optimization.
- Brenden’s recommendation:
- Podcasts by Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan
- All In podcast: A podcast known for well-informed conversations on differing opinions, as recommended by Brenden
**As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases of podcasting gear from Amazon.com. We also participate in affiliate programs with many of the software services mentioned on our website. If you purchase something through the links we provide, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The team at Podcasting Tech only recommends products and services that we would use ourselves and that we believe will provide value to our viewers and readers.**
For additional resources and insights visit podcastingtech.com or follow us on social media:
- Instagram: @mathewpassy
- LinkedIn - /mathewpassy
- Threads: @mathewpassy
- Twitter/X: @mathewpassy
- Facebook - /podcastingtech, /mathewpassy
PODCASTING TECH IS POWERED BY:
- Podpage - Build a beautiful podcast website in 5 minutes
- Podgagement - Engage your audience and grow your podcast!
- Captivate - Easy, professional podcast hosting to create, grow and make money from your podcasts.
- Riverside.fm - Record Podcasts And Videos From Anywhere
- Castmagic - 10x Audio Content With AI
EQUIPMENT IN USE:
- Rodecaster Pro 1st Gen (No longer available). Consider the Rodecaster Duo or Rodecaster Pro II
- EV RE20 with 309a Shockmount
- Rode PSA1+
- iPhone continuity camera but previously the Logitech Brio 4k
- DCMEKA In-Ear Monitors
- BusyBox Smart Sign
Transcript
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When we talk about podcasting technology, we're always looking for something that's going to make
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your life easier, but we don't want it to just make your life easier
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and be cheap and sloppy and something that you're not gonna be
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very proud of. And when the concept of a PodPage
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first came along, there were a lot of folks who were concerned, like, yeah, an
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automatic podcast website, I don't know. Is that really gonna be worth it?
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Is my site gonna look professional? Is it gonna be cool? Is it gonna
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work well? How easy is this kind of technology? And
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right away, I could tell the 1st time I ever put my eyes
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on a pod page, I knew there was some real there there.
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Right? You enter in your RSS feed, you tell it the name of your show,
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And within 5 minutes literally, within 5 minutes, I had helped folks
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create a functional, beautiful, You
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know, really powerful podcasting website.
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And that was several years ago, and it's only
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gotten Much better, much stronger. And it's definitely something
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that if you are not savvy enough, if you don't wanna go down the
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wormhole of WordPress, if you, You know, don't know what
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you don't know when it comes to building the right podcasting website?
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Then you definitely want to check out a pod page. And
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today, we are super excited to have Brenden Mulligan, the PodPage
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founder, also just a serial entrepreneur with some other cool stuff that
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he's done in his past. Brenden, thank you so much for joining us here today.
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Thank you for having me. It's good to talk to you again. So we we
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spoke about this, I think, many, many years ago when this first developed,
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but, You know, pretend that that episode never existed. Tell us, how did you
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get to creating and thinking of the idea
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of the PodPage service? So I have
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spent my career helping creators. I started in the music industry.
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I moved into helping app developers And then,
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working with podcasters and digital artists and the theme throughout all of them
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has been the same, which is all of these creators, They
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do what they do because they have some talent, in that
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medium. And so podcasters, like, they're amazing because they Find people to
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interview or they come up with great stories or great topics. They they create
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great content. And so in all of my time as an entrepreneur, I've and
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working with I've always tried to find the things that they're they
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shouldn't really be focusing on because it's just they should be focusing on
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their craft as opposed to sort of the maintenance of their business.
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And there's some areas that they need to be focused on strategy, but there's other
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areas that they shouldn't. And in almost every one of the cases and groups,
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The building your own website has been one of these things that it should be
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easier than it is. And so back in in my music industry days,
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after watching Myspace fall apart, what we all realized was These musicians
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have been focused too much on being on these platforms and not enough about owning
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their own piece of the Internet, and so we help them create websites,
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Really, really easily using the content they'd already put on the Internet, and when I
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saw what podcasters are doing, I saw almost the exact same thing. I would search
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for really good Podcasts, and the Top hits on Google were
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Apple Podcasts. I think at the time of it have been Itunes. I can't remember.
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You know, Spotify. It's it was platforms, and a lot of them didn't have their
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own website and I started reaching out to podcasters asking why and they're like, it's
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a pain. I don't really wanna learn about WordPress. I tried. I paid a
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designer, but it didn't work. Like, all of these excuses were basically, it's too hard.
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And so when I dug in a little bit more, I realized that the
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RSS feed, The same RSS feed that's that's read by Google and
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Spotify and Apple has all the content to basically be able to
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create a website instantaneously. I mean, We say 5 minutes
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to get to a website that you're like really happy with and you can just
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leave alone forever, but it takes like 10 or 15 seconds to actually generate the
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thing. And so, It
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honestly started as a weekend project for a friend that had a pretty popular podcast,
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but didn't have a website. I was like,
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yeah. Let's let's just try it. So at the end of the weekend, I was
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like, here's a website I built for you. It's totally self supported, powers itself, it
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updates itself. It doesn't, you know it not only pulls in your episodes, but it
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pulls in reviews from Apple, so the
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content stays fresh, all the stuff. And so then we're like, alright, well, is it
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worth it? So we threw it on a subdomain of his.
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And a week and a half later, it was the number one hit on Google,
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after changing his link and his RSS feed to that. And so it was
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like, oh, so basically with no effort, You're able to tap the
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number 1 spot on Google when someone searches your your podcast
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name. And at that point, it was like, Okay. This is clearly worth
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it for a podcaster to do. Now, like, can I make it easy and
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accessible for them to do it? And so then That was when I started DM
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ing podcasters a link to a page that I built for them and I said,
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Hey, here's a website I built for you. Would you be interested in just giving
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me feedback on what you hate about And and it sort of start that's where
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it kinda came from. It was just talking to more and more podcasters and seeing
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their reaction and then seeing how openly they were to switch to it or
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adopt it once they realized how easy it was. And yeah. I mean, one of
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the things that was so great about creating a pod page for the 1st time
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and then helping clients create a pod page was that
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simplicity of it. You know, something that comes up often when people are
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trying to build a website or, honestly, with any creative endeavor, are
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Choices. Too many choices. And what I loved about it
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was you put you like I said, you pop in your feed, you can have
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a website in minutes or seconds even. But You
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have some, you know, design palettes, let's say.
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Right? Like basic templates that people can use. And You you
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have just enough where it's like you can find what you're looking
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for, but you don't have to feel overwhelmed by all those choices to the point
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where you can't move forward with it. And on top of that, it's so easy
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that once you maybe get tired with your one design, you're like, yeah, let's try
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something else. You can go ahead and just, boom, click that. Now the whole website
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kinda changes, Keeps into account, right, some of the customization
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that you've made, but, right, you can update the look and feel without having to
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go through and reprogram your entire website once again.
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It is that whole flow and, and
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basically the, the theme of, I want it to be easy for people
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Without having to do a ton of work. I want it to look good without
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being overwhelming. I want them to be able to change it
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without screwing things up That it is so hard. And I would
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say it's gotten harder over time as we've made the pages more complex, but a
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big part of Q1 for me, It's literally the biggest
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project that we've worked on for a while and what I'm working on right now
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is adding a ton of themes and functionality, as far as
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cut design customization without making it more complicated. So if
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you were to log in to PodPage with my account, there's this crazy amount of
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new new stuff to change because I'm trying to figure out how to make it
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still feel accessible and easy, But we're about to roll out like a new we've
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haven't updated our templates for a while, but we're about to roll out a a
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a new set of templates that are in I mean, obviously, I'm biased, but They're
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really, really nice. I honestly I mean, this is just on me. Like, I feel
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like we've fallen behind a little bit over the last couple of years because we
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haven't done a lot of template work. We've done a lot of, like, Adding the
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ability for people to tweak things on their website and make it look better, but
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as far as just a one click, like, I want my website to look like
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that, we haven't it hasn't been as, high on
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the priority list. So that's what the beginning of this year is, and so I'm
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excited about it. And so I I appreciate what you said, but it's I'm I'm
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embarrassed by it. I think it could be way better, and hopefully, it will be
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in couple weeks. I mean, everything can always have room for improvement.
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But again, for for folks who can't build a website or don't wanna go
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through the whole rigmarole, it's nice to have Nice but, you
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know, simple choices to work with. Talking about some of the
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Tech stacks, talking about some of the features, you've added a lot since the very
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beginning. What are some of the features you are most proud of with
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PodPage? Let's say one that you
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particularly like, Maybe the community is like, yeah. Whatever.
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And then what's that one of the communities like, oh my god. This is amazing.
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You're like, really? I don't even think that was gonna be that important to you.
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For me, things that I like, you know, it's funny when you build
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something that one of the pitches of it is it's automated. It takes care
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of itself. It's a set it and forget it type product.
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If you want to tell people how powerful it is, but you don't want to
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confuse them by being like, We do all of these things and you don't even
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know it. Right. And so, so I love all the
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features that sort of happen in the background. And
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those features are things like, You know, the way that we actually,
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this is just rolling out. We haven't even announced yet, but it is live. We're
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starting to pull in chapters, so if you put chapters in your RSS
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feed you'll start seeing them show up on your website if you want.
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We're gonna start For, for the elite plan,
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you can put in your, if you have a YouTube channel
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and you have a, You have a
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playlist that all you put all your podcast episodes on, we're gonna start actually
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trying to match your YouTube channel Podcast episodes
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with the episode that we import. And so when we import the
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episode from your feed, it'll automatically put the video
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for that episode on the episode page. So when people come to your website
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to to look at the episode you they can actually just watch it as opposed
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to have to listen to it on the web. So It's all of
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that stuff is the part the stuff that really gets me excited because it's it
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makes things so easy. We're using a ton of AI tools to To do small
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things, we're gonna start transcribing episodes. If you don't have them transcribed, so your
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your website has more text for Google to understand the context of the website or
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the the webpage. So I love all that stuff. A
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lot of times users don't even notice that's happening because it's
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just happening. The for the from a user standpoint, by far the best feature
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that we've launched
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since probably since The 1st year, has
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been sort of our guest workflow and, a lot of
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podcasts have guests. We built basically a profile where they
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can a very simple thing where they could go in and they could just type
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like, here's a guest name, here's their bio, here's a headshot, here's
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their social links, and And then they could say they were
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on episode 54, and then when you look at episode 54, there'd be a little
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guest bio at the bottom. You click the name. It has a whole page on
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their website for the guest. That was
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the feature. And so I thought it was kind of clever and nice, it seemed
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to fit the medium, and so I've released it
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and, The the initial feedback we got from our Facebook community was, this
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is amazing but God it's just another thing for me to have to fill out.
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Pod page is great because all this stuff is automated is there any way you
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can automate this? Now obviously we can't automate generating a guest
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profile, But their suggestion was can I just have my guest do the work for
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me? And so we ended up building a a guest facing version of
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that profile builder Where now the podcast just sends a link
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to a guest. They fill out a form that form saves them in
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the backend of their pod page. And then the the podcaster can go in
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and say, okay, like, Brenden was on
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Podcasting Tech, I'd already filled out the profile so that was, I could just click
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my name and say he was on he's gonna be on episode 54, and then
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when episode 54 is imported we can attach
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The Brenden episode Brenden's profile to the episode and also
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email the guest, Hey, the episodes released here are
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links. That whole workflow has been like transformative for our users
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and totally not something that we thought we'd be doing when we set out to
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build the website service. But, But really is really it's really helpful for them because
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a lot of people wait to email their guests because they don't have the
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website link yet. And so, Anyway so that's that's been
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a big a big win for for our
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users. And I'm assuming that If, like, one of the questions is like, you know,
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where can I find more information about you? Right? Let's say, you know, I'm using
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this form with you, and you'd say, obviously, podpage.com. Now
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aren't I automatically creating some link backs, which is really powerful for SEO
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in general? Yep. Yep. You you know, you can The person can can plug in
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their website, their podcast link, their, you know, Instagram account,
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whatever they want, And they they have they have control
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over what the pro the bio is, and so, and the profile looks like.
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So, yeah, it's been a it's been a big hit for both. I mean, If
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anything, I think at this point, the scale that we're working at, I think
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one of the most inefficient parts of the whole thing is that a guest Isn't
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creating, like, a pod page profile that then they could send a lot of Podcasting.
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They're creating a profile for each podcast, and we've gotten some feedback now. They're, like,
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I feel like I'm filling out A pod page profile form for
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so many shows that I'm on so often, it'd be nice if you could just
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I could just kinda, like, give permission for the new ones to access it.
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So good problems to have, but, but it's, you
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know, it's been helpful on both sides. Maybe, we'll chat with you in a year,
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and you'll say, yep. We figured it out. We got it filled, and here it
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is, folks. You'll, you'll you'll have your own guest profile on PodPage.
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Yeah. I also love that you have your own guest release built into it. So
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that's great. So you can basically turn on that. There's a a
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show guest release form, with, you know, copy
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courtesy of Passy Legal for Podcasting. Obviously, you can upload your own. But,
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like, Again, just 1 more place that podcasters may not be
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thinking about what it is that they need and you're already
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providing Like, hey. Here's a heads up on something that you need. And by the
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way, we've already done the work for you, to make that super
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easy. What are some other Future
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features, or what are some other places where PodPage is
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looking to go in the future if you can share any of that with us?
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Well, I think, you know, at the beginning of 2024, if you're talking about the
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future, you can't can't talk about the future without thinking about AI. I think there's
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a lot of stuff that we can do to be helpful there. There's,
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you know, SEO is a hard thing for most people, including myself.
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And knowing not only like, you know, PodPage does all the work to structure
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your page to make it as attractive to Google as possible. And, you know, when
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you put a transcript Not only do we post on your page, but we tag
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it in the HTML. So when Google looks at it they know this is a
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transcript, and so when they're trying to structure that data on Google search
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results They don't have to figure out where the transcript is, we tell them. So
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there's a lot of spoon feeding we do to Google, but you still have to
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have the right content on there. And so,
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We're trying to help podcasters
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make sure that they are doing, as well as
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possible with the content they wanna do. So we've last year, we added a bunch
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of sort of advanced, SEO tools. If you've ever used WordPress
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and Yoast SEO, We basically took a lot of inspiration from that and now
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make it easy to say, okay, I just released an episode, and we say what's
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the focus key phrase that you want to be coming up on Google for, and
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then we'll analyze the the the episode and the page to tell you whether
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or not you've set it up for success, because there's only so much PodPage
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can do. And this has been really helpful because a lot of people would come
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to me and say, hey, I was hoping to rank for, you know, business
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podcast, and then We help them realize, like, not only is that
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gonna be incredibly competitive, but your your site actually is more
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about, like, small business, small businesses
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in Akron, Ohio or something. Right? And it's like then they once they
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start targeting their key phrase towards that, they have a lot more success ranking for
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those kind of things on Google. So we added sort of the the
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analysis tools, but I think we're still there's still an opportunity to help
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not only, with the analysis, but also with just helping people understand.
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Like, we can look at a podcast, and we do this for elite users if
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they wanna we can look at their episode when you say, like, the key phrase
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you're probably should be targeting is this, you know, and it may be the guest
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name, or it might be, you know, something in the in the topic. But we
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look at the show notes, we look at the summary, we look at the title,
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like, You know, our guess is that this is what you're gonna wanna rank for
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because this is seems to be what it's all about. So using tools
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like that, A little thing we're gonna release, which is just, inspired
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by Amazon. I don't know if you've seen the Amazon AI tools for their reviews,
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but instead of reading the 5,000 reviews, you can just now at the top it
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says, People like this because and it sort of summarizes everyone's
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review. We've that that's actually already built. We just haven't turned it on yet.
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Search a bet, a much better search using AI. Like there's a lot of that
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kind of stuff that we just want it to be the page to be a
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lot smarter. Again, our It's sort of like our goal is
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just to continually make it less and less of something you think about.
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Right? Like, it's just doing what it needs to do, and it's just working and
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helping you. Some people like writing blog posts
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alongside their, alongside their episodes,
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and there's a strategy for that, and we can help Use AI to help
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inform the strategy around writing a blog post that that
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helps promote the episode versus competes with it, stuff like that. So,
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We're doing a lot more high touch SEO stuff this year. We did a a
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big SEO seminar yesterday. We're gonna be doing one of those monthly. We're gonna have
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SEO, consulting and, like, high touch SEO,
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1 on 1 consulting for people who want it, you
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know, so there's just we wanna do a lot more. Now that we spent so
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many years making these amazing websites, now we wanna make sure that they've they're all
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found for the people who wanna put in the work to do it.
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Amazing. And some of those new AI features that you're talking about, those are only
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gonna be for, elite plans, or is that also gonna
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be in the pro? It'll there it'll depend on the feature.
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Okay. I I need to look at it, but and it it might
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start with elite, and go to pro in the same way a lot of stuff
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with pro, went to basic. You know, Elite gives us an opportunity to beta
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test it with people who are a little bit more invested in their
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in the website because they're paying more and they want more high you know, advanced
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features, and so it lets us kind of give it to them. They can they
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can use it, and we can get it right, and then a lot of stuff
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can move down into pro or parts of it can move down into pro. Things
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like like AI transcriptions, You know, a lot of people transcribe
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their audio with their host or someone else, but if it gets to us and
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it's not transcribed, we wanna transcribe it for you because there's so much we can
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do once we have a transcription. Transcriptions are actually really
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expensive, and so that's one of those things, like, the cost is high
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enough where we wanna make sure that we can afford to do it for everyone.
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So that will be something that would be an elite. But some of the smaller
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AI stuff will will be in pro. Well, one of the
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things you mentioned was that, you know, So often, you get
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people who you want this product to be something that they don't have to think
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about. And I'll be honest, when I was using this for, one of
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my shows, I never thought about it. Like, I honestly I I
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can't even remember how rarely I would visit the website
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for my show just because I knew it was already taken care of. Everything was
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automatic. The episodes are being pulled in. It was always working. Right? I never
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had to go in and, like, purge cash on my on my WordPress site,
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make sure all my plug ins are updated, make sure the most compatibility issues, you
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know, were were working. It just always worked, and it was just one less thing
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as a podcaster that I had to think about. So For anybody listening,
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if you haven't, put together a website for your podcast, if you're thinking about how
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am I gonna display my content, cannot cannot
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stress enough how Great. A pod page would will be,
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obviously, podpage.com. There'll be a link to it here in the show notes below. Brenden,
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before we let you go, we just wanna ask you a other questions about podcasting
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in general, just to see kinda where you're at in the world. So one of
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the first things we wanna know from everybody is, is there a favorite Podcast
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that you are listening to right now or, maybe 1 or 2 that
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you would recommend, to folks? You
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know, it's so funny because I spend so much of my day writing code. I
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I used to be able to listen to podcasts and work and now that I
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just I don't I can't do that anymore, and I work from home, so there's
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no commute. So I feel like the number of podcasts I listen to has gone
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down a lot.
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The. I'm really enjoying, there's one that's a friend
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of mine, named Chris Hutchins. He has a podcast called All
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the Hacks, And he's also, like, one of my beta Tech or, like, he's the
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he's one of my pod page users that Tech me and says, hey, can you
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add this crazy feature? I'm, like, no no one is gonna want that. A week
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later, I'm like, no. I'll build it anyway, because it kinda sounds
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fun. And so he's he's it's great. It's a great podcast. I try to
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try to listen to as many episodes as I can, And it's
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all about optimizing your life, and he takes the approach of, like, oh, if you're
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interested in optimizing how you do travel, credit cards, or maybe it's money, or
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maybe it's preschools or maybe it's your cell phone plan, like, it it he finds
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people who have gone deep on everything and then interviews them. So I that
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I love. I've always loved, like, Tim Paris and Joe Rogan's shows. They're just so
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long, so I I usually catch clips of those,
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and then, I've been I've been really enjoying the All In podcast, which I know
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has been getting a lot more popular. It's I come from the tech world and
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it's a bunch of tech world people, but I feel like it's a really it's
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an it's a refreshing Podcast to listen to because I feel like it's people who
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generally have differing opinions, having conversations about their
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differing opinions, and They're fairly well informed people,
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and it's just like I feel like it's the exact opposite of what you get
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when you read, you know, mainstream media. You get where you're getting
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such a one-sided approach to things, like it's actually a
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conversation. And so they'll have on, you know, they've had on Tucker Carlson or Jared
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Kushner, but they've also had on RFK Jr. Or, you know, people
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on, like, the far liberal side. And so I feel like it's a nice balance
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of, like, oh, is this just, like, informative and interesting. So I feel like I'm
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being drawn more to that content now, where before I think I was more
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drawn to, like, Startup content. So I was listening to My First 1,000,000,
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and, more like businessy side stuff. I've sort of gotten to the point where,
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like, alright. I've I've listened to that for long enough. Now I'm sort of interested
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in other stuff. Is there gonna be a PodPage
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podcast anytime soon? You know, I try to stay in
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my lane, And do and do what I'm good at,
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and I've I've tried a few times to think, like, oh, could I do a
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podcast around podcast websites, or could I do And I feel like there's a lot
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of great podcast content out there about podcast tech,
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about how to podcast and all that, and It's just not necessarily I
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think an area that I'm great, so I'm gonna leave that to people who
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are. I think doing a podcast is so hard. I mean, it's so much
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work, And I've such respect for all the people out there doing it that
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I think that I would rather spend all my time trying to make PodPage better
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and not Not trying to do a podcast. So I'm always making myself
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available to podcasts, but I haven't I don't think I wanna do my own. I
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I think, you know, honestly, I think I think I sit down and I think,
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Do I have 52 pieces of content a year to share with the
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world? And I just don't think I do, at this
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point. So Or if I do, it would be a lot of work to fig
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to organize that and figure it out. So it's just not where I wanna focus.
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Alright. Outside of Podcasting websites, because obviously, that's your
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lane and and, you know, you're working on that solution anyway. Is
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there another place in podcasting in general that you can
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Do you would like to see improvement or see something
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change? I think that the openness of podcasting is such a
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core central part of it that is so incredibly important. And it's hard to
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watch Spotify. I feel like they actually innovate pretty well. Like, I think
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their podcasting listening experience is really good. I I use it The majority of the
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time, I like that it's cross platform, but I hate that it's this
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walled garden. So I would love to
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see The consumption experience diversified a little
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bit, although it's just really hard to see that happening. But,
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but, you know, we we face a lot of issues with Our users where they
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write in, they're saying like, oh, this isn't working, or this isn't showing up here,
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and it's because they're on Spotify for Podcasters and they've, like, by
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default Gated their content to just a few places or
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so I would I would love to see more innovation across the
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board on the consumption experience, but I'd, Like I said, I don't I don't know
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if that's gonna happen. I do think that this video is gonna be a bigger
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component to it, and so we'll see what
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you or what YouTube does this year, when they do their full launch
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and stuff, but, I think that I think Tech consumption experience is
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still more to be desired. I think on
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the podcasting sort of like the Inside Baseball tool side, I think the hosts are
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all doing a really great job. I think the podcasting 2 point o
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tags and And all the stuff that could be in the podcasting feed,
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it'll be great when that's all supported because it makes people like me, like, makes
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my job so easy when there's already a transcript, when there's already chapters when
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there's already guest names. Like, my life would be way
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easier if all the content that we, that was already being published other places was
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just stuck into the feed. And so what the podcast 2.0 initiative is doing,
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I think is awesome. And hopefully those tags are adopted by more
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people and the feeds have more than a minute because I think it'll just make
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all the places you can go to learn about podcasting way better. Like, I wish
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there was a video link in the feed. So when I get an episode, I
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already know what the YouTube link is, and I can I can put that on
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the website? So I think it's all coming, but, I'm I'm excited
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for that to develop. And then I think there's there's sort of this mad rush
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not just in podcasting, but in tech in general for, like, a 1000000 people
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doing AI tools, and we've sort of held back. I mean, like, well, everyone's Everyone's
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innovating on AI right now, but I feel like at the end of this year,
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a lot of that will shake out, and there'll be probably a few really, really
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good people. I honestly think the hosts are gonna win there,
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Because a lot of the AI tools are best used pre
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feed. I think of, like, podcasting workflow is like pre feed and post feed. Pre
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feed is like, need to write your show notes. You need to come up with
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a title. You need to come up with all this stuff. You need to do
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all that before you put it in your podcast host and before it goes in
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the feed. So I don't like to mess with any of that on the PodPage
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side. The post feed stuff is I think where we live, which is, like, cool,
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you've you put it in your feed, now we can put it on your website,
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now we can help you Put it on Twitter and X
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and, Facebook and everywhere else. Now we can help, you know, get it into
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Google SEO, all all that, you know, email it to your guests, Potentially
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email to users. All that marketing stuff is, like, post feed. I think there's a
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lot of cool stuff that we'll see in the pre feed side. Okay. And
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then, of course, the last question is, what technology are
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you using for podcasting? I know, like I said, you don't host your own podcast,
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but you do appear on on many. So What's the equipment there in your tech
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stack? You know, it depends on the day. Today
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I'm using the, just like a basic ATR
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2100 microphone that I think I got 4 years ago
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because someone said this is a good bit, maybe Tim Ferris recommended it, And I
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was, like, here's a good basic mic, and I've used that, with the same
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stand I think it came with. Like, it there's not there's not a lot of
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tech here, and then I've got an AirPod in. Still a great microphone, that ATR
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2100. That that's I've been recommending that for years, and, yeah, I would still
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recommend it today. Yeah. It's great. It did sit on my shelf for years
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Because I think I did I was on someone, maybe it was with Dave Jackson,
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and he they said that the AirPods sounded better
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Then the mic. So I was doing AirPods for a while and then for a
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while it was just, just like my computer mic. I
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think that all of the post-processing, like echo cancellation, audio
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cleanup tools have gotten so good that,
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that I think 4 years ago podcasters were very specific about,
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like, please use specific microphones, you know, come on for
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pre Pre interview sound checks all and I feel like over the last
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year or so that's kinda gone away, at least in my experience, where it seems
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like The, these tools are able to make great
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audio using kind of whatever the input is to a point. Yeah. That, you know,
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when you think about that, that's a really good point that now there are so
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many great AI enhancement tools and
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plugins and software that even Not
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great audio could be made to sound decent, and decent audio could be
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made to sound highly impressive. So really sticking to
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something as simple as a 2100. Just that just something that brings a mic
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closer to your mouth as opposed to, you know, the built in microphone on your
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computer or even I find sometimes with AirPods, the the microphone
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being behind your mouth, you know, there's a lot of room
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that has to be absorbed before I can hear your voice. So,
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but, yeah, I I like the I like your point that you don't have to
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get too crazy these days because the technology is there to improve
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Whatever your sound is, you know, it's take it up a few notches. I I
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also think that maybe it could have been COVID when, I mean, everyone got
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into podcasting or People couldn't go to their studios or
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people just sort of had to make do with whatever they had. And,
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and I feel like that kind of It was a good shock to the system
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where it was like, you don't need to, before you're at 1st episode, you don't
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need to spend 1,000 of dollars on gear. You can just.
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Throw some AirPods in because ultimately what's important. What's really important. Long term is
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that you are care about this topic enough or care about this podcast enough
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to keep doing it every week. It doesn't actually matter what you sound
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like. Eventually you want to make sure you sound good, but you're way better off,
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like using your mental cycles to Love the craft and get into the
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craft and make it a habit than you are to like build the perfect podcast
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studio, or at least that's been my perspective and observation.
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You know what? I don't think I could have said it better myself. That is
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the exact kind of advice that we would give everyone which is You've never
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heard a person say, you know, that podcast
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meant nothing to me, but, man, it sounded good, so I kept listening. Whereas
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Yeah. People will come to a podcast with
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solid content even if the quality isn't as
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pristine as they would like. So focus on good content. Focus
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on your audience. Focus on delivering value. And everything
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else, you can fix in post or, frankly, you can improve Later
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as you find, more success with what it is that you are doing.
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Well, we've been chatting with Brenden Mulligan, the founder of PodPage.
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And, you know, without Exaggerating truly the best
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way for a podcaster to build, launch, and not
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have to maintain a website because It does all the work for you. And on
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top of that, it just comes with amazing other features that are
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beneficial to podcasters that You would be spending more money
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on, you know, signing up for this, signing up for this, signing up for this.
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And,
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Brenden and the team at PodPage just bring it all together in one easy place.
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So Cannot recommend it enough. We have a link to pod page here in the
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show notes. But if you're thinking about a website or if you're tired of the
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struggles of your website, can't stress enough that you should definitely
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go check it out. Brenden Mulligan, thank you so much for joining us here today.
Brendan Mulligan
Founder at Podpage
Brenden has led teams of product managers, designers, and engineers to create scaled consumer and enterprise products, both as a startup founder and at Google post-acquisition.