Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to the Bottom Line Me podcast. I'm your host, Ann Allard. Today's special day, we're wrapping up a season that we feel has been filled with a lot of insights, stories, and great conversations that we hope have helped in some small way to keep you informed, give you a new idea, or reflect on your profession.
From the very first recording, it's been an incredible journey for us, filled with a lot of learning, growth, and a whole lot of editing.
And who better to join me for this episode than the person who's been behind the scenes every step of the way, our producer and editor, Andrew Herbert. Hi, Andrew.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Hi, Ann.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Great to see you.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: You're as well.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Thanks for spending some time with me.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Thanks for the invite.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Well, Andrew certainly has been the one who keeps every episode looking and sounding polished, keeps us on track and helps to bring this podcast to life. So I'm really looking forward to having this conversation and having you have an opportunity to get to know Andrew a little better. So with that, how's it going there?
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Can't complain. How about yourself?
[00:01:20] Speaker A: I have nothing to complain about. I thought a great place for us to start was to kind of just rewind and take a look back at the beginning. Do you remember what it felt like when we recorded the first episode?
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Scary.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I think for all of us, it was. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: We didn't know quite what this was gonna be, but it's. We're 70 some episodes in, so.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: That many? Wow. I didn't realize it. Well, we're gonna be coming on our 100th anniversary at some point. Then next year, probably just about.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Awesome. Great. Well, I agree. I think it was scary, but it was a fun leap, really. You know, I'm certainly not the creative genius behind any of this, but I know that every creative project has a lot of bumps or some bumps in the road. What were some of the biggest challenges that you think we or you faced.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Early on to start was looking for a platform to host it on. Looking. There's so many services online that can host the podcast, but some of them can't distribute to the right channels or they don't have the right features for our situation. We needed it to be private when we started, so not all of the services provided that. So even making it private was a hurdle in itself. And then getting our listeners to figure out how to access it when it was private was another hurdle we had at that time.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: So we've come a long way.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. We made it public and made it way easier to get to.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
So, you know, I think with any new project, there's usually a moment when all of it, you have that aha. Moment when you feel like everything's starting to click. Tell us a little bit about when that happened or if it happened.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: I mean, we've gotten the flow down a lot, a lot more. I mean, it's been a much easier process to get from finding a guest, getting it edited and getting it published. So we've gotten that, that workflow pretty solid now.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Good. Any other things that you think we've sort of gotten over the hump with?
[00:03:27] Speaker B: We don't have any more questions about how to access it.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Oh, well, you know, and isn't that a biggie? Because if people can't find us, what's the point?
[00:03:35] Speaker B: Exactly. Now you can just search any player and find it.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, excellent. Good.
So now let's take a little look behind the scenes. You know, you've been the one that's really, as I said in our opening, that has made this sort of look very professional and polished and make us all look and sound good.
Tell us a little bit about what that editing process involves and what it's like for you.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: It's gotten a lot better.
When we first started, there was a lot of, like we said, trial and error figuring out what. What works. What length are we going for? Do we want a 30 minute conversation or we want to cut it down to under 20 minutes? And I think we found our sweet spot. Under 20 minutes.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: So now we don't ask so many questions that we think is going to lead to a longer conversation. We've gotten. Cut that down significantly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: I mean, occasionally we may run over or I think on occasion we've not even hit the 20 minute, depending on what the topic is exactly. But yeah, yeah, we found our sea legs, as the saying goes.
That's really great.
You probably have heard it all. But are there any. I like to talk about a little humor in this as well. Are there any funny or unexpected moments when you've been editing that really stand out or just made you sit back and say, whoa, this is too much.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: We've had funny or we've had guests that were too comfortable with sharing, so we've had to like, oh, that's too many name drops. We should probably cut most of that out.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: But yeah, I mean, there's some bloopers that we've had to take out.
There's been times where the technology hasn't worked how we were expecting. We have to pivot immediately because our guest only has a half an hour available.
Yeah, we need to pivot right now.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And kudos to you to be, to always have a plan B for us. And I think that's the key, is to know that, okay, if we can't go down this road, we have the option to go down the other road. So that's great.
I think most listeners only hear the end result, the final product, any other know, bumps along the way, or any other surprises in just kind of getting this all produced.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: I guess some of the biggest surprises is when we have scheduled guests like the week before it's supposed to come out and then they may, you know, may have a meeting comes up and they can't make our shoot.
We've had to pivot, find other guests for, hey, we need this in the next five days.
You know, those are some of the biggest last minute changes we've had to overcome. But every time it's worked out.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, again, I salute you for making it work out.
You know, how do you think that the podcast has evolved from the technical or creative standpoint since we started? You know, I think when we first started we had an agenda of what we wanted to talk about and it certainly has evolved and changed a lot. I know, talk a little bit about that.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: I think now we're straying away what we started out with taking one of our programs, 23 mistakes and covering each one of those mistakes, which was great.
But now we're finding, literally, and you shot a bunch of episodes recently, you found that the topic of connecting with people while they're still remote, being a common thread. So instead of prioritizing our own agenda or what we think people want to hear, you're finding what people are actually talking about and being. Yeah, that's probably a good topic. You know, we're finding the trends that are actually happening as opposed to what we think people want to hear.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: You know, that's so, I think that's, I agree with you so totally. And I think that's the beauty of being able to have somebody on and ask questions and just listen to what the responses are. But there's no question, I think a lot of the, the topics and ideas that we've brought to the podcast in the last year have really come from either our guest or our audience who has submitted some kind of a thumbs up or hey, could you talk a little bit more about this? Or here's another topic that we'd be interested in. So. Yeah, that's awesome.
So you've had the front row seat from the beginning.
So now tell me a little bit about what you've learned about how to, you know, kind of tell stories on a podcast and what the audio production experience has been like.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: I think we've learned the beginning, middle, and end in the sense of storytelling.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: So we always introduce our guest.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Why are they here? Or what did they. What did. What is their background?
Then we have our middle, which is. Here's the topic of today.
We want to discuss this for the next 15, 20 minutes. And we know our end.
We know the entire point of the show is to get to the bottom line. So you always wrap it up with this is the bottom line.
So to address your question, not sure if that really answered it, but I.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Like the answer, though, that we really didn't have a structure when we started, but it sort of. It revealed itself along.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
That's great. I think you answered the question perfectly.
I think we both know that we hear a lot of people. Even my own granddaughter thinks she should have her own podcast.
But everybody wants to get involved in podcasting.
What do you say to that? How does somebody even go about doing it? What advice would you give somebody that's even considering starting one?
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Go for it today. It is incredibly cheap and low risk.
There's low risk to it. There's next to nothing there. I mean, you can do it on whatever device you currently have.
Get started with your phone. You can record voice memos and post those. There's a lot of hosts online or podcasting host platforms that are free to start out with.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Get started. There's.
Get it distributed on Spotify or all them. It's free to do that and see how it goes. I mean, your first 10 episodes are not going to be good and they're not going to be listened to. But get into your 15, 20, 30, keep going and you'll start to see traction. I know a lot of people will not see immediate results in the first 10 and say, well, this isn't working. I'm done. As opposed to, well, did you keep going? Did you try checking your tagging or play with SEO? Did you try making a group on Instagram or following groups on Instagram or engaging in a community to grow the podcast? Or are you just posting things and.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Thinking it's gonna happen, holding your breath? Yeah. Yeah. So you have to have a little bit of a strategy to an extent.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Or at the very least play around before you just give up on it. And like I said, if you want to get started? Just do it. Don't overthink it. A lot of, a lot of the issue is analysis paralysis, where you're overthinking. Well, I need the best mic, I need the best camera, I need to know how to edit all this. And most of the tools are right there and it's already. A lot of them are freemium platforms anyway, so you can get started.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and I think I know myself and a lot of our guests. What we've learned just from listening to you is that don't worry about the ums or the, the. Oh, geez. That's not really what I wanted to. To convey to you. That makes it a normal and free flowing and easy, authentic conversation. So, yeah, that's one of the things I have to thank you for because that took a long time to learn. Especially if you're the kind of person that wants structure and wants to make sure you dot all the I's and cross all the t's. And that's not how it works in live conversation. So.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Well, our history as, as our department was producing video content that was scripted and we knew exactly what we were saying. We were on a teleprompter. And then we introduced the idea of a podcast where it's much easier to listen to it as a conversation and organic. So that, I think was a learning curve for not only you, but everybody in our team that has been involved.
It doesn't have to be so strict. It doesn't have to be so planned out. It just says be organic and entertaining.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's been a fun ride.
So gotta get a little personal here.
What's been your favorite part about working on this podcast?
Aside from talking to me?
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Oh, it's my favorite thing. Every day I think I get to meet a lot of new people.
A lot of our guests are people from inside our own company, but I've never talked to them before, so I think part of that has been really interesting or learning what their position is or what they do outside of working here. A lot of them are involved in their local land title associations, so that's been pretty cool to see. Oh, you can just get involved in those things. You don't have to. It's not a secret club, so that's been interesting. And also just some of the topics. I mean, we've had someone recently talking about journaling and thought that was fascinating, you know, that how, how impactful that could be on a daily structure.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: And it seems like it's such a simple concept. So being able to go into more depth about people's personal experiences has been pretty fascinating.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. That's been my. Really, one of my favorite parts, too.
So do you want to get to the bottom line today?
[00:13:40] Speaker B: I think so.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Okay. So. All right. So I gotta ask if you could go back to the beginning. If there was one thing, one piece of advice that you would give yourself when we first started or just before we started, what would that be?
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Just make it public from the jump.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Well, that was a hurdle.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: That was a huge hurdle for us. And once we were able to overcome that, it made it a lot easier to grow it and just get it out there, really. I mean, the bottom line is get it out there in front of people and don't be too concerned about what you're saying. I mean, don't say something inappropriate, but.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Exactly.
Well, thank you, Andrew. Thumbs up. High five.
Really appreciate everything. And to our audience, we're going to take a little time off and relax over the summer, but we'll be back in the fall with some new episodes. And we hope until we see you again, that you'll all continue to learn, grow, and prosperity.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Sam.
