5 Ways to Make, Break, or Improve Your Podcast

Jonny Gamet 0:00
A lot of people will try to, especially on the editing side even spliced together different sentences, different thoughts to try to get this coherent. And it’s just naturally not going to sound very good. Because again, I tell people all the time, we can’t really change your voice and your inflections and other things like that. So when you’re just trying to combine two sentences together, it’s often very hard to do that from an editing side.

Adam Vazquez 0:26
Yeah, we had one client (who will remain nameless) that wanted us to go borderline North Korea on the things that they were saying, just editing things that didn’t get said, piecing it together with sound to make a new script.

Jonny Gamet 0:43
I’ve always wanted to voice over a cartoon or something, and so I thought maybe voice acting and trying to do the guest voice, but it didn’t work out.

Intro 0:54
Put that content down. Content. The close is over. What’s your name? Content. That’s my name. You know why, mister? Because you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. That’s my name. Content Is for Closers.

Adam Vazquez 1:16
All right, we are back with another episode of Content Is for Closers. We got some unique setups today. I’m outside. Carlton is an undisclosed location. And we’ve got most importantly, producer, editor, sound person extraordinaire, project manager, Jonny Gamet on the show for the very first time. Thanks for joining us, Jonny.

Jonny Gamet 1:34
I’m so excited to be here, guys. It’s a weird feeling being on this side of the project.

Adam Vazquez 1:40
It’s crazy that we haven’t done this before, given you edit every episode. And we’ve talked to some of the other team members.

Carlton Riffel 1:50
We tried, and then Jonny just said, “I don’t know where the file is. I don’t know what happened to the files.”

Adam Vazquez 1:55
Yeah. Yeah, there’s been lots of jokes, lots of jokes already about how the post-production how easy the post-production process will be on this one. Because for those of you who don’t know, Jonny is our producer, our editor for all of our client podcasts. He helps just run the timelines and make sure all the files are in the right spot. So he kind of runs the company. It’s like we are all here as well. But Jonny does a lot of it. But anyway, yeah, so excited to talk to you, Jonny, obviously. And before we get to some of the more, I think it’d be helpful to hear from for people to hear some things they can do or ways to improve their show. But before that, you’re really interesting and unique in that you have like four different jobs. Ours is one of your pretty semi-full-time jobs. And I think that’s the case for a lot of people who are creating because a lot of times this is something that’s added to an existing role. And so just off the cuff off the top, tell us, how do you manage that? How do you think about managing all your different roles?

Jonny Gamet 3:05
Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing I would say is be wherever you’re at, at the time that you need to be in that particular role. So like, for me, my nine to five as it were, I work in college athletics. And so everybody knows that it’s in the athletics realm that that’s a lot of nights and weekends and a lot of busyness throughout different times of the year. And so it’s kind of one of those things that when I’m in that, then I’ve got my college athletics hat on, not obviously, not literally, but then I’m there. And then, on the side of that, I also very involved in my church, we—my wife and I—run the youth group there and have for the last about 10 years. When I’m there, that’s that hat that’s on when I’m doing stuff with HEARD or editing and those kinds of things, then that hat comes on. And of course, being a dad and being a husband, obviously when it’s time for that making sure that has on as well. So I think the biggest part of it is just focusing on what’s in front of you. And the job that’s in front of you for that time, whether that’s at eight o’clock at a normal nine to five, or if it’s seven o’clock at night editing a podcast. So that’s kind of how I think about it.

Adam Vazquez 4:15
Yeah, and yours is unique because you have a nine to five, but in reality, a lot of what you do ends up being like five to nine, I feel like because of like nights weekends, that’s when you have to do that. So it’s even more unique, I would say then the normal. Well, the other thing that’s unique about you for our team is you’re probably the most pure audio and broadcast. I’m not I probably you’re the only one who has that. That actual training. The rest of us are hacks who are just finding our way. So talk a little bit about that. What got you into the space, how did you get interested in it? How did you develop some of those skills?

Jonny Gamet 4:53
Yeah, I mean, like a lot of people growing up sports was really important for me, it was always just something I wanted to play professional baseball, that was my thing. I’m not wearing my Rockies hat today because we don’t really typically, I have a lot to cheer for with the Rockies. So, but growing up baseball was kind of my thing and always wanted to pursue that from a professional ranks. And like many people, that dream started to become a reality in terms of Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen late in high school. And so I kind of had some good talks with mentors and different people in my life who said, “If you can’t play sports, maybe talk about it for a living.” And so I’m one of the few people you see all the data and statistics out there of how many people change their majors, those kinds of things, like I went to school, day one, studying journalism. And that’s what I was going to do and did that for four years, got a master’s degree actually left and went and worked at ESPN radio for a while covering high school football, down south Clemson and South Carolina. So a lot of different sports opportunities that I got the opportunity to do, and then again, a door open in collegiate athletics. And we’ve been doing that for a little over a decade now. So still able to use what I studied in college, and from the podcasting side, I mean, it just, we’ve seen this awesome evolution over the last really 10 to 15 years of this really becoming an industry. And it was kind of one of those things that nobody really knew what it was at first. And now of course, it’s exploded in the last five years. So stuck at the opportunity. I love editing, I love being able to take care of people’s stories and those kinds of things. That’s a little bit of a journalistic in me, but yeah, it’s a lot of fun talking about a variety of different topics.

Adam Vazquez 6:35
Carlton, did you switch majors?

Carlton Riffel 6:38
Yeah, actually the first week I went to school I switched my major. I went from graphic design to studio art. Then I realized when I finished college, I probably should have stayed graphic design.

Adam Vazquez 6:51
Yeah, nice.

Jonny Gamet 6:53
A lot of people go the other way with that. A lot of people would start in like an art major and go more for graphic design, so that’s interesting.

Carlton Riffel 7:00
Yeah, this is useless. Why am I studying painting? I’ll never use this.

Adam Vazquez 7:07
And here we are. It worked out. Yes, I did, too. I think I might have you beat. When I enrolled you had to like declare a major, I think and so I can’t remember even what it was. I think it might have been business or Bible. I was all across the map. But then before I even the semester started, same thing. I just okay. Yeah, yeah, I had already like, emailed in, I made a mistake. My life I need to change the direction of my life. I need to be a rhetoric and public address major so I can address the nation at some point. That hasn’t fully come to fruition yet.

Jonny Gamet 7:49
That’s impressive, it just rolls off the tongue.

Adam Vazquez 7:52
Yeah, that’s a good— That was my first change. And then I changed again. I had the art studio moment. I was like, “Oh, people don’t give speeches in town halls anymore. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do with this.” I switched to organizational communication. That’s what I finished with, but it’s a journey.

Jonny, little known fact” you and I met— Well, I guess we probably knew each other in college, although I don’t remember a ton of that. But you and I met in a Glengarry Glen Ross sweatshop boiler room-type situation. Making cold calls. I noticed you kind of skipped over that part when you’re given the career arc?

Jonny Gamet 8:31
No, and it was it’s really funny because— I was a little ahead of you in school, because I’m older than you. You can see the little bit of the gray in my beard. But yeah, it was kind of funny because I still remember walking in that first day and be like, “Adam! What’s up? What are you doing here?” Yeah, we were in the trenches together, for sure. For sure. I think it told both of us, sales is a lot more difficult than they let you know about in college.

Adam Vazquez 8:56
Yeah, yeah. So it was just one of those smile and dial type jobs that our intro music kind of nods to, but it was a real-life gig. So you did all of that you got that actual training? You’ve obviously been producing tons of shows for us over the last what how long have we been? You’ve been working with us now?

Jonny Gamet 9:17
I think it’s been about three years now. Just a little bit over three years.

Adam Vazquez 9:20
Three and a half years. Wow. And so over that time have done probably, I don’t know, maybe 1,000 episodes. What are some of the top things that you see from an editing standpoint that either someone could do to make your life easier or just to improve their show as a podcaster?

Jonny Gamet 9:40
Yeah, absolutely. I think everybody has, especially in our day and age, this idea, “I’m gonna go start a podcast.” And there are all kinds of data and information that’s out there of how to do that. And a lot of people will spend a lot of unnecessary funds and spend 1,000s of dollars on equipment and then they get to episodes in and they lose interest. But like from the editing side, I really think some of the things that jumped out immediately is if you’re starting a podcast, or maybe you’re doing a podcast right now, and you’re wondering why we’re only getting 10, 15 downloads, sometimes that can be the atmosphere in which you’re doing your podcast. And so what I mean by that is, all of us here right now, we’re in totally different backgrounds. Carlton’s in one room, I’m in another room. Adam, you’re outside. If we were all to just stay silent for 10 to 15 seconds, you could hear, even in all of these different situations, you could hear some kind of background noise. For me, it might be the overhead fan. For Adam, it might be a car that drives by those kinds of things. And a lot of times with podcasts that can be a little bit distracting.

Carlton Riffel 10:46
It’s going to be my child screaming.

Jonny Gamet 10:49
Yeah, exactly. I got four kids myself so I’ve got the door barricaded over there hoping they’ll come barging in.

Adam Vazquez 10:57
It’s good ambient noise.

Jonny Gamet 10:59
Yeah, you’ve got that background noise, which sometimes can be distracting, especially if I’m interviewing somebody and in the next conference room over, you’ve got some kind of meeting going on, and people can hear what’s going on, it just takes away from that.

The other one that I would say really kind of jumps out from the editing standpoint: There’s a term in college that we were given, it’s called “verbal clutter.” When a lot of people speak, they get very uncomfortable with no sound when they’re speaking. Think about it in conversation when you and I are talking, even in the last couple of sentences, you’ve heard a couple of verbal clutter things that I’ve said. So a lot of people, to keep the conversation going, will say “um,” “you know,” “uh” because they’re uncomfortable with that dead silence between conversations. And so I just tell people in terms of your verbal clutter, just be aware of that. Obviously, somebody like me could come along and clean all that up, but sometimes it makes it sound unnatural in your speaking. One of the ways to overcome that I tell people is just slow down when you’re speaking and think about what you’re saying because really, as dumb as it sounds, sometimes it’s just your mouth catching up with what your brain is trying to process. And so really that verbal clutter, those are the two big things from an editing standpoint, that I think trip a lot of people up. Those are the two big ones that I’d start off with right off the bat.

Adam Vazquez 12:23
I had a speech teacher in high school that if you said “um” during any type of thing, he would yell, “UM!” So you’re giving a speech in front of the class, you’re trying to continue to work through it, and you’d be like “um” and he’d go “UM!” And destroy the flow of whatever you were doing, which broke me I think of that particular one. Mine is a little more sophisticated, sneaky. I don’t know what I’m about to say so I start a sentence and then repeat myself. Tristen loves it when I do this. I’ll be like, “Yeah, so what is it… What is it you’re trying to do?” Like, you know what I mean? I’ll give myself that second to be like, “What am I actually trying to say real quick?” And then actually say it, so that’s a fun one that I know you guys love on the editing side of things. What do you do, Carlton?

Jonny Gamet 13:23
On the transcription side I’m sure she hates that.

Adam Vazquez 13:26
Just repeating.

Jonny Gamet 13:27
What are all these “what’s” in here?

Carlton Riffel 13:28
I’m a basic… Yeah, I essentially just do all the worst verbal clutter. So I’m a frequent um-offender, frequent you-know-offender. Just right there, I did it again. So Adam, maybe next episode, you can just scream “UM” into the microphone every time I do that. Break my bad habit.

Jonny Gamet 13:50
You’ve given me a new idea to just start screaming “um” every single time I hear “um.”

Adam Vazquez 13:54
Yeah, it’s very annoying. I told my wife that story, unfortunately. And so if I ever do slip up in just casual normal conversation that spouses should be allowed to have, she loves doing that to me as well to frustrate me. So my home is not a safe place anymore for verbal clutter, essentially. It’s really it’s really distracting. There it is. There it is. See, it gets super annoying if you start paying attention to it. What about the technical side? What are some of the things that you think about? Or you do that probably the normal podcaster or audio person isn’t thinking about that might be helpful?

Jonny Gamet 14:34
Yeah, well, there’s a lot of— again, just for those out there that are maybe trying to do this on their own. There are a lot of great tools out there that you can use to enhance your podcast, even the sound of your podcast. One of the things that we use with regularity is Descript is a software that’s out there that you can sign up for. It gives you the opportunity to do the editing right there. Again, gives you also a transcription of what you’re doing. You’re saying so you can follow along with what’s going on. Again, in our day and age with the equipment and software that is out there, most computers have a pretty decent microphone, if you are on Zoom or on some kind of video chat call, most of the time your computer is going to be fine and your camera for your computer is most of the time gonna be fine as well. And again, I’m one of those guys, it’s kind of a cheapskate, my wife will tell you from a budget perspective. So if I’m wanting to do this and starting to generate content, I don’t want to go out and spend 1,500 bucks to $2,000 worth of equipment to see if this is actually going to work or not. And so a lot of people are already armed with the equipment and the things that they need, it’s just a matter of going out and doing it. And so I would say finding those software’s if you’re looking at audio editing software, there’s actually a program called audacity now, which is an editing tool that is completely free. If you want to go the next level up from that Adobe offers a whole bunch of editing tools and software’s that people can look into. But again, if you’re looking to do this, not long term, maybe starting out with a simpler process and solution, seeing how it takes off, then you can upgrade when you need to in the future.

Adam Vazquez 16:08
That whole spiel is going to murder our new business product where we sell expensive kits for for podcast equipment.

Jonny Gamet 16:17
But don’t worry, we can edit all that out in post. I’ll take care of that.

Adam Vazquez 16:21
I’m just kidding. We don’t have that. We do have, I should say—

Carlton Riffel 16:24
Just bleep that whole section out

Adam Vazquez 16:26
We do have a— Don’t do it, Carlton. I shouldn’t have even told you. That’s going to be a problem. We should say that the simplest option, Jonny, for what you’re just talking about is to sign up for HEARD prime, which is an unlimited editing service done by yours truly. Shout out, Jonny. So that’s the best option.

Jonny Gamet 16:52
When you sign up for prime, it’s coming right to me. That’s a great service that we offer. Not to give ourselves a little sales pitch here, but if you’re looking at from the editing perspective, we can turn that around for you pretty quickly and take the editing hassle out of it for you.

Adam Vazquez 17:08
Carlton, did you have anything to say?

Carlton Riffel 17:11
So, one of the things that I did right before Jonny came online, and one of the things that he took off my plate, which was awesome, was we listened for specific areas that are into podcasts that are good points, or have some good content within that 10 to 32nd. span. And Jonny selects those out. And so when you’re listening to the podcast, I am that first round, what are some things that you’re listening for? And what are some ways that the hosts and guests can make sure that they make some tight, neatly packaged points in their podcast that can be then clipped out later to be used? And it audiograms and quote cards?

Jonny Gamet 17:55
Yeah, that’s a great point. There are a lot of people out there that will use the term the Goldilocks principle in business and other places like that the idea of not too hot, not too cold, just right. And that applies to podcasting as well. We have clients out there that will record a 45 minutes to an hour-long episode and the data and the numbers show that people are engaged people there because it’s a very niche platform and a niche topic and area that people want to know about. And that’s what their audience is we have others that if they went 30 minutes, that’s probably too long for their audience. So I would say knowing your audience, knowing what they expect to hear. For me, when I’m looking at listening to quotes and listening for quotes, a lot of times I have no idea what this industry is all about. We have guys that talk about— One of my favorites is our guys, shout out to The Data Stack Show. And they talk about— I mean, if you want to talk about computers and data and code and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I’m already getting bored just talking about it myself, but they do a great job.

Adam Vazquez 19:04
Go listen to The Data Stack Show!

Jonny Gamet 19:05
It’s a great show. And they do a great job here can pasta soup, great job of bringing in the guests and really exploring that wheelhouse. And again, numbers show that they have a very, very successful podcast, and it’s in that great niche industry. And so again, finding that, that that sweet spot of is it too short, is it too long, and you’re gonna find that as you’re recording the episodes, this one got a whole bunch of lessons. And this one didn’t. Maybe it was the guests that you had on maybe it’s a topic that you had. So for me as I’m listening to these things, you can actually again, and this is where transcription helps you a little bit as I’m reading through this transcription, oftentimes the hosts will say something to the effect of “that’s a really good point” or “man, that’s awesome. I didn’t know that.” And so when I’m seeing that in a transcription, I know to kind of go back and go okay, so what did he actually say that was awesome or what that the host said was a great point. So I cheat a little bit on that and because they know more about that industry than I do so. But again that finding that sweet spot and finding those nuggets that are going to take away from the conversation and get the great follow-up pieces that you can use in social assets and graphics and quote cards and those kinds of things.

Carlton Riffel 20:16
One of the things that I think complements that is, if you’re on a podcast as a guest, or even as a host, sometimes summarizing what people have said because they’ll have great ideas and great points to make over a period of 20 minutes or so. And sometimes it’s just that really 10 Second overview where they take all that they just said and then put it together into something that’s a little bit more neat and shareable.

Adam Vazquez 20:40
Yeah, just to add, first of all, I just feel like we need to be transparent here. Carlton looks like he is recording through a potato. Like, there’s a potato that somehow has some translucency to it. I kind of see him. I want to put that on the record because I get internet shamed all the time by Carlton and so this is fun for me. I’m looking at you through a muddy puddle, is what I’m seeing right now. Normally, I’m the one that—

Jonny Gamet 21:10
And Carlton is the IT department.

Carlton Riffel 21:12
And I’m on a five-second delay.

Adam Vazquez 21:14
I know. Even the laughter is like, “I’m looking through muddy puddle,” and then… “Bah hah hah!” It’s good stuff.

Carlton Riffel 21:24
I’m at my in-laws. I can’t even participate in the conversation. I’m blaming my in-laws. I didn’t actually understand your words, Adam, when I got here. I forget of every time and they just roll their eyes.

Adam Vazquez 21:42
Carlton with his fake magic internet friends that he talks about? Well, just to talk to what Jonny was saying about the sound bites, I think one thing that as a podcaster I do is I’ll put pressure, sometimes too much pressure on myself to say things super concisely and coherently with the thought that it could be edited down the road for a soundbite or for promotional piece or whatever. And that’s great. I think that’s great if it happens organically. But I think that we’ve taken this idea of repurposing content and record once and deploy everywhere. And we’ve gotten so extreme with it, that we’re a little bit unwilling to be flexible. When something could be improved upon. For instance, if we have this whole conversation, and we’re talking about how to repurpose content, but it’s just not crisp, it’s just not in a concise fashion. The best way for in my opinion, to make that promotional piece is to take the idea, take the things that we discussed here, write out a two-sentence, little thing and record it separately. It’s 10 seconds extra work. But the final asset is going to be so much more polished and usable. So that’s just for free.

Jonny Gamet 22:59
That’s a great point. That’s a great point. Because a lot of people will try to, especially on the editing side, even splice together different sentences and different thoughts to try to get this coherence. And it’s just naturally not going to sound very good. Because again, I tell people all the time, we can’t really change your voice and your inflections and other things like that. So when you’re just trying to combine two sentences together, it’s often very hard to do that from an editing side.

Adam Vazquez 22:59
yeah, we had one client (who will remain nameless) that wanted us to go borderline North Korea on the things that they were saying, just editing things that didn’t get said, piecing it together with sound to make a new script. I’m sure that was a lot of fun for you, Jonny. It was tons of fun for me on the customer-facing side.

Jonny Gamet 23:43
I’ve always wanted to voice over a cartoon or something. And so I thought maybe I could do it. Voice acting, trying to try to guess voice but it didn’t work out though.

Adam Vazquez 23:51
That’s our next service coming soon. Jonny is J.A.S, Jonny As a Service. It’s gonna be really expensive. Awesome. Well, this has been really fun. It’s mostly been fun. Obviously having you on Jonny. Also just the delay with Carlton. I can’t even think about anything else. It’s just giggling. But yeah, this has been thank you for all the work you’ve done, obviously, over the last three years. It’s crazy. It’s been that long. And hopefully, I’m sure the audience is going to want to hear more from you now that we’ve exposed who the magic man behind the curtain is. So we’ll have to find a way to bring you on more frequently and talk about this and all the other stuff too. We didn’t even touch on football, Broncos nation, let’s ride. There’s so much we could talk about.

Jonny Gamet 24:39
You just walk away my closing line. That’s what I was going to say.

Adam Vazquez 24:41
Oh, my bad. I don’t think I said it correctly.

Jonny Gamet 24:46
We’re just going to delay a little bit more. We’ll get our boy Ross on here.

Adam Vazquez 24:51
Yeah, so anyway, with all that, Jonny, appreciate you coming on and we’ll have to do this again soon.

Jonny Gamet 24:57
Absolutely. Always a pleasure, guys. Thanks.