
We've flipped the script on this extended episode as Principal Marketing Strategist, Melissa Richey English interviews our host, Wendy Simmons, and producer, Kyle Davis. Ever wonder what it takes to dream up, research, plan, record, produce, and launch a podcast? Well, we sure did! With the support of excellent resources, awesome talent, and a whole lot of heart and hustle, we're delighted to share lessons learned from Season 1, and a glimpse of what to expect for Season 2!
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to The Shortlist.
We're exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.
Today, we're flipping the script for our last episode of Season One.
I'm Melissa Richey English, Principal Marketing Strategist at Middle of Six.
And for this episode, I'm your host.
Today, I'm interviewing our fearless leader and host, Wendy Simmons, and our podcast producer, Kyle Davis, to gain their insights on starting The Shortlist and find out what it takes to create a podcast from scratch with your in-house team.
Wendy, welcome to the hot seat.
Hello, Melissa.
And Kyle, welcome back to the guest chair, which for you is also the producer and editor seat.
Hello, yes, all three chairs.
All right, Wendy, let's start at the top.
Where did you come up with the idea to start a podcast?
So, you know, during the pandemic, I was listening to a lot of podcasts and enjoying that way of learning information.
And, you know, you could be immersed as you're out on a walk or, you know, doing something in that kind of solitary environment.
And I just, I swear, I woke up on New Year's Day 2021 and I was like, oh, we should do a podcast.
I mean, that's felt like what it was like.
I don't remember.
I don't have like a note in a journal that proves that point.
But I just feel like it was like New Year, something new to do.
This felt right.
Well, that's pretty ambitious.
I don't remember exactly how much time elapsed before you told me about your idea.
Do you remember?
Well, I feel like it was probably the next business day.
I don't know if that's true, but I definitely remember walking out to my kitchen and telling my husband, and sort of doing that patiently waiting for it.
It's early in the morning.
He's eating his breakfast.
I'm wondering when I can pounce this idea on him and say, so I think I should do a podcast.
His reaction was, I don't think you should do any more work.
You are doing tons of work.
You're busy.
I thought the idea was maybe to do a little less work.
Shout out to Joshua.
And I listen, I'm like, yes, I hear what you're saying, but I don't think it will be so hard.
So then I'm sure I just let that marinate overnight, and then rolled it out to the audience in you that I knew you would probably say, sure.
I think I said, that sounds like a lot of work.
So I think Joshua and I were aligned on that one.
I was overruled.
But then here I go to the next person, and it's Kyle.
Hey, Kyle.
The yes man.
I guess.
I'm like, I feel like we should do a podcast.
And what does he say?
Kyle, what did you say?
Probably like, how hard could it be?
Right, exactly.
Let's do it.
Which, in retrospect, slightly naïve, slightly naïve.
But for me, it was more like, yeah, why the heck not?
It is a lot of work.
And I definitely think for me, I kind of discounted some of the requirements on your time just from like, even just what we're doing right now.
Just like, oh, you got to block like two, three hours to record.
You got to block two, three hours plus to edit.
For me, it took a little bit of a minute to think about like the strategy behind it other than just the novelty of the idea.
But after thinking it over, I mean, and I think it's been borne out.
I mean, there is such a niche and such a audience for this type of discussion.
I probably am getting ahead of myself though.
Well, one of the things that I did as far as doing some really early research before getting into the deep type of research was I just listened to some podcasts about making podcasts, search how to make a podcast.
And I listened to a few other podcasters say, basically, the message was you should do it.
There's tons of people doing this.
It's not so hard.
You'll be fine.
Find something that you're interested in talking about and passionate about.
It'll be great.
Don't worry about it.
And so that gave me a level of confidence.
I'm like, okay, they're saying this.
And, you know, that must be true.
But to Kyle's point, it was a little naive.
It is more time intensive.
You know, you have to do more planning.
You have to do more prep.
The expense, you know, it was more than I thought.
I mean, I would definitely do it again.
We're going to keep doing it.
But it was that encouragement from the yahoos out there in podcast land.
And I think that was part of what probably my saying, it sounds like a lot of work is because I knew we wouldn't half ass it.
I knew we were going to whole ass it.
Got to whole ass.
So I knew that to do it well to the level that would be to the satisfaction of our team would be a lot of work.
So I also knew this felt like a good fit for us and for our industry.
There's not that many AEC marketing podcasts because I listened to all of them.
So I knew there was a market for what we were doing and I knew we could bring our perspective and do it in a really fun and interesting way.
My hesitation was knowing it would be work because we knew.
Yeah.
Personally, I listen to a ton of podcasts also and I'm a fan of the format.
I've always been interested in all realms of marketing, video production, video editing.
So I had some familiarity with like Adobe Premiere Pro and the Adobe Suite of editing software and things like that.
I thought it was a cool idea and a cool opportunity for me.
Let's dive in.
Let's gain a new skill.
Let's learn a new software.
Let's get another process.
And as a podcast fan myself, like learn sort of the nuts and bolts and the ins and outs of actually how these things get made.
And it was such a fun opportunity, even if no one listened to it, to just get our team together and to just do what we're doing right now.
You know, have some laughs, joke around, talk about what we're passionate about, talk about what we're interested in.
And it's been really awesome and encouraging to just hear like how smart everybody is on our team, like myself completely excluded.
Tivnon and Melissa yourself, some of these podcasts that we've produced, I'm like, man, these people really know their stuff.
This isn't just like for fun, this is like truly valuable information.
So it's just been a really fun team building experience the whole way around.
That was definitely one of my unexpected outcomes was how fun it is to listen back to the episodes and hear, because obviously, I'm not on every episode.
So hearing what you guys recorded and then how it got edited and learning the perspectives of our team has been really fun for me.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I in the very beginning, of course, I think this is very natural reactions that it's painful to listen to yourself, even with Kyle's wonderful editing, taking out the ums and breaths and that kind of thing.
To listen was hard.
Now I find myself on Wednesdays when these come out, actually hit play and listen to it as I get ready.
I laugh along with the jokes and I enjoy listening to Abigail or Becky talk about design or whatever the topic is.
Even though I was there to be the host of the show, it surprises me how much I enjoy each episode too.
I can remember a time in the early days when it just started auto-playing in my car, and it took me for a surprise where I was hearing my own voice come through my speakers in my car.
Hey now.
But now I have the same experience where I'm excited on Wednesday when the new episode drops and I'm like, oh, let's listen to it.
Right.
I don't listen to them when they drop you guys because I spent hours listening to them many times previously, but I do listen to my sports podcasts or whatever.
And I'm like, come on, man, you can't like throw a little de-noiser on that.
You can't get rid of the hum.
Like, what are you keeping all this clunky stuff in here?
Like that edit wasn't good.
So it's definitely changed my perspective too.
Yeah.
I'm a lot more judgy on other people's podcasts now.
I know.
Come on, get your audio quality in order.
Let's go.
Some good mics, not that big of a deal.
Well, you know, maybe we're biased.
We think we've got a well done, well produced, well edited podcast.
So what were the steps you took at the beginning to figure out how to do this?
Well, you know, it took a little bit of research to really understand all of the elements that would be required in creating a podcast from scratch and then launching it.
So I took the SMPS Master This Create a Podcast three part webinar series with David Lacour and he mapped out his approach to the PSM show and a lot of the basic foundational information about launching a podcast.
And then I also listened to the audiobook, Everybody Has a Podcast Except You by the McElroy Brothers.
Apparently they have something like 12 different podcasts between all of those guys and their wives and all these different topics.
So I thought that their audio book was excellent.
I think I listened to it twice just to, again, get that foundational knowledge.
My brother is an audio engineer, and so he had some advice and just sort of reaching out and understanding the lay of the land before you really like invested more time and more money, you know, having equipment brought in and figuring it out.
Yeah, Wendy recommended both of those to me as well.
And I especially enjoyed the Everybody Has a Podcast Except You book.
It's definitely like a humorous book and they don't take it too seriously.
And it has a lot of really like practical tips on the nuts and bolts and how to get things started.
That was an enjoyable listen.
And after reviewing my notes on that audiobook, I felt like we kind of knew how to dive in.
Kyle, I love to tell people that we produce and edit this podcast entirely in-house and brag on you a little bit, Mr.
Producer.
So what did you do to get prepared to produce and edit a podcast?
I think honestly, listening to a lot of podcasts just in my daily life has definitely been helpful.
And as I mentioned, being interested in video editing and having some familiarity with the Adobe Premiere Pro, it definitely was a bit of a shortcut there.
I mean, honestly, like a huge bit of this is literally just like the razor, you know?
It just looks like a razor blade.
So like, can you cut?
Can you make a cut?
Can you eliminate things?
But to your point, Melissa, I think Wendy and I both share this sort of like whole assed approach, if you will, where if I hear an um or a clunk or it's just even minor stuff, but once I start at a certain standard, I can't pull it back.
And so that was something that was a little bit unforeseen or slightly added some time to the production schedule.
It was just like, oh no, we're going for like a really high bar here.
And I like to think that we reach it, but oh boy, can it get a little bit tedious when you start with such a high standard and then you're like, oh, I got 45 minutes where I have to consistently apply this.
When you were on vacation and I had to clip the quote for our social post, I was like, I knew it was a lot of work and I knew how proficient you were at it, but when it took me like 12 tries to clip a 30 second clip out of a piece of audio, I just had a new level of respect for what you do and how you listen to us for hours and hours and bring it down to like a 20 to 30 minute episode.
Yeah, it's a slightly psychotic editing process, but it works for us.
So yeah, listening to the same book as Wendy also helped a lot because that was kind of like the main barrier for entry.
It was just like, what website do I go to?
What software do I open?
What mics do we buy?
The actual like roll up your sleeves and edit the podcast part is more of learn as you go, take your lumps, figure it out.
So that everybody has a podcast book was valuable in that it sort of laid the whole groundwork for you where I didn't know exactly just like the process for like, we're on teams, we're on audition, we're actually also using something, a browser based recording software called Clean Feed as our backup and also just like the logistics of how we all see each other and communicate, especially being remotely.
It showed how the technology could be used and made it a lot more simple and streamlined to think through the process that way.
A way that I have thought about that SNPS webinar and the book were, it was like having a cookbook or some recipes.
Yeah, there you go.
And we had both of those and we modified the recipes.
Like, I don't think we are doing that using the same software and the same systems that either of those resources told us to do.
They weren't mandating, they weren't saying this is the way to do it.
But they're like, you're going to need all of these elements.
And then through our own research and other people that we reached out to and looking at the tools we had through Adobe, we made our own decision.
So like Kyle said, we record on Adobe Audition because we had that software and we wanted to learn within the suite and we found the clean feed resource so that we could have a second backup audio option, which we have not used and hope we never need to use, but we have that.
That's right, knock on wood.
Right, exactly.
And we chose Buzzsprout for our podcast hosting platform.
When we looked at others, we felt like that was a really good one.
And so while nothing was mandated on what to do, we were able to change out the ingredients to come up with what we felt like was the best version for our podcast.
Right, because it's like you need to record it.
What do you record it with?
What equipment, what technology?
You need to edit it.
What do you edit it with?
You need to host it.
What do you host it with?
So that was great to kind of get the lay of the land and to make our own choices from there, do our own research on pricing or what our capabilities were going to be.
We've kind of evolved and adjusted our approach over these almost now 30 episodes.
And I think that is a lesson learned where it's just kind of like, it's whatever works.
I mean, we've got eight or nine disparate people in different locations and we're scheduling these podcasts and where Wendy had the brilliant idea of like purchasing two high-quality mics and we basically just like mail one to our different team members, whether they're in Portland or they're in tacoma or they're in Bellingham like I am.
That's like a perfect example of how we just kind of like made the process work for ourselves.
I don't know how many people are shipping a microphone throughout the Pacific Northwest for their second studio, but it gives us the high-quality audio that we want and it's a process that works for our whole team.
It makes it seamless for us, so that's what we're doing.
Yeah, well speaking of high-quality audio, everyone's recording whether it's in their closet or in their home office, so what have you learned about editing and tips and tricks for making the quality of the sound the best?
Well, I've definitely learned a bunch of weird words that mean nothing like parametric equalizer and dynamics processing and hard limiter and maybe like denoiser kind of explains itself, but that's something that, you know, through my process, just editing the podcast, maybe coming up against a challenge or a problem or being like, you know, how could I make that voice a little warmer?
How could I remove some of those clicks or some of those hums when people are typing on their keyboard?
And like most things in my life, it's like, okay, we'll just go to YouTube and there's some man or woman on there with a video and it's just like expertly laid out, click this, go here, do that.
And just through trial and error, it's like, oh, now we have these presets where this is how Melissa's voice sounds the best and this is how Wendy's voice sounds the best.
And I pull over those effects racks, if you will, from one individual to the next, so that when it's a Melissa episode, I've already kind of got everything set for you.
And if it's a Rachel episode, I've got everything set for her and kind of tweak it from there.
But really just trial and error, watching videos, trying things out for yourself, getting your hands dirty.
When you mess with audio, it's instant feedback.
You're like, whoa, that sounds really bad.
So I'm gonna go back to default.
And then you try it again.
Oh, that actually does sound a little bit better.
I think I might keep that.
So you mean when I got the compliment that I have a Barry White podcasting voice, it's not just me.
You've created some magic.
No, you actually, if I can blow smoke, Melissa, you have the warmest, nicest radio voice of the team.
No doubt about it.
That's just called natural talent.
Oh, you see, all my life, I was just told I had a very deep voice for a woman.
So who knew it was an advantage in podcasting.
Hey, I want to stop for a second here and acknowledge that there are lots of editors, podcast editors out there that you can hire.
And we didn't consider that for a second, knowing that we had talent here and Kyle that could help with that.
Also, now that we've done 30 episodes, I cannot imagine letting the files leave us before Kyle has been able to work his magic.
It just seems impossible that some other editor, and I know it could be done, we just don't have experience with it, but could weave the story together the way Kyle does.
And especially maybe just understanding the AEC industry.
And even when we're listening to it, maybe we say something, we misspeak a little bit.
We don't want the wrong information or the wrong direction to our listeners to go out there.
So we're able to reel that back or just make sure it's clear in providing that instruction.
And so if anyone's considering using an outside editor, it is possible, but I wonder what that experience is like.
I feel like a lot of the quality goes to us being able to do that in house.
I just don't know how anybody could ever relinquish control.
Right.
But that's more like more of a personality trait of our team where we're like, no, don't you dare take our precious files.
We do it ourselves.
We don't let anybody else do it.
And if we haven't made this clear, every episode, Kyle is recording whoever Wendy is interviewing.
So he's also coaching us along, say, oh, try that again, but say it a little bit like this way, or that was perfect.
Or if you're feeling nervous, Kyle's great at putting you at ease and letting you know, hey, don't worry about it.
Just record it.
It's fine.
Yeah, there's definitely like a bedside manner to being the producer that just differs by day and differs by team member.
And on the editing and house portion, I mean, part of it for me is just like selfishly, like I wanted to learn this and I wanted to be able to get proficient at a new skill, which I think was another cool part of this whole process was, you know, now we've all kind of like stretched out of our comfort zone.
We're all thrown on a mic and it's, it can be awkward.
It could be nerve wracking, but we're kind of putting ourselves out there to try to produce something as a team.
And I'm learning more about production and other people are learning more about public speaking or becoming an expert in a certain topic or feeling comfortable sort of having that authoritative idea or being able to have like a free flowing conversation on these topics that are interesting to our audience.
So yeah, for me, I just wanted to keep hold of it because it's like a fun project to do, even if it can take a little bit of time.
Wendy, were there other reasons that you wanted to keep the whole production in-house?
Hmm, I mean, I think mostly it was that quality control and being able to be in control of the creative aspect of it.
I mean, everything from the design, we did that all in-house and how it was launched and that piece of it.
Just, I don't know, we're marketers, right?
This is in our wheelhouse, even if podcasting wasn't something we had done before.
So it felt like we should have the full experience that we couldn't shop it out to anyone else.
We had to own it and it's worked out really well.
I would keep doing that.
I would recommend it, even if it means that to launch each episode in the first season, it took about 30 to 40 hours per episode.
That's a lot.
That's a lot more than I thought it was going to take.
I think this like second half of the season and probably going to the next season because we don't have all the startup work of the launch.
It's probably going to take closer to 20 hours.
But if you think about Kyle, myself, and then a guest and the prep work and the editing and then the pushing out to social and other channels, you know, that's just, it's going to add up for sure.
So, yeah, even though with that, I'd still vote for keeping it in house because, you know, like our proposal work, other things, it's like, well, we want to, we want to put our final polish on everything.
Right, right.
We just don't know any other way other than to just keep going, keep pushing.
How do you polish it more?
How do you make it prettier?
How do you do it the right way?
That is one thing about, if you were thinking about hiring someone outside to edit.
I mean, our podcast is interesting in that we want it to be a conversation and we want it to be casual and fun, but we're also talking about very specific topics that pertain to the AEC industry and we are also giving advice or our perspective and we don't want our information or our story to be off in any way.
So there is a little bit more of like a reigning in that we have to have.
I mean, if you were just having a conversation with friends or if your podcast was more entertainment driven or comedy driven or you're giving your opinions about movies or whatever, I think there's a little bit more wiggle room to have it be a little looser and someone could probably just say, oh, well, I'm just going to cut A to B, B to C and there you go.
You got a podcast.
It could be a lot more streamlined.
We definitely have a little bit of a heavier hand on the narrative and the content side of it to make sure that we are giving folks the valuable information out there.
And it's a testament to our team that there is that expertise in house and we do feel comfortable kind of speaking to those things.
So Wendy, what were your goals in launching The Shortlist?
Well, like Kyle mentioned, something that we were excited about was learning a new skill.
And maybe not everyone was excited, as excited to get behind the microphone, but everyone was willing, which was pretty wonderful.
I'm personally terrified right now, I can barely contain myself.
I know, we want you on more, but you fit better in your producer seat than you do in front of the mic, right?
Not better.
Don't make me talk about AEC stuff.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
You guys are way smarter.
I love the enthusiasm folks had for coming and making this happen.
But thinking about the very original goals, we had been trying to put out one blog post a month.
That was sort of our cadence for creating content, putting it out there.
But it only reached a handful of folks, 20 or 24 over time, and it just didn't have the draw as I knew a podcast would.
The really cool thing about creating a podcast, you push it out there, and then when people start listening, then they will continue down the feed and listen to another episode or they may listen to three episodes at a time, which just does not happen in the same way for a blog post.
People don't read one necessarily and then read three or four more down the line.
And it also may not be top of mind for them to like, oh, I should go to the website and look at the blog.
But of course, podcast feed is right in your phone, and so you get to see that when a new episode drops.
I don't know if that is exactly a goal, but we wanted to share our expertise with the AEC community, and we wanted to make it more accessible and just easy for someone to listen, gain some insights, move on with their day.
And actually, that's part of the reason of we aim to have most episodes under 30 minutes.
So you could go for a lunch walk or you could listen to it on the way to work, and it's not going to take a huge investment of time.
You just get a little something and maybe skip over an episode that isn't relevant to your world, but that's fine too and you can get a lot of content there.
I've been encouraged by the podcast platform in that way because in my experience, working on different websites or being in e-commerce or blogging or whatever marketing thing you're up to at whatever time, it's always like, oh, well, how do we get traction to our website?
How do we get eyes on our brand?
It's like number one thing is create really interesting, valuable content and give it away for free.
And it's like, oh, well, that's a lot easier said than done.
Just have a brilliant blog post every week, get out of here.
But the podcast has allowed us to do that in such a more like effective and personal way.
It's delivered right to people's phones.
People love listening to podcasts.
It's a little more digestible like Wendy mentioned.
And that's been really cool to kind of see that, to see that advice out there and now to feel like we're actually maybe even delivering on that promise has been really cool.
Yeah, and the way we approach it is we will take one large topic and break it down into three smaller topics.
So from a recording for a couple of hours, we get three episodes typically, so.
Hopefully.
Yeah.
You know, I was at an event just the other day and two marketers came up to me and they said, we're brand new to AEC marketing.
And they were also young in their career in general.
And they said, do you ever have any advice for people who are new to their career?
And luckily, I was at this event where I had a shortlist postcard that I was able to hand to them.
I was like, well, we have a podcast.
There are 30 episodes there.
You can listen to those.
And then if you have questions, you can reach out specifically to me.
But this is a great start.
And they were so thankful.
It made me so happy.
Like, yes, we made this.
And I guess the blog or the website could feel a little bit like this, but I could tell right away that we're going to listen.
Thank you so much.
You know, problem solved.
Yeah, I was at a conference a few weeks ago, and someone was lamenting that someone on their team had left, so they were back to be in a Department of One.
I was like, we have a podcast episode about that.
You should listen to it.
So it is a nice way to give somebody something of value in a really compact, easy to communicate way.
Episode 12, Departments of One.
Be sure to check out Episode 12, Departments of One.
There you go.
Another goal of ours, and it has definitely proven to be true, is lowering the friction for people to reach out to Middle of Six and the team.
In fact, we have this format where I'm interviewing people from Middle of Six.
We have not had any official guests on yet.
Stay tuned, season two, that may happen.
Maybe it won't happen.
We'll see.
But because I was really driven to introduce Melissa to everyone in the AEC community, have folks meet our graphic designers and get to know them and have the personality so that the next time they meet us at a conference or they decide they're going to send an e-mail, they already sort of know who the team is.
Like, oh yeah, I know Kyle or Rachel.
Well, they've listened to the whole team in that way.
So I'm hoping that that just lowers the barrier and invites people into our circle.
OK, I'll take the microphone back here and then ask Melissa and Kyle, tell me a little bit what it's been like to be on the other side of the microphone being asked to create an outline of content that you want to share.
What's that been like for you?
I was pretty nervous on the first one and something that we did that I think took some of the pressure off is we just called it Episode Zero and we just did a recording just to see what it was like and we knew if it didn't produce anything usable we could just throw it out.
But that was a nice way to just kind of get used to the format, test out the kinks, see what we needed to do with the setup on the audio to make Kyle's editing load easier.
So that was pretty useful.
I also learned that you don't want to be too scripted or rehearse that part of the best episodes come out from some of that natural conversation and the natural camaraderie our teammates have.
Yeah, there's a balance between preparing and having a plan and then how do you speak through it naturally?
We use OneNote for everything at Middle of Six, including our planning for the podcast.
We have a bit of a template, we try to fill in the spaces for questions and think through what's the organization of each episode, but then you almost have to let that go, so that you can have a nice conversation and it flows, and you might even think of things on the fly, and keeping that natural but still organized enough without an outline.
It's a little bit of a disaster.
One thing that's been a pleasant surprise for me, the unexpected outcome even, is that people are listening that I didn't even realize would be listening.
Now that we're doing more networking events in person, I'll be at something and they're like, oh, I was just listening to your podcast.
And it's those moments where sometimes you kind of forget you have one and then someone brings it up to you.
It's like, you got to be kidding me.
Right.
Yeah.
And for me right now, being on the other end of the mic, it's been a while since I've done this.
And, oh man, it is way harder.
It is way easier to sit on the sidelines and to just chime in and be like, oh, just try that again or, oh, just loosen up.
Oh, you got this.
No big deal.
And now I'm like trying to tell it to myself and I'm like, no, but I actually do need to say everything totally perfect.
And when I mess up, I'm just like, oh my gosh, it's like the end of the world.
So it's pretty funny to be on this side now where I get it.
It's like there's just another level of pressure when these levels are bouncing in front of you and the red record buttons on, and you just don't want to suck.
So I get it.
I know.
It's like we can go and facilitate a meeting, stand in front of a room, present best practices.
We feel really comfortable in that space.
So they sit down in a chair in your closet with a microphone.
It's a lot harder than it looks.
I know.
I keep telling myself, like, just talk, just talk like a normal person.
How hard could it be?
It's hard.
I'm amazed at Wendy and the rest of the team's ability to come up with topics.
I mean, I'm being a slacker here and that this is a super easy topic that kind of fell out of the sky so I can just vamp on this all day.
But coming up with pre-positioning or interview coaching or what else are some other things that we've talked about, Melissa?
Cover letters.
I mean, we've gotten so granular into certain topics.
And when you start thinking about it piece by piece, when you start thinking about the strategy of things, you're like, wow, I could easily talk about a cover letter for 20 minutes.
So I think that was one of my hurdles at first was like, haven't we talked about everything?
But when you really try and get focused and have very specific questions about a topic, then you can talk for a good 20 minutes.
We could probably talk for an hour about a cover letter.
Yeah, we've had like 30 of these and we've probably already got 30 more ideas outlined and that's the expertise of Wendy and the rest of the folks on our team to be like, we have this brainstormed out, there is those granular things and there is that valuable information out there to dive into.
Being on the other side here, I couldn't imagine coming up with another 15, 20 things that I would feel comfortable being an expert on.
So I'm just going to keep on faking it and I'll just show up whenever Wendy makes me do it.
That was your strategy to be the producer?
Like great.
My strategy was to, oh, I don't know, I don't have any topics, sorry.
Well, I have to say one of my favorite episodes was the graphic design episode that Becky and Abby did.
And I was very skeptical that the topic of graphic design, a visual topic was going to translate to audio, but somehow we made it happen.
And I thought it's actually one of my favorite episodes.
It made me laugh a lot.
And Becky and Abby did a good job of painting the picture of graphic design topics through descriptions.
That's episode 23.
Episode 23, episode 23.
10 graphic design tips.
And they did do an excellent job.
And then even sometimes it's like, oh, you know, then you hit like Ctrl Shift D and I'm like, how is this gonna work?
But they definitely did it.
And talking about those aesthetic things on a audio platform, they did a great job.
And there was a lot of interesting conversation that came out of it.
Yeah, and then that one inspired us to create a blog post.
So in the reverse, right?
So let's do a blog post on that, so we can put those keyboard shortcuts in there and a few screenshots here and there and links to those tools so that people who listen to the episode or maybe just run across it in another way could actually have the visual component to go with that podcast.
Kyle also added some Easter eggs in that episode.
So that was one of my other reasons I liked it because it made me laugh from those things.
Always looking for opportunities to joke around a little bit and get something funny in there if we can.
We have a lot of comedians, faux comedians and fans of comedy at Middle of Six.
So not me, but-
I was going to say, I mean, you probably couldn't tell by the way that I'm performing right now.
We like to keep things light.
Someone described the podcast as sort of like the SNPS roundtable, right?
You're getting together with friends, you're laughing a little bit, sharing.
There's not necessarily always one answer to any questions.
So there's lots of back and forth, and that probably makes the editing even trickier because we're like, well, that applies in this case and in that case, but that's a good vibe.
And I think more laughing and more comedies in The Shortlist's future.
Well, we're almost wrapped on season one of The Shortlist.
So what are some best practices and lessons learned that you're walking away with?
I love the approach that we took in batch recording, trying to record two or three episodes at a time.
Believe it or not, I mean, I know we're professional podcasters now, but it takes a second to start warming up your voice and even getting the tech issues out of the way.
So you can be more efficient if you can get at least two episodes recorded and three, especially in a certain topic, because if you're talking about branding, you're talking about business development, just stay in that mindset, keep it all together, and then it makes three really good episodes without having to stop and re-record and schedule again and all that stuff.
Yeah, it has been nice to chunk those into subsections.
So you're all kind of in the same mind space.
You're talking about the same topic, but just going a little bit more granular or a little bit more specific on a certain thing.
And also the way that we mail this microphone around, it makes sense to say, okay, well, the microphone's in Portland, so let's get three episodes out of it before we ship it to Tacoma or whatever.
On that note, also best practice, definitely invest in a high quality microphone or two.
I just couldn't imagine going any other way.
I think, you know, being a podcast listener myself and thinking about the audience and thinking about someone's either in their car or they're on their walk and they're choosing to spend time and invest their energy in listening to us.
It's like, let's make it as seamless and as smooth and as pleasurable as possible.
Let's get rid of the bumps and the dings and let's not have it all staticky and white noise everywhere.
I want it to be an enjoyable experience for the listener to spend some time with the team.
And we say invest, but the investment level isn't ridiculously high.
I think for one good, sure MV7 microphone and a stand that it comes with, you know, and some headphones, it's going to be less than $500.
We bought two sets of that so it could travel around, but we don't have a big mixing board or any super high tech equipment.
We use our computers in Adobe.
So I do agree.
It was like, if we're going to do it, let's not buy the $99 version, but also it feels like as far as expenses go, it wasn't that unreasonable.
Right.
And from the blah, blah, blah.
Melissa, why don't you say, how about from like the production side, like, what are some lessons learned there, Kyle?
What about some lessons learned on the production side, Kyle?
That's been an interesting learning experience for me.
So as Wendy mentioned, we use OneNote for a lot of stuff.
So we have our outline in OneNote.
And I would say, you know, you want to be as the producer and the editor, you want to be an active listener with your hosts.
And I even just take notes in the margins, like I mark spots that I plan to delete later, like when Kyle screws up three or four times and needs like a fourth take.
Just saves you a lot of time when you're listening back and you hear someone start on a tangent to know that like, oh, they're gonna screw up two times and you're gonna keep the third.
That'll save you a lot of time in the future.
And then also just sometimes we lose our train of thought or a kid walks into the room or someone bangs the desk.
It's like, oh, we gotta try that again, or we gotta pick it up where we were.
It's like, where were we?
And you're like, oh gosh, I don't even know.
And it's like, so as long as you're keeping your notes and keeping along, you can prompt your people to say, oh, this is where you were talking about, let's pick it up from here.
And then you're on your way.
One of the things that we learned from, in the research and resources was recommendations to be in the right state of mind for podcasting.
This is a business, a professional podcast.
We need to understand the subject.
We need to be prepared.
We need to prepare the guests.
We have to think through the questions, that part of it, but also just how's your energy level?
Did you have a real rough night of sleep last night?
Are you stuffy with allergies?
What's going on?
If you have a headache, let's just not podcast that day.
It's going to translate and change the vibe of the conversation, and it's just nearly not actually worth trying to suffer through it.
So bringing the energy and everything will make for a better podcast.
So that's something that might be hard to remember as a best practice, but it's worth canceling or rescheduling if you're not in the right mindset.
Yeah, and similarly, it's worth interrupting someone if they're struggling through it, or if they just need a different perspective, or they just need to hear a joke to get their head straight and loosen up.
From the production side, it's a team project.
We're all trying to do our best.
We're all trying to make the best product possible.
So I try not to hesitate to chime in with some encouragement or some advice, or even just to be goofy, loosen people up, and make sure that we're having a good time and we're having fun talking to each other about this stuff.
I think there was, what, maybe two episodes we re-recorded where there was just, it was not the day, it was rough, and the amount of time, Kyle, that you would have had to spend editing it just wasn't worth it.
So I think there was two episodes that we re-recorded.
One of them was mine.
Yeah.
I think there's a couple.
I think there is two that are on the cuddly room floor forever.
Rest in peace.
That was probably a close to episode zero type one.
We were figuring it out.
How do we bounce back and forth off of each other?
How do we ask questions and not go into monologues?
We actually just re-recorded it because we're like, now we know how to do this.
Well, yeah.
I would say it does get easier.
The first two are more nerve wracking and then as you get into your flow, it goes a lot more quickly, easily.
I think one of them we recorded in one take almost.
Yeah, and we're done.
Yeah, we've gotten a lot better here where talking about batch recording, it's like, oh yeah, it's like 30 minutes per and it's like it's done and then that's added a lot of efficiency to the editing too.
Because I say it all the time, it's like, if we don't like it, we'll just delete it and then no one hears it.
So who cares?
So who cares?
Well, we've moved into lessons learned from best practices, I think.
Nice segue.
Right?
We're getting to this point where re-recording can be quick and easy.
I have a microphone at my house all the time.
So sometimes I'll have an idea or say, hey, Kyle, we need to change the outro to say something different.
And I can go up and do a quick recording or two and save that file.
And so that's been a time saver in making sure you just get what you need and have to suffer with the old bad stuff for long.
And I think that kind of speaks to a lesson learned is to adapt as you go, as you learn more.
Absolutely, yeah.
We started out, we were dropping episodes weekly, and then we went down to every other week.
So I think giving yourself the permission to have some flexibility in how you approach the project throughout the season.
We went down to every other week for a really unexpected outcome, which is that it was too much content.
Not that probably our listeners in time wouldn't want that much, but it was just a lot.
And it was really kind of overtaking our social feed.
It was kind of everything.
We were focused on the website.
So we did that for a month and we learned like, you know what?
At this time, we need a little less of this.
So, you know, we didn't we didn't feel bad about it.
We just made that adjustment and then released every other Wednesday.
Yeah, that's probably one of my biggest lessons learned is just give yourself plenty of time.
I mean, from the editing side, it can definitely get tedious.
You can definitely spend some hours on it.
And if you're under the gun or if you're under a deadline, you can't edit any faster than you can edit.
Like there's no fast forward on quality or making things sound good.
So give yourself that space.
Give yourself time.
If you've got to adjust your schedule, it's not the end of the world.
You'd rather do it at a productive pace and give yourself the space to do it well than have it be a rush job and just have it be, you know, just it's not fun.
It's not fun to do it that way.
If we were to release every week, I feel like it would be one person's full-time job, essentially, and that is kind of the equivalent amount of time to do it well and to, you know, have every, give everyone space.
You know, if Kyle finishes an episode and says it's ready for your review, I may not be able to look at it that day.
I need to look at it within a couple days.
But, you know, you don't want to make it so tight that you have to edit on a Tuesday and turn around.
I mean, it's not our full-time job.
Another lesson learned we figured out, and this was really nice from the data that we could get from Buzzsprout, our podcast host, was who is listening to the podcast during the holiday season?
And the answer is, you know, subscribers are, but the downloads do fall a little bit in that area.
So as we're looking at season two, we want to think about the content that would be released at that time.
Maybe it's special episodes or kind of a different take, or skipping those holiday dates because people are doing other things.
They're with their family.
They're maybe not listening to the podcast as much.
So it's something that we saw and it's great to have that data.
And then we can make sure that when we are releasing things, it's hitting the audience at the right time.
Well, we've done it.
We are close to wrapping season one.
Do either of you have any parting thoughts?
Yeah, my parting thought in thinking through 30 episodes an entire season is like, it's what I mentioned earlier.
It's like go easy on yourself, have fun with the process.
If this is something that you're interested in, just go into it with an open mind and sort of a learner's mentality and take it from there.
It's kind of like thinking about like whether you're building something or you're doing a home project or you're painting or what have you.
If you're the one doing it, you're just going to notice like every little blemish, every little missed brush stroke, oh, that right angle is a little off, all that line's not straight, but you're the one with like your nose in it and you're the one that sees it.
But the second you share it with other people, they don't fixate on the same problems that you do.
They don't see the mistakes.
They just, they hear all the hard work and all the enthusiasm that you put into it.
And it can be, it can definitely be fulfilling and worthwhile.
So I would encourage people to just get after it if that's what you want to do.
Yeah, that's good advice.
And I would just want to say, you know, thank you to the listeners, people who have sent in their questions or sent in comments to say, oh my gosh, this is like reading a page out of my journal, or thank you for providing this.
We share that internally at Middle of Six.
We put it on our little Teams chat for The Shortlist, and we have little celebrations, little high fives and dancing around because we feel like we did something, we're making a difference, and that brings us a lot of joy.
So of course, you know, thank you to the listeners and for anyone who's been sharing it to their network or knows people who might be interested in the topic, I cannot say thank you enough for that.
And also, you know, the Middle of Six team themselves for being brave and coming in front of the microphone and thinking through and creating content that our friends and people in the AEC industry really like.
Again, that wouldn't happen without hard work and pulling time away from other things to make sure that we are creating content that has value here.
So thank you Middle of Six team for that.
We're gonna take a little break.
We're gonna take a little break over the summer.
We have so many ideas for episodes coming up.
We'll be chomping at the bit to actually get those recorded.
But I just want to say, because we don't say it very often, if you subscribe and follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or any player, we're really on every single outlet out there.
If you do that, then when we come back for season two, it'll pop right up into your feed and you won't miss a beat there.
So hopefully the 30 episodes we put together this first season can tide you over for a bit and let us know if you have questions because we would love to answer those and address them on the next season.
Thank you so much, Wendy and Kyle, for sharing your perspectives on The Shortlist season one.
I also want to say thank you to Wendy for dedicating the resources to make this project a success.
Yeah, thank you, Wendy.
Good job Middle of Six team.
It's been awesome.
The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, Principal Marketing Strategist.
Our producer is Kyle Davis, with digital marketing and graphic design by the team at Middle of Six.
We wanna hear from you.
If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss, send an email or voice memo to theshortlistatmiddleofsix.com.
If you're looking for past episodes or more info, check out our podcast page at middleofsix.com/theshortlist.
You can follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at middleofsix.
Thanks so much for listening.
We hope you'll tell your friends and colleagues about the show and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes.
Until next time, keep on hustling.
See you next time.
Have a good summer.
See you in season two.
welcome to The Shortlist.
We're exploring all things AEC marketing to help your fit.
Yep, yep, it's been there.
The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.