[Mike Dell] Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, whatever the
[Mike Dell] case may be. This is Mike, and this
[Mike Dell] is Mike Dell's World Number four hundred. And,
[Mike Dell] today is the day before International Podcast Day.
[Mike Dell] It's Sunday, the twenty ninth of September twenty
[Mike Dell] twenty four. So, I figured I'd get out
[Mike Dell] ahead of the International Podcast Day. I guess
[Mike Dell] it's probably the thirtieth someplace in the world.
[Mike Dell] That's cool. But, yeah, I figured I would
[Mike Dell] just kind of go over a little bit
[Mike Dell] of my history in podcasting, those of you
[Mike Dell] who have been with me forever. I have
[Mike Dell] some listeners that have been listening since the
[Mike Dell] get go, or pretty close, which was in
[Mike Dell] April of two thousand and five. I was
[Mike Dell] living in Lake Ann, Michigan. It's a little
[Mike Dell] town a few miles west of here. I'm
[Mike Dell] in Traverse City, in case you guys didn't
[Mike Dell] know that. The pinky finger of Michigan. Everybody
[Mike Dell] in Michigan points to the back of their
[Mike Dell] left hand, at least if they don't live
[Mike Dell] in the UP. And, they're in the pinky
[Mike Dell] finger area, I guess. Nobody calls it that,
[Mike Dell] but that's what I call it. But, over
[Mike Dell] in Lake Ann, you know, I was well,
[Mike Dell] we'll go back a little bit further. Back
[Mike Dell] in the early two thousand's, I got really
[Mike Dell] interested in talk radio because I was, you
[Mike Dell] know, up at all hours of the night,
[Mike Dell] working night shift at a printing plant. And,
[Mike Dell] you know, talk radio, people like Art Bell,
[Mike Dell] and, Jimbo Ham, Larry King, and Bruce Williams,
[Mike Dell] Sally Jesse Raphael, the old NBC Talk Net,
[Mike Dell] and, of course, like, Paul Harvey. But, you
[Mike Dell] know, in the middle of the night, there
[Mike Dell] really wasn't a lot of of different shows
[Mike Dell] to listen to. So it was mostly Art
[Mike Dell] Bell. And then I would catch Jim Boyan
[Mike Dell] or Larry King, you know, before Art Bell.
[Mike Dell] And, I discovered this thing called an iPod.
[Mike Dell] And, back when the iPod first came out,
[Mike Dell] I thought, oh, this is great. I can
[Mike Dell] put stuff on here. So, what stuff? There
[Mike Dell] wasn't much to put on there other than
[Mike Dell] music. And, you know, when you're working night
[Mike Dell] shift, music's kinda boring, puts you to sleep.
[Mike Dell] So, you know, Bruce Williams was the first
[Mike Dell] I I knew of that would put MP3
[Mike Dell] files on their website that you could download.
[Mike Dell] So I would download those MP3 files from,
[Mike Dell] three hours of Bruce Williams and And then,
[Mike Dell] I found a couple other sites that would
[Mike Dell] do that. And before too long, I filled
[Mike Dell] up my little iPod. In fact, I have
[Mike Dell] the iPod that I used over in that
[Mike Dell] other desk behind me. One of those iPod
[Mike Dell] Shuffles. It looked like a stick of gum,
[Mike Dell] kind of that shape. And, I think I
[Mike Dell] could put five hundred and twelve megabytes of
[Mike Dell] MP3s on there. And, you know, back then
[Mike Dell] we didn't encode them as high as we
[Mike Dell] do now. And, that was plenty. It would
[Mike Dell] get me through an eight hour shift and
[Mike Dell] I wouldn't even have to worry about the
[Mike Dell] AM radio. Listening to Art Bell when they
[Mike Dell] turned the power down, and you could, you
[Mike Dell] know, have the radio at just a certain
[Mike Dell] spot and crank it up. This was a
[Mike Dell] lot easier. I could listen in earbuds, wired
[Mike Dell] earbuds. And then I heard about this thing
[Mike Dell] called podcasting. I would listen to Twit, of
[Mike Dell] course. They were one of the first ones.
[Mike Dell] I listened to Adam Curry, The Daily Source
[Mike Dell] Code. That one was pretty popular. And, you
[Mike Dell] know, back then there was maybe a hundred
[Mike Dell] podcasters, something like that. Listened to Todd and
[Mike Dell] Geek News Central. He was one of the
[Mike Dell] first ones that I listened to. And, I
[Mike Dell] mean, there was just all kinds of stuff,
[Mike Dell] you know, out of that hundred that was
[Mike Dell] worth listening to. And, definitely got into it.
[Mike Dell] And, you know, I always wanted to have
[Mike Dell] my own radio show. I didn't really have
[Mike Dell] a lot to talk about. I still don't.
[Mike Dell] But, I always wanted to do it, you
[Mike Dell] know, just for the sake of doing it.
[Mike Dell] And, this was kind of the way to
[Mike Dell] do it. So, again, April two thousand and
[Mike Dell] five, I got a I just bought a
[Mike Dell] Dell laptop, a little twelve inch Windows machine,
[Mike Dell] and came with a little stick microphone. I
[Mike Dell] said, well, jeez, how hard is this, podcasting
[Mike Dell] thing to do? Back then, it was it
[Mike Dell] was a bit harder. I had to, hand
[Mike Dell] roll the RSS feed. That took me a
[Mike Dell] little while to figure it out. And, you
[Mike Dell] know, I was hand rolling a website. And,
[Mike Dell] basically, truth be told, I stole Adam's feed
[Mike Dell] and, just changed stuff around for my stuff
[Mike Dell] and put it on the server and away
[Mike Dell] it went. And so that's how I started.
[Mike Dell] It was this show. It was named differently.
[Mike Dell] It was called the Benzoide Report. The reason
[Mike Dell] for that was I lived in Benzie County,
[Mike Dell] Michigan. And, some of the people out there
[Mike Dell] call themselves Benzides. It's the smallest county in
[Mike Dell] Michigan, and I don't think it's the least
[Mike Dell] populated, but it's not very populated even now.
[Mike Dell] And I think they only have one working
[Mike Dell] traffic light in the whole county. So, it's
[Mike Dell] mostly woods and Lake Michigan shoreline, and cute
[Mike Dell] little towns and whatnot. Lake Ann being one
[Mike Dell] of them. And, so I thought that would
[Mike Dell] be cool. A benzoed report. I didn't know
[Mike Dell] a benzoed was a class of drug, so
[Mike Dell] So, that probably slowed me down a little
[Mike Dell] bit or got listeners in there that, well,
[Mike Dell] what's this all about? And, you know, it
[Mike Dell] wasn't really about anything. It still isn't. And,
[Mike Dell] that's kind of what I like about it.
[Mike Dell] I've done lots of other podcasts, and I'll
[Mike Dell] go through kind of a list of that
[Mike Dell] here in a little bit. I do have
[Mike Dell] some guidelines here, so I don't forget anything.
[Mike Dell] But, about the first thirty six episodes, thirty
[Mike Dell] seven episodes of the Benzoin Report are lost
[Mike Dell] in the bit bucket somewhere. You know, they
[Mike Dell] always say that you put something on the
[Mike Dell] Internet and it's here forever. Well, that's not
[Mike Dell] exactly true. I cannot find the first thirty
[Mike Dell] six episodes that I did. Nowhere online, no
[Mike Dell] mention of it online anywhere, but, I know
[Mike Dell] I did them. And, truth be told, probably
[Mike Dell] on a hard drive somewhere in my garage
[Mike Dell] in a in a bin full of, old
[Mike Dell] hard drives. So, some point some point, I'll
[Mike Dell] get, set up to where I can search
[Mike Dell] some hard drives and see if I can't
[Mike Dell] find those. It would would be cool to
[Mike Dell] listen to how crappy that first episode was.
[Mike Dell] Again, I was sitting on my front porch
[Mike Dell] outside in the woods, with a stick microphone
[Mike Dell] and a laptop and, yeah, I'm sure it
[Mike Dell] was just wonderful. But, flash forward to September
[Mike Dell] of two thousand and eight, I decided that
[Mike Dell] the Benzoin Report was probably not the right
[Mike Dell] name for the podcast and switched it over
[Mike Dell] to Mike Dell's World with episode ninety three.
[Mike Dell] So, technically, subtract ninety two episodes and that's
[Mike Dell] my true count of Mike Dell's World, but,
[Mike Dell] we're splitting hairs here. And, I've done a
[Mike Dell] lot of unnumbered episodes. For a while there,
[Mike Dell] there was some technology that you could actually,
[Mike Dell] literally phone it in. You'd dial a phone
[Mike Dell] number and talk into the phone, and then
[Mike Dell] when you hung up, it created a podcast
[Mike Dell] episode and put it out. So, I did
[Mike Dell] a lot of those episodes. Done, you know,
[Mike Dell] I've podcasted a lot of places. I've podcasted
[Mike Dell] walking down the strip in Las Vegas. I've
[Mike Dell] podcasted, you know, taking a walk around my
[Mike Dell] neighborhood, one of my favorite episodes. I forgot
[Mike Dell] what number it is. It's still online. But,
[Mike Dell] it's called Walking with the White Squirrels. I
[Mike Dell] don't know why that's my favorite, it just
[Mike Dell] always was. I've replayed it probably two times
[Mike Dell] since. You know, it's the neighborhood I live
[Mike Dell] in. It's all nice and woods. And behind
[Mike Dell] my house, there was a family of white
[Mike Dell] squirrels. And, I haven't seen any in several
[Mike Dell] years now, but you know, there were albino
[Mike Dell] I guess they're albino squirrels, and, I guess
[Mike Dell] they don't last in the wild just because
[Mike Dell] they're easy to see. But used to, you
[Mike Dell] know, take a walk back there, and I'd
[Mike Dell] see three, four, five, six of them. And,
[Mike Dell] now I don't see them anymore. So, yeah,
[Mike Dell] I guess. But, you know, walking and talking,
[Mike Dell] you know, people look at you funny. Nowadays,
[Mike Dell] they don't because, you know, everybody's got Bluetooth
[Mike Dell] and talking on their phones all the time.
[Mike Dell] You know, you can walk around like a
[Mike Dell] crazy person and nobody would care. And, you
[Mike Dell] know, a lot of people walk around with
[Mike Dell] cameras in their face. It's just not quite
[Mike Dell] my thing. You know, because of my podcast,
[Mike Dell] I have the full time employment that I
[Mike Dell] have now. I went to a conference in
[Mike Dell] two thousand seven out in California and, by
[Mike Dell] chance, ran into the, Ravoice team out there.
[Mike Dell] Barry and Todd, Brian, Angelo, I don't remember
[Mike Dell] who else was there. But, I hit it
[Mike Dell] off with them, apparently, because, a couple years
[Mike Dell] later, I went part time with them. Everybody
[Mike Dell] was part time back then. So, in o
[Mike Dell] nine, started part time at Blueberry doing, tech
[Mike Dell] support. You know, helping them with, you know,
[Mike Dell] they just come out with a PowerPress plugin
[Mike Dell] for WordPress and, just started hosting shows. You
[Mike Dell] know, before that, we weren't doing any hosting.
[Mike Dell] It was all advertising. And, we pivoted. If
[Mike Dell] you want to hear the whole story about
[Mike Dell] that, the episode of Podcast Insider that came
[Mike Dell] out last Thursday. Some of the people have
[Mike Dell] been around Raw Voice and Blueberry all the
[Mike Dell] time. We kind of went through the history
[Mike Dell] of that. You know, celebrating twenty years of
[Mike Dell] podcasting, He said, Nearly twenty years of me
[Mike Dell] podcasting in April. That'll be twenty. Todd, I
[Mike Dell] think, just went over twenty years. Interesting stuff.
[Mike Dell] But, yeah. I went with Blueberry part time
[Mike Dell] in two thousand and nine. And, you know,
[Mike Dell] I've been kind of living the living the
[Mike Dell] dream, I guess. And then in twenty fifteen,
[Mike Dell] I went full time. And I've been there
[Mike Dell] ever since, of course. And, again, you know,
[Mike Dell] about four hundred episodes. The officially numbered ones
[Mike Dell] are four hundred for this show in nearly
[Mike Dell] twenty years. So, I figure that averages out
[Mike Dell] to about one point six episodes a month.
[Mike Dell] I always like to say I'm the king
[Mike Dell] of inconsistency in podcasting. So, that's how that
[Mike Dell] works. And if you've been with me that
[Mike Dell] whole time, you know I go two, three
[Mike Dell] months sometimes between episodes, and then I put
[Mike Dell] out a bunch of them, and then, stop
[Mike Dell] for a while and put out a bunch
[Mike Dell] more. I'm doing exactly you know, don't do
[Mike Dell] as I do, do as I say. My
[Mike Dell] suggestion is stay consistent. But I haven't done
[Mike Dell] that. That's okay. But, I've had a lot
[Mike Dell] of other podcasts along the way that I've
[Mike Dell] started and stopped. I'm also the King of
[Mike Dell] Pod Fade. And, this isn't even a full
[Mike Dell] list, but I was just, you know, going
[Mike Dell] through my head here. The second show that
[Mike Dell] I started was with a friend of mine,
[Mike Dell] John Martin. We're both ham radio operators, and
[Mike Dell] we're teaching live classes, getting your ham radio
[Mike Dell] license here in the US. We did the
[Mike Dell] technician and the general course. We didn't do
[Mike Dell] the extra class. We've had plans to and,
[Mike Dell] that one pod faded. But, we called it
[Mike Dell] the Ham Radio Pod Class. And, that started,
[Mike Dell] like, in September of two thousand five. And,
[Mike Dell] even got a mention on the Adam Curry's
[Mike Dell] daily source code. So that was the claim
[Mike Dell] to fame there. But, near as I can
[Mike Dell] tell, we we got probably seven or eight
[Mike Dell] hundred people licensed as, technician class amateur radio
[Mike Dell] operators here in the US. And, I don't
[Mike Dell] know how many generals, but, definitely had a
[Mike Dell] pretty decent following on that. Made a couple
[Mike Dell] enemies along the way. There was a couple
[Mike Dell] of other people that were doing cassette tape
[Mike Dell] classes for ham radio and they weren't real
[Mike Dell] happy with us. We'd go down to hamvention
[Mike Dell] and get snubbed. I won't mention any names
[Mike Dell] because, one of them is still active, doing
[Mike Dell] that. He does good. He sells, I don't
[Mike Dell] think he sells cassettes anymore. And, in fact,
[Mike Dell] I think he had a podcast for a
[Mike Dell] while with Leo LaPorte. But, again, I won't,
[Mike Dell] I won't say his name just because they
[Mike Dell] don't, you know, no no bad comments there.
[Mike Dell] He's a good guy, and he's trained a
[Mike Dell] heck of a lot more hams than I
[Mike Dell] have. But, that was that was the second
[Mike Dell] show that we did. Then I thought, oh,
[Mike Dell] let's do a daily podcast. Oh my gosh,
[Mike Dell] daily is nuts. And, I've tried it four
[Mike Dell] or five times and, it's just way too
[Mike Dell] much. No matter how short the content is.
[Mike Dell] A daily podcast. Shout out to James Cridland
[Mike Dell] doing, you know, daily, weekdays. We did, daily
[Mike Dell] seven days a week for, one called Strange
[Mike Dell] Today. That's where I'd find weird news and
[Mike Dell] and, you know, talk about that. And, you
[Mike Dell] know, anything strange in the news and strange
[Mike Dell] history stuff. I I was like history. So,
[Mike Dell] you'll see a repeating theme here on some
[Mike Dell] of these shows. But, one thing nice about
[Mike Dell] that is I had a few extra guest
[Mike Dell] hosts. So, I would write all the scripts.
[Mike Dell] They weren't really word for word scripts, but
[Mike Dell] I'd write scripts and then I'd send them
[Mike Dell] off. You know, so Trucker Tom and, I
[Mike Dell] can't think of the other guy that was
[Mike Dell] that would do the weekend shows for me,
[Mike Dell] but, he still does Linux and the Ham
[Mike Dell] Shack. So, shout out to you. But, had
[Mike Dell] Trucker Tom do a few of them, and
[Mike Dell] Jim Farley, my wife, Kathy. You know, so
[Mike Dell] we not always the same host every day,
[Mike Dell] but we we made that go a complete
[Mike Dell] year. So I did end up with three
[Mike Dell] hundred sixty five episodes of that one, called
[Mike Dell] Strange Today. And I think that one's all
[Mike Dell] gone too. I I again, I probably have
[Mike Dell] it all on hard drive somewhere. And then
[Mike Dell] Jim Farley and I, Jim's a ham radio
[Mike Dell] friend of mine and, friend, has a cottage
[Mike Dell] up here. We break bread, quite often. Anyway,
[Mike Dell] Jim and I did one called What's Up
[Mike Dell] With That? It was just a commentary comedy
[Mike Dell] thing. We'd just talk about whatever was going
[Mike Dell] on that day, when we would record. We
[Mike Dell] did quite a few of those episodes. And,
[Mike Dell] every once in a while, I'll get Jim
[Mike Dell] to record with me and we'll put one
[Mike Dell] of those episodes out on this feed. Again,
[Mike Dell] this feed stayed consistent, not consistent, but, it's
[Mike Dell] been the one where you find out everything
[Mike Dell] because I throw stuff into it from time
[Mike Dell] to time. And, I did a geek show
[Mike Dell] for a short time called Geek of the
[Mike Dell] North. That didn't last very long. Had that
[Mike Dell] one on a network with, Steve Lee. And,
[Mike Dell] I don't remember what the network name is,
[Mike Dell] but he's since retired. He's also one of
[Mike Dell] the founders of International Podcast Day, him and
[Mike Dell] his son. And, shout out to you, Steve.
[Mike Dell] Haven't heard from you in a while. Look
[Mike Dell] me up and see what's going on. And,
[Mike Dell] those of you that know me know that
[Mike Dell] I'm an aviation geek. So I did another
[Mike Dell] daily. And, it lasted a year, called Aviation
[Mike Dell] History Today. So, I would read stories that
[Mike Dell] happened back in the day, you know, about
[Mike Dell] aviation. It was just a little short, ten
[Mike Dell] minute daily. I did that for three hundred
[Mike Dell] sixty five days, so I stayed somewhat consistent
[Mike Dell] with that one. And then after the year,
[Mike Dell] I said, well, why don't we just do
[Mike Dell] aviation history this week? So I did a
[Mike Dell] half hour show where I would cover the
[Mike Dell] whole week and, come up with some pretty
[Mike Dell] pretty cool ones. On the April first, show
[Mike Dell] I remember, those of you that are Star
[Mike Dell] Trek geeks, which I am, know that in
[Mike Dell] two thousand and sixty three, the, Doctor. Zefram
[Mike Dell] Cochrane discovered or demonstrated Warp Drive. And, it's
[Mike Dell] known as First Contact Day. Anyway, I put
[Mike Dell] that in there and, I said that was
[Mike Dell] the great great grandson of Todd Cochrane. So,
[Mike Dell] anyway, that was funny. I tried a local
[Mike Dell] one called the Traverse City podcast. That really
[Mike Dell] didn't go very far or very long, but,
[Mike Dell] you know, just sorta did that for a
[Mike Dell] while and, probably did five episodes where I
[Mike Dell] thought, yeah, this is hard. It's hard work.
[Mike Dell] So I didn't, didn't stick with that one.
[Mike Dell] I did stick with this next one for
[Mike Dell] two years. And, it was a daily, seven
[Mike Dell] days a week. It was the Traverse City
[Mike Dell] Weather Brief. And, all I did was, read
[Mike Dell] the weather forecast. Whatever the National Weather Service
[Mike Dell] put out, I'd just read that, and, I
[Mike Dell] could record a couple days ahead of time.
[Mike Dell] It was about a one minute, if that,
[Mike Dell] podcast. And, also, was a Amazon what do
[Mike Dell] you call it? I can't say her name
[Mike Dell] or she'll talk to me, but, the talking
[Mike Dell] tube lady, it was one of those skills
[Mike Dell] that people could sign up for when they
[Mike Dell] got their daily news brief. They would get
[Mike Dell] the local weather. So I did that for
[Mike Dell] a couple of years, and that was fun.
[Mike Dell] But, again, even though it was very short
[Mike Dell] and I could record it anywhere, I just
[Mike Dell] you know, dailies are hard. Again, James, how
[Mike Dell] do you do it? That's crazy. James does,
[Mike Dell] you know, a good four minutes, five minutes
[Mike Dell] sometimes, on Pod News Daily. Check that out
[Mike Dell] if you're into podcast stuff. Then I tried
[Mike Dell] another one, Fast Food History. I don't know.
[Mike Dell] I got probably twenty episodes of that. It
[Mike Dell] was interesting for a while, but, you know,
[Mike Dell] again, history related. And then, podcast help desk.
[Mike Dell] I did that. I thought, wow, I'm talking
[Mike Dell] about podcasting all the time on my main
[Mike Dell] show. Let's try it as a weekly show.
[Mike Dell] So, I did that. And, that one went
[Mike Dell] for a while. I think I got maybe
[Mike Dell] one hundred and fifty episodes of that before
[Mike Dell] I kind of ran out of things to
[Mike Dell] talk about. Plus, I was doing Podcast Insider
[Mike Dell] for Blueberry. And, it kind of is the
[Mike Dell] same thing. So, I kind of bailed on
[Mike Dell] that. Now, I'm doing Podcast Insider very weekly,
[Mike Dell] very consistently. I'm not always the host of
[Mike Dell] it, but, nine times out of ten I
[Mike Dell] am. It's Mackenzie, I, and Todd, and sometimes
[Mike Dell] other people. So, that one's going. And, I
[Mike Dell] do another show that is still in the,
[Mike Dell] we're trying to get our sea legs, but
[Mike Dell] with Mike Wilkerson, over at Two Guys Talking
[Mike Dell] Network. We do the Auto History Podcast. And,
[Mike Dell] we've done a few episodes of it and,
[Mike Dell] kind of regrouping right now to get into
[Mike Dell] a battle rhythm of, being consistent. But that
[Mike Dell] one, I think, will go consistent and having
[Mike Dell] a co host helps. So, yeah. Why you
[Mike Dell] know, one of the other things I wanted
[Mike Dell] to talk about is, well, you know, why
[Mike Dell] podcasting? You know? Just do a YouTube channel.
[Mike Dell] Do, you know, blogging. Do, you know, actual
[Mike Dell] radio broadcasting. Well, I have done some radio
[Mike Dell] broadcasting. I get on, every once in a
[Mike Dell] while with the morning zoo show here, Omelette
[Mike Dell] and Friends. That's actually Omelette and Finster now.
[Mike Dell] I haven't been on there since they changed
[Mike Dell] the name and moved stations. But at some
[Mike Dell] point, I'll get back on there. And, also
[Mike Dell] used to do a show called Folk Air.
[Mike Dell] I gotta say that slowly. On, the local
[Mike Dell] community station, WNMC. I play folk and bluegrass
[Mike Dell] and roots music for three hours or two
[Mike Dell] hours. I think it was a two hour
[Mike Dell] show every Saturday and Tuesday. And, I kind
[Mike Dell] of backed off from that. But, I might
[Mike Dell] go back to that at some time. So,
[Mike Dell] I have been on the radio, but not
[Mike Dell] talk radio. Well, I guess the morning zoo
[Mike Dell] shows sort of talk. But, anyway. But, you
[Mike Dell] know, podcasting is is definitely a different sort
[Mike Dell] of medium. You know, now, you know, there's
[Mike Dell] a push for video now. And, as you
[Mike Dell] can tell, you know, me talking into a
[Mike Dell] microphone with headphones on in my office here
[Mike Dell] is not super compelling video. But, you know,
[Mike Dell] it's cool to do once in a while
[Mike Dell] for special occasions, whatever, and, you know, your
[Mike Dell] mileage may vary. Do what you want. That's,
[Mike Dell] you know, the rules. But, for me, audio
[Mike Dell] is just special. Again, you know, I'd be
[Mike Dell] listening to these people on talk radio in
[Mike Dell] the middle of the night. You know, you
[Mike Dell] you really felt that you got to know
[Mike Dell] them. And now and that was radio, and,
[Mike Dell] you know, commercials and all that stuff. Well,
[Mike Dell] in podcasting, you don't have to have commercials.
[Mike Dell] You know, a lot of podcasters choose to
[Mike Dell] to monetize with commercials, and I do listen
[Mike Dell] to some shows that have commercials in them.
[Mike Dell] No big deal there. In fact, I've ran
[Mike Dell] commercials before. But, you know, just audio, there's
[Mike Dell] a different vibe with audio. You know, you
[Mike Dell] can be doing other things while you're listening
[Mike Dell] to audio. And, with podcasting, it's even different
[Mike Dell] than, say, radio. Podcasting is one on one.
[Mike Dell] Most people are listening on their earbuds, or
[Mike Dell] they're in their car driving down the road,
[Mike Dell] listening on Bluetooth to the stereo, or Apple
[Mike Dell] CarPlay, or Android Auto, whatever. And, generally, it's
[Mike Dell] not a group activity to listen to a
[Mike Dell] podcast. Now, there are some exceptions to that,
[Mike Dell] I'm sure. But, it's a one on one
[Mike Dell] experience. And, you know, when you're on earbuds,
[Mike Dell] you're right in their head. Or, you're listening
[Mike Dell] to somebody, they're right in your head. You
[Mike Dell] know, if you're listening to me on earbuds
[Mike Dell] right now, I'm right in your head. Watch
[Mike Dell] out. What's all this clutter? But with radio,
[Mike Dell] you know, even though the content can be
[Mike Dell] very similar, with radio it's one to many.
[Mike Dell] With podcasting it's one on one. You know,
[Mike Dell] if you're listening to this after the fact
[Mike Dell] on a podcast, podcast app, chances of you
[Mike Dell] listening to me right now and somebody else
[Mike Dell] listening to me right now are very remote.
[Mike Dell] It's gonna be you're listening now, somebody else
[Mike Dell] is listening ten minutes later or three days
[Mike Dell] later or ten years later, whatever. It's just
[Mike Dell] a different sort of vibe. Video has its
[Mike Dell] place. Again, you know, special occasions. I'm looking
[Mike Dell] over at my camera or looking over at
[Mike Dell] my monitor, but, you know, I can wave
[Mike Dell] at you if you're watching on video. And,
[Mike Dell] you know, I could show you screenshots off
[Mike Dell] my computer. I could show you pictures. I
[Mike Dell] could, you know, have some actual interesting video
[Mike Dell] going on. And, that's a different vibe altogether
[Mike Dell] too. You know, like a YouTube channel. YouTube
[Mike Dell] is probably my number one source of video
[Mike Dell] content. I don't watch regular TV all that
[Mike Dell] much. I mean, every once in a while,
[Mike Dell] live sports is about it. And then, you
[Mike Dell] know, a lot of that, you have to
[Mike Dell] pay for cable to get to. You know,
[Mike Dell] like yesterday, the Michigan State versus Ohio State
[Mike Dell] game. Not that I care either you know,
[Mike Dell] care for either one of those teams. But
[Mike Dell] if I wanted to watch it, I couldn't
[Mike Dell] do it unless I paid somebody to, to
[Mike Dell] watch it. You know, the cable company. Cable
[Mike Dell] prices are ridiculous. Over the air broadcast? It
[Mike Dell] wasn't on there. I could stream it, but
[Mike Dell] I'd have to pay for, I think it
[Mike Dell] was Peacock for that one. But, they're all
[Mike Dell] different. And, podcasting is mostly a free experience.
[Mike Dell] Now there are exceptions to that, too. There's
[Mike Dell] people that charge for their show or charge
[Mike Dell] for an ad free version of their show.
[Mike Dell] And, you know, more power to them. But,
[Mike Dell] for the most part, free and open podcasting
[Mike Dell] is free and open, just like it says.
[Mike Dell] I don't know. It's just one of those
[Mike Dell] things I fell in love with and I
[Mike Dell] still am. You know, in my work at
[Mike Dell] Raw Voice Blueberry, I help a lot of
[Mike Dell] people, with the technical side. Not so much
[Mike Dell] the strategy side. You know, if I was
[Mike Dell] the best podcaster in the world, I'd have
[Mike Dell] a heck of a lot more audience than
[Mike Dell] I do. But, I can do this. And
[Mike Dell] I can, you know, leave the warts in
[Mike Dell] and all, as Adam once told me. I
[Mike Dell] flubbed up a voice memo I was sending
[Mike Dell] him for his show one time and, I
[Mike Dell] just left it in there and he said,
[Mike Dell] Yeah, warts and all. It was kinda cool.
[Mike Dell] Let's see. Am I getting any, anything going
[Mike Dell] on here? I'm just looking through some of
[Mike Dell] the comments. I don't see anything. Of course,
[Mike Dell] I'm not probably looking in the right places.
[Mike Dell] But, yeah. It's, you know, podcasting is just
[Mike Dell] different. And, you know, doing four hundred episodes,
[Mike Dell] okay, there's people out there that have done
[Mike Dell] way more episodes than I have in twenty
[Mike Dell] years. I mean, Todd's up there close to
[Mike Dell] two thousand episodes. Trucker Tom's well into the
[Mike Dell] two thousand's. And, he's been at it a
[Mike Dell] little longer than I have. And, yeah, for
[Mike Dell] me it's more therapeutic. You know, if I
[Mike Dell] want to get on and say something, I
[Mike Dell] can get on and say something. Now, you
[Mike Dell] know, I bite my tongue probably more than
[Mike Dell] I ought to. Because, you know, saying something
[Mike Dell] can have consequences. And, I'm not into that.
[Mike Dell] I have opinions, everybody does. But, the way
[Mike Dell] you know, if you watch the mainstream news
[Mike Dell] right now, oh my gosh, you know, you
[Mike Dell] would think that we're on the brink of
[Mike Dell] civil war here in the States. And I'm
[Mike Dell] not finding that to be true. Regardless of
[Mike Dell] what they say, people are not as divided
[Mike Dell] as everybody might think if all you do
[Mike Dell] is watch what the news reporters say or
[Mike Dell] the so called journalists. And, you know, I
[Mike Dell] know people from every walk of life. I
[Mike Dell] know people from every, political background or political
[Mike Dell] opinions and all that. And I'm friends with
[Mike Dell] people from every political opinion and all that.
[Mike Dell] And, you know, we don't have to argue
[Mike Dell] about that stuff. Whatever will happen will happen.
[Mike Dell] And people are not as divided as you
[Mike Dell] would think. You know, the news, in my
[Mike Dell] humble opinion, and this is just my opinion,
[Mike Dell] you can argue with me and that's great.
[Mike Dell] I welcome, comments to the contrary. But, you
[Mike Dell] know, what you see in the news is
[Mike Dell] the worst possible thing. Okay? They do that
[Mike Dell] on purpose. What bleeds leads, or whatever the
[Mike Dell] saying is. Nobody wants the good news. And
[Mike Dell] the news is, you know, man bites dog
[Mike Dell] stories, not the other normal good stuff that
[Mike Dell] is going on. We went to dinner last
[Mike Dell] night with family and we've got people from
[Mike Dell] DC to light as far as political opinions.
[Mike Dell] And we sat around the table and didn't
[Mike Dell] argue about politics. We weren't at each other's
[Mike Dell] throats. We all loved each other. And, it
[Mike Dell] was all great. And that's how the world
[Mike Dell] really is. But, if you watch the nightly
[Mike Dell] scare on the news channels, you're going to
[Mike Dell] have a warped sense of what's really going
[Mike Dell] on. I did work in television for a
[Mike Dell] while, local news. I wasn't on air. I
[Mike Dell] was, you know, behind the scenes pushing buttons
[Mike Dell] and whatnot. But, every story that they covered
[Mike Dell] while I was there that I knew something
[Mike Dell] about directly without the news had some material
[Mike Dell] thing wrong with it. And, I've got to
[Mike Dell] believe that, all of it's that way. You
[Mike Dell] know, I always like to say that, these
[Mike Dell] twenty four hour news channels out there, and
[Mike Dell] it doesn't matter which one it is, there's
[Mike Dell] not twenty four hours worth of news to
[Mike Dell] cover. Obviously, they repeat stuff, you know, top
[Mike Dell] of the hour for five minutes, whatever. And,
[Mike Dell] but, all the rest of it, they gotta
[Mike Dell] make stuff up. They have to because there's
[Mike Dell] just not twenty four hours worth of stuff
[Mike Dell] to talk about that's relevant. Or, you know,
[Mike Dell] it used to be the news would tell
[Mike Dell] you what happened and you got to check
[Mike Dell] and figure out what you think is true.
[Mike Dell] Now, they tell you what they want you
[Mike Dell] to think is truth, and you gotta figure
[Mike Dell] out whether they're lying or not. So, I
[Mike Dell] don't know. Anyway, boy, I got off into
[Mike Dell] a weird thing. But, anyhoo, yeah, almost twenty
[Mike Dell] years. You know, I I remember, you know,
[Mike Dell] when podcasting we went to that first podcast
[Mike Dell] conference out in Ontario, California, and it was
[Mike Dell] like a family reunion. You'd go in there
[Mike Dell] and, you know, everybody listened to everybody else
[Mike Dell] or at least had heard of each other.
[Mike Dell] And, you know, you'd walk up to somebody,
[Mike Dell] and, hey, I'm so and so. And, you
[Mike Dell] know, you'd recognize their voice, You'd know all
[Mike Dell] about them because you'd listened to them. Or,
[Mike Dell] they knew all about you because they listened
[Mike Dell] to you. And, you know, now with, you
[Mike Dell] know, there's some reports there's four million shows
[Mike Dell] out there, maybe more. Probably more. But, still
[Mike Dell] great going to these conferences. I went to
[Mike Dell] Podcast Movement here a couple months ago in
[Mike Dell] DC. And, I met a whole bunch of
[Mike Dell] people. Down to earth, didn't matter what political
[Mike Dell] opinion, race, sex, or any of that stuff.
[Mike Dell] They were just podcasters. And that was great.
[Mike Dell] You know, age didn't matter. In fact, I
[Mike Dell] am loving seeing the younger people getting into
[Mike Dell] both listening and producing podcasts. And, you know,
[Mike Dell] or videos or both. There's a little argument
[Mike Dell] amongst the oldsters about what is a podcast,
[Mike Dell] but, you know, audiences don't care. If you
[Mike Dell] do a YouTube channel and you call it
[Mike Dell] a podcast, then okay, call it a podcast.
[Mike Dell] Nobody really cares. I mean, you know, some
[Mike Dell] of us that like the technical stuff might,
[Mike Dell] but, ignore us. Podcast is a podcast is
[Mike Dell] a podcast. And, doing content is the whole
[Mike Dell] idea. And, in podcasting, there's no real rules.
[Mike Dell] There's some standards if you want it to
[Mike Dell] be distributed in certain places. Or, if you
[Mike Dell] don't want it distributed in certain places, you
[Mike Dell] can do whatever you want. And, that's okay.
[Mike Dell] So, I think I'm just going to cut
[Mike Dell] this off at about half an hour here.
[Mike Dell] I don't want to beleaguer it. You know,
[Mike Dell] a lot of podcasters say, Well, I want
[Mike Dell] my podcast to be exactly an hour. Well,
[Mike Dell] if you only have a half hour's worth
[Mike Dell] of stuff to talk about, well, don't stretch
[Mike Dell] it out. Don't waste people's time. People make
[Mike Dell] time to listen to you as a podcaster.
[Mike Dell] And, they build you into their schedule. That's
[Mike Dell] why consistency is important. I'm consistent about one
[Mike Dell] and a half episodes a month. That's not
[Mike Dell] consistent. But, that's one of those things that
[Mike Dell] people forget, that you don't accidentally listen to
[Mike Dell] a podcast in most cases. Yeah, maybe you
[Mike Dell] jump in an Uber and somebody's listening to
[Mike Dell] a podcast, driving the Uber, whatever, I get
[Mike Dell] that. But, you make a conscious choice to
[Mike Dell] listen to and or watch a podcast. You
[Mike Dell] don't do it by accident. And, so if
[Mike Dell] you're making compelling content, or even boring content
[Mike Dell] like I'm doing, people will make time for
[Mike Dell] it. They may not make time for it
[Mike Dell] every week, but, they'll make time for it.
[Mike Dell] And, they don't accidentally listen to you. So
[Mike Dell] if you ever wanna get into podcasting, hit
[Mike Dell] me up. I can help you with that.
[Mike Dell] And, otherwise, thanks for hanging out with me.
[Mike Dell] And, like I said, I I look forward
[Mike Dell] to, another four hundred. Hopefully, it won't take
[Mike Dell] me twenty years to do it. Catch me