- Well, thank you very much, and we're thrilled
- to be joined by
- one of the most successful
- business leaders and people
- anywhere in the country.
- Whether it's technology,
- no matter what business you're talking about, there's
- really nobody quite like him. Michael Dell, very
- much of a legend who's here with his
- really exciting announcement. It's, so amazing.
- When I was a young boy,
- there wasn't any Internet.
- There wasn't any World Wide Web.
- There wasn't any egghead sending you texts saying
- those are the same thing. You don't have
- to say Internet and World Wide Web. They're
- the same thing.
- There weren't any video games when I was
- a boy.
- Well, there was Pac
- Man. That was a game, I guess.
- And Asteroids,
- Wizard of War,
- Scrambled. Defender was a hell of a lot
- of fun.
- Those were what we called
- video games.
- Did I say we didn't have video games?
- Because that would have been a mistake.
- But there is one thing you have now
- that we didn't have when I was a
- boy that I wish we did.
- Like Dell's World.
- Yeah. That's me.
- Hey.
- You guys still subscribed? Hey. Appreciate it.
- So,
- yeah, it's been an interesting year so far
- for sure.
- Not as interesting as last year, but still
- the same. So
- I guess,
- I got two major topics tonight.
- One being
- that
- there's there's
- something going on in technology,
- and I and I don't mean, you
- know, computer processors
- and hard drives
- and that kind of thing. But
- a lot of stuff in, you know, just
- basically,
- you know, how tech works and, you know,
- what tech
- is used for,
- and,
- you know, just my normal rant. And, plus,
- you know, I got some
- personal updates.
- Yeah. That's always fun.
- But,
- yeah, it's true. You know, life goes on.
- Life is
- interesting. Of course,
- the last time I talked to you in
- February, I was complaining about
- customer service. Well,
- yeah, that that hasn't really changed.
- You know, a lot of customer service stuff
- isn't,
- isn't that great. But, you know, let's get
- back to the personal updates.
- I mean, there's a lot to tell, and
- there's not a lot to tell.
- Unfortunately, I've been to now three funerals in
- the last six months,
- or two. I'm about to go to another
- one in
- in, Detroit this weekend,
- but
- it's neither here nor there. Of course, you
- know,
- my,
- founder of Blueberry, Todd Cochran, he passed away,
- late, you know, last late summer, early fall,
- you know, which you guys know all about
- or might know all about or don't know
- all about. I don't know,
- but it just seems recent enough to include.
- And then
- my wife's best friend,
- Mary,
- down in Grand Haven
- passed away.
- And that was kind of a shocker because
- she's younger than us. And
- but,
- yeah, she was not in good shape and
- finally
- succumbed to
- to,
- lung problems mainly.
- But, again, you know, that's
- it's one of those things, but, man, it's
- just, you know, wow. Well, you know, somebody
- younger than you
- passes away like that. It's, it's a little
- bit of a shocker. Plus, of course, like
- I said, my wife's best friend
- or one of her best friends. She has
- several best friends, but,
- I think Mary was probably right up there
- at the top of the list.
- And so that was a little rough.
- Kathy spent most of February
- and March,
- going back and forth downstate and, you know,
- helping the family out and
- and all that. And then,
- a couple weeks ago, we had an 80
- birthday party for my uncle,
- Bill Busby.
- He was instrumental in starting Motorola Semiconductors
- back in the day.
- And, anyway, we had his 80 birthday out
- at my mom's house. He was doing pretty
- good.
- Monday morning, he passed away, in his sleep
- or
- soon after waking up or something. I, you
- know,
- I guess I don't know all the details,
- but, he was 88 years old and, had
- a really good run. So you know, he
- was in really good shape,
- you know, up until towards the last year.
- He had a little, cancer issues.
- So
- and, you know, was fighting it, I guess,
- okay or, you know, I don't know. I
- guess the treatments really took
- some oomph out of him. But, yeah, last
- summer, he helped me move a couple campers,
- rode with me in the truck and, you
- know, helped out and, you know, had a
- nice conversation. So I was glad to have
- that, that going on. He was also a
- US Air Force veteran,
- crew chief on the, b
- 57,
- I wanna say, or b 58.
- Might be the b 58.
- I don't remember. One of the one of
- the fast bombers,
- from, you know, fifty, sixties.
- And,
- anyway, he passed away, so we're going down,
- to the Detroit area for
- for a funeral on Saturday.
- And, ironically,
- my 98
- soon to be 99 year old grandmother's riding
- with me, so that'll be interesting.
- And as far as the the health stuff
- goes, I, about
- a little over a week ago,
- developed a torn retina
- in
- my right eye and had to go in
- for
- emergency surgery to repair that. So, it it's
- been a bit of a recovery
- because the first week I had to
- be face down. You know, they put a
- bubble in your eye and you gotta
- keep your face down to,
- to hold everything in place while it heals.
- But, I just had my second post surgery
- checkup today, and everything's looking good.
- And I can, function more or less normally.
- The vision in that eye isn't quite up
- to par, again, because they put an oil
- bubble in there. So
- that's a little weird. It kinda looks like,
- you know, when people,
- blur their zoom background
- on camera, well, that's what I see in
- the foreground as well with that eye. But,
- twenty twenty in the other eye, so
- we're we're highly functional.
- And he tells me once that, oil bubbles
- out of there,
- vision should clear up just fine. So that
- also has me grounded for probably the next
- six weeks or so,
- which I guess is alright. It's cheaper not
- to fly than it is to fly, and
- I don't have anywhere to go in an
- airliner.
- So
- that's
- that's a thing.
- Sorry. I had to hit the cough button
- there.
- Kinda
- not fighting off. I think I'm just kinda
- having lingering crud because all,
- over the last month or so, I've had
- kind of a low level,
- cold going on.
- Whatever that bug was is, taking its time
- leaving.
- But,
- I don't know. A couple weeks before,
- I don't know. I guess
- the middle of last month
- went down to
- Arlington, Texas
- and participated in the military creator con.
- That was quite,
- quite a nice outfit. You know, couple 300,
- I guess, 400 people
- came to that, all veterans or active military
- or,
- you know, military spouses,
- you know, all talking about, you know, creating
- YouTubes and
- and podcasts and
- authoring books and starting businesses.
- And,
- yeah, it was, it was quite nice, and
- I knew a lot more people there than
- I thought I would
- when I went.
- Jamie Jay,
- and Christopher Lochhead,
- Gordon Firemark.
- He's the podcast lawyer.
- He was there.
- Of course,
- the creators of military creator con,
- and I'm drawing a blank on the name
- the names. But,
- anyway, it was, it was definitely a fun
- event. It was one of those events, though,
- that had something scheduled from eight in the
- morning till eleven at night, all three days.
- And
- so it was quite busy. Didn't get a
- lot of chance to,
- do anything other than event related stuff, but,
- it was all good.
- And
- yeah. So that was that was fun.
- I've since got
- gotten promoted at,
- Blueberry.
- I'm now the
- VP of operations,
- so I kinda
- oversee the, the teams,
- working together and
- and do a lot of the day to
- day stuff.
- Also, you know, external
- external industry connections
- and and all the stuff. A lot of
- the stuff that Todd did
- as CEO,
- but
- without the title. So that's okay.
- You know, our CEO now is, or one
- of our other cofounders,
- Barry. He's
- he's
- doing pretty good at that.
- Trying to keep the, cats all herded up.
- So we're we're doing okay over at Blueberry.
- That is good.
- So, yeah. Not,
- not complaining at all. It's a it's a
- it's a bit more work,
- a bit more responsibility,
- and definitely
- feel a lot more hands on now,
- than
- than in the past. So
- if you are a podcaster and
- and want to start a podcast, move a
- podcast, whatever, get a hold of me, and,
- we'll make it happen.
- We've got all the all the tools you
- need over there. I'll make this a commercial
- for my employee or employer,
- but,
- hey,
- it's all part of it. And, of course,
- I use Blueberry hosting for this show
- and PowerPress plug in and, you know, all
- the stuff.
- So and and speaking of technology,
- you know, I I had a whole thing
- I spun up, you know, about, you know,
- doing an episode,
- all about, you know, the different scams out
- there and all that. But, you know, I
- think it's a bigger problem than that.
- Of course, there's
- what a lot of people call AI slop
- out there, and AI is really,
- really, really good at what it's really, really
- good at,
- but it's not good at everything.
- And, also, you know, AI created
- content.
- I don't know if you watch a lot
- of YouTube. I tend to watch a lot
- of YouTube. I consider that kind of my
- main TV. I don't really watch a whole
- lot of regular mainstream TV or streaming,
- streaming TV or or anything like that. You
- know, I watch a few things, obviously.
- Star Trek,
- kind of, like, you know, having all those
- available on Paramount. And
- and, you know, my wife and I usually
- pick some sort of
- series to watch or rewatch on Netflix
- or something like that. Currently in the middle
- of watching The Blacklist.
- That's a interesting show.
- A little gory. Kinda surprised it was on
- NBC, but,
- hey.
- You know, it's a it's a it's a
- pretty compelling show.
- But, you know, I
- tend to avoid
- things that have a lot of advertising if
- I can.
- Yeah. You know, you
- still get advertising, you know, even on YouTube
- channels. I pay YouTube so I don't have
- to watch all the
- the, poorly
- injected ads that, they throw in there at
- exactly the wrong time.
- But, you know, there's a lot of ads
- that
- are done by the creators. That's fine with
- me. But, you know, when you're flipping through
- YouTube,
- you could get on to oh, this looks
- interesting, and you hits, you know, hit the
- button to play it. And
- you you
- get what's obviously an AI narrated
- slideshow is is what I equate it to,
- or maybe they might have real video,
- something
- like that. And,
- you know, it's not that I don't wanna
- watch it. Some of it's really compelling.
- Well, here's my
- I I wouldn't call it a secret because
- I talk about it, but
- there's definitely
- a lot of,
- or def how should I say it? I
- I definitely like one one type of
- AI content that I actually enjoy.
- It's
- kind of my my dirty pleasure,
- but I watch
- or listen to mostly even though it is
- a YouTube video.
- AOA Karen stories.
- I
- know that sounds crazy,
- but,
- yeah, they're oddly compelling, so I do watch
- it. But I know full well it's 100%
- AI,
- and
- that's fine.
- But I did,
- just now or not just now, just tonight,
- see an article over at MacRumors
- that YouTube will now automatically
- label AI
- videos
- even when creators don't.
- So apparently, and I haven't seen this yet,
- but in YouTube, it's gonna be,
- marked as an AI
- creation.
- So I I applaud them for that because
- I'm gonna guess
- that the vast majority,
- of views on YouTube are going to switch
- to the
- non
- AI stuff.
- You know? I I know I'm gonna I
- I'm not gonna totally avoid it because some
- of it is actually pretty good.
- But
- if I have a a video on sub
- on a subject
- I want to
- watch or listen to
- on YouTube,
- and there's
- two. One of them is AI generated, and
- one of them isn't. I'm probably gonna lean
- towards the non AI generated
- one.
- And that kind of brings me to
- podcasting,
- in general as well. There are a lot
- of AI voiced podcasts.
- And
- let's let's let's get one thing off the
- table here. Yes. I know podcast can be
- video. That
- is a,
- that's just true.
- That's okay. It's been that way since the
- beginning.
- But just having a YouTube channel does not
- necessarily
- constitute a podcast. A podcast is a distribution
- method and not necessarily
- a genre.
- So we'll just get that off the table.
- When I talk when I say the word
- podcast, I mean generally audio.
- But there's a, you know, a lot of
- AI generated
- audio
- podcasts, and some of them are really quite
- clever.
- You know, I
- I I get it. I get why they
- wanna do it.
- But there's a a company out there called
- Inception
- PointAI.
- I believe that's what they're called, and they
- are generating
- an enormous
- amount of
- AI generated
- content on podcasts.
- And they were at Spreaker, and then they
- moved now to,
- well, Spotify,
- but it's Megaphone,
- which is owned by Spotify
- as their hosting platform.
- And and they've taken out the monetization
- so far, I I guess. I haven't really
- listened to any of them, but, you know,
- they're actually quite good
- to a point. But
- as AI is good at doing, they hallucinate.
- And a lot of the information
- that is
- put out by it is
- factually untrue
- or,
- you know, something like that. These AI Karen
- stories that I like on YouTube,
- which, like I said, my dirty pleasure,
- whatever. I know they're AI. I know they
- suck,
- but they're mostly fiction,
- and they're not
- reported to be true stories.
- Whereas,
- some of these other podcasts out there
- are reported to be true stories, true shows.
- Again, there's nothing
- inherently wrong with that except for
- just the sheer volume of it and they're
- not
- necessarily
- saying that these are AI generated. Now there's
- sure telltale signs,
- not nearly as many as there once was,
- you know, to tell it it's AI, but,
- you know, and they're like I said, they're
- quite good. The quality is good. The voices
- are good. The inflection they sound
- pretty darn close to human.
- So,
- yeah. So that you know, that's what's kind
- of going on in, you know, with AI
- and podcasting. And, again, you know, I use
- a little AI here and there. I you
- know, my
- artwork
- is
- somewhat AI generated, although
- I did a lot of, tweaking to it.
- I do a lot of tweaking to it,
- so it's not a
- 100%
- AI generated thing.
- I don't use any AI voices except for
- the one episode I did just to try
- it. A couple years ago, I did one
- episode that was all AI. It was a
- clone of my voice, and, it it just
- didn't sound quite right.
- And, you know, AI is getting better all
- the time and, you know, pretty soon we
- may not be able to tell very well.
- But, you know, I could sort of tell.
- And, you know, there's some telltale
- things that AI does when it's writing, you
- know, because, you know, how they do this.
- They write a script and then use AI
- to write the script and then they use
- an AI voice to read the script.
- And so the writing sort of sticks out.
- You know, they always like to say something
- like, not only was it this, it's that
- too. Or not only was it this, it's
- that too. Or in conclusion,
- you know, there's some telltale things you can
- hear in the in the script
- that tells you that it's
- AI. You know, you can hear by my
- little broken delivery here that it's just me
- sitting at the desk talking into a microphone.
- There's no
- hey. Excuse me. No AI,
- involved with this part.
- The transcript, of course, will be AI generated,
- but it just takes what I said and
- types it.
- And that's what it's good at. It's not
- necessarily
- good at
- generating that stuff. And I always like to
- say never ask the AI its opinion.
- You know,
- it's
- it's just weird.
- It's just weird.
- But, and that goes along with the scam
- stuff.
- Used to be it was really easy to
- tell a scam email
- because, generally, it was somebody that English wasn't
- the first
- language
- or their first language.
- So they would,
- you know, misspell things, use weird grammar,
- all that. Well, with now these large language
- models, that's exactly what they do right
- is they,
- you know, they
- they clean up
- the,
- you know, clean up the the grammar, the
- pronunciations
- to a point. Some of the pronunciations
- are kinda wacko.
- But if you type it out a certain
- way, they'll say it the right way.
- So, you know, that's not always
- the case, but, you know, it's
- with with the voices. But, you know, like
- I say, you get a spam email nowadays.
- It's really hard to tell,
- you know, by the broken English
- that it's a scam.
- Of course, you know, if they're asking you
- to pay something immediately
- or something bad will happen, it's a scam
- hang up.
- If they're asking you to pay them in
- iTunes gift cards or any gift cards,
- it's a scam. They're asking you to send
- crypto,
- it's a scam.
- I hate to say it. There's nothing particularly
- wrong with crypto, but, that is
- one of the ways the scammers
- get people. And
- it's too bad because, you know, it is
- kind of a an
- interesting technology
- and interesting way to move money
- for sure. So,
- yeah, just,
- you gotta watch the the scams.
- And and, you know, getting back to the
- ad stuff, you know, you watch YouTube. If
- you're not a member, you don't you're not
- paying YouTube for YouTube premium.
- You know,
- they'll cut you right off at mid sentence.
- You know, cut off the video in mid
- sentence to play you an irrelevant ad or
- sometimes irrelevant ad, but still, you know, it's
- like,
- really? I just wanted to hear the rest
- of that guy's sentence.
- And, you know, it's just maddening. Watching regular
- TV, which I do periodically,
- the ads on TV have gone down in
- value
- a lot. You know, it used to be
- you watch your local TV station,
- and it
- was ads for something you might be interested
- in, you know, the local lumber yard, the
- car dealer, the
- the this or the that.
- But now,
- at least here in Michigan, and I I
- guess that probably is a regional thing, but
- at least here in Michigan, it's all the
- online gambling stuff.
- And, oh my gosh,
- you know, BetMGM
- and,
- you know, just all the different online casinos,
- are just advertising the hell out of, local
- TV.
- I guess it must work because they're doing
- they keep doing it, but,
- you know, I I've never once did any
- online gambling, and I never once will do
- online gambling.
- And then social media. Oh my gosh. You
- know, the the amount of AI
- on Facebook,
- and not that it's all bad. Again, you
- know, I'm not ditching on AI because it's
- really good at what it's good at.
- But
- now they have a thing like in Facebook
- groups, which is probably the most useful thing
- on Facebook is the Facebook groups. You know,
- you join a group about, you know, whatever
- niche you're interested in, and you you can
- get some information there and discuss things and
- ask questions
- and all that. And that is all fine
- and dandy,
- but now they have these AI
- users that go in there and try to
- start conversations.
- And it's so obvious that either they're trying
- to stir up crap or, or just get
- conversations
- going, which is not a bad thing, but
- some of it is just inane.
- It's insane. It's crazy.
- It's nuts.
- Oh my gosh.
- You know, I I follow a couple of
- carnivore
- Facebook groups
- and, or flying Facebook groups,
- you know,
- airplane stuff.
- And, you know, if you're on a group
- that's, you know, not very high volume, meaning
- there's not a lot of posts there, sometimes
- an AI agent will pop in and ask
- a question
- or
- say something controversial.
- You know? And
- especially with the carnivore stuff because, you know,
- carnivore people are just about as bad as
- the vegans.
- Like I said, no no shade on either,
- but,
- they they definitely
- take their way of eating as
- the only way and
- how dare you. But, you know, somebody goes
- in there and asks if,
- you know, pure maple syrup is is acceptable
- on carnivore.
- No. It's all sugar. You know, that's obvious.
- But these AI's don't really know that or
- that maybe they do and just wanna stir
- up crap. So
- I don't know.
- It's,
- it's pretty interesting. Or they'll they'll have AI
- video shorts.
- Facebook's just full of these AI videos that
- are
- airplanes doing impossible things,
- and
- and it looks pretty damned realistic
- until you realize, yeah, there's no way that
- airplane did that.
- You know, just no way.
- And
- and then, you know, the the other one
- that really bugs me on Facebook. Okay. I'm
- on my soapbox.
- One that bugs me on Facebook is they
- have this thing called threads that,
- competes basically with x, Twitter.
- And
- they'll post something on your timeline
- on Facebook
- that, you know, it's just a blurb, and
- it says hit read more. You read more.
- It says read more on threads and tries
- to get you to sign up for threads.
- I don't need any more social media. I
- don't even like the social media I'm on.
- I'm, you know, I'm on it for specific
- things. You know? Like, Facebook. I'm on it
- for the groups
- that I
- deal with and and and, you know, a
- little bit of work stuff.
- I'm on x a little bit.
- Like I said, don't use use that for
- a whole lot, but it is kind of
- an interesting place to look up news,
- especially something that's actively happening.
- But I'm not gonna get on Instagram. I'm
- not gonna get on threads. I'm definitely not
- gonna get on blue sky, which is another
- Twitter competitor.
- Not gonna get on truth social. That's another
- Twitter competitor.
- You know, I I I've got all the
- social media I want. I I have to
- be on LinkedIn
- professionally, so I am on LinkedIn.
- Not particularly
- fond of that either because that is a
- mostly spam generator.
- And I'm on Reddit a bit, but Reddit
- is kind of the best of Facebook groups,
- but more just on the web, which
- is I don't consider that really social media
- and, you know, you could find some interesting
- stuff on there. It's worth
- doomscrolling,
- but I've often said I am gonna switch
- to a flip phone when I retire.
- You know, if you wanna call me, call
- me.
- If you wanna text me, I I may
- read it
- on my flip phone, but I'm definitely not
- gonna get into a conversation with you. And
- don't think of texts as real time.
- Texts are like emails. I'll get to it
- when I get to it. If you really
- need something in real time,
- dial the number and talk to me.
- And if I don't answer you, leave a
- voice mail, and I will call you back.
- Don't just call over and over and over
- and over again.
- You know? I guess I'm gonna be a
- tech curmudgeon.
- You know? I'm Gen x. I started before
- all this tech,
- and,
- you know, I think I wanna go back
- to that at some point.
- Although, I always listen to podcasts and probably
- watch YouTube or whatever replaces it in the
- future,
- you know, as long as it's indie creators.
- You know, that's the thing with podcasting. It's
- definitely
- sort of I
- don't know if it's bifurcating,
- but they're you know, the the beauty of
- podcasting
- has always been
- that
- anybody and everybody can do it.
- And it's getting easier and easier and easier
- and easier to do.
- You know, there's,
- you know, myriad of hosting companies out there
- that'll help you generate an RSS feed and
- get you distributed everywhere. Of course, I like
- Blueberry,
- but, you know, there's a bunch of them
- that do that. And
- that's all that's required
- is generate an RSS feed, record something, you
- know, sit down talking to the microphone.
- And
- we read a study,
- or I don't know if it's a study,
- but a report by, Tom Webster
- from Sounds Profitable formerly
- from,
- oh, what's the company? Anyway, a research company
- that he worked at for years and then
- now he's, you know, got got a thing
- called
- Sounds Profitable, which is kind of
- another
- sort of research
- and monetization
- thing.
- And he was saying that, you know, a
- lot of people
- look to podcasting
- for
- authentic
- sounding
- audio, you know, information.
- You know, the the indie talking into the
- microphone,
- you know, I'm sitting in a shed in
- my backyard.
- Yes. I have some fancy equipment and all
- that, but that's not even necessary either.
- You know, I'm just a gearhead, so I
- like it. But the thing is
- that the more podcasts
- that sound like broadcast
- and you know the the sound.
- Hey. We're here at the White House today.
- You know, where they're just broadcasting at you.
- Well, you know, I'm talking. Okay? And,
- casting at you. Well, you know, I'm talking.
- Okay? And, you know, I tell you anytime
- you want, you can
- email me, mike@mikedell.com,
- and talk back to me. Send me a
- file or or whatever, and, you know, we
- can have a conversation.
- I'm not
- sitting here trying to make a broadcast
- quality
- thing.
- It's just not what it is. You know,
- this is, you know, some dude sitting in
- a shed in his backyard just talking into
- a microphone.
- You know? I don't expect to set the
- world on fire with it. You know, I'm
- not trying to get advertisers
- to, pay me a gazillion dollars to talk
- into the microphone. Now that would be good.
- And if that ever happened, I wouldn't do
- it here, but I'd do it wherever they
- wanted me to do it. Whatever. Sure. You
- know, write me the check.
- But
- it's not the same thing, and I think
- that's the thing in podcasting. There are
- professional level shows.
- Not saying they're better. They're more broadcasty. In
- fact, a lot of people that for were
- formally in broadcasting, which, you know, radio is
- dying. You know, it's a dying art form.
- I I kinda hate to see it because,
- you know, radio has its place and it's
- and it's pretty awesome, but,
- you know, some of it is just
- really, you know, you you go in any
- city and flip through the FM dial, and
- there's, you know, the same 20 or 30
- formats that sound exactly the same as the
- 20 or 30 format formats in your city.
- And there's really not a lot of differentiation
- between them now. In every city or at
- least every broadcast area. There there are a
- couple of, indie
- sort of radio stations.
- You know, we we have a good example
- of it here in in Michigan. You know,
- we've got a a group of radio stations
- owned by a family and, you know, they
- have a rock station. They have a talk
- station. They have an oldies station
- and and a country station, and they, you
- know, they're they are locally generated radio. They
- might be in syndication for some of the
- talk station, of course, is an indicate is
- in syndication
- for part of the day,
- but they do have local
- locally generated programming.
- Their morning shows on, you know, on all
- the stations, their morning shows have live people
- in the studio from, you know, whatever till
- 10:00 in the morning or whatever.
- And and, you know, there's some personality there
- where there's not
- in some of the, you know, some of
- the other stations. You know? There might not
- even be anybody in town
- that works for that radio station. It's just,
- you know, plugged into the satellite and just
- another outlet for Bob FM or whatever they
- call it. You know? We have one here
- called Bob FM, and it's just a format.
- But,
- you know, podcasting is kind of going that
- way.
- You know? A lot of lot of podcasts,
- you know, have a team of 30 people
- working on
- production for this thing, and it's highly produced
- wall of sound,
- sound design.
- And, you know, they read the credits at
- the end of the podcast, and it's,
- you know, it's just a myriad of people.
- And,
- again, nothing wrong with that. The water's warm.
- Come on in. Make a podcast.
- But
- I can get just as distributed
- as
- the one with a team of 30 with
- my team of one.
- And
- that's the beauty of podcasting, and I think
- we're losing that somewhat. Now, again, there's probably
- just about as many
- indie podcasters out there that are doing something
- similar to what I'm doing or maybe stepping
- it up a bit because I'm not consistent
- as you know.
- But
- for the most part,
- you know, there's not a whole lot of
- difference in distribution.
- So my show is available right beside Joe
- Rogan. Yeah. More people are gonna listen to
- Joe Rogan, of course.
- But
- my show's there.
- And, you know, if I was a little
- more consistent
- and and promoted it a bit, maybe I'd,
- you know, gain some more audience. That's great.
- But, you know, that's not my goal here.
- My goal here is to have a place
- where I can jump on the microphone and
- and
- talk
- for
- however long about whatever I want.
- And, you know, it doesn't cost me that
- much.
- You know,
- and that's,
- I think, the beauty of independent podcasting. You
- know? Even if you get 20 listeners,
- well, you know, if you
- have, you know, a room with 20 people
- in it, does that seem like a small
- amount? That would keep you pretty busy
- if you had to entertain them, for an
- hour or whatever, however long your show is.
- So, you know, there's there's room for all
- of us, and that's the beauty of it.
- But I I don't want
- people to think
- now that, oh, well, you know, if I
- don't get 5,000 listeners an episode, you
- know, what's the use of doing it?
- You know? Or you're not gonna quit your
- job. The the most heartbreaking thing I can
- hear on the phone when somebody calls Blueberries,
- hey. I I just got laid off from
- my my job, so I wanna start a
- podcast to make money.
- It doesn't happen that way unless you're already
- famous for something.
- You know, podcasting takes some time. You know,
- if you really work at it and, you
- know, do all the right things, which,
- obviously, I don't.
- But if you do all the right things,
- yeah, maybe you can make a few bucks.
- But you're not gonna quit your day job
- or replace a day job with a podcast
- tomorrow.
- You could get started on it tomorrow, but
- I would be making some other plans to
- make some money for a while because that's
- just generally not gonna happen.
- And you have to have three things
- to succeed
- in podcasting.
- You have to have a a you have
- to be consistent.
- That's one thing.
- You have to
- yeah. I don't know. Be authentic, I guess,
- would be the best way to put it.
- I mean
- and on top of that, your information has
- to be either interesting
- or informative
- or
- compelling in some way.
- You know, a friend of mine, Dave Jackson,
- the other day on a webinar, he says
- he says, you know, everybody tells you you
- gotta be consistent
- and you, you know,
- and and you've gotta be
- oh, I forget what he said. Jeez. See?
- Brain farts. You know what? I'm gonna leave
- that in there. I'm not gonna edit because,
- hey, this is authentic.
- We're just having a conversation here. I just
- happen to be the only one talking,
- which sometimes happens in real two way communications,
- which I'm working on. I'm working on.
- But,
- you know, he he says I could scream
- into the microphone for five minutes
- and then put it out every Tuesday at
- four,
- but who's gonna listen to it because it's
- not good?
- So,
- you know, there's there's three elements to that.
- The technology,
- I I would say,
- you know, with a tiny bit of learning,
- you can
- tackle the technology
- even if you're not very technically advanced.
- And that's the other thing. It's not required
- to be technically advanced anymore. It used to
- be. Everybody
- when I started twenty one years ago,
- everybody had to be a geek,
- and that's everybody involved. Everybody that listened, every
- anybody that created a podcast had to be
- a geek or hire a geek.
- So
- and that's not necessarily
- the case anymore.
- You know, learn a little bit about audio
- production, which
- it's not super hard, you know, make it
- not sound bad,
- Compress it to an m p three
- and upload it to a podcasting
- host or your WordPress website or some way
- to get it into an RSS feed. Don't
- do stupid stuff by naming the files all
- the same.
- Keep get a piece of artwork. You can
- go on Fiverr and for
- 10 or $15,
- have somebody design you some
- cover art
- and,
- voila. You're there. You know? Not not really
- all that hard to do.
- Whereas, you know, if you wanted to start
- a radio station, that, takes years. You know,
- your construction permit, you gotta buy a ridiculous
- amount of equipment, you know, towers and transmitters
- and
- studio equipment and studio building and somebody go
- out and sell ads for you and
- and, you know, some ridiculous electric bill in
- two or three spots depending on how your
- transmitter and your studio work.
- You know, plus you probably gotta bribe a
- bunch of FCC people to approve the license.
- So, you know, it just takes a ton
- of money. With podcasting, you you go to
- go to Best Buy, buy a $50 microphone,
- plug it into your computer that you already
- have, download some free software,
- record,
- and then, you know, get a hosting plan.
- You know, a Blueberry, $15
- will get you on the air.
- And,
- you know, you know, there's there's other places
- to do it as well. Like I said,
- I'm not not here to make a commercial
- for Blueberry, but
- it's not particularly hard anymore. And, you know,
- the hard part is get it out there
- because, you know, there are,
- in theory, four plus million podcasts out there.
- Now
- you're really only competing with about a half
- a million realistically,
- and
- you're not competing with anybody that is you.
- That's the other thing.
- People come to podcasts and listen to podcasts
- because of the person
- almost more than the subject matter. And and
- I can think of a couple of examples
- of that. I actually listen to a couple
- of podcasts about about subjects that I don't
- really care all that much about. I just
- like the host.
- They have a lot of other information
- and and, you know, and I am learning
- about that subject matter,
- but
- it's, you know, they're they're just a compelling
- person
- and they're authentic and they give good information
- or at least what I think is good
- information. That's the other thing. Never
- ever ever ever ever ever ever ever believe
- anything you see,
- hear,
- or read,
- and that could be on the Internet, on
- TV,
- anywhere unless you see something with your own
- two eyeballs.
- In my case, one eyeball at this point
- just because the other one's still healing.
- But you know unless you see it personally
- or hear it personally
- without technology,
- you can't believe it because
- everything is manipulated.
- And I go into a whole tirade about
- the news business, but I won't. That's not
- what this,
- this episode is all about anyway.
- So I know I was all over the
- place. Been a while since I podcasted blah
- blah blah. I say said every time,
- but, you know, I'm compelled to
- to talk into the microphone.
- I've got one, and I can do it.
- And we are gonna be restarting the podcast
- insider show. We're kind of revamping that as
- well.
- You know, for quite a while, we were
- just doing
- generic podcast topics and, you know, just cranking
- them out every week, and and it was
- just getting redundant.
- So we're reformatting that into more
- conversational,
- kinda what I'm doing here,
- but with, you know, it's gonna be two
- or three of us at a time doing
- that
- and talking about, you know, some
- thing going on in the industry
- or, you know, some trend.
- You know, there's a trend towards
- video right now. You know, what people don't
- understand is videos always been part of podcasting.
- But now it's getting a little more front
- and center,
- and
- that's fine. But don't feel like you have
- to do video. Video is so much more
- difficult.
- You know, video
- yeah. I mean, sure. You can hold your
- iPhone up in front of your face and
- do shorts and all that. That's easy.
- But,
- you know, doing long form videos, if I
- was doing this in video, I'd have to
- worry about my lighting. I'd have to, you
- know, shave. I I haven't shaved in a
- couple of days.
- You know, probably put on a shirt that's
- not not this
- rough t shirt that I'm on. And, you
- know, I'm sitting here enjoying an adult beverage.
- I wouldn't want to do that on a
- video that I put out.
- I could do it when I'm on the
- microphone.
- So, you know, there are some advantages to
- doing just audio. A lot easier to edit.
- You know, if you screw something up and
- you want to edit. I don't edit these
- very often, so this was not edited.
- But if you wanted to edit,
- you know, say you said something stupid or
- you flubbed something up and you wanna cut
- that out, it's a lot harder in video
- than it is in audio. So, you know,
- just keep that in mind. You know? I
- don't think video for
- the creator side is gonna be as popular
- as everybody seems to think it is.
- But hey. You know? We at Blueberry, we're,
- we're actually working on a video product. We've
- always supported video, but we're gonna support it
- a lot better,
- coming soon.
- And,
- you know, make it, affordable and
- and make it to so that, you know,
- if that's what you want to do, you
- have that option.
- And if you don't wanna do it, you
- don't have to.
- You know?
- It used to be, you know, a long
- time ago when we first started this stuff,
- if you built it, somebody would come. You
- know? There was a 100 podcasts when I
- started.
- You know, most podcasters
- and most podcast listeners listen to a fair
- number of those 100 shows
- because
- that's all that was out there. Now there's,
- you know, millions of them and, you know,
- some of them are active. You know? Like
- I said, I I'm guessing around 500,000
- active
- podcasters, and active is defined different ways. I've
- I figured if you haven't put out an
- episode in ninety days, it's not active. So
- this one really wasn't active until today.
- So I probably got counted in the inactive
- list there, but,
- you know, we'll try not to do that
- as as long. But I I say that
- every time and it never works. So, you
- know, hey, you know what to expect. If
- you've been with me long enough,
- yeah, I put out stuff when I put
- out stuff, and,
- no pressure. That's,
- that's kind of a nice way to do
- it.
- Of course,
- I did the I've been doing the daily,
- you know, cup of Traverse City, and then
- I ended up taking a month off. And
- I tried to restart it this week and
- just things got in the way, but I
- I'll get back to that. And it'll be
- five days a week, five minutes.
- And that's fun. That's fun. You know, I
- don't mind that pressure,
- and especially since, you know, I've said all
- along, you know, if this doesn't this this
- isn't fun, I'm not gonna do it. Or
- if I'm, you know, indisposed at some point,
- you know, I'll take a day or three
- or a month off.
- But, you know, I'll try.
- And and the same with this one, you
- know, I'll I'll flip on the microphone
- more often maybe,
- maybe not. I I I I'd like to
- because I enjoy it.
- Jeez, I've been talking for forty five minutes,
- and I figured that's enough for this round.
- And please let me know. Are you still
- listening? Are you still
- subscribed or following
- or whatever? And and
- more importantly,
- you know, what do you think? Do you
- think, you know, technology is just going off
- the deep end, or
- am I just being
- a a crusty old man sitting here, you
- know, shaking my hand at the kids on
- my front lawn? You know, that could be
- either.
- So
- I'm not opposed to being wrong
- or, or at least having a different opinion.
- So with that, everybody have a good
- however long it is till I talk to
- you again.
- Catch me later.