449. Stop Letting Trolls Kill Your Podcast Momentum

0:05 Good morning, podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Friday, February 6th, 2026, and today we're diving back into the mailbag with your questions on handling hateful comments, choosing audio or video for guest interviews, and wrapping up the show by sharing our wins from this past week. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:20 Good morning again podcasting. Morning, Ted. Thanks so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronick and currently on stage with me. I'll get to why I'm giggling in just a moment. We have Ralph E step producer, Ashley Feller, BC Babbles, Nick Nahlbach, Dr. Face, Sid Meadows, Jonathan Howard and also Tide has joined us as well. Tied from the audience has joined us bright and early on stage. Love that. Thank you for being here. Let me make Jonathan a moderator. There we go. Welcome everybody. I'm giggling because now that more of us are on camera as we stream live and record the video, we get a little dancing during that music break there Dr. dancing, me dancing. It was cracking me up watching that. And you can watch us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook. We're streaming live.

2:13 We share that info in the show notes. And if you're listening live here on Clubhouse, Ashley shares a direct link to the YouTube. You need something in the morning to get your blood pumping and this music has always done that for me. Me too. What you guys don't know is I'm usually dancing. I don't usually talk about it, but I'm usually bouncing in my seat here when that music's playing. Another reason from somebody who had asked written in and asked us why the 32nd music interlude there And among other things. Yeah, just to get the blood flow and get a little groove on as we do this live stream. Hey, by the way, a reminder.

2:55 Oh, actually, before I get to my reminder, I think Ralph had something. Go ahead, Ralph. I just want to say one thing is since we went live on camera, now I have to add the hair and makeup now to the morning. So I'm just letting you know you're adding a little burden to the Ralph's morning routine. So I'm doing the iron pumping in the morning and now I've got hair and makeup. So my wife is saying you're up early all the time now. And now I noticed you're all fixed and spiffy before you leave the house. I said, well, I got to bring it to the podcasting morning chat. So, Mark, you've added a little burden to me, but I hope I'm looking all right today. No, I got to ask Ralph, are you really doing makeup? I mean hair? OK, I'm. So, so let me be honest, I'm going to be very honest. What I have noticed with the lights is I get a little bit of a weird Sheen. So my daughter-in-law says you can use a little foundation. So both of my boys are like, Dad, you are not putting on makeup.

3:43 I said I don't like that shine so much. So not every day. It just depends on how I'm feeling, Mark, But definitely the hair, you know, I got to make sure the hair is before we start taping. I'm looking is there any hairs out of place and things like that Because I'm really trying to bring my A game here because I don't have much to work to start off with so I've got to make sure I Polish up what I do have. And your makeup can be tax deductible. See see that Dr. has the money guy. I have to agree with you there. That label seems to be sticking because everybody now is referencing different financial things with Ralph here on stage with us. All right, so the reminder I wanted to get to is that next Thursday, February 12th, our evaluation series returns and that's where we break down a listener submitted podcast episode. And the show we're breaking down is called Movies in a Nutshell. And the episode is about the movie The Matrix, one of my all time favorite movies.

4:46 So we will put a link in the show notes to catch that episode if you want to listen prior to Thursday the 12th. We'll also play some clips for you to really help you get a feel for what we're talking about. And we're going to try to revamp a little bit of how we do this series because as Nick had shared and the listener had shared, it felt a little bit all over the place. And I know Ralph and I had a conversation about that earlier this week as well. So we're going to try to do this in a way that really brings you, the listener into this evaluation so that you don't feel lost and you feel like you're really getting as much out of it as the podcaster whose podcast we're evaluating. So more to come on that.

5:31 Check the show notes for links and team, I will share a link with you to fill out your evaluation form. I'll share that again with you in our group chat. All right, so today we're going to jump right into the mailbag. First, this is actually listener feedback regarding yesterday's discussion specifically on promoting your older episodes. That's what Sid had brought to the table. And this one's from a regular long time listener, Steven Koeffer, who posted yesterday in our Empowered Podcasting Facebook group. He says good episode today. Enjoyed the how to promote your older episodes discussion.

6:13 We just recorded an episode of our show that tried to do just that as we are concluding the end of our second season. 53 total episodes. We recorded an episode comparing the top and bottom 5, listened to audio episodes and watched video episodes. The audio and YouTube rankings were quite different. Most of the top and bottom 5 lists did match. Comparing the two rankings gave us an opportunity to talk about and pump up past episodes as well as encourage each audience each audience to check out episodes they may not have listened to or watched.

6:55 For example, our number one listen to episode was our number 19 watched video. There were other examples where the most viewed video episode were on the bottom of the listened to list. He finishes up here by saying hopefully. We encourage each audience to check out episodes they may have missed or skipped or to re listen. Also encourage new listeners viewers to check out past episodes. When we drop that episode we will re prop our social media reels. I think he meant repost for those older episodes as well. That was a suggestion that I had gave and I love this. I love the instant feedback.

7:39 Thank you to Steven. It's a really smart approach, I think I. Also, yeah, about Stephen, you know he is a long time listener as you said and he posted something about four days ago that I think we should mention. He says, and I'm reading from the post, very excited to share that I will be bringing my hazard identification and risk assessment for action sequences, sequences class to the SAG and AFTRA Nevada Local Conservatory later this year. Stay tuned for more details. Stephen, I believe he is a stunt person. Yeah, right he is. So this is something that's very big. I said congratulations to him. So just as an empowered podcasting group, we should all throw a big congratulations his way. Congratulations, Stephen.

8:27 Agreed. Congratulations, Stephen. And yeah, I really, the approach that he's taken here with this episode that he's telling us about, I think it's really smart. And I love that he turned his episode data into content instead of just letting it sit there. He's comparing top and bottom audio episodes with YouTube video performance. I think that gives him a natural and a relevant way to resurface those older episodes and guide people through the back catalog with some intention. I like it because he's giving listeners and viewers a reason to care and a reason to explore as opposed to just saying, hey, go and listen to these old episodes. So kudos for Steven to Steven.

9:11 I think that's really a a cool approach. And I'm curious. I did respond to his post and asked him to check in and let us know how he feels like that episode goes because it's as he said, he's going to be publishing it soon. All right, so let's dig in. Oh, I didn't have my mailbag ready. Here, let me grab the mailbag and grab this next piece of mail here. OK so this actually comes from Reddit podcasting Reddit and the title. How do you deal with hateful comments on your episode? So this person says. We've had a few negative comments here and there over the years, but nothing that was downright nasty or hateful. On a recent episode 1 YouTube troll posted 5 comments just being incredibly nasty telling telling me how annoying and horrible I am.

10:06 I'm fake, pretentious, I add nothing, no one cares about me. I'm the annoying person everyone has always told me I am. Telling me F you saying that I tricked him into listening on and on. My social media manager told me that the comments actually help engagement and not only should I leave them but respond. So I gave him sweet sarcasm in response. Now I know people deal with and this is him still continuing. Now I know people deal with the with way worse on a daily basis. This person is a small sad excuse for a human but it still stings.

10:49 How do you keep from letting the negativity under your skin? It does make the inner critic start to speak up and I hate feeling like this. Ashley wants to chime in first. Go ahead, Ashley, and then we're going to hear from Ralph and BC. As someone who's done a lot of social media management and reviewed a lot of mean comments, the first thing I want to say is it's not personal. It really isn't. More often than not, when they're making mean comments like that, it's about them and they're looking for a way to just go be mean somewhere. So remember, what you're doing is important and valuable and everything that those people are saying are not true and they're not personal.

11:32 I totally agree with you. Thank you, Ashley. I think that a lot of times the hateful people and hateful comments when they're directing them at you the way like this person described. Yeah, I think what's happening is that those people are getting triggered because they're seeing in you what they wish they had in them. Think about that for a minute. I really genuinely believe that. And I would encourage you to to yeah, I would encourage you to test this out for yourself. When somebody triggers you, stop and think about it for a second. Look, we all get triggered by people. I say that a little bit blanket statement, but I do believe that at some point we all get triggered by other people and stop and ask yourself, why is this person getting under my skin?

12:20 A lot of times if you really dig deep, it's probably because you're seeing something in them that you're having a hard time bringing out and embracing in yourself. OK, I'm going to go to Ralph next and then BC. Go ahead, Ralph. So one of the other worlds I live in is my daily podcast is a religious based podcast. And so I get this almost on a daily basis. And I remember when it first happened, Mark, it was, it was shattering to me. I was like, how could somebody say, I mean, they would make comments about, you know, you eat, you ate the screen, you know, you're terrible, we hate you and all this kind of thing. And when you first get those comments, it's real easy to say, oh, why am I doing this?

13:02 Why am I doing this? And I've taken 2 pieces of things that this is the advice I'm going to give the same person. Number one, if they make comments, that is a beautiful thing because that's engagement and YouTube, all the other platforms love engagement. So if you have some knucklehead troll that's out there throwing you shade or giving you negative comments, just thank them for the negative comments. Second thing is those aren't your people. That's the thing you really have to understand is this algorithm. These things are serving up to people who aren't your people, and your people are not going to respond the way that you would think that they would respond. Your people will give you good comments.

13:42 So take those good comments, take those positive comments, print them out, put them in front of you so that all day long you can see the things that are the reason that you do what you do. I had that happen to me a couple weeks ago. Somebody wrote me a glowing comment about how I changed their financial dynamic in their family. Dude, you couldn't have paid me for that. That's posted right here on the wall in my studio. So every time I walk past, I'm like, that's who I'm talking to today. Not the haters, not the trolls, not the knuckleheads are just looking to get a get my get my anger up. So that's my big take away for that. Mark, thank you. Thank you for letting me share that. Yeah, thank you, Ralph. Great example and yeah, great advice. Thank you very much. And I'm going to keep it moving.

14:23 Go to BC and then I think Jonathan has something as well. Go ahead BC. Yeah I had a similar issue earlier last year. Random Sunday in March, I'm minding my business focusing on school and I get 12 notifications on TikTok. Someone who posted on 12 of my videos. Nasty crap. And funny enough, I knew this person but I forgot they existed until they commented on my stuff. And I'm like thanks for the engagement to Ralph's point. And now go figure out why your mom doesn't love you. Not my problem. Bye. I'm not super nice. I I will feed the fire a little bit and that's my own detriment sometimes. But I was just like this is not worth my time.

15:03 Go figure yourself out. Make keep your problems in your corner, not mine. Feeding the fire part, that could be actually, whether you mean it to be or not a strategy because if you are feeding that fire first, you better have thick skin because the most likely if you're going to throw some stuff into that fire, that fire is going to come back and burn even even brighter, right? That that that troll is probably going to get triggered. I know I'm using that word a lot today and probably respond, but that's just it. You're getting them to respond. You're creating more engagement that way, so you never know, but I think I kind of do.

15:45 It's similarly to what you guys do. For example, my first filter. It's basically, is this actually useful feedback or is it just noise? If there's something constructive buried in it, I'll pause and see if there's a lesson there. And if it's clearly a troll, I don't take it personally most of the time. It is hard not to take it personally even if you know it's a troll right? It's still they hit you where it hurts sometimes. But I don't automatically delete it. Just much to like what everyone's saying, it is engagement. It does help the algorithm. It does help push it out even more, especially if that engagement builds. The way I try to respond is to just be nice. Thank you, you know, sorry you feel that way. Maybe this show isn't meant to speak to you anyway. And what I think that that does is by replying in kindness, I think it shows those who may come across those comments. It shows them really, who's the troll, who's the bad guy and who's the good guy.

16:55 Jonathan, did you want to add something? Yeah, you guys hit most of most of what I would say, you know, ignore it to do all the things that you got to do. The only thing that I would say is check on that comment and does it feel like it hits a vein with you? And if it does, that's something that you can probably improve upon on your show. So if it feels like it just hits and that you know, it hits you in the gut or it's pinching A vein, maybe that's something that you have a your own problem with the show. Just like they're they're reflecting themselves. Sometimes we're reflecting ourselves when we in our responses to that. So take it, accept it, and look to see if there's something you can do about it to make your show better.

17:37 Great point. And also Ralph makes another great point in the chat here saying that also you can ask other people to comment. And I know I've shared that before that strategy, my old show, the Mark and Lowell show, if we would get a negative comment, which thankfully not often, but we would certainly, you know, as a popular podcast, you're going to get haters, right? And so when that happens, whether it's in a review or a comment on a Facebook post, Instagram post, what have you, I ask the audience to go and leave comments. I don't necessarily, I'm not necessarily saying go and respond to that person, but instead just leave lots of comments so we can bury the -1 and usually my audience would respond really well to that. They would go in droves and comment, comment, comment, and before you know it, it's hard to find the -1. Another great strategy.

18:30 OK, does anyone else want to add anything to this part of the conversation? OK, so with that, let me get out another piece of mail here. All right, this one is short and sweet. It comes from Nate. Nate posted this in our Facebook group, the Empowered Podcasting Facebook group. By the way, I'm going to pause here real quick and tell you that I feel like I know that this might be a little counter. Well, here's my problem. Calling the Facebook group, Empowered Podcasting, having this group here, Podcasting Morning chat, it feels like a mixed message. So I'm thinking about changing the name over at the Facebook group to Podcasting Morning Chat. I know that we do have an Empowered Podcasting conference community.

19:20 I think maybe that's a new group to start or we can just welcome everybody into this one place. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I need to get my branding synchronized. It's been too long the way that I've been doing it and it's confusing. But anyway, Nate post a very short and sweet question and I want to also talk about some of the comments that he got as well. Nate says, when I start having guests on my podcast, should I continue doing audio or try video? This is an an interesting one because it is that something that you do? Like if it's guess that means up, I got to do video now.

20:01 Like are there reasons to do video like that? Yeah, I think it's completely comes down to what your preferred format is. If you're doing the production video adds a whole other layer of the process. You know this, we all know this. So and I mean, I would think just let your guest know what the format is and you may even come across a guest if you want to do video that they're not comfortable with that. So you may have to figure that out too or they just may not be your guest. I would also say if you want to, because sometimes I see that audio podcasts will still have video clips of special segments, but the full episode is still just audio. So maybe there's a hodgepodge idea there, but for the most part, it's your show, your format.

20:45 You decide what's easiest for you all. Right, fair enough. Thank you BC I'm going to go to Nick and then I'm going to check in with Ashley. Go ahead, Nick. My personal opinion is to record the video and I'm saying this, I, I know I've talked about this in the past when I started my show, my show was primarily audio, but every interview I recorded video. And the reason I did that is because I didn't want to get to episode 50 and realize, hey, I want to get into video now and I'm starting from scratch on video. I am kind of like a content hoarder. Where? I if I can have the content, I want to have the content, even if I'm not going to use it right now, I want to have it at my disposal.

21:31 So eventually I ended up posting like what BC was saying, just clips of the episode. I wouldn't post a full like 60 minute 45 minute interview video. I would just post clips, like 5-10 minute clips on YouTube and that's kind of what got me started into the video side of things. And I wouldn't have done that had I not had the video already on hand. So I say even if you're deciding right now that you want to go audio only, that's all you're going to release right now. Still record the video so you have it, and you can always go back to it in the future if you want. Yeah, I like that, right, Because you could just save those files. A year could go by, two years could go by. Whenever you start to feel comfortable maybe getting into the video, you've got it there now. You've got plenty of content to work with. I'm with you there, Nick.

22:23 I think that's a great idea. OK, I'm going to go to Ashley and then Sid wants to chime in as well. Go ahead, Ashley. So I would first start by determining if you want to do video because you feel pressured to or because you really believe that it's a way that your podcast will get further discovered. Once you've done that, I would still continue to record video if you haven't already, much to Nick's point, because just because you record it doesn't mean you have to use it immediately. You can save it up for something else, and at very least you can use those videos to make promos on social media. I've always recorded on video, kind of like Nick. I never published a video on YouTube. I don't know, probably episode 30 or so. I don't remember.

23:11 So we're audio first with the video component. So don't feel the pressure to do video. I mean, do what you feel is congruent to you and to your show and to your brand. But here's what I will say. I think that every podcast, even if you're audio only, should be recorded on video because video gives you the ability to have a more engaging conversation because you can see the person, you can see and react to their facial expressions, their body language. And so it's so important to actually be on video when you're recording, whether or not you ever post the video record on video because it'll make up for a better audio conversation. Yeah, I love that.

23:51 There is something about building the rapport, building chemistry by seeing the person across the street screen. I think that is so important. And by the way, I love what Dave put in the chat here, he said. I've been able to provide the video of past guests that have now passed away. The family loved seeing their loved ones again and that actually reminds me also. Thank you for that, Dave. That reminds me also, Sid, you had a similar situation with a guest, right, that you wanted on the show. I and I think he passed away and then you had his son on the show. So I have two two instances like this. I did a pre recording that I, I pre interviewed that I did not record with a father and son.

24:33 And before we could record the episode with them talking about the transition of a family business, he passed away. He had cancer and he though he was already in the process. He, he was losing his life already, but he did die a little bit suddenly. So then that delayed the audio recording. But I did have a really great conversation with the son. So that's an opportunity that I missed there to be able to share that with the family. But I didn't have the guest die of pancreatic cancer very suddenly about a year after he's upset. And I'm attempting to get in touch with his wife to do exactly what I think whoever was to said it to share the video so that his kids it's on YouTube and it will be there.

25:14 But I wanted to share the raw video with his family for that very reason. And I'm I'm attempting to get in touch with his wife for that, for that purpose. Yeah, what a special gift in those kinds of scenarios. Thankfully, I don't think they happen that often, but what a gift to be able to provide somebody. Yeah, just by doing what we love, right? It's pretty powerful stuff. Thank you for sharing that, Sid. And I'm going to go to Ralph. Ralph, what do you got? I really have two things here. Number one thing in BC mentioned this. I think you need to make sure the person understands this is going to be a video recording so they can get into hair and make up like Ralph does. No, I'm, I'm being funny, but this is all part of that pre interview thing that we talked about week before last.

25:57 And I just think you need to have that conversation because you may deal with people who do not want to be on video. They may have issues with social media having their photos. I'll give you an example that my son is in the Coast Guard. My oldest son is in the Coast Guard. He has to be super careful about where his image shows up because of operational security type stuff. So just make sure you're saying to them, hey, you should be doing that anyway on the audio side, but I think it's even bigger to do that on the video side. But then the second thing is just talk about that during the pre interview. Get an idea. Do they have the is it going to be a good experience on video? Because unfortunately I've seen some videos that are like, what were they recording through? Did they have like mayonnaise on their camera or something like that?

26:39 And, and if your plan is this is going to be a video release at the front end, that's where you may have to step up your game a little bit and say to them, hey, you're going to have to be on a webcam. You're going to have to be. I mean, the iPhone is great. You can even show them how to do that. But just give them some coaching so that there's not a surprise moment when they get into the interview. So that that those are my two big takeaways, Mark. Yeah, I love that. Thank you, Ralph. Yeah. And I'm curious, did anyone else have anything because there's AI want there's a Part 2 to this that I want to get to. It's based on one of the comments that that Nate had received, but I want to make sure if anyone else wants to chime in. OK, so one of the comments which I think in general, it's a it's a great comment.

27:22 I'm not calling this out because I think there's a problem with it, but it did did make me pause. OK, so this comes from a community member. He actually first came into this community in September when he joined us at the Empowered Podcasting conference. His name is Mark and Mark's response to Nate was stay with the audio only until you have that down. Well, you don't want to add too much to the learning curve and be overwhelmed. So that's again, a thoughtful response. And it's the reason why I pause now is because, well, twofold. Is it a bad thing if you're new to the game of podcasting? Is it a bad thing to just dive right into learning the insurance and outs of video production because you're new to the game?

28:10 I was thinking it could make it more challenging. Like if you're learning how to do the audio and you get really comfortable with that, it is a different beast to do the video editing. Maybe it's a almost a disadvantage for some people to start with the easier step. Just dive right into the video. And, and the Part 2 to this is that video editing has gotten so much easier these days. I mean, AI will practically do it for you and it will do it for you, but you may just have to go in and clean up some stuff a little bit. But like it's almost now press a button and it's edited almost. I'm wondering if maybe, again, great thoughtful advice, but maybe it's starting to get outdated. And I've been there too.

28:52 I've given that advice. So again, not a knock on Mark, but I feel like maybe that's advice that we want to start rethinking. So I'm curious what people think about that. And I see several people want to chime in. I think this is where you have to decide, are you an audio first or video first show? If you're a video first show, learn all the stuff. Invest in yourself and learn all the on camera stuff you need to do, like hair and makeup, like craft does, right? Learn all the editing and all that. The best practices for doing a awesome video show. If you're audio first show like me, screw that. I'm not learning all that. I'm just putting it out there because I've been asked to do it.

29:33 Our video channel is growing. Don't get me wrong. We've had a huge increase in subscribers and really, really small YouTube channel, OK. But I'm not investing in trying to build that because that the way that like Ralph's trying to build his because we are an audio first program. So I think you got to decide what you want to be and then lean into being the best at that first. And once you feel like you've really got that down, then you move to the next one. Thank you, Sid. And I'm going to go to, I see several of you want to chime in and Yvonne's joined on stage. I like to go to our audience members first when they are kind enough to come up and want to contribute to the conversation. So Yvonne, good morning to you.

30:15 What did you want to add to this? Good morning and happy Friday. You know, I started audio first because I was not comfortable being on camera. It wasn't so much about the editing and learning the video editing. It may be a little bit, maybe a little bit the bear, the barrier to entry felt a little bit lower for audio. And really what needed to happen for me was I had to get comfortable doing reels before I really wanted to go to video. But I guess my take on this is do what you're called to do. Start with what you have, where you are and try to get better as you go, whatever that is.

31:03 Like lean into what's calling you in and where you're at and then expect to grow from there. Like, you know, I'm still recording on Zoom. My video is not the crispest, sharpest thing in the room, but I'm doing it and I'm learning as I go and I'm and I'm thinking about switching over to Riverside to get better on the video. So start where you are and don't stop yourself because you don't have the skills yet. You'll get better as you go. Thank you, Yvonne. And I see Jonathan has a similar response as you did, Jonathan saying in the chat, know yourself and your energy first and foremost.

31:46 And Yvonne, you know, I'm curious with your Zoom and you called out the fact that you're still using it, that the quality isn't great. And I mean, there are some things that you can do in Zoom in the settings to get higher quality. So I'm just curious, have you played with that or have you just kind of assumed what it spits out is what you get? Well, there's a lot of reasons. I'm, I want to move from Zoom. It's complicated. Like I'm, I'm looking to get rid of one more Subs. You know, I have so many subscriptions now. So I'm in, I'm using the script to edit and I'm thinking that Riverside can do both the recording and the editing. And so I'm going to do a trial run and see if I like the editing features in Riverside and see if I like the recording features. So one thing just to keep in mind is, again, there are settings in Zoom that you can play with to improve the quality and which would mean that maybe you wouldn't have to switch if you're comfortable using Zoom.

32:45 So if you need some instructions just on how to improve the quality of Zoom, let me know and I can send you that info just to give you all your options. Yeah. Thank you so much. That's awesome. Sure, Tide. Did you have anything? Because I see you put something in the chat. So I just wanted to see if you wanted to chime in at all. I filmed a podcast episode last night and I had seen a real posted by Buzz Sprout. I think it was on the Zoom sound quality. And that was something that Alex and I had spoke about in on Clubhouse the other day. And I was having some really like significant challenges with it because my mic was coming in loud and clear and then other people's was not. It was the whole thing.

33:26 And so Alex gave me some great tips. But then I saw the reel on Buzz Sprout and I went into the settings and I did, I think it was like 2 or three steps, the things that it told me to do. So I went in and I did that and I filmed the episode last night and this evening when I get home from work, I'm going to listen to the recording. But I'm excited about the sound quality potentially being better. And then also I did on Buzz Sprout, I did enable the, I think it's called the magic mastery feature that they have. So I did enable that too. So I'm looking forward to seeing or or hearing how it turns out because I'm audio only. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. And please let us know how that turned out. You can once it's available for us to consume, let us know and we'll check it out as well. Very cool, Thank you for sharing. I'm going to jump the line for a second because Sid looks like he wanted to respond to something as you were talking there Tide. So go for it, Sid.

34:15 Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, I just would like you to know that in the show notes, they'll be late to download this guide to improve the quality of your Zoom recordings. So please take the opportunity to get this powerful tool brought to you by the Empowered Podcasting Group. And just know that when you click the link, there will be an e-mail capture there. You give us your e-mail, we're going to give you this amazing tool that's going to help your Zoom recordings be much more powerful and a lot better. How's. That for a mid roll ad. That's a wonderful mid roll ad now. Now you just gave me a little more work to do, but that's OK. That's you proved a point and I think that's a really good suggestion, subtle suggestion to me to do something like that. So we will get you some instructions and put a link in the show notes.

35:01 And yes, we will capture your e-mail in return, but I promise you we won't spam you. All right, let me go down the line here, Ralph, what you got for us? I just wanted to say one thing here that we might be overthinking. I released a video on YouTube that's gotten over 5 million views and I recorded it in front of my office building on the farm with my iPhone camera. I did 0 editing to it, so you don't have to overthink this either. One of the things that I'm seeing a lot more of is videos that aren't super produced are doing better and getting more views and getting more engagement than the ones that are super produced. So don't feel like you've got to have this team of video editors that's going to make this thing look like the Evening News.

35:46 You don't have to do that. What I'm seeing, and it's my own thing. I've got 5 million views on a particular video because I just filmed it. I was wearing like overalls working out on the farm and it just something that occurred to me I wanted to say, and it wasn't wasn't fancy. I just posted it. So you don't have to feel like you've got to have this production team to go and do that. Now you can hire a production team. There are people out there that do that. I actually have a production team that does my stuff. And yeah, so you can do that, but don't feel like that's an obstacle to getting that video out there because you really don't have to do that. Yep. Thank you, Ralph. I'm going to keep it moving. Dr. What do you got for us? Well, I think the hardest part is it's like the cheese stands alone.

36:31 You know, if you are audio 1st and every single person around you is saying video, video, video, it's hard to say no audio. I really just want audio. So you just have to know yourself, have strength, have, I guess the phrase is stand in your truth. It sounds so esoteric when I'm saying it. And also, you know, it's not just about making a video. There is a whole strategy for YouTube that I don't care to even approach. So in my business, I have someone who does that. I have someone who does that because I knew that I didn't want to do that.

37:18 And I'm talking about videos for my clients and things for my clients, not me specifically. You have to stand. Stand in your truth and know what you want to concentrate on when it comes to strategy. Yeah, I'm with you there. I wanted to do this when you said something specific the. Mouse takes the cheese, the mouse takes the cheese of the cheese. I hold the dairy or the mouse. It didn't quite do the exact lyrics I wanted, but that's OK. All right, let's go to BC and then Alex. Go ahead BC. Another thing to keep in mind too, it depends on your background. I was I was lucky enough to come into podcasting with a broadcast media undergrad, so I had been messing with Adobe Creative Suite for several years going into it.

38:07 So I hopped into podcasting as a video podcaster. And even though I'm I'll be the first one to mention to people without that background, video adds a whole other layer to the process. If you're producing, consider that part of it. But I've also been doing it for 20 years. So if you have a constant creation background, you might be able to hop in and find that video podcasting is for you because of what you've been dedicating yourself to previously. A lot easier than typical. Thank you BC let me check in with Alex and we got to get to wins from the week. So Alex, I'm going to probably give you the final word. Go for it. I think this is all a new point because if you look at the stage, this is a lot of seasoned people and I think people coming up are used to video in their daily life. And it's not that audio is going to go away, because it's not. I think people are just going to be recording in video more than ever and then they're going to either use it or they're not going to use it.

39:08 And I think that's the main thing. But I know Ashley did have her hand raised. That's the only reason why. Yeah, I think Ashley has a quick editing tip. Go ahead, Ashley. Yeah, I just wanted to say, I know Descript does this, but I believe Cap Cut and maybe even Final Cut Pro do this is you can actually merge. Like for example, if you record your audio on a separate device from your video, which really would be ideal, you can join your audio and video clips together and edit them as if they were one, meaning that they're all one thing. What happens in the audio happens in the video and they don't fall out of sync. Yeah, but it's the script. Who cares?

39:50 Alex, not a fan of the script. Thank you Ashley, great tip. It's time for wins from the week and Dr. looks very distraught all of a sudden unprepared. Dr. is very distraught right now. All right, fine. DRI won't go to you first even though I know pre show Sid has suggested we do. You had enough time but I guess you forgot. That's OK. All right, so here's what we'll do. You know what, I'm going to start today and then we'll go down the line and let me first encourage you, if you're in the audience, come up, come share any win.

40:32 We don't care if you think it's a small win, it's a win and it deserves to be celebrated. So anything, even if it's just that you got out of bed every day this week and started your day and made made it happen as best you could, we'll take that as a win and celebrate that with you. So bring it my win for this week, although I do have several I'll share 21 is that I started and I shared this earlier maybe yesterday, started working with Ralph this week on getting my business and my business finances in order so I can take it to it being the business to another level. It's time to level up and I feel like especially after this past year dealing with ADHD and no medication and struggling through that, I got to step things up now.

41:24 And Ralph has been wonderful already to work with and I'll explain one of the reasons why with my second win. I had a couple days ago a discovery call with a very established podcaster who hosts most multiple shows. One of them has done literally millions of downloads and he's built a massive online community in his niche, which coincidentally is ADHD and autism. He came to me because even at that level, he felt like his podcast wasn't fully aligned with the rest of his business and he wanted to grow it in a more intentional way. So after the call, instead of defaulting to my usual coaching package that Ioffer to podcasters to help them with whatever area of podcasting they're looking to improve or grow, I instead of going with that coaching package, I eventually trusted my expertise, my experience, and proposed an ongoing consulting partnership that matched the actual scope of what this particular client needed.

42:32 And that's thanks to the encouragement of both my wife and Ralph. I should say I tend to sell myself short when it comes to charging a client based on what I believe is my value. I tend not to value my expertise and my services highly enough. But after talking that through with my wife, with Ralph, I sent the e-mail with this revised approach. And yes, I definitely experienced moments of nerves, hesitated to press that send button, but ultimately I did. And within I'd say 12 hours, he accepted immediately without any hesitation.

43:16 So my win this week is trusting my value, not negotiating against myself, and remembering that even very successful creators still want clarity, partnership and support. And I am thrilled because I do feel like I've been in somewhat of a dry spell with new business. And what a what a great way to break that streak with something that feels very significant, very exciting to be a part of. So that's my win. All right, now I'm going to go down the line. I see plenty of people in the audience, but nobody heeding the call to come up here. So I'm going to encourage you again. Come on up. Let's share.

43:58 Thank you, Tim. Appreciate you bringing you up right now. I'll start. Yeah, There you go. So let's start with Tim and then we'll go to Yvonne and then we'll hear from the rest of the crew. Tim, good morning. Please share a win or two with us. My win today is literally the reason I was late today. Echocardiogram. I'm fine. But it's just proof that I do have a heart health is doing great. So that's my win for today. I know it's not anything to do with podcasting, but it allows me to make sure that I can be in top condition for Empowered Podcasting conference in August. Of this year. Thank you, Tim. And glad you're healthy.

44:39 Congratulations on a good result. And yeah, that's OK that it's not a podcasting win specifically. You're a podcaster and you're part of this community. Yes, Dr. OK. Someone yesterday, because we were talking about Empowered Podcasting conference for 2026, Someone yesterday asked when can you put in for a speaker position? Yeah. Yeah, that was actually me. Oh, OK, there you go. So it was Tim. We are having weekly meetings and we just had one on Wednesday and we decided it will be sometime in March, so stay tuned. Sometime in March, that's when we will start accepting speaker applications.

45:23 We'll tell you when and where and to be continued. So yeah, thank you for bringing that up, Dr. All right, I'm going to go to Yvonne and then Ralph, you're on deck. Go ahead, Yvonne. Share a win with us. I. Have to say it's on the side of you know, I got out of bed this week. There is definitely some challenging things going on Personally, I lost a good a good friend this week passed away. But on the upside of that, this week was filled with deep, rich conversations with old friends and people who are going to be guests on the podcast, where the Just the Discovery call was rich and deep and very proud of this week's episode.

46:09 And it's been about human connection this week. That's what my win has been. Congratulations on your win. And I think, yeah, human connection, especially when you lose somebody close to you, I think human connection is the best medicine dealing with the grief. So I'm I'm glad you got that love and support and made those great connections at the same time. Yvonne, thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. All right, Ralph, you're up. Please share some wins with us. So my win of the week is Mark's win of the week. And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to frame it a little differently because there's two components to this. Number one is I found it a win that Mark and I have built up a level of trust because one of the things if you do coaching, if you do trying to help people, the first thing you've got to do is build up trust.

46:59 And so Mark, I just want to say awesome job, dude. You and I have developed a trust relationship, which is just fantastic. The other thing of this is at the end of the call, I asked Mark for some feedback. I said to Mark, I said I would like you to give me some feedback and I was put my own vulnerability out there because Mark had been vulnerable with me and I had to return the favor. And he said something. I said what was one thing you could work on and he told me something I could work on. And Mark, you don't even know this, but you made a huge impact on me because you said something about how I always clarify Tran things before I say them. And I went back and asked some other people and I'm like, crap, you do that all the time.

47:40 And they said you don't have to do that. And Mark, that was huge for me. Major win for me. So thank you so much for trusting me #1 to help you with your business and secondarily for you. And I haven't built a really cool friendship to where we have this trust with each other that you can say something to me that might have been hard to say, but I just want to say thank you for saying it. Mark you, thank you so much. You're welcome and thank you for sharing that. And would you would you be open to me getting a little more specific to that feedback so people understand what you were saying? OK. So, yeah, the feedback that I had for Ralph is I had been noticing more so in our private conversations. But sometimes even here on the the morning chat, I, I noticed that sometimes Ralph will like to preface what he's going to say by saying I don't mean this in a negative way.

48:26 Now, he says that in a variety of ways, but he often starts by saying, I don't mean this to be offensive. I don't mean this to hurt your feelings. This isn't going to sound like it, you know, don't take this the way it's going to sound. And my advice to him was to try to pull back on that because even though the intention is pure, you're planting a seed of negativity. You're basically saying, don't think of a white elephant, right? And that what you can't help but think of a white elephant, right? So when you say don't take this negative negatively that, that you're, you're setting up the person to think, oh, this is going to be maybe perceived as negative.

49:08 So instead, either don't lead at all with that or maybe find a way to say it more positively. There's a time and place for that. Sometimes I think that's appropriate, right? But I, I was just noticing that a little too much from Ralph and I thought that would be helpful. And since he asked for feedback, I gave it to him. So I'm glad that was helpful, Ralph. Yeah, and Mark, it was super helpful because it made me go and examine why I do that. And that opened up some things that I'm going to have to that I'm going to have to deal with. But Mark, because you said that to me, I could have turned it off. I just said, well, this guy doesn't always talking about I, I don't want to hear that, but I was willing to hear it. And so Mark, congratulations, Joel Ren, and thank you for giving me one as well. Dude, I really appreciate. It you're welcome, Ralph.

49:49 All right, I'm going to keep things moving. Go to Ashley. Ashley, you want to share wins with us? Absolutely and I'm really proud of this. This is going to sound kind of different. I've gone one week with decaf only coffee. Caffeine has been a huge crutch in my life since I was about 12 years old and I'm middle-aged now. Said to have gone a whole week and gotten all the things done and actually maybe have even been a little more productive is that's really big for me. My other win is I had an in person discovery call with a lady named Marianne. She's a singer-songwriter and a musician. She's about 70 years old and she had a large music void in her life.

50:32 But now she wants to get back into playing festivals, house concerts, dinner gigs, those kinds of things. And she had seen a post I made about electronic press kit assembling. And that's one of the things I do. And she contacted me and we met. And those meetings, I do those, you know, just those as a courtesy to see if people are interested. I was not expecting that. She gave me a $50 tip. So that's another win. Yeah, congratulations on both those wins. Hey Ashley, how's your partner doing? He's OK. The reason I ask is you went off of caffeine. I just want to make sure that I'm just doing a safe, well chat. I was wondering where you're going with that. Now I get it.

51:17 Yeah. Congratulations Ashley. I know it's not easy for many of us to get off the caffeine, especially that coffee in the morning. But yeah, the decaf I guess serve its purpose. But yeah, it doesn't give you the energy like the caffeinated one does. So kudos to you. And very cool story about that older musician. Very cool. Thank you Ashley BC you are up. Yes, so great news. Got my final grades back and I passed everything. So your boys officially a Masters of Science in digital Marketing and I'll be getting my diploma here in the next few weeks. Congratulations. Very excited to bring that to whomever is smart enough to hire me in the future, and we'll see what happens here going on soon. Awesome.

51:58 Get a job. Yeah, I think he's ready. Congratulations, BC Love that. All right, Dr., You better have one for us. I woke up on time and I did my blueberries and my Grape Nuts in the morning and I'm I'm regular. Wow, congratulations on that. All three of those wins. That is fantastic. I'm so glad you're regular Dr. So glad we're flowing here today at the morning chat.

52:39 Yes, we are all right. We will keep it moving. Congratulations Dr. and Sid, what do you got for us? Not really sure how I follow that mark. No one can. So I have two wins of the week. First off, just we are ahead and it feels really good. We've got lots of recordings done, but we have all the rest of the episodes for the month of February because we're on a new schedule. We're on a weekly schedule rather than a bi monthly schedule or bi weekly schedule, sorry, whatever it's called every other week. So we got all the episodes, they're processed, they're done, they're loaded and buzzed route ready to go, which gives my marketing person the opportunity to get ahead and get emails created and blogs created and social media assets done. So it feels really good to finally be ahead.

53:20 We made it through the 1st week of publishing the first episode of season 7 with lots of great feedback. So you know, that's really good. So feeling great about where we're headed there. And then my second win for the week is, you know, I have a big birthday coming up and I've been dealing with a little bit of high blood pressure, which I have no symptoms of. But I've been going to the doctor and having blood work done and all this work done. And I went for a review of the, all the, the labs yesterday and basically said, I don't have anything to tell you. I'm not really sure what's causing your high blood pressure. We're going to keep looking to find it. But the rest of it like, you're, dude, you're super healthy and you're in a great place. And so that actually felt really good to, you know, get that kind of report from the doctor as I approach this big milestone birthday. I'm surprised at turning 30 that you have high blood pressure already said.

54:12 I wish I was 3030. Oh my God. It's really weird though. I went to the doctor and they took it and it was high. And then I went to the dentist and they took it and it was high. And I'm like, OK, I need to track it. So my wife bought me a machine and I've been tracking it and I switched from the right arm to the left arm and tracking it and damn, it's still running high. And they don't know exactly why. My kidneys look great. My liver panel looks great. So they're going to give me a test for sleep apnea because that has the opportunity to impact your blood pressure. So we'll see. But All in all, you know, they're trying to figure out the cause of my high blood pressure to treat the cause rather than the symptom, which I really appreciate because, you know, once you go on high blood pressure medicine, it takes a while to get off of it.

54:53 So hopefully we can avoid that. But you know, it still feels really good to, you know, at this milestone get a really good clean bill of help from the doctor, so. So I also would highly recommend as somebody who's been dealing with high blood pressure, I would recommend working with a holistic nutritionist. It's really, it did wonders for me. I mean, my blood pressure isn't perfect, but it's certainly has gone down considerably. And sometimes supplements and diet can be make all the difference when it comes to high blood pressure. So I would recommend that. All right, Alex, once again, final word, you're going to wrap us up with wins from the week.

55:33 Now that we got done the nutrition corner between Dr. and Sid and you, I had actually three kind of wins this week. I popped into the clubhouse on a non powering podcasting room, which I haven't done in a long time. And I was talking to Tide and we had a really great conversation about podcasting and we were talking to a bunch of people about just this, this room and people like they still didn't even know we exist, which I think is really kind of interesting in the sense of, you know, people have their whatever they do and, and we got a chance to talk about editing and everything else. But my other two wins have to do with people in this community. 1 I had a great conversation with Ralph and we're, we might be doing some business together.

56:16 And then I had a chance to speak with Amanda for about an hour and a half and she's amazing. She's doing well, the chickens are doing great. And she just really gave me some great advice, both business as well as content creation. And it was just great to hear her voice and her perspective. And, you know, she's doing such a great job with her small little town in Michigan. And, you know, as the content creator or want to be content creator, if you're looking for a way to kind of, you know, see how it's grassroots, you should check out her stuff. I mean, because she went from like a realtor that was getting laughed at for doing Instagram or TikTok stuff to now she's, you know, she's put, she's put a little town on the map and she started a business.

57:08 So that's why I reached out to her just to kind of get some ideas because I was a little stuck because I lost my, my social media person. So I'm kind of having to do it on my own kind of stuff. It's very easy to do until you have to do what kind of stuff. So that's where it's at. Congratulations, Alex, on all those wins. And I'm also particularly excited to hear that you and Ralph might be working together. And you know, I don't know the details, but I will say there was something I wanted to add earlier, just that I want to recognize that if somebody else might be listening right now, that might need some help with their finances. Again, I said this yesterday, content creators and finances don't always go hand in hand very well, right? And I will say it was very vulnerable for me to sit down with Ralph, not because I didn't feel comfortable with him, but I didn't feel comfortable sharing all of my financial situation with Ralph.

58:06 It felt like I said vulnerable, especially because I, you know, I've gotten to know Ralph first. So now it feels like it feels extra vulnerable because I'm not just sitting down with a stranger who has the experience, expertise, doing it 30 years right now. It's all of that and it's somebody I know and that feels really, really vulnerable. But I will tell you, it's once you do sit down and you breakthrough that it gets easier. It's just a matter of really breaking, breaking through that discomfort. And that's at least for me. And we've got, we've got way more to go here.

58:47 But now, you know, I'll admit, I was kind of dreading sitting down with Ralph for the first time again, not because of Ralph, but because of me. But once I did, it really opened things up for me. So if you're hesitating because you're you're feeling shy or ashamed or embarrassed, I encourage you to try to work through that because if we don't understand our business and our finances, it's destined to fail. Sure, you might learn a lot of lessons along the way and you can learn a lot of lessons too, by working with with, with people that are experienced in these different areas that you may need help with. OK, So with that, we are back next week Monday, 7:00 AM Eastern Time.

59:31 We will be doing on Monday our Obsession Worthy podcast series hosted by Jonathan. Of course, also me as well, but Jonathan leads the charge on those. I've shared a link here on Clubhouse. We'll share it in the show notes. We are going to be doing covering the show Two Birds. No, I'm sorry, it's hyper fixed is the name of the show and the episode is Two Birds, 100 stones. Is that right? Did I get it the right way or did I reverse the title and episode? Well, you'll find out in the show notes when we include the link there. So check that out. Join us next week, all all week long, Monday through Friday, 7:00 AM Eastern. You can learn how to get in touch with us at Podcasting Morning chat.com until Monday.

1:00:19 Make it a great weekend, everybody. Take care.