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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday.  My name is Darrell Darnell, I failed my first driving test, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.  In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I’ll share a lesson realized after my first encounter with Ray Ortega.

Friday Forum
Friday Forum is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU.  It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long.  It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others.  You can participate in Friday Forum by calling and leaving a message at 304-837-2278, emailing an audio file to feedback@goldenspiralmedia.com, or clicking on the Send Voicemail tab on my website, GoldenSpiralMedia.com.

What I Learned Yesterday:
What is your dream?  Who do you admire?  Or, who do you look at and say, “I’m going to be like them one day!”  When we’re kids we often have people in our lives that we aspire to become.  Maybe it’s an athlete like Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Tiger Woods, or Peyton Manning.  Maybe it’s a musician or singer like Daryl Hall, Bono, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, or Adam Levine.  Perhaps you wanted to be like your mom or dad, or a grandparent.  

Back in 2008 I decided to start podcasting with my friends Courtney, Jason, and Clint.  We had a little bit of money and invested in some used microphones, a used mixer, and a rats nest of cables from a buddy of mine named Adam.  We purchased some new pop filters, a new digital recorder, and a $20 headphone amplifier so we could all hear ourselves.

I recorded the first episode of The Fringe Podcast speaking directly into the digital recorder while standing in my closet.  I thought the clothes in the closet would help absorb any echo from my voice, and also drown out the noise from my kids in the other room.  Jason ended up not wanting to drive to my house each week, and never even used the equipment he’d help pay for.   We would bring him in via Skype each week.

There is so much I didn’t know back then.  I had no idea how to get rid of that chirping electrical sound from our computers.  I didn’t know about shock mounts.  I had never even heard of a compressor/limiter/gate.  We landed an interview with actress Jasika Nicole about a month after the show premiered.  From an audio quality standpoint, that interview was and is a disaster.  

In fact, it is such a disaster that when I was at new media expo 2014 I sat in on a session that had Ray Ortega as one of the panelists.  I was surprised when he mentioned this Fringe podcast that interviewed one of the actresses and how terrible the audio was.  He went on to say a few other very critical things about the podcast.  Keep in mind that Ray Ortega and I had never met.

Later that day I saw Ray out in the hall and I swooped in.  I asked him if he remembered the exact name of the Fringe podcast.  He said that he didn’t.  I told him that I was quite sure that he was talking about my show.  He stammered a bit and insisted that I was probably mistaken.  I described the audio to him and the actress that was in the interview.  We both agreed that it was indeed my show that he’d just trashed to the audience of New Media Expo.

He was really apologetic.  I told him that he had no reason to apologize.  Everything he said was correct.  I then gave him the back story that I’ll share with you now.

When Jasika’s manager called me to set up the interview I nearly fell out of my chair.  I had submitted a request via her website nearly a month before and had totally forgotten about it.  He made arrangements for us to speak with Jasika that Saturday morning, about 3 or 4 days away.  Jasika would be calling via her cell phone and Skype was not an option.

I had no idea how to bring a call from a cell phone or landline into a mixer so that I could record it.  My friend Cliff Ravenscraft used a device called a broadcast host to do that sort of thing, but those cost around $500.  Even if I did have the budget for that, which I didn’t, getting it to arrive before the call would be close.  I called every audio equipment rental in my area but nobody had anything that would work.

Then I had a breakthrough.  My home phone had a headphone jack in it.  However, it was a smaller than normal sized jack.  It was a 2.5 mm jack.  RadioShack came to the rescue and I located a 2.5mm to 3.5mm converter cable.  I was then able to run a cable that would record Jasika’s voice through the left side of the cable, and send our voices back to her through the right side of the cable.  I did tests with cell phones and land lines and it all sounded great…well, as great as a phone line gets.

I set everything up on my kitchen table and the podcast team came over early Saturday morning anticipating her call.  Jasika called right on time and it was clear right away that something was very wrong.  We could BARELY hear her.  I had the phone volume turned all the way up.  I had the volume on the mixer turned all the way up.  But for some reason, we couldn’t hear her.  

What was I going to do?  This was our one chance!  Do I ask her to hang up and call again?  Do I tell her to speak louder or yell?  We kept going with the interview and I kept tweaking the knobs on the mixer to try to improve the sound.  Nothing worked.  To make matters worse, I made a rookie mistake.  I failed to delete all the files off the memory card before we started.  In the middle of the interview the card filled up.  This caused the file to become corrupted.  I was eventually able to retrieve the file, but audio had been severely damaged.  It was filled with pops and crackles.

I don’t even want to think about the number of hours and hours I spent trying to get that interview where it was even remotely presentable.

I told Ray that the interview had made me a better podcaster in several ways.  I learned more about audio editing and production during that time than I ever thought I’d learn.  Also, as bad as that interview was, it was that interview that caused our show to get noticed by some of the major Fringe fan sites and quickly propelled us into the spot of the most popular Fringe podcast, a spot that we maintained throughout the rest of the series.  We interviewed other cast members, the composer, a director, and a member of the promotion team at FOX.  I don’t know if we’d been given those opportunities if we hadn’t first had the Jasika interview.

I also told Ray that we won a podcast award for our Fringe podcast and even went on to become a 2 time finalist for the best produced podcast.  Ray’s demeanor changed.  He said that knowing the rest of the story made a big difference.  Although he had given up on our podcast after the bad experience he’d had listening to the interview, he was glad to hear how it had driven us to improve our sound and helped us gain success as a podcast.

The fact is, I was never happy with our sound, even before the interview.  After every show that we did, we looked for something to improve.  At first it was internal things like figuring out how to share show notes or play audio clips while we recorded.  Then it became things like improving the way we included our audience in the show.  We added a second show just for their feedback and theories.  We bought a webcam and streamed our shows live.  We started a chat room which added the ability to interact live with the listeners.

We eventually saved up some money and bought a better mixer.  Once I added a compressor/limiter/gate to our setup, our audio quality greatly improved.  Last year I was finally able to buy high end professional microphones.  I regularly get emails from people wanting to know how they can get their podcast to sound as good as Golden Spiral Media podcasst do.  For example, I recently heard from someone that said, “I’ve been listening to your podcast and it’s great.  I wanted to know how you get that radio sound?”

Here’s what I learned.  No one that you aspire to be got to their current position overnight.  Michael Jordan didn’t become the greatest basketball player of all time without missing A LOT of shots.  Michael Jackson didn’t become a great dancer without falling on his face along the way.  You think Lady Gaga has some great songs?  How many do you think have ended up in the trash can or never made it out of a notebook?  I didn’t achieve my success in podcasting overnight either.

Don’t look at someone’s end or middle and compare it to your beginning.   Maybe you’re well on your way to achieving your goal but you’re not there yet.  Identify one thing that needs to improve and improve it.  Then identify one other thing and improve it.  Keep repeating this process and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you progress.   

As of the day I’m recording this, Kevin Durant is 3 games away from beating Michael Jordan’s record of scoring 25 or more points in 40 consecutive games.  I’ve never had the privilege of speaking to Kevin but I can guarantee you that he would quickly be able to list areas of his game that could improve.  

There is ALWAYS something to improve.  Take a few minutes and identify your next step to achieve your goal, and do it!  

I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes or Stitcher.
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