![If You Sounded Good, You Were Good [Day 16 30 Days of Podcast Notes]](https://images.beamly.com/fetch/https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.rss.com%2Fstreamlined-podcaster%2Fpodcast_cover_20260916_122857_a7aaeae9723ee3f8a0758f9d13809543.jpg?w=365)
The thing I keep landing on when I ask why my show did well is that I was stubborn about audio at a time when most shows weren't. Guests recorded their own side — I wrote instructions for QuickTime and for Windows, sent a Dropbox link so they didn't have to figure out hosting, and always kept a backup on my end. The story that proves how far I'd take it: I once interviewed Troy Dean with my headphone monitors off, and only afterward realized I'd recorded my entire side on the built-in Mac mic. There was no AI cleanup to fall back on, so I transcribed the whole conversation and re-read every one of my questions between his answers. Back then, sounding good was enough to be good. That is not true anymore, which is where the back half of this series is headed.
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Disclosure: this episode description was generated with AI.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:04 Welcome, welcome to day 16 of 30 days of podcast
00:00:04 --> 00:00:09 notes here on the Streamlined Podcaster. I spent
00:00:09 --> 00:00:12 the last 15 days, the first half of these notes
00:00:12 --> 00:00:16 will say, kind of reflecting on my journey into
00:00:16 --> 00:00:20 podcasting. And I want to round out things with
00:00:20 --> 00:00:22 this before I move on to kind of how COVID changed
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 things and what podcasting is like today and
00:00:25 --> 00:00:30 the future of podcasting. But The the main thing
00:00:30 --> 00:00:36 I want to talk about today is Back then if you
00:00:36 --> 00:00:41 Sounded good You were good. I've thought long
00:00:41 --> 00:00:47 and hard about why my show did well I talked
00:00:47 --> 00:00:50 a little bit about it in previous notes, but
00:00:50 --> 00:00:54 the thing that I keep coming back to more than
00:00:54 --> 00:00:59 anything else is that I was dedicated to quality
00:00:59 --> 00:01:05 in a way that I maybe some would say this was
00:01:05 --> 00:01:10 undue effort on my guests because I would make
00:01:10 --> 00:01:14 them record their side of the audio and send
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 it over to me. And I did try to make that as
00:01:17 --> 00:01:19 easy as possible. I had instructions on how to
00:01:19 --> 00:01:24 do it on both QuickTime on the Mac and on Windows
00:01:24 --> 00:01:27 with Windows recorder. I automatically sent them
00:01:27 --> 00:01:31 a Dropbox link for them to upload the audio so
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 that I didn't, you know, they didn't need to
00:01:34 --> 00:01:39 worry about having to find a place to host the
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 audio or anything like that. And I of course
00:01:42 --> 00:01:48 recorded a backup, but the dedication to sounding
00:01:48 --> 00:01:53 good at a time where most people didn't. I think
00:01:53 --> 00:01:56 was, unless they could get to an actual recording
00:01:56 --> 00:01:59 studio, I think was really important. And one
00:01:59 --> 00:02:04 story to drive this home is I didn't have my
00:02:04 --> 00:02:06 monitors on. This is another reason I always
00:02:06 --> 00:02:09 use headphones is because I can actually hear
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 my microphone in the headphones. And so I know
00:02:12 --> 00:02:17 which one I'm using and how I sound. And I wasn't
00:02:17 --> 00:02:20 using my headphone monitors. on this day and
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 I was interviewing a pretty big person in the
00:02:22 --> 00:02:26 WordPress space, Troy Dean, who was a well -known
00:02:26 --> 00:02:31 podcaster as well. And he paid me a really nice
00:02:31 --> 00:02:33 compliment at the end of the recording. He said,
00:02:33 --> 00:02:37 you're really good at this. And I asked good
00:02:37 --> 00:02:38 questions and I was genuinely curious, but I
00:02:38 --> 00:02:40 also made sure we got really good audio. His
00:02:40 --> 00:02:43 audio was pristine. What I didn't realize was
00:02:43 --> 00:02:46 that I was not recording with my podcasting mic.
00:02:46 --> 00:02:53 I was recording with the built -in Mac mic. And
00:02:53 --> 00:02:58 so I sounded terrible at a time where I couldn't
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 just run terrible audio through some AI tool
00:03:01 --> 00:03:05 and make it sound good. So what I ended up doing
00:03:05 --> 00:03:14 was transcribing the entire thing and then rereading
00:03:14 --> 00:03:18 my questions. and my parts of the conversation
00:03:18 --> 00:03:23 to the best of my ability in between his answers.
00:03:24 --> 00:03:28 And I combined them. That's how dedicated I was
00:03:28 --> 00:03:32 to good audio. Did it matter? I sincerely think
00:03:32 --> 00:03:40 it did. I don't know that it would today. But
00:03:40 --> 00:03:44 at a time where podcast production value was
00:03:44 --> 00:03:51 largely bad, I was very keen on having a good
00:03:51 --> 00:03:54 sounding podcast. So if you sounded good back
00:03:54 --> 00:03:56 then, you were good. That is, of course, not
00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 true anymore. And that's kind of going to be
00:03:59 --> 00:04:01 the topic of the back half of these episodes,
00:04:01 --> 00:04:04 which is what changed and why did it change and
00:04:04 --> 00:04:07 how can we adapt to those changes? So that's
00:04:07 --> 00:04:13 it for day 16 of 30 days of podcast notes. If
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 you are a solopreneur, solo business owner, who's
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 doing everything themselves, including creating
00:04:19 --> 00:04:22 content, maybe running a podcast and you are
00:04:22 --> 00:04:25 feeling overwhelmed and you're ready to take
00:04:25 --> 00:04:27 things off of your plate, but you don't want
00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 to hire a team. You should definitely join my
00:04:30 --> 00:04:32 mailing list. I talk about exactly how you can
00:04:32 --> 00:04:35 do this. This is how I help people. You can sign
00:04:35 --> 00:04:40 up over at streamlined .fm slash join streamlined
00:04:40 --> 00:04:44 .fm slash join that's streamlined with a D. But
00:04:44 --> 00:04:47 that's it for this episode of The Streamlined
00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 Podcaster. If you're enjoying these episodes
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 be sure to subscribe wherever you listen. And
00:04:53 --> 00:04:56 there's a new feature now in the show notes where
00:04:56 --> 00:04:58 if you have a thought you can send in your own
00:04:58 --> 00:05:01 voice notes. So maybe at the end of this I will
00:05:01 --> 00:05:05 put together a listener tips or listener notes
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 episode. So you can click the link in the description
00:05:08 --> 00:05:11 for that. Thanks so much for listening and I
00:05:11 --> 00:05:12 will talk to you tomorrow.