- Hi, my name is Pat Flynn
and I'm here to help you
get your podcast up and
running in no time at all.
It's exciting because a
podcast has changed my life
in so many different ways,
not just my business,
but also my personal life.
It's helped me make a better
connection with my audience,
but more than that, it's helped
open up so many new doors
and opportunities for me,
from speaking to writing
books to selling courses
and all kind of other things, too,
so I'm excited that you're
diving into podcasting, too.
Now, to start out with, in this video,
we're gonna talk about
equipment and software
and all the things that you
might need to get set up
and running on a budget.
I'm not gonna make you
spend a bunch of money
on all these big random boxes
which, yes, they are useful,
they will help, but actually,
you don't need that to get started.
I want to remove all the
overwhelm and distractions for you
and just get you going right away.
Also, make sure you
stick around to the end,
because I'm gonna give
you exactly what you need
to figure out now the mandatory
items for your podcast
that you need or else
you can't move forward.
So, let's just dive right in
with the equipment that we need.
So, obviously, we're
starting a podcast here
and people are going to be
listening to your voice.
You want to make sure you
have the right tool that
can help best send that voice
over to that person's ear
when they're listening to your show.
You can have the best
content in the world but
if it doesn't sound great,
people aren't going to be
listening to you for that long.
Now, there's a wide range of
microphones available to you
to help you produce your
podcast and you can spend
anywhere between $20 for a cheapo mic
or even thousands of dollars for
your best-sounding
broadcasting type microphone.
For your podcast, though, again,
I want to make things easy for you and
I want to make sure that you don't need
any of the other external
boxes and all these cords that,
yes, professional broadcasters use but
we live in a time now where
you don't need all that stuff,
still, to sound like a pro.
The microphone that I would recommend
that you start out with
is this one right here,
which is the Audio-Technica ATR 2100 USB.
The price of this microphone
is under $100, which is great.
It also comes with a stand, a USB cord,
and an XLR connection.
Now, the beauty of this
microphone is that you don't need
this XLR cable and the mixers
and all those other things
that a professional
broadcaster might need.
All you need is a USB
connection, which it comes with,
to your computer to help you sound great.
It also comes with a little mic stand,
which I would actually recommend replacing
with this next item.
Instead of using a stand,
I would recommend using one
these boom arms for your mic.
This allows you to
connect your microphone,
hook this down on your desk
using this little clamp here.
This fits in and then you're able to bring
the microphone to your
face, keep it off your desk,
and allows you just more flexibility.
Now, in addition to that,
I would also recommend
what's called a shock mount.
Now, a shock mount, as you can see here,
allows the microphone to be
suspended sort of in mid-air
and what this does is it
allows for the vibrations
from your table and your
computer and any other equipment,
perhaps you might bang on
your microphone a little bit,
it allows the vibrations to be absorbed by
these little rubber bands here and
have the sound not in your mic.
Then, finally, the last
thing you need is something
that helps you reduce the plosives.
What are plosives?
Plosives are your
B-words and P-words that,
when you blow into the
microphone with those letters,
it will create a popping
sound and you do not want that
so you can use what's
called a pop filer or
something like a wind screen to help
stop the plosives from happening.
Okay, so to recap those
things one more time,
you have the microphone, the
boom arm, the shock mount,
the wind screen or pop
filter and then, of course,
you need to plug it in, a
USB and if you need a dongle,
you can use a dongle,
too and then finally,
the links to these products
are below this video.
All right, so after you plug in,
make sure that you fire the mic on and
then go into your systems
preferences into your computer
and find the sound and just make sure that
the ATR USB microphone or
the mic that you plug in is
the one that's highlighted
so that we know that
the sound from our voice is going
through the mic and into the computer.
Now that we're done
hooking up our equipment,
we're going to dive into
our editing software so that
we can record our voice,
chop up those audio clips,
and also create what would be,
eventually, a podcast episode.
Now, to start, you're gonna
watch me to a super-quick
and basic tutorial on GarageBand,
which is for Mac users.
If you're on a PC, you can use Audacity,
which is also free, too.
All right, so I'm gonna keep
this super short and sweet,
however, if you want a
more detailed tutorial
about GarageBand or Audacity,
I have a tutorial for each of
them, both below this video.
Okay, so really quick,
we're gonna open up an empty
project here in GarageBand
and then, really quick, we
just want to make sure that
the microphone that we have
selected is the one that we want.
So, as you can see here, Input 1,
it does say the ATR USB
microphone, so we're clear there
and we are just recording
using our microphone, so great.
We're gonna hit Create and
you're gonna now see one track.
This is a single track and
tracks work like layers.
If I had a second track,
which I could add down here
if I wanted to by hitting that Plus symbol
and doing the same thing.
I can hit Create and now I
can see two audio tracks.
Depending on the one that I'm highlighted
on is the one that's gonna be recording.
Now, why would you need separate tracks?
You would need separate
tracks for different voices.
Perhaps one track is
just for the interview
that you're recording or
maybe you have some music
or voiceovers that you're just gonna drag
and drop into this.
Either way, it's nice to
have it organized like that
and now just have it all live on one line.
Now, before we get going here, remember,
we are recording a podcast,
not producing music,
which GarageBand is primarily built for,
so we're gonna change the settings here
from Bars And Beats to
Time and to do that,
we just need to click on
this drop-down menu here
and select Time.
As you can see, now we have
an understanding of how long
we would have podcasted
for and we can turn off
these other devices
here, like the countdown
or the metronome and now we're
all set to begin recording.
To record, all you have to do
is hit the red button there
or R on your keyboard, like this.
Now, I'm recording an episode
and as you can hear and see
as you're following along,
you can see waveforms
depending on when I speak
and how loud I speak, too.
Now, looking back here,
we can see a playback.
We can actually drag this
playhead all the way back
to the beginning and we can hit Play
and we can listen to
exactly what we just said.
Now, I'm recording an episode
and as you can hear and see
as you're following along,
you can see waveforms
depending on when I speak
and how loud I speak, too.
As you can see there, when
I got a little bit louder,
the waveforms are much higher.
Now, just some really
basic editing tips for you.
You want to make sure
that when you're editing,
you get as precise as
possible and, to do that,
you will need to zoom into
those parts that you want to
delete, or change, or move around.
So, let's zoom in really quick.
You can do that a couple
ways by dragging this slider
over if you wanted to or you
can just use the pinch zoom
on your laptop if you
have one of those as well.
What I want to do is get
rid of that loud part.
Let's say I just didn't want that anymore.
So, I'm gonna find that
loud part and I know because
of that waveform that typically
would start right there
and if I were to play, you
would hear that loud moment.
How loud.
But let's say I wanted to get rid of that
because it just didn't
fit into my episode.
Maybe it was a mistake.
Sometimes, you might sneeze
or cough during an episode.
There are gonna be moments when
you'll want to take something out.
To take something out, all
you have to do is essentially
split this recording into two
and then remove that part.
So, to do that, all you
have to do, really simply,
is to move that playhead
to where you want to
make that split, you go to Edit and
then hit Split Regions At Playhead.
The shortcut here is Command-T,
so I'm gonna do that right now and
you should see it split into two.
Now, if I want to get rid of this one,
I can just delete it and there, it's gone.
Now, let's say I didn't
want to do that but
I actually wanted to insert
something in the middle.
So, I'm actually going
to undo my delete there.
I'm gonna slide this over and
now I'm gonna record
something in the middle here,
just simply by pressing Record like this.
Hey, this is the recording in the middle.
Woo-hoo!
And now, I know there's a gap here so
I'm gonna move this over
just a little bit and
now I'm gonna play all of it,
starting from before
that gap and then after.
Depending on when I speak and hey,
this is the recording in the middle.
Woo-hoo!
How loud I speak, too.
Now, before moving on, one
more really important tip.
When you are recording audio,
the last thing you want to do is
record audio that's too loud.
The technical term for this is getting
too hot with your mic,
meaning that it is so loud that
when a person listens to it
on the other end, it sounds distorted.
The way that you can check to
see if your audio is too loud
is either by looking at these waveforms.
If these waveforms extend
beyond the sides of
this track here, then it is too loud.
Or, as you're recording, you're
able to see this green bar
move into the yellow.
Yellow is okay but if
it gets ever to the red,
then that means that you
are probably too loud.
I'm gonna hit Record here and
do a little clicking noise
that I know will fire
off a red mark here and
you'll see exactly what happens and also
what it looks like on the waveform, too.
Like this.
(clicking tongue)
You see how it bumped up to the red there?
Now, look at this mark here.
It goes from all the way
to the top to the bottom.
That is too loud and it will
never, ever be processed away,
even with as much editing
as you wanted to do,
in a way that sounds great for
the user listening to your podcast.
So, the best practice
is to play around with
the audio volume before you record so that
it gets as high as it can be without
firing off to the red at
your natural sounding voice.
Finally, I want to share
with you how easy it is
to import audio files from elsewhere
into this podcast episode, for example,
voiceover work or, perhaps, some music.
All you have to do is
download that music and
if it's music, make
sure it's royalty-free.
I'm going to drag and drop that file
into this second track here.
There you see the waveforms pop up and
if I drag this over to the beginning, now,
when I hit Play here,
you're probably gonna
hear the music at first
and then my voice come in.
However, I can already tell that
the music's gonna be too loud.
I'll show you how to solve
that in just a minute
but let me hit Play and see what happens.
(upbeat jazzy music drowning
out prerecorded voice)
You can barely hear my voice.
So, what do we need to do?
We need to adjust the
levels both of ourselves and
the audio file here from the music.
So, to do the music,
really quick, quite simply,
you just have to turn the volume down
for all of them if you wanted to do that.
In the more technical tutorial
that I share with you,
I show you how to fade out
and do things like that.
But, this one, let's just turn
this down maybe 15 decibels
and play with that.
A lot of what this is,
is just experimentation,
because you can always change
things and keep going through
to make sure it gets better
and better, so let's hit Play
and see what happens now.
(upbeat jazzy music)
And now, I'm recording an episode and
as you can hear and see as
you are following along,
you can see waveforms depending--
It's getting a little bit better.
Let's turn it down even more.
And now, I'm recording and
episode and as you can hear
(upbeat jazzy music)
and see as you are following along,
you can see waveforms
depending on when I speak--
Sounds a little bit better.
Now, we can obviously, continue
on and make this perfect
but we don't need to do that right now.
What we need to do is
continue talking about
the rest of this tutorial
so we can get you set up.
All right, so now, you understand about
your podcasting equipment
and your podcasting software.
You can go ahead and get
set up with those now.
You can place your orders
so you can have time for
those things to come
in but really quickly,
I need to share with you
some important things that
you have to nail down before you can
actually get your podcast published.
All right, three things.
Number one, you need to pick
a podcast name or show title.
Now, a lot of people ask me
questions about this, such as:
"Pat, can I use my name as the podcast,
"like The Tim Ferriss Show?"
Absolutely.
"Can I use the name of my
brand to create my podcast?"
Yes, like the Smart
Passive Income Podcast.
"Can I do something that's
not my brand name and
"not my name but it's just the
name of the podcast itself?"
Yes, you can, just like Amy Porterfield's
The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast.
You want to pick a name
that works for you.
Now, of course, you could
spend a year coming up
with the perfect name and
my biggest advice to anybody
starting anything is that at some point,
you're gonna eventually have to just
pick something and move on.
Is it a permanent thing?
No, you can always change it later,
so that should help you out.
Next, you're gonna have to come up with
some sort of show description.
This is gonna be a summary and really,
your pitch for why people should
be listening to your show.
This is what's gonna live on
iTunes and other directories
and it's gonna be what
people read to decide,
yes, I want to listen to this
or no, this is not for me.
Also, keep in mind what keywords to
include in the show description.
Don't keyword stuff.
Don't make it sound unnatural.
Remember, human beings are reading this.
But, do include certain
keywords that you know that
your audience is going to be, perhaps,
typing in because iTunes is also,
in addition to a podcasting
directory, it's a search engine.
Then, finally, really important,
you're gonna need to create
some sort of podcast artwork,
meaning a cover for your podcast.
This is what people see, actually,
before they listen to any of your show so
it's really important that
you spend some time with this
and so go into the
categories that you think
you're gonna be involved with.
Look at what's there.
See how you might be able
to stand out from the crowd
and eventually, you'll need to create,
whether on your own or you
hire somebody else to do it,
a 3000 by 3000 pixel square image that
has your podcast artwork,
and perhaps your show name
and whatever other elements you want,
but don't put too much in
there because, remember,
people are looking and finding
these podcasts on their phones,
so you want it to look great
at a small, scaled-down level, too.
All right, now there's a couple
things you can do from here.
Obviously, you can watch the next video,
which is gonna walk you through
a number of recording tips,
how to do interviews,
exporting your podcast,
those kinds of things,
but I would highly
recommend you also download
The Podcast Cheat Sheet.
It's a free guide I have for you.
It's gonna walk you through a lot of
the more finer details of
the start of your podcast,
like how to actually make sure your show
stands out from the crowd,
how to plan your first few
episodes, that kind of thing.
The link for The Podcast
Cheat Sheet will be
below this video on YouTube
here so open up the description.
You'll see The Podcast
Cheat Sheet right there.
Click through.
You'll get access to it right away and
it will help you through a
lot of these beginning stages,
especially here for the first video
here in this mini-course.
So, awesome job.
Keep up the good work and I'll
see you in the next video.
Or, if you have dongle, that's
needed, you can put those--
(laughing)
(electronic beeping)
Use ...
Darn it!
(electronic beeping)
Just--
No, we can do it better.
We can do it perfect.
Okay, one more time.
(electronic beeping)
USB and if you need a dongle,
you can use a dongle, too.
(chuckling)
