December 1st 2017. That was the day we all got on a conference call, said fuck this shit and said "we're doing a podcast." We had so much conviction. This was it, we're going forward.
Lesson 1: Just get it out there. Fix it later.
Wellll you'll notice we didn't even publish our first episode until this Monday, 1/8/2018. Despite that gung ho attitude, we had some more bumps in the road to deal with. We made some serious mistakes (probably) and if we'd been a little less careful, we could have had an episode on the air within 2 weeks. Our brains were bursting at the seams with Crypto knowledge. How were we going to get that information out there?
We decided on a format after some discussion: a weekly episode that catches people up on current events, and standalone episodes on the top coins to give people a place to start their research. I mentioned that in the previous blog, but just a refresher on the vision!
Lesson 2: None of us had produced any online content before, ever.
Here was our collective experience in broadcasting and internet content creation combined:
- Karim bought something around $700 worth of podcasting equipment and never recorded an episode.
- Brent likes to hear himself talk and did an hour of Facebook live one time. Oh he was also on the school news.
- Mike listened to Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan a lot.
That was it! It didn't even slow us down, the ball started rolling right away.
We spent the next few days furiously Googling and trying to come up with what we needed to purchase.
I (Brent, it's possible others eventually write blogs) decided to get a website up. I'd been asked to appear on the AnteUp Pokercast to specifically talk about cryptocurrency, and they're actually a real good functioning podcast, and wanted to have something to show people. I spent countless hours overnight trying to figure out how to make a website. I was using Squarespace, which is extremely easy (apparently) but since my experience is so limited it took me quite a while.
It looked awful. It had one episode, me telling everyone they shouldn't be there. I even said we'd be launching before January 1st 2017. 2017, not 2018. Whatever, I'll get some more valuable information when I talk to Scott Long while on his show.
Lesson 3: The content is what matters, not the equipment recording it!
I was super excited about getting to pick Scott's brain about podcasting. I had bought a SamsonGO microphone to bring on the cruise with me. We were recording on a cruise, yes - perhaps you saw it in the news. There was an outbreak of Norovirus, and I made sure to participate. Anyway, I showed Scott my cool new mic and told him I came prepared in case he didn't have two condenser mics. His response?
"Oh I was just going to use the mic from the laptop."
WHAT?! OK I'd been consuming a lot of information about how to start your own podcast, and the first item on every single list was to get a decent condenser mic. Here I was with a successful podcaster, someone who's been in journalism for something around 20 years, and he didn't give a shit what kinda mic he was using. He knew his content speaks for itself, and always has. The listeners will always forgive technical things, if they believe in the content and it's providers.
Alright fine, mics aside I wanted to pick his brain about how to use Audacity, Libsyn, and the ins and outs of his method. He'd never heard of Audacity, hasn't used the Libsyn account (his partner does that), and his method is his co-host gives him an outline and they start recording. That's exactly what we did. He told me he'd direct the conversation a bit, ask any questions that came up, and we'd try to keep it to 45 mins or less.
AnteUp has put out an episode every week since June 15, 2005.