Podcasting

To clean the front and rear elements of a lens, use a microfiber cloth or lens cleaning tissue, gently breathe on the lens first, then move the cloth in circular motions to remove smudges or fingerprints. Use a squeeze bulb of compressed air for dust. Make sure to keep the cloth moistened and be careful not to scratch the lens coatings. Smudges on the front or rear element will affect image quality.
 
Transcript: "What's the best way to clean the front and rear elements of a lens? It's actually very, very easy. First you need is some kind of a cloth or a tissue. There are lens cleaning tissues. They're perfectly fine. You use them once on each side and you toss them so you have a garbage issue. I prefer microfiber cloths. They're available all over the place in different configurations. They will not scratch the coatings of your lens and you could wash them out with mild detergent solution, dry them out and use them hundreds of times. Anyway, very, very simple thing to do is first thing you do is breathe on the lens. You never, ever, ever try to clean a dry lens. So just give a little gentle breath and then move the cloth around in circular motions until you've cleaned off all of whatever smudge or fingerprint you might have. Do the same thing on the rear and that's it. Use this thing a dozen times or so. Wash it out because again you're cleaning grit off of the lens. You don't want to put it on the next one. One thing you have to really be careful though is that these lens coatings, all right, if you go too hard or if you go dry on them, you're gonna start scratching them a little bit. And by the way, if for dust, just use a little bit of compressed air in a bulb, not one of those cans. You put it up there, you could actually damage the coatings. So I'd say one of those little squeeze bulb things, clean it off or just a little gentle dusting like that. Fingerprints might be a little bit more difficult. Again, do it repeatedly. Make sure you keep moistening it and again, circular motions until it comes clean. As far as dust inside the lens, sometimes if you look inside of a lens, you see little particles of dust. That means nothing. It will not affect the image quality or the sharpness whatsoever. Having a smudge on the front of the lens does take away resolution because again, this is where the light is first coming into the lens. More so, a smudge on the rear element, that definitely affects the image quality and keep both surfaces clean."

Balance a need for a well-structured script with the desire for a natural and conversational tone in your podcast episodes by rewriting the script in a more conversational tone, taking opportunities to ad-lib and interject, and coming up with new questions based on the feedback from your guest.
 
Transcript: "How do you balance a need for a well-structured script with the desire for a natural and conversational tone in your podcast episodes? Well, Jill and I write the intro and outro as well as the questions that we plan on asking. Now again, there's a certain amount of ad-libbing that goes into that, but the most important thing is before we go live, I'll take all of this, the intro, outro, and the questions, and I will rewrite them in a way that's closer to the way I naturally speak, because quite often you write down a great question or a great line or intro, whatever the case may be, and it reads well and it would look good in print or on a screen, but to say it, it sounds like it was prepared and it sounds written. So what I do is I rewrite everything in a more conversational tone. That's number one. I'll also quite often, we'll go out of sequence if we have to, quite often the conversation goes in a direction where our guest might say something that's a great point to lead in with another question or even a new question. I mean, that's another thing for spontaneity. We have a script and we have questions we want to ask, but we'll also go into other questions. Quite often, one of us will think of something or the guest will say something that leads to another question that's quite relevant to what the conversation is all about to begin with. So those are the whole things I would say. Just write in a conversational way. Do not write overly scripted. Write a script the way you speak and take every opportunity to ad-lib and interject and come up with new questions based on what your kind of feedback your guest is giving you. Just be ready to be spontaneous."

To stay innovative and fresh with my podcast, I am staying up-to-date on all changes, leaning on experts for niche topics, and prompting my guests prior to them joining me to give updates on their specific industry.
 
Transcript: "All right, so the question is, what steps am I taking to stay innovative and fresh with the podcast? Well, it's real simple. If you are the sole expert, you just have to stay up to date on all of the changes, anything new that's being brought in, whether it's an innovation, or it is a change in policy procedure, or just the way that things are done in your space. If you're somebody like myself who interviews experts for the podcast, it's kind of a cheat code in that I do not have to be up to speed on every single niche topic. If we're talking about firearms training, or mental health, or vehicle interdiction, I don't have to worry about hyper-focusing on all the changes in each one of those spaces. That's what the expert's for. Lean on your experts, lean on your guests, or even prompt your guests prior to them joining you and ask them to give us some updates on their specific industry. I think you'll be surprised what you may get from them so that you don't have to be focused on any one thing."

To keep content relevant and engaging, focus on making sure the evidence, information and content given is relevant and actionable so that the listener can get something out of it.
 
Transcript: "This is an interesting question, and I was trying to think about how I was gonna answer this about keeping content relevant and engaging. Sometimes it's very difficult. It depends on what your space is, what you're talking about, and how you formatted your podcast. For me, it's a little bit simpler because I don't do a daily show. If you do a daily show, that can be very difficult because you have to have something new each and every day. For us, because we talk about training and we talk about the public safety space and we talk about law enforcement, we can pick on a topic and we may not touch on that topic again for six months. And so we just hyper-focus in making sure that all the evidence, all of the information, all of the content that we're giving is relevant, it's actionable, and so that the listener actually gets something out of it. I think of it like a training class. If someone's gonna take time to listen to me, I want it to be worthwhile for them. I want them to walk away with something that they feel like they got everything out of me on that day. That keeps them engaged over time. That keeps you relevant. Good luck."

Be honest and open with your guests if you make a mistake recording an episode or part of it. Hopefully they will understand and be willing to re-record the conversation.
 
Transcript: "All right, so let's talk about one situation that I've personally experienced twice in my career that I hope you never have to endure, and that is recording some or all of an episode and not actually recording it. So you start the interview, but you realize that you haven't hit that record button just yet, and now you're sitting there and thinking, oh shit, what do I do? Especially if you do something like what happened with me where I had a bucket list guest, somebody who normally is very difficult to get even just an hour to record anything, and having to approach them and say, hey, I'm so sorry, I haven't been recording this the last 20 minutes. Or even worse, hey, I'm sorry, that entire conversation we had, I don't have it, we have to do it again. Now you have to take a very cautious approach to this with some people. Some people will get really upset over it. I've been very fortunate in that the two people that I've had this experience with, the first time when it was an entire episode, they said, hey, no problem at all. In fact, I would love to re-record that with you. It was just a great conversation, so let's run it again. And then the second time when it was 20 minutes in and I stopped them, they said, that's great. That's phenomenal. I really hated that first part of the conversation. I'd love to go over it again. And so just be honest, be open with your guests, and hopefully everything works out for you. Good luck."

Batching is a great way to avoid burnout or creative exhaustion. It involves planning out what topics and content you want to create in advance, then recording and editing it all at once. This helps you stay on track with your content schedule and prevents you from having to constantly reset up your studio and come up with new ideas all the time.
 
Transcript: "All right, this is a pretty easy one. How do you avoid burnout or creative exhaustion? Batching. If you're not familiar with batching, go to the old Google machine, type in batching podcast episodes. It'll lay it all out for you. Essentially, it's a way of scheduling your time so that I'm not going back to the well and having to reset up my studio and come up with something new each and every day or multiple times a week. You game plan out, what are the topics I wanna talk about? And then you hammer it all out in a short, succinct period of time, whether it's over a day or two days, and you may record two, three, four, 10 episodes at once. It allows you then to edit them all at once. It allows you to plan those out. And you may actually come up to a point where you, like we do, where you have 20, 30 episodes in the can, and they're just scheduled for release. And so it also helps you keep on track with your scheduling. And hopefully the concept of batching is something you jump into. I would definitely recommend it. Good luck."