Podcast Batch Recording: The Ultimate Guide to More Podcasting with Less Work

This is Feed you'd Brand with hosts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazzard.

Hey, welcome back to Feed. You'd been Tom Hazard, your host for today, and we're going to talk about how podcasters that have been, you know, working to try to record and maybe struggling, we're going to talk about how to stop the podcast recording grind. Now, what do we mean by that? What do I mean today? Well. Well, a lot of people, when they sit down to podcast, they want to do one episode at a time. And some shows may need to record one at a time. What I mean by that is maybe one day a week or just one in a session, because you want to do some preparation and really concentrate and think about it. I know one of our podcasters at Potatoes reads the book of every guest that they have on their show, and that takes a commitment and a lot of time and preparation. And it isn't so easy to record a few episodes in one sitting or in one session. And, you know, if your show is like that, then okay, I understand that. However, most of us, and I can tell you, Tracy and I for sure, in our decade, more than decade now, of podcasting experience, always have done batch recording. It's really the ultimate strategy to record more podcasts doing less work. And, you know, as I said first up there, it may not be right for your show. I understand batch recording is not right for everyone. In fact, with Feed your brand, we don't batch record this show at all. So batch recording for some people, I believe Tracy really doesn't like batch recording. You know, if she were here, she would tell you that, because I think she puts a lot of thought and preparation into the guest guest that she's going to interview. If it's a guest interview or the topic we're going to talk about, and you want to be fully present and focused on it. But in our first podcast, wtff, we did batch record and really needed to because we were doing a very large volume of content. We were doing five days a week. Now, one of those was an interview episode, and then four were just me and Tracy speaking on specific niche topics in our category, in our genre, and which was 3D printing. You know, any of you have listened to the show long enough, Remember that? And so we had different topics we would talk about. And when certainly recording those episodes that didn't have a guest, it was really easy to batch record. And we had young kids at the time and actually an infant as we were, you know, recording episodes of wtff, and we would Wait until that baby went to sleep, you know, and at 9pm at night, we'd come out into our recording studio within our home and record, you know, five, six of those episodes in a sitting, which helped make things really, you know, practical for us to manage it and to show up daily for our customers. Now, obviously, when it came to interview episodes, it's harder to do that. You can't do it at nine at night. Who's. Who's going to schedule with you to record something at, you know, 9:00 o' clock at night? But when you have though, when you, what you can do. And what we did is scheduled one day a month where we're going to record those four interviews. And actually we would try to squeeze in five or six into a. If we're taking the whole day to record them and, you know, have at least an hour of recording time for each one and a little break in between. And when we started doing video, we went and made sure we were going to change our shirt in, change our shirt and go ahead and do that when we. In between for the video so we could batch record a bunch in one day. So what I want to share with you today is that there are strategies you can use to manage your time and record more episodes and not have a podcast dominate your life, your business, or maybe it's your free time if it's something you do on the side. And so, you know, that's what really we're going to talk about today. And now I'm pleased to say Tracy is joining me. I thought I was going solo. And those of you listening to the podcast, you know, you can't see her, but we record these live and then they come out as a podcast later. Well, we had some technical issues and I don't mind sharing that with you. And I don't even think we need to edit this out of the podcast. This is the reality of podcast recording. And as I said, this show is not batch recorded. We do it every week at the same time. But we had a technical issue. So thank you for joining me, Tracy. I was figured I'm going solo and there you go.

I finally made it.

I want to hear later how you made it. We don't want to bore our audience with the technical issue, but I'm so glad you got here because I enjoy doing this with you and we were planning to do this together. I was not planning to do it alone. Although, hey, you know what, the show must go on at times, and I was ready and doing it. But so, Tracy, I Did share. You know, I've definitely said that this batch recording may not be right for everybody, but I was really just getting to the point where I was sharing with our audience that really time management and finding the time to record can be the biggest issue for a lot of podcasters and it can keep them from recording. So our intention, or at least one of my intentions today, is to share with our audience. If you're not already doing it, you can spend just a little time every month to record enough episodes for four to six weeks and get ahead and have podcasting be one thing you do and not just dominate your and so you have no free time.

So we can talk about some concepts and some. The way that you can batch record that is the most successful. I'm gonna say it like there are techniques to it for sure that make a difference into you being successful batch recording or not. But the part that I. I hate batch recording. And I'm just gonna straight out say.

That I thought so. And I said that to everyone before you joined us.

Yeah, right. And. But I hate it because I like to be ultra prepared, number one. But I also burn out from an energetic standpoint because I put all my energy into the show. So for those of you, you know, sometimes we talk about these woo woo things like energy, but for me, the energy of showing up, for someone showing up to do this, it expends a lot of energy for me to prepare and do a show. So I peek out and I really cannot record more than three in a row. So that's something that you have to also figure out for yourself. Even if we're doing a solo cast, there's an energy exchange between Tom and I and I can peek out and I can't handle more than three in a row. Also, it's too many concepts to keep around in my mind. If the topics are not aligned and grouped together, or if you jump from guest to guest to guest, my breath runs out, my. My throat starts to feel scratchy. Like I definitely hit a limit for myself. So that's something that you need to find because you can say, I'm going to do a whole day of recording and then out three hours into it, you can't go anymore. So make sure you check this out for yourself and really feel for that and understand that. And so when we did, we used to do all our topic episodes for WTFF, the 3D print podcast. We used to do them in two days because to do. Because we did five days a week. So that was a lot of Recording that we would be doing. And we only did one interview a week. So we were, you know, we had a lot of episodes.

I did mention that early on. I know you weren't here for that, but it's it. If you want to really kill it and put a large volume of content, even in the early days or for a period of time to fill up that page on Apple and get a good volume of episodes under your belt. Publishing a daily episode for at least a couple of months, although I believe we did it for about two years before we dialed it back. Tracy. But we also had a podcast that built over 100,000 listeners and we really did monetize with third party sponsors. So there was a lot of benefits to that.

Yeah, it was our job.

Right.

It was a part of our job in order to do that. And so that's how we made money. So it made sense to be make time for that. But we really couldn't. We started to break it up and do two days and then we spread the two days out in the month because that also was helpful for us. So like we started to find some ways to make it work. But it was very taxing to try to produce that amount of content. The most often I see batch recording happening is when you're first starting and you have extra energy and excitement about your show and you want to bank them up so you can get into a regular system of doing that. I think that's probably the best way to do that. And then what I would say is from that point forward, then figure out what the minimum you can do and stay ahead and the maximum you could do and not peek out on an energy standpoint and not have it be too much. So I typically when I would record for the binge factor and I was always doing interviews, I wouldn't allow more than two interviews per week pack under my schedule. That would be more than I wanted. Which meant though that I was always at least three to four weeks ahead because I was always banking up more than I was publishing and I usually would end up somewhere around six recorded in a month. So I was at least banking in two extra all the time ahead of my schedule so that I could without having to batch record, be ready to take a vacation, be ready to take a couple of weeks off the holidays. So I already had that buffer building up over the whole year without having it be that I got so far ahead. I was like six months ahead. So that's the way I like to do. It was like I was like trying to be like 2 to 4 ahead every single month.

Yeah. Now, to me, Tracy, that's a little bit different issue. That's not really a batch recording issue. Getting ahead is, I think, something every podcaster should do unless they're recording theirs live for some good reason. Like, we are doing this because we show up for our customers every week at the same time. But even if you're not batch recording, and maybe you're recording one a week, waiting to launch your show, waiting to publish anything until you've got four, eight under your belt, and then do the weekly recording would allow you to take a break. But batch recording, it's really has its advantages in certain key situations. And I wanted to share a couple of those, if that's all right, Tracy. And one of them is.

Yeah, I just want to clarify what I said there, Tom. I wasn't saying that. I was saying, for those of you who want to avoid batch recording, the banking up extra over time eliminates the. The necessity to do that for a holiday or for some time off. So. And then also it is not necessarily a strategy for when you're launching, but it is a good idea to double up and do that when you're planning if you don't want to batch record.

Okay, well, let's talk about some situations where it's practical and makes sense. One of those is when you have a co host. Now, you and I have co hosted a lot of shows together, Tracy, and we also have customers that are co hosting. I have several, you know, existing shows that we support that have co hosts, and those co hosts need to find time on their schedules to record together. Some do it on the weekends, some will do it in the evenings, others like that. We have one that they really like to record their episodes together, like in person, and they still have a guest remotely with the two of them. Right. But when you're going to find time for you to get together with your co host, whether it's virtually or in person, really good idea to take advantage of that time, that day, that half a day, that evening, whatever it is, and record as many episodes as you can. Because in that situation, it can be a challenge just to coordinate your two schedules. So as long as you've got a day or a portion of a day where you can get together, you want to take advantage of that and record as many as you can. And again, pro tip, especially in this day of video, this day and age of video being so important, which in the early days of WTFF we were not doing, but now almost Everything we record has video, Tracy, and I recommend you change your clothes or at least your top between each episode you record. Otherwise you're going to have all the episodes for a whole month looking like you never change your clothes. And that's maybe not the best look. So. And I'm speaking for myself as well.

Unless you want to go for the I wear the same thing every day. So, you know, it could be the.

Only time I do that, Tracy, is I do regular webinars all the time. Not this webinar, but I mean like a webinar with like a lot of attendees joining. And I do purposely wear the same shirt every time. First of all, most of those people only see me once and don't see me in multiple webinars. But then I can cut clips from different webinars, highlight clips, and it looks like they all came from the same event when maybe they didn't, right?

Which you'll want to have a variety as you go forward in your podcast. You'll discover that or your video cast. But here's a couple of things, like co hosting is in and of itself very challenging. That's a whole episode on its own. I think we've covered it a few times, but Tom and I have gone through this. There's a couple of things that can make this much more productive when you go to batch record as co hosts. Number one, plan your episodes before you get together to talk about it.

Oh, 100%. You have to.

You will waste a lot of time debating what you're going to talk about and trying to prepare. So it's not a good idea to do that. Make sure you've done that ahead of time. Do a Google Doc between the two of you and like, have a bunch of topic ideas, whatever it is. Have your brainstorming session separate from the batch recording session so that you're prepared. And anything that you wanted to set up and do, divide and conquer in terms of the tasks for what need to happen to start to batch record. Because what will happen is that you're going to get there and someone's got to now process all those files. Somebody else maybe had to prepare all the bios and all the other stuff that you were going to talk about or the links, the things that you wanted to share. So make sure that when you do that brainstorm session, you are also saying, oh, this is your to do list and this is my to do list. It's going to make it a lot more equal and even, because that's what tends to happen. And where co hosting falls apart really quickly is when you batch record. You start to get this intensity of where your partner may not be keeping up with you, you know the amount of work you're doing and that imbalance really shows itself in that batch recording situation.

What are you saying about me? Tracy, come on now. Seriously though, you can't. The other thing is, we also do see in coast, just another little pro tip. If you're trying to really make sure the effort is completely 50 50, I think you may have an unrealistic expectation. There's always certain things one person is better suited to than the other. And Tracy and I always say we don't strive to achieve balance. We strive to achieve harmony, meaning something that works, but it isn't. We're not keeping score. I did this. You need to do that. But everybody should contribute.

But if your job is to process all the episodes and load them up into the portal, into the potatoes portal or whatever you're using and your job is to take all those recordings, download them, get them up there, or your job is to edit all of those recordings, the pressure on you when you have a batch is high. And if the other person isn't keeping up with their level of work, it feels like it's all on you. And then when things don't get done on time and you aren't publishing on time or you're not getting the editing completed as fast as you want, there's this lot of tension that can happen in your co hosting situation. That's why I'm. I don't like batch recording. This is why I'm saying it is because it dumps a lot on one person to do that portion. Now you got an assistant, you got this all worked out, got a system for it. You're going to feel so much better about this and division of labor and giving each other space and enough time between the time it batch records to the time that you publish is really important too.

That is very important. I agree. Another pro tip I want to share and this is true regardless of if you're co hosting or solo hosting. Okay, so this is for everybody. I really do recommend you have a document to prepare yourself and if you have a co host to prepare each of you. Tracy and I have a Google Doc that in it actually is the history of every episode we've done so far this year and we had one in 2024. We every year we start a new Google Doc and it has the date that we're going to record and then the air date that, you know, the publication date and. But it's got all of the outline and. And it's got everything that. The key points and links to certain things that we've created, whether it's the artwork for the episode. And, you know, we create some of these things ahead of time because. Gonna get to another pro tip in a minute, which is batch recording your preview episodes. If you're gonna do that the way we've been doing, and we have some other customers have been doing it, but the document's really important. And this goes back to our earliest days. Even a decade ago, in our first podcast, wtff, we had a document prepared for every episode that not only covered the key points we wanted to discuss, or if it was an interview episode, information about the guest and their bio that each of us would review ahead of time. We would put some opening, you know, an opening question we wanted to ask and maybe some potential other questions, which we would often deviate from in the moment, depending on what happened in the interview. And there's a whole nother episode about that, how to structure the best interview questions, and. And another one on asking the best opening interview questions. But the point is, this is all memorialized in a document. And when you are going to record multiple episodes in a session, batch recording, very important that before each one, you're going to take five minutes, you're going to review this document, get your head straight about what it is you're going to talk about or who you're going to interview. I agree, Tracy. It's harder to be in that moment when you're interviewing someone and shift from one to the next, you know, without more of a break. And some people may say, that's not for me, and that's fine, but it can be done, and we certainly did it. Certain days would be interview days, other days would be the solo cast days. But you always had a document to refer to, never scripting it. Just have an outline of key points, give you that roadmap so you can go through. And we have one for today's show, and we have them mapped out for going into the next month. And it's. That's one important tool that'll help you do this.

Yeah. And I want to remind you, again, I said divide and conquer before. Right. This is a case. There's. It might be my job to prepare for two of the interviews we're going to do, and Tom's going to prepare for two of the interviews we do. That way, the document has the opportunity for him to have Input. Me to have input. But that means that I need to review what he did and he needs to review what I did. Make your own notes, add those things. That's where it has to come ahead of time. And not be doing that while the other person is trying to come in the zoom room. And you're about ready to start your interview. Right. Unless you make that a part of the way the show runs. Like, you know, make it be like a surprise. Like surprise. Here's our guest, Tom, and ask your questions off the cuff. That could be a part of your strategy.

Absolutely it can. And in addition to that document, so I want to go back to, for this show, we publish a short, usually 3 minute, 4 minute little episode next up. And it's really on Mondays. And it's just to remind everyone who subscribed to our podcast that Wednesday we go live. And if you want to get our content first, you need to join live. And a brief little summary, you know, of what the topic we're going to talk about is. And Tracy and I, when we have these mapped out, usually we'll split them. I'll do roughly two a month, or sometimes I'll do three and she'll do one, or she'll do three and I'll do one. It just depends more on the topic, maybe whose idea it was or who has maybe a little more natural sort of feel for what it would be about. But we split those responsibilities. But each of us will batch record a bunch of them at one time because we need to prepare them ahead of time. And we record them in video because our social media team will take a clip or two from that and promote on social media in the couple days ahead of live stream that it's coming up. And that's what it's about. So batch recording those, even though we do not batch record the actual episode because we're recording it live at the same time every week, can be helpful to keep ahead, make sure everything's going to run smoothly. And obviously it's. It's really more raising awareness ahead of time so that if people understand what the topic's going to be and that one's really for them, and it's important they know they can join live and get some support from it.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, a couple other things, Tom, I want to go over really quick to successes and points of failure that might happen when you're batch recording. And one is to your recording test ahead of time, like make sure you do an actual test, check the recording files, because if you're wrong in one, you're going to be wrong in a lot and you're going to be really sorry. One little mistake could cascade into five episodes messed up. So make sure you check your test your recording and test it out before you start.

What? Really good point. You're right. If you want to make sure if you make a mistake, you fail quick figure it out and course correct. And you haven't burned a whole day or, you know, several recordings. Oh my goodness. I can hear the customer call coming in and hear them with tears in their eyes, even though I can't see them on the phone and asking, is there anything we can do to recover that? Well, no, I'm afraid not.

Yeah, really, check that out. Really make sure you have the location for where you're going to do it. Whether it's a Google Drive, a Dropbox, make sure you have a big enough drive and this is where you're going to like you're going to peek out. Even on Zoom. A lot of times you don't have all as much room as you think and you've got to download those files really quick. So make sure your drive is big enough if you're going to batch record.

Yeah those with you. Zoom. And I know not everybody does, but a lot of people do. You have a storage limit and it is going to auto delete at some point. So get them off of there. Save them in another cloud service or on your local computer. Please don't lose those recordings.

Yeah, I've rarely seen it. Zoom. Zoom is pretty forgiving. I've rarely ever seen it where if you recorded a bunch in one day that they, they would just send you a notice saying you're over space. Delete. You know, do something. But they're not going to shut you. But then files are going to start heading into automatically heading into your trash and you'll only have so many days to recover that. So make sure you get it.

I mean, do you write Zoom is forgiving in that they'd be in the trash for about 30 days? But I'll tell you, Tracy, I've met a lot of podcasters that live in Procrastination Nation and they don't get to the point of downloading all those and getting them to their producer or downloading their own machine if they're editing it themselves. They get so busy and then there gets to be this. Oh, when they go to look for that file and it's gone, I mean there will come a point where it's no longer there, no longer recoverable so please don't procrastinate.

Yeah. And there's lots of really great tools. I know I'm talking a little bit too much tech here, but there's Dropbox integrations where it will automatically go from Zoom to Dropbox. You can put an alias of your Google Drive that's in the cloud and save files to your computer, but it's actually saving into your Google Drive. Like, there's a whole way to hack all of that Google it, AI it, you know, ChatGPT it and find some solutions for what you want if you need to do it. We use Zapier and we zap our stuff over to our Google Drive.

Our stuff automatically goes from Zoom directly to Google Drive, doesn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's not the integration, though. We did have to use Zapier and it's not for the TechAverse, I think. Right.

The next little sort of tip that I have is label your files. So turn your recordings on and off. Make sure you like, close Zoom, start it back up again. Whatever you're going to do. If you're going to record like that, because otherwise you spend a lot of time going through. Because sometimes the numbering's not in order or you start one and then you end it and you, like, trash that one. Let me start again. And you don't remember which one's which. And you will delete the wrong file. You'll miss it. You'll. So label them immediately.

Label them immediately. But also, another pro tip, when you're using, I don't care if it's Zoom, Riverside, Zencast or whatever you're using, when you're recording your episodes in a system that's a remote meeting type of a system. And all those ones that I mentioned don't have to be used for meetings at all. You could record solo casts in them. But you have a session, you start to do it, stop in between, stop the session, don't just stop the recording and start another one, because that's where you're going to get all these recordings in one folder that are from different episodes. And that's going to make that. Yes, Tracy, that file labeling and naming, very important, but it's going to be more confusing. You got to go and play it and listen to it. Which one was this? Watch it. What's the. Oh, yeah. And then it gets very confusing. So if you start a new session every time for each episode, even if that sessions folder, when it's saved, has no identity to the episode, each episode will be isolated in A separate folder. And that makes it much easier to know what files are what and to reorganize them.

Yeah, absolutely. And then this is where you make. When you do a bunch of batches and I've, I'm always been the one who does them, who loads all the episodes up. You will make copy and paste errors. I'm just telling you it will happen. You will think you saved your new file drive and when you go to drop it into the portal to send it to our team to publish or send it to your audio file and upload it, you'll upload the wrong one because you copy and paste it. So double check everything when you're publishing or submitting into a form or for a publication, any episode, double check all the files, folders, the links, because you will make these errors. It just invariably happens.

Yes, it does, Tracy. And you know, a related, I would say suggestion that I have for all of you is because I just had this happen with a customer of ours recently. They recorded an episode that had multiple cameras and there were multiple devices that recorded audio in this studio situation. And not everybody records live in a studio, but this particular one was. And they just gave a link to a Dropbox folder that had everything in it, everything in one Dropbox folder, but didn't really label what a lot of those things were and what was important and what wasn't. And the problem was the system they used to record recorded many, many multiples of the audio for the episode that were so unnecessary. And it confused the production staff. And no matter who you use for production, just giving them a folder of all the stuff and saying, well, it's all there, you figure it out. It's probably going to cost you a bit of money. In their time figuring that out and trying to, you know, just even having to download. Think about this. It was like a dozen files that were like the same thing recorded a different way, and each one was 125 megabytes. So 10 files, you. They got to download a gigabyte worth of stuff to go through it it and figure it out. Whole lot of wasted time and effort. That's probably going to cost you too much money. So I recommend you go into it yourself, figure out what's the one or two or three most important files that are needed. There's a lot of redundancy with a lot of these programs. So again, this was not a batch recording situation, but I think it can become a batch recording nightmare if you don't do as Tracy suggested and keep it organized and Only give your producer the files that they need.

So when we send out a microphone and help someone learn how to podcast and start the recording, we have a checklist that we send them. And the checklist, this is the only time I recommend really using it. You think you got this covered because you podcast all the time and you got this all going, but when you do one after another after another, you're going to forget something. I guarantee it. And many, many times. The only time we have ever forgotten to turn on the on off button for recording is batch recording. So it's one of those things on the list. So there's a, a cycle of things. Especially if you're turning on a camera, turning on a microphone, turning on the computer. Like, you know you've got multiple things you're turning on. I was doing an Adobe conference where I was doing interviews and I got, I was lucky to be able to interview M. Night Shyamalan from, you know, the director of the Sixth Sense and everything like that. And it was really cool and we had a great conversation. Come to discover my wonderful videographer, who's my son in law, forgot to hit the on button on the recording. And we have like the crappiest sound possible because we didn't have the device that was recording the microphone part on. It just sort of ambient caught it. And so we couldn't use the recording. I could only write an article.

You know, that was before he was our son in law. And hearing that, he's lucky he still got to become our son in law because that's like a cardinal sin for anybody who's a videographer.

But it happens because there's like five things to turn on. Like I feel for him and he was doing it solo and he's got the camera and he's got the lighting and he's got the microphone and it's like it's too much to do to remember a checklist and just take a breath and double check all the things. Did I turn on the recording? Is my camera on? Is it on the right angle? Is my microphone actually the right microphone? I rarely if ever go down to the little arrow next to mute my microphone, mute my audio and double check the microphone. Except when I batch record because it can get jostled and unhooked and I won't notice it because we recorded three, four in a row. It's the only time I double check it multiple times in a session. Right?

Yeah. You know, I was looking around to see if I had one of our checklists handy to show to our people watching the video and I don't seem to have one. We will put a PDF in the blog post for this episode so you can download it, print out your own politics checklist, because no, it is very important. And Tracy, you've reminded me of another very practical and important batch recording situation that we have done many, many times. And actually we have some customers doing and preparing to do. And that is recording a lot of people in an event. At an event where you happen to get a lot of people together in one space at the same time. Like, you know, we have customer who, who has a. A whole organization of different chambers of commerce in regions of the country and they want to take advantage of interviewing them all while they're all at this conference, you know, over the course of a couple days. And so you're going to batch record a lot of different interviews in a short period of time. So many advantages of doing that, being able to interview people in person rather than remotely, which is a lot of fun when you have the right equipment and when you can do it because it's a more personal experience. But selfishly for you, the podcaster, getting to record so many episodes in a short period of time because you're going to an event, you don't have your normal daily day to day kind of grind of work. You can schedule people in different windows of time, giving yourself enough breaks in between accomplish a whole lot. You walk out in an event with a dozen episodes recorded. That is content gold right there. And it's going to set you up so that, hey, you know what, you can take a month off of podcasting after that and not have to worry about it because you got enough for the next three months recorded. So a lot of good recommendations and things to do with things that you can do with batch recording.

Yeah, it was just making me like get tense just thinking about the event recordings because the event recordings all end up on a device and you gotta download all the little. I mean, the chances of you losing files, forgetting files, mistaking the files, getting the wrong files, having some that are false, starts that aren't real, that need to be deleted, deleting the wrong ones like it's high. So this is one where being very organized will pay off.

And you know what, Tracy, thank you for. Tracy got us the PDF here of our recording guide, so I'm sharing it. For those of you listening to the podcast, you don't see this, but definitely go to the blog post@podcastregeneta.org, when this is published as a podcast, and you can see the recording guide. And you know what? Some of you might read this and think, well, yeah, sure, I know how to do that. Okay, maybe you do. And I don't doubt. I mean, if you're a podcaster, you already have a certain amount of intelligence and initiative you're taking to do this, and I hope that you do remember all this stuff. But as Tracy's saying, episode to episode, back to back, a whole bunch being done or even just a few being done, in one day, you're going to forget something. You're not going to realize it. Like Tracy said, check the microphone setting, make sure it's right. Make sure you push record. You will regret it if you don't, and you end up making a mistake. So that's why we make this recording guide. It's not that people are not. Don't have common sense. People do it. You all have a lot of common sense. But in the moment, you're going to get distracted and you're like, oh, yeah, I didn't check that. And you're going to find, whoa, I missed it. I almost didn't hit record. Oh, my gosh, that would have been horrible. And then you'll be thanking me and say, hey, Tom Tracy, I really appreciate it. Thanks for the. The recording guide. I use it every time now. It's kind of like a checklist. You know, the checklist didn't exist for pilots of airplanes until over World War II, and there are a couple of really tragic crashes of B17 Flying Fortresses, among other things, because those planes, and even modern planes are even more complicated. But those planes had so many settings and things that if you didn't do certain things before you take off, the flight was absolutely doomed and you would crash. So the checklist was created for pilots to check. Everything you ever see when you. You're at the airport, your pilot walking around the plane, you're looking at the wings and stuff, and doing certain things before they climb the stairs and get in the cockpit, before they board all of you. There's a very good reason why they do it. Now, fortunately, we're not flying airplanes here on podcasting, but the checklist is important, is my only point. So please.

Well, if at minimum, you don't want to have a checklist, at least get yourself a little post it that says turn on record and stick it right in the corner of your laptop. I stick it right in the center till I do it, and then I pull it off. So that's also something you could Do.

That's not a bad one there, Tracy. I like that.

Yeah, I mean it's just the one critical thing you don't want to screw up. Right?

You know what, things are still going to happen. I had a customer this week reach out because they did some two camera recording for an episode and one camera battery died in the middle. And so really they only have one camera for the whole thing. Fortunately, it's good enough and it's going to work. So another pro tip, plug in your equipment. Don't just rely on batteries and batch recording. This is even more important because you're going to record over the course of a day. You're going to spend a lot more time than just one session. Right. And we've always said please don't use wireless headphones or AirPods and certainly never use them for the microphone. Some people like to use them to hear and that might be okay in a lot of situations. But back to back, those batteries are not going to last you all day long.

So that's also another thing is a lot of if you're using a DSL camera or anything like that, those things time out. They actually do not allow you to just record for long periods of time. Endlessly. Now there are some, like my Sony zv, it has a streaming option so I'm actually not recording on the camera, I'm streaming it. So you're just getting it like a pass through. But I had, I did have to hack and hook it up to permanent power in order to do that, but still I discovered that it overheats and so you have to set the temperature high on it to allow it to stay as long as it can. But invariably if I use it for an entire week and do my many, many recordings over the course of the week, I will always have to reset it. So if I were to do it in one day, I may have to reset it twice in the same day.

So the point here is be aware of your equipment and make sure that you have set yourself up for success or more importantly, preventing unintended landmines. You're going to trip over and blow everything up, right. That have to do with especially batteries, plugging things in, all those sorts of different things. Just make sure you're as you're going to do batch recording that especially when it's new to you that situation, you know, you haven't maybe done that before. You're going to encounter some different, maybe not requirements, but maybe some different best practices that are going to make the difference with you making it the best experience possible. And of course, making sure you've got good quality recordings to be able to share your important message with the world.

Absolutely. So one last thing before we go and end this, I wanted to make sure that I said earlier that it's a good time to do batch recording is when you're banking up to launch your show. However, I do not want you to start with batch recording as the very first three episodes that you record. Try your first three episodes without batch recording it or, you know, taking it a little easier on yourself because the stress of batch recording and all these other things that we talked about, like I said, you are just getting your feet wet. Give yourself an opportunity to ease into the water, get used to the temperature, make sure it's what you want, test some of these things out and then you'll find where your failure, your points might happen is like, oh, my microphone was not as stable as I thought it was. My camera kept turning off. It's not going to be happening. And feel like you're pressured for the time slot that you've given yourself. So Tom and I always recommend starting your first three episodes that you record an interview you first. So just make a zoom meeting. Do it like you normally do. Just make sure your recordings on, make it simple. Then record your most important topic, the thing that you want to get your message out. As long as you're gonna do some solo shows, if you're never gonna do that, then skip that. But record an introduction episode. Record something about me, what I'm gonna be about, what the show's gonna be about, and do that as your third one. That's kind of the way we recommend it. Or do two interviews and then do that episode. Give yourself a couple of easing in before you do that introduction. It's like writing an introductory chapter. You start there and sometimes you find out the rest of the story doesn't go the way you intended it to. It's easier to write your introduction a little later. That's what we recommend. Then try batch recording right after you've gotten those first three, you figured out all, worked out the bugs. Then try batch recording and see if you like it. It might not be for you, it wasn't for me, but that's okay, it's you. You gave it a shot. Because if you do like it, it's very, very efficient, very interesting.

I don't remember you expressing quite that emphatically in the past how much you don't like batch recording. I'm curious, is that an opinion you formed after us doing it for years. Because we did it for years.

Yeah. Because my work was always on the very front end and the very back end of everything. So it meant I had hours and hours of work on either side of. So then it just was too intense for me. And it just took a toll over the years of doing that that I really. When we structured the way this show works, I'm happy for it being live because it means I prep up. And I do prep up months in advance. A month. A whole month in advance. Like you'll have all the. We'll have all of May now scheduled into the event portal and there'll be. All the descriptions will be written, the images will be created. All of that will be done at once. But. But the recording of it then is a lot easier. And the post processing. So I didn't create a situation where it's heavy on both sides. It's only heavy on the front end for me now. And the back end is easier. So that's really. It is. Because the technical work was on me.

Makes a lot of sense. I can understand that. And as I've recorded podcasts for episodes, for a podcast that was just of a personal interest for me, I found it pretty easy to batch record the stuff. And I preferred it that way cause I sort of had a progression from episode to episode and it was almost like a story arc that was happening across episodes. And the other one is where I was more playing your role. Co hosting another show with another individual who would never have shown up to record had it not been one a week that we scheduled at the same time every week. And we're both early birds and we did it really early in the morning before our work days got in the way.

That's a great point right there. If you're not aligned in your time slot, it's even going to be worse from the energy level. So if like we had to record early morning, and I'm not a morning person and Tom absolutely knows that, that would have been like too much for me. Energetic. Spending that much energy that early in the morning would not be good. And Tom, like is exhausted at the end of a day.

Well, I did show the example early on in wtff, how we used to batch record a lot of our solo up at Music, meaning episodes where we didn't have a guest. It wasn't solo because it was you and me, but they were our. Just our own episodes without a guest. We recorded a lot of them starting WTFF at like 9 o'. Clock. At night or later because we had an infant who by then was asleep and sleeping through the night and that's when we were free to do it. That was very hard on me because at 9pm at night my brain is not at its best and I had to really suck it up and make it it happen and try to have that energy. But that's a little bit, I think, why, Tracy, you were a little more on top of things at that time and sort of the organization and the preparation and I was obviously participating as much as I could. But yeah, when I was doing this other podcast with another gentleman, he was an early bird. We'd schedule and we'd get on Zoom at 6am, record from 6 to 7, have a session and then be done with our day, onto our days. And it was like the best energy for us. Sudden business never got in the way because no one was awake to be calling us or wanting anything from us at that time of day. So for us that was great.

Well, I hope we gave you a lot to think about about batch recording and how you might want to do this and some techniques for being successful doing this. And we'll be back next week without batch recording with just a single show next week. But we will see you both live and hopefully we'll have our tech issues all worked out next week. I don't know. There'll be another thing.

Hopefully not. Hopefully we get back to. We've been doing this steadily for years and all of a sudden two tech problems in the last two weeks. I think we'll have it worked out. But anyway, we'll see you next time. I almost said wtff, Tracy. I almost did.

No, you didn't.

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