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School Business Insider
So You Want to Start a Podcast? A Roadmap for School Business Affiliates
01:00:46
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- [00:02]
John Brucato
You're listening to ASBO International's School Business Insider. I'm your host, John Brucato. Each week on School Business Insider, I sit down with school business officials and industry experts from around the world to share their stories and explore the topics that matter most to you. Find out what it means to be a school business official and get your insider pass on all things school business. Hey, listeners, and welcome back. Today we have a special episode. I am actually being interviewed. I am not interviewing, but I am being interviewed by Amanda Wing. She is the deputy Executive Director of ASBO New York, and I am actually joining her with her AEDG affiliates on a webinar that they're hosting about podcasting 101 how to really get started. So it was a really cool conversation. Very different than what I'm typically used to and what you're probably used to hearing here on School Business Insider. But we're able to dive into what I do behind the scenes from a podcasting standpoint, how I got started, what my background is, and really where the time commitments are to make all of this come together week after week. So it's pretty cool episode. Keep in mind that this was a webinar, so I did some screen sharing, so I tried to talk through it and make it so it wasn't impossible to listen to. But I hope you enjoy today's episode and I will catch you next week.
- [01:37]
Amanda Wing
Well, welcome everybody. I'm Amanda Wang. I'm the Deputy Executive Director and COO of ASBO ny. I have a background in association management and journalism, so I'm really excited to get to kind of bring both of those worlds together today. I'm also a volunteer with our affiliate staff planning group. We work to host webinars like this and also help with program planning for ASBO International's affiliate track for the annual conference. There's a few folks from that group on here today, so thank you to them for being here. And it's just kind of been an honor to be part of this group of professionals that are working to bring great programming to our affiliate staff, working with ASTHMA International. And one of the things that I'm probably most passionate about is shedding light on the association profession and helping not only affiliate staff, but but just kind of bring awareness around what association management really means. And it's exciting to kind of start to bring some of this together, not only maybe in our association world, but for us to all connect here. So Today's webinar is podcasting 101 how to Launch a show for your ASBO affiliate. And so it's about deciding if podcasting is right for you and. And giving a roadmap of how to start from concept to launch. I'm really, really excited to have today's guest with us for this webinar. John Brucato is a wonderful person, one of the busiest people I know, and somebody that I'm very honored to call a friend. He is the assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations at Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, New York. John is also our new incoming president of the Asthma New York board. He's an adjunct professor at Canisius University. He is a frequent speaker, a volunteer, and unofficial hype man of the school finance profession, although I think we need to figure out how to make that an official title. And of course, he is the host of Asthma International's official podcast, School Business Insider. So if you've ever dreamed of being part of a live taping. I definitely used to when I would sit on the couch at home on a sick day as a kid. Now's your chance, because today's webinar is actually being recorded and will be featured on an upcoming episode of John's podcast. We encourage questions throughout the session, but please keep yourself muted. And raise. Use the raise your hand feature so that we can keep the sound consistency and quality really good for John. And we don't have any side stuff that he's going to have to edit out. So without further ado, welcome, John, and thank you for being here.
- [04:38]
John Brucato
Thank you, Amanda. It's a pleasure to be here, and it's nice to see everybody today.
- [04:41]
Amanda Wing
Yeah, thank you so much. So, John, let's dive in. I'd love to talk just a little bit about your background. Obviously, I did a little intro for you. You are somebody who is super, super busy. You do a ton of stuff. You're also a really involved dad in addition to all of the other things that you do. So I'd love to just give you an opportunity to talk about your background. And I think the thing that kind of connects for people is we think about doing podcasts, but we're also busy. So if you can fit it in, maybe we can fit it in too.
- [05:14]
John Brucato
Right, right. So my background, I'm a school business official, but it's my day job. And then I do all this other stuff on, like, many school business officials that I know. Never thought that I would be one or really knew that it existed. So I went to school thinking I would be in some kind of tech role at, like, Apple or Google by now. So I have a technology background by. By trade. Started I was working at Yahoo for a while and then I worked at a suburban school district in the western New York region, Buffalo region, and got exposed to school business. Kind of fell in love with it and that was kind of my trajectory. So. But I'm also. I love music. I've been have music in my family. I've been playing many instruments for a long time. So the podcast was kind of just a natural kind of blend between what I do in terms of my day job and some of my passions in terms of music. I also have a family, I have a three year old son and we have another little girl on the way in four weeks now. So more big changes to come. So it's been a really interesting journey just both in my career and now taking on this podcast. I was podcasting with a colleague of mine for a short while and then kind of ventured off and now I'm doing this officially with ASBO New York, but. Or excuse me, ASPO International. But it's just been an amazing adventure so far because I'm able to share people's stories, whether they're a school business official or a subject matter expert in some kind of area of school finance. But selfishly, I get to learn and meet all of these people at the same time. So it's really been a nice kind of blending of those experiences and excited to kind of just kind of pull the veil back of what I do. What you hear on the podcast and give you the behind the scenes today.
- [07:00]
Amanda Wing
Well, and a fun fact, John, the intro music to the podcast, you helped with that too, right? With your musical background?
- [07:09]
John Brucato
Yeah. So if you've ever heard. It's kind of like a jazzy, kind of whatever, generic song. But I sampled some things on my computer and I was actually, I remember I was sitting in my dining room playing bass guitar along with it. So that was a little fun thing to do just to kind of put my own little stamp on it. But yeah. So the music for the intro and the outro is homegrown. I did that myself, which was.
- [07:31]
Amanda Wing
Which is kind of fun, that is. So most of us probably are not going to be able to do that, but I think that's awesome. And just an additional. I can't say enough good things about John. He knows that. So just another fun, fun thing about John and I don't know if my.
- [07:47]
John Brucato
Head'S going to fit on the screen any longer.
- [07:49]
Amanda Wing
I know, I know. Well, I'm also friends with John's wife. And so I, we, we joke about I don't know if we can get John one more award. Love John and we'll give him all the awards. So as we've said, obviously you're really busy. We're all busy. You know, regardless of sort of the affiliate size. Right. There's some affiliates that have one staff. Maybe it's just the executive director, maybe they, it's an executive director and you know a part time person. You know as we New York we've got 11 staff and I think we're kind of on like the mid to larger size when it comes to teams. And then certainly there's some affiliates that, that have a bunch of staff but that's not necessarily the norm. We're all, we're all sort of at capacity but we talk about this idea of oh maybe we should have a podcast. So from for you, you've got your day job, you've got your board service, we're not the only board you're on. And then the podcast, how do you make time? And we're going to get into some of the nuts and bolts but how do you find time in your week and what sort of is the time commitment for the podcast on a weekly basis for you?
- [08:52]
John Brucato
Yeah, it certainly is a lot of work and it really is just not finding the time but I guess just reprioritizing it. Some days are really long when it comes to making sure that my priority is my, my home district and then I get my school business official job done first and then everything else comes after that. But I will say if I can do it, any one of you can do it because to be quite honest it is somewhat of a one man show. ASBO International is a huge help when it comes to if I need help scheduling or if they, they do all the graphics. So we have a individual graphic for each episode which we didn't used to have that, that's kind of a newer thing in the last eight months or so. But when it comes down to it I'm the only one I so I do the, the recording, I do the scheduling, I do the questions, I do the editing and all of the production. So I've gotten it down to a science where my episodes I try to target they, I try to target around an hour but now more recently 40 minutes I found that an hour is just a little bit too long. But anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes I found is a sweet spot. So when you think about it, I have to find topics, find people to talk about Those topics, schedule it, and then coordinate my schedule with them. And we have literally had international guests being international at Asbury International's podcast. So there's been times where we have an episode from a gentleman in, in South Korea was. Which was really cool, but I was, it was, I know, 6 or 7pm for me, and it was. He just starting his workday. So trying to coordinate those kinds of things can be challenging. But you know, obviously if you're an affiliate and you're in your time zone, that that's easy enough to do. But the biggest challenge is just really trying to coordinate schedules and making people feel comfortable because I don't know many people who are on podcasts on a regular basis, but it's just kind of an awkward thing to be a part of as an. As someone being interviewed. So I spent a lot of time kind of pacing out the topics throughout the year, and I try to align them with cyclical topics. As a school business official, to the best of my ability to, you know, we have some really nice episodes where it's kind of light and feel good. We tell people stories. There's other ones that are very technical. Like if we get into Gatsby, those are kind of dry but very informative, which is funny because I was, I was talking with the, I'm on the editorial advisory committee with ASBO International and we were talking about different episodes and they were wondering, you know, what are some of your most listened to episodes? And I said, you know, the top, the third most listened to episode is Gatsby 101. Like, how dry could you get? But people love it. So it's a lot of really informative informations. So, yeah, I think really knowing your audience and really what speaks to them has been important. But in terms of the time commitment, it can be a lot depending on if you're doing it all by yourself or if you have a team. But because I've been doing it for a few years now, I've gotten it down to a science. So like I said, earlier episodes are around 30 to 40 minutes in their finished form. Could be anywhere between 40 to 50 minutes in what's recorded. So after I'm done editing and I publish and everything, it probably takes me an hour and a half per episode at this point, maybe a little shorter. And it all depends on the, I don't want to say quality of your guests, but like, how many things you don't have to edit out. So if I can just rip through an episode and not have to like cut out any Weird pauses or silences, I can get it done even quicker. But that's not to say that that's a problem. It's just it takes longer to kind of edit that. So my philosophy with this podcast is, is not only do I want to bring quality content, but I actually want the production to be good as well, because it could be where we're really talking about some really impactful things. But if it sounds like garbage, you're going to lose people. So that's. That's kind of the balance.
- [12:34]
Amanda Wing
That's great, John. I know I've been on the podcast and stopped in the middle and said, oh, sorry, John, you're going to have to edit that out. So that. That definitely makes sense. There's no shortage of ideas. Right? And so a podcast is just one more idea that maybe crosses someone's desk and maybe they're bored or whoever says, our affiliate should have a podcast. So your team decides we're going to have a podcast, what would be the first thing that you say? All right, you're going to start a podcast. The first thing you should think about.
- [13:07]
John Brucato
Well, I think the first thing to think about is the time commitment, because it is a lot of time to dedicate towards doing something like this. And then also, are you going to be able to sustain it? I think one of the things is there's different. There's different philosophies on the podcasting. You know, are you going to regularly publish an episode? Is this going to be kind of once in a while? You know, what I didn't mention is that our podcast with ASBO International is weekly. So that's another thing I have to contend with. I'll be quite honest. There are times where I am scrambling to. To try and meet our Tuesday release deadline. And there are other times where I've recorded maybe, like four or five episodes in a week, so I can just kind of pace those out. That's much nicer, because then I'm not scrambling every single week. But I think the first thing to consider is how you want to set up your podcast in terms of its frequency. I mean, if you're doing it for the benefit of your members, which I'm obviously assuming you are, you're probably not looking to get as many followers and be like the next Joe Rogan. So I think if you, you know, want to pace your podcast out, maybe it's quarterly or something like that, that's totally fine. But then you have to kind of go down the rabbit hole of, you know, what kind of equipment Are you going to use. Who's going to host the podcast? Who's going to edit it? Like, who. Who's putting in all the work behind the scenes? So if it's, if it's just you, that's things you have to consider. But if you have people on staff that maybe have a. A liking towards, like, production and things like that, you can kind of farm it out to them. But if you're going to do it all yourself, you need to practice a lot. I, I watched a lot of YouTube videos on how to use EQ and different programs to get the sound levels right. And I. That was a little, maybe a little extra. I. But I liked to. It was a passion of mine, so. And if you like doing it, you know, it. It'll make it a lot easier. It's not that you're just trying to grind it out. And I will admit there are some weeks where I'm like, I just don't feel like recording this week. I have too much going on. But, you know, it's, it's. That just kind of comes with the territory. So I think figuring out how you want to. To move forward is one thing, but then sticking with it and making it sustainable for yourself as another. So those, those are the two things I would consider. But. And then you can get into the equipment and everything, which I think we'll talk about in a minute.
- [15:22]
Amanda Wing
Yeah, absolutely. And again, if anybody has any questions, feel free, put them in the chat or raise your hand and we will try to get to you too. So it sounds like, John, one of the first things just kind of restating what you said, right. Is to make sure that you think about the frequency. So just because you decide to start a podcast doesn't mean it has to be a weekly podcast. It can be a monthly podcast. So how would you advise a team that's sort of trying to navigate that? Is it thinking about not only the frequency, but then also sort of narrowing the scope? Right. So you don't necessarily have to have a podcast that. A school finance podcast, that's just about all of the things, the whole universe of topics. You could make it more narrow. It could be a legislative update or it could be focused on pd. So how, how. How would somebody kind of go about maybe narrowing that scope down?
- [16:23]
John Brucato
Sure. Great question. So I think to your point, I am doing the universe model where I am kind of talking about all things school of finance. So not that there's ever a shortage of topics, but, you know, there's a lot to kind of Draw on. But if you're, if you as an affiliate are looking to do a podcast, I really think you need to prioritize what your membership is looking for and what you think you can offer in a quality format for your members. So to Amanda's point, if it's a legislative update or maybe you have like a quarterly podcast to just kind of summarize what's been going on, not only at the association, but maybe some strategic developments in your state or anything in that kind of ilk, I think, would be a good place to start. But it really. What is the purpose of your podcast? And again, in this context, if it's really to benefit your members, it should be reflective of what your members are looking for from your affiliate. So I think if you start out and say, okay, I want to do a weekly podcast, and that's your only kind of barometer and what you want to do, I think you have to rethink your approach and make sure that it's. It's best for your members, because you could have the best intentions of releasing something every single week. But if you start running out of things to talk about and it's just kind of, you're just publishing to publish, then the value is lost. So I think prioritizing what your purpose is and what your members are seeking is a good place to start.
- [17:46]
Amanda Wing
That's. That's really helpful. So I think another piece that could be a little overwhelming, and then we'll get into kind of the nuts and bolts. We, you know, many of us are association professionals. We may have back having worked at other member associations. As I said, my background's in journalism. A lot of affiliates have staff that have backgrounds in, you know, marketing membership, but they're not school business officials. Maybe the executive director or somebody there has. Has been in that seat. You're, you know, not always going to be the expert on. On what your. Your guest is coming to speak on. Many of us, right. Like that wouldn't necessarily be. We're not experts, you know, in government relations or, you know, the different things that we may be interviewing folks on. So how do you navigate when you're not necessarily an expert, but you're, you know, you're interviewing somebody who's an expert in a particular topic because I think that could be really overwhelming and almost turn people away. It's not necessarily going to be the executive director or maybe the person who has the school business kind of finance background. It may be a staff person who ends up being great at speaking, great at running a podcast, but then they're not necessarily going to be the expert. So how do you navigate those interviews?
- [19:01]
John Brucato
So it's been interesting because I was podcasting before ChatGPT was a really big thing, and I'm still podcasting now that ChatGPT seems to be all things. So before it was more challenging because if I wasn't an expert in a particular topic, it would take a lot more time for me to prepare for an episode so I can ask some questions, cogent, intelligent questions, rather than just kind of riffing. And not to say I don't do that now, but with the advent of AI has really helped me from a preparedness standpoint because what I can do is, and I'll walk through kind of my, my whole workflow, but I've created a GPT where I basically I tell the, the GPT who, who my guest is a little bit about their background, the topic, certain things that I would like to cover, and then I ask, you know, is there anything that I'm missing to fill like a 30 to 40 minute conversation? And I'll work through that. And that has really been a game changer in terms of kind of changing my frame of thinking in terms of what kind of questions to ask, but also just organizing it and just a huge time saver on the front end to prepare for these episodes. So it's not like I'm going in cold by any means, but I have an outline put together in a really nice way that I've been tailoring with this GPT to make my life a lot easier. Because going back to my, my earlier point, it really is just me doing it. So anything that I can do to be more efficient in terms of creating these episodes, but still maintaining its quality is something that I'm really, really focused on. So the AI has really been a huge time saver because not only is it helping me kind of formulate questions in the conversation guidelines, but it also, I have it tailored to do a social media post for LinkedIn, social media posts for Twitter, an episode description, and it gives me like five or six episode titles. I don't always use them, but it's good to kind of spark my creative juices to really kind of decide on what I want to use moving forward. So that whole piece of using AI has made this a much easier venture than it was a couple of years ago, where I was really doing all of those same things, but I was doing it kind of in my own head and doing Internet research and things like that. This is really just, I Treat it as like a production assistant. It really has sped up the whole process for me.
- [21:16]
Amanda Wing
That is really great. And that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about, right with AI and sort of how that's improved your efficiency. So that's really helpful. There's so many uses like that and it makes sense. You're still the one doing the interview, you're still the one asking the questions. But using it as an assistant to really help you do the prep makes a ton of sense. So getting into kind of the technical aspect, when we hopped on, I said I don't, I don't have a professional microphone. Maybe I should have a. John's got his professional microphone at his desk. What's like the minimum equipment that you would want if you're going to start out? All right, we're going to try out this podcast thing. What's the minimum amount of equipment that you need to get started?
- [22:01]
John Brucato
Honestly, I think all you need is a nice microphone like the one I have here is a little bit over the top. It's a microphone that most big time podcasters are using and it was, I don't know, a few hundred dollars, which is a little excessive. But you can find a nice quality USB plug in microphone. I would highly recommend do not use the microphone on your laptop cause they're very inconsistent and the sound quality isn't the best. But if you want to sound, it's amazing how much little you need to spend to sound like a professional podcast. So I think a high quality microphone or mid range microphone is a good place to start. I have a whole different. So the setup that I have right now is kind of like at my desk setup and then I have a whole mobile setup. Because what I'll do is I'll, I have a backpack full of recording gear. So if I go to ASBO New York's conferences or I go to ASBO International's conferences, we usually have a booth set up for school. Business Insider. I'm interviewing people in, in person, which as an aside is way, way better than interviewing people via zoom. It, it's, it's. Zoom is. Zoom is nice in terms of ease and reachability. So I don't think Asthma International is going to fly me to South Korea for an interview. So zoom, I guess is just as good. So, but I just. As a professional, it's easier just to have a conversation in person. That's probably pretty obvious to all of us, especially having gone through the pandemic. But being able to have that kind of, that Body language and just that that sense of conversation in person is so much better than over the web. And then in terms of after a microphone, when you go to record, finding a product that allows you to record a high quality audio file. So Zoom is not. It just. I'll tell you that right now, Zoom doesn't allow you to. As far as I understand it, I can't record a super high quality audio file. I use another product called Riverside fm. There are a million different products out there. This is just one that I've settled on after kind of trialing some different ones. But not to get too technical, the nice thing about this product that I use is that it records a local audio file on each guest's computer. So it's of the highest quality possible. And then it uploads it to the server that I can then grab and download it, edit it and all that kind of stuff. So I think, in summary, high quality microphone. And if you're going to be recording virtually, finding a platform that allows you to take advantage of those high quality pieces of equipment.
- [24:24]
Amanda Wing
So I know, John, I've asked you this before when I've been on your podcast and not in the Joe Rogan style, right? You don't typically record like a YouTube video or a video where people have the option to, you can watch this as a video or you can listen to it as a podcast. You try to stick to. And I think probably would be biting off more than people should if they, if they go that route. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [24:52]
John Brucato
Great question. So yes, my podcast is audio only. I have no intention of recording video on a, on a regular basis, but maybe like a one off here and there. But when you watch podcasts that are record like nice high quality podcasts that are recorded, video recorded, they have multiple different angles and a lot of that is not only are you getting a good angle of the guest, but it helps so much with editing because trying to edit somebody if you have one camera angle is going to be obvious. So there's a lot of like production tricks there. That's where I draw the line. I don't have the time to do that, so. And I realize that a lot of my audience is listening to my podcast while they're commuting to and from work. So they're not going to be hopefully watching it anyways. But if you're looking to go the video route, I think that's just a, that's a whole nother level and I think that would be really challenging to do by Yourself because you would both be the host interviewing a guest and trying to make sure like all the camera work is going on behind the scenes. At least with the audio you can. For me I can look off screen and I can see like things are working or things are not working and I can kind of course correct. But video is a lot more challenging to kind of to fix. You may have to like start all the way over and do a completely new take. And it's, it's just really challenging. So I would not recommend trying to do video unless like you go all in and this is what you want to do on a semi full time basis. But for me, I don't have the bandwidth to try and do something like this that offers video as much as I would like to, but it's just too much.
- [26:21]
Amanda Wing
That makes a ton of sense. So let's talk a little bit about the software and editing side of things. I know you said you very generously agreed to show us, do a little bit of a screen share and kind of show us what the process looks like, what your tool that you use, kind of how you, how you do all of that. So I'm going to let you, let you take over and share us as much, share as much as you would like to about kind of your editing process. I think this really gives folks a look behind the curtain. What does this actually look like? If I were to record and edit a podcast?
- [26:56]
John Brucato
Absolutely. So caveat because I'm, I think, Amanda, you said at the top of this, I'm stealing this audio because I'm going to publish it. I think it'll be a good kind of behind the scenes. So for those of you listening on School Business Insider, I'm going to be as descriptive as possible because a screenshot via audio doesn't work so well. So, so what I'll show you is the platform that I use to record. Again, it's called Riverside fm. It really is a glorified zoom. So as you can see here, I'm in what's called the studio and I have different recordings from all of my guests. And really all I need to do is I send a link out. It's the same link for every guest and all they have to do is join and it works. It's all web based. The only caveat with this one is that you need to use Google Chrome. But if I go into the studio, I can show you kind of what it looks like. This is all it is. It's basically just a web based zoom. So you can see that I'm in the studio and then as soon as I have guests come in, they'll come up here. And I always tell my guests I have kind of just like some housekeeping. I tell them what to expect in terms of recording, let them know they don't have to be perfect when they record because I can edit all of it out. So my goal is to make them look as good as possible. And I've had some really, really nervous people on before who keep wanting to start and stop, which is totally fine. But I tell them from the onset, like, don't worry about it, I'll edit it out and no one will be the wiser. I think I've used that phrase 200 times. And I let them know that I keep the video on just because it's easier to have a conversation when you're looking at the person. Even though I'm not recording video. So I have the audio recording only, but video just for conversation purposes. So I'll hit record, we'll do the recording and then I'll hit stop. And for this one, it takes a couple extra seconds for the audio to kind of upload. So I always make sure that they hang on so I can grab that audio file. But that's really all it is. It's nothing earth shattering, it's just how this platform works allows me to record a much higher quality product than if I were to use Zoom. And I'm not saying you can't use Zoom, it sounds fine. But if you listen to the same conversation side by side between something like this and something like Zoom, it would be obvious. But if all you're doing is Zoom, that's all your audience is going to know. So it's not really going to be that big of a deal. Now, this product that I use is very similar to others and has a lot more features than what I take advantage of. So for instance, they've been. This company has been pushing a lot of AI features which I don't use really. So I'll show you before I get into the AI. Let me just kind of show you kind of like the editing process. So I'm on a Mac, so I use a product called Logic Pro. Again, probably overkill from what I. What I need to use. You can probably use something like GarageBand or something like that. But I use this to kind of import the audio file and then edit it. So this is what it looks like. This is again, this is literally professional audio recording software. Again, way overkill. But it's something that I'VE used in the past and I'm most comfortable with you do not need to use software like this. But you can see that I have the intro music here. I have Stan. So my podcast, I don't record the intro and outro every single time. That's another kind of little time saving thing. I have standard music and an intro and outro that I use. I do an introduction for each guest that is unique to each episode, but the music and everything doesn't really change. And then for each guest I have their own track. So I have my, my name here. My guest at the sign was at the time was Sonya Trainor. We did a whole episode on a legal update and what the Supreme Court has been doing that affects public education. But I exported all of the audio from that platform that I showed you prior and this is what the raw audio file looks like. So over here on the left I have a whole bunch of different plugins that I use to kind of help with noise cancellation and clean up the audio. And then depending on the quality of my guests audio, it's either a really, really, really easy process to edit or it can be mind numbingly tedious. So sometimes I've had, I've had guests where their microphone on their laptop is catching like the CPU fan the whole time. And anytime that I'm they're not, that I'm talking and they're not, you can just hear the fan in the background. So I have to literally go through and select all of these blank spaces and delete them. Now I choose to do it this way, but with products like the one I'm using to record and other AI products, it will do that pretty much automatically for you. Now the thing is, I've tried that a few times and it hasn't really been perfect in my eyes. So I still like to do it myself. And because I'm comfortable enough doing it and I've been doing it long enough, it doesn't take me as long. But for anybody listening, if you're starting out, I would highly recommend leveraging some kind of AI platform to help with the post production process for you. Because going through and selecting Dead air and deleting it over and over can be a little tedious. But that's kind of how I do that. And then so once this is all edited, I'm going to close out of this once. Once the raw audio is edited and I export the audio file, I use a product, a hosting platform called buzzsprout. There are again, there's a million different Hosting platforms out there, this one is probably the most user friendly. But I'm able to then take that audio file, upload the new episode and then I just fill in the title, the description, I schedule it. We release every week on Tuesday and then it's good to go. And then oh, for the episode artwork, ASBO International, they're amazing. They create all the episode artwork for me. So we have a shared Google Drive where they just dump the episode logo in there. So I'll download it and then, and then upload it to, to buzzsprout. And buzzsprout's nice because you can listen to the podcast directly in this platform. It gives you statistics in terms of who's listening to it and, and from where locations is really cool. So for, for School Business Insider we have majority of our listeners are in North America, but we have representation from Europe, Africa, Asia and two people in South America. So we're going, it's really cool to see kind of who's listening to what and how often. So this is like we're lucky. This is continuously growing for us in terms of our listenership, which again we're not trying to monetize this by any means, but we're trying to reach a vast audience across the world because we have school business officials all over the globe. So it's nice to see that it is reaching some people in some capacity. Even though a lot of our conversation is rooted in North America, you know, we have people from across the world that are tuning in on a semi regular basis, which is really nice. And then from there I also use a product called Buffer. It really is just a one stop to publish out to social media. I don't publish to Twitter so much anymore because it's just this kind of turned into a dumpster fire. So I use LinkedIn more so than anything else. So I, I don't use this platform as much cause I'm only posting to LinkedIn. But from here I just have the, the School of Business Insider LinkedIn page and I'll post the kind of social media post that ChatGPT has helped me with. I'll post the link, it'll auto generate the image and then I'll post it out. I usually repost it from my personal account and then Asbel International will repost it just to kind of get it out there. So there's a little bit of a social media blitz every single week that we work on and then that's really it from like the recording aspect of it. Amanda, do you want me to show a little bit of the AI functionality I use.
- [35:00]
Amanda Wing
Yeah, that would be great. And just while you're pulling that up, John, I just want to review for everybody. So I heard four programs. The one you record in, the one that you do your editing, and the one that you actually go to launch with. And then the social media. Can you repeat all four of those for us? You record. Record in.
- [35:19]
John Brucato
I record in Riverside fm.
- [35:22]
Amanda Wing
Okay. And then Logic Pro, you.
- [35:25]
John Brucato
I edit in Logic Pro. I publish on Buzzsprout. And social media, I just use LinkedIn, but it's whatever your. Your choice is.
- [35:33]
Amanda Wing
Okay. And now is there a platform that helps you? I thought you said there was like a platform that helped you after buzzsprout. I may have made that up. I thought there was one more that you. That you might. Okay, that. But that.
- [35:46]
John Brucato
Oh, I'm sorry. And I'm sorry for. Oh. So for social media, if you're. If you're posting to multiple platforms, this one's called Buffer. It's free. You can, you can preload your social media posts and then schedule them to go out.
- [36:00]
Amanda Wing
Is it similar to like a Hoot suite?
- [36:02]
John Brucato
Yes. Yeah, exactly.
- [36:03]
Amanda Wing
Great. All right, thank you.
- [36:05]
John Brucato
Yep. You're able to. You can, you can connect Facebook, Instagram threads, all that stuff. But again, like I said, I only use LinkedIn these days, so I'm not. I don't really utilize this anymore, but it is free, so it's. It's worth a shot.
- [36:17]
Amanda Wing
That's great. I think, John, showing some of the AI features would be fantastic. This group I know is really big on AI and efficiencies, and certainly for those of us who are a lean team, anything that can kind of help with that is welcome. So, yeah, anything you could share on that side would be fantastic.
- [36:35]
John Brucato
Sure. So what I'm going to kind of show right now is the AI functionality in Riverside fm. So as I mentioned earlier, I don't take advantage of it, really. I just haven't found the time to play around with it. I played around with it a little bit and I can see how it's going to be a really nice time saver. But what you do after you record an episode, you can go in here, it'll do show notes for you. So the summary, keywords, takeaways. It'll do magic clips. So it'll look at topics that you're talking about in the episode and give you like a little clip. So if you want to create that into like a social media post to post out there and there's A little audio with it. It'll do that for you and it'll actually edit the whole podcast for you. Now, again, I can't speak to it in too much detail only because I haven't used it so much, but there's a lot of functionality in here where it has the whole transcript. It'll. You can cut out the. The ums and all the silences automatically. I used to do that with another program, but again, it wasn't 100%, so sometimes it would clip the audio and you could tell that it was. It wasn't right. So unless it's really, really prevalent, I leave the ums and stuff in there because I don't think it's that distracting. But this tool is. Is great. It'll. It'll go through and you can basically publish an episode right in this platform as well. But then in terms of the AI that most of you are probably more familiar with, I use chat GPT on a regular basis. What I have done is created a custom GPT in my account. Now I have the paid account, so I'm probably able to do a couple more things than if you just had the. The free account. But I have this school Business Insider assistant, I called it. And basically what I do is. Here's a great example. So my last episode was with Ron Clamser, a dear friend of mine and current ASBO New York president. What I did is I actually recorded that with him in person. And so what I did is even easier for me. I took the transcript from the recording and I said, can you please provide production elements based on the attached episodes transcript? And I use the term production elements as a part of creating that GPT. So when it, when it sees that, it knows that I want a title, an episode intro questions, and a podcast summary that I can put and publish out there. So this one's a little backwards because I did the transcript already and I had titles. But you can see that when I tell it that I want those production elements, it gives me five options for titles, it gives me an episode intro, it gives me interview questions, it gives me the episode description, and then social media posts, both for LinkedIn and Twitter. Now, it knows how to do all this because I've created this custom GPT on the backend and have been able to customize it and try to make it more so my voice. The one thing I'm starting to realize is I'm obviously not the only one podcasting and I'm not the only one podcasting using AI. I think many of you can probably tell when someone is using artificial intelligence in terms of posting and just communicating. So I'm trying to change that a little bit in terms of the voice of my, my descriptions and things like that to make it less generic and so AI derivative. But that's kind of a work in progress. So I don't always just copy and paste and push it out there. I usually use this as kind of like a launch pad into something and tweak it. But the episode titles for us, it usually works really well, so I don't have to think about it too much. But this really has been a, has been a game changer. So that was an, that was an example of when I had the transcript already. But for instance, if I go to. Oh yeah, so that Supreme Court decision. This is, this is a great example. Amanda of I know a little bit, but I don't know that I have enough knowledge to do a full interview. So I was talking with Sonia offline and we were scheduling the interview and she's the executive director of the Attorneys association and she had a presentation that she gave basically on what we were talking about. So she gave me the PDF and then I told my GPT that who my next guest was going to be, what I really want to focus on. And I copy and pasted some cases and descriptions that she had provided. And I don't know all of these cases. I am not an attorney. I listen to a lot of political podcasts on my own time. But again, that doesn't mean I'm a political expert, so I can speak to these at a higher level. But I needed a little bit more depth in terms of what I wanted to talk about. So I, I gave this GPT all of these questions and I said, you know, could you please provide all these production elements for me? Gave me a few episode title options and descriptions. But the interview guide is great because it really took the individual cases that we were talking about in this interview. It went out and I didn't use deep research, it just searched the web, but it was able to put together a few questions and talking points for me that I otherwise would kind of had to muscle through on my own. And maybe it wouldn't have been as high quality. But I also want to say, and just with using ChatGPT, I think using this as kind of a guide is really important. But if you're just asking every single question verbatim, I think you lose the authenticity of your production. So I tell my guests I'll send them the questions ahead of time. And I say, you know, these are kind of. These are questions, but that really is just kind of to help us guide our conversation. I'm very open with my guests saying that if we go down a rabbit hole about something that's really important or relevant to the conversation, let's do it. I'd rather my recording be more organic than just kind of hammering through questions and trying to hit 40 minutes on the nose. That's kind of like, my philosophy on it. Not saying that's right or wrong, but because ChatGPT has been able to help build these questions and these talking points has allowed me to focus more on the conversation and kind of keep my place and pace in the conversation rather than just firing off questions. So that was kind of a monologue, Amanda. Sorry.
- [42:46]
Amanda Wing
No, no, no, no. That's great. That's really helpful. You know, I think as somebody who is a longtime podcast listener, I've been listening to podcasts forever and ever. You know, one of the things that always seemed really overwhelming to me, aside from the prep and stuff, is the show notes. Right. And I think for so long, without AI, people were having to really spend a ton of time on the show notes side and sort of that post production and seeing where AI can help with really, that pre production, post production, and stepping in as an assistant, as an intern, as I said, my background in journalism, I interned even in high school at a. A local TV station. And so I know, like, the intern side of, you know, producing a TV program. Right. You're really using this as a very knowledgeable intern, but like any good host, you're not going to just take what the intern hands you and read it and Ron Burgundy it and just kind of go ahead and read it. Right? You're. You're using your editorial knowledge, your expertise, then to edit it down and make it customize and enhance what you're doing, but it's not replacing what you're doing either. So I think that's really a super important distinction.
- [44:03]
John Brucato
Yeah. I'll just say I consider myself a pretty good active listener, which I think has helped in this whole process, because to your point, Amanda, I have these questions, and I could easily just Q and A the whole thing, but I think it's more organic to actually listen to what people are saying and how they're saying it and then just improvise off of that. I'm not saying I'm just shooting from the hip the entire time, but in my mindset, I'm like, we're just sitting at a table Together over a cup of coffee, having a conversation. I think that's that mindset and approaching it that way makes for a better end product and easier to listen to for the end consumer than if it's just an interview. Like a straight Q and a interview, like for a job interview.
- [44:42]
Amanda Wing
Yeah, absolutely. You know, kind of thinking about, again, you know, what this. This whole conversation being really. For affiliate teams. I could see a monthly podcast that's a staff member interviewing the executive director and just saying, hey, Steve, can you tell us what's going on? What's happening at the legislature? It doesn't even necessarily have to be. You're starting out and sort of having this really, really grand idea, and then maybe, all right, now we're going to do the executive director and our board president, and, like, you can sort of grow it really organically and small. And I think that, you know, for a lot of people, it's just the idea of starting is very overwhelming, but starting small in a way that you can kind of use ChatGPT to help you along. And as you said, it takes practice to get up those not only listening skills, but sort of just the banter right where you feel comfortable just kind of having that. That conversation go back and forth. We do have a question in the chat and a shout out to the Texas ASBO team, because I know Tom from Texas and has, I think, a group of folks that are with him. So he asked, what are your platform stats? And then he said, we don't have a lot of native podcast listeners if they do it on Apple podcasts.
- [45:57]
John Brucato
Yeah. So we. Our stats, I think, well, ranking wise, I think we hover around the top 10 in all education podcasts, which is really cool. The thing with podcasts stats is it's kind of squishy because you have downloads, you have subscriptions, you have listeners. So I will be completely honest. I am not an expert in terms of what the difference is between all of those. I just. I go a lot on specific and anecdotal feedback in terms of what we're doing and what I can do to improve the product in terms of our platform. I push. I primarily focus on Apple podcasts. I read an article once that says, if you're not on Apple, you're not on podcasts. So that was just stuck in my head. So a lot of people use Spotify, but to that point, Tom, the nice thing about Buzzsprout, I saw you in the chat, it is very inexpensive and easy to use. But the nice thing is that it pushes it out to all major podcasting platforms. So even though like on LinkedIn I share the Apple Podcast link, if you're subscribed to the show on Spotify or on Pocket Casts, Amazon, anywhere you can consume podcasts. The nice thing about a product like buzzsprout is that it just kind of pushes it out to all of those. I, I don't need to worry about publishing it like 20 different times. So that, that has been, has been huge and I think most of the podcasting platforms do something very similar to that.
- [47:19]
Amanda Wing
Thanks, John. So we have another question for Michael. Do you find better engagement for educational content versus features or peer interviews? You mentioned Gatsby being popular. Is that an overall trend?
- [47:32]
John Brucato
So I will. I think it's a mix because um, if I look at, I'm looking at my all time downloads and if I look at the most popular episode, it was Innovation on Wheels Combating the Bus Driver Shortage. This was an interview that I had with a good friend and former colleague of mine where she was partnering, she's part of the community education department and she was partnering with the transportation department to implement a whole start to finish training program to recruit new bus drivers. And I think because that was just such an innovative and different take on solving a problem, it was, is really, really popular. But then my next two most listened to episodes are smooth audits, building strong SBO and audio audit relationships and then navigating GASB101. So I will say, I mean the content is dry, the guests were great, you know, no shade to them, they did a wonderful job. But I think I have a mix between those who really want an expert's technical advice and approach to something and when GASB 101 came out, or when 87 and 96 I think came out, we did episodes in all of those and they were really well received because it was kind of a preview of what's to come. So I paced it where we would have to do these GASB implementations at fiscal year end. I had these auditors on in January well in advance of when they would. People would even really have to start thinking about it. And I think that proved beneficial because those that were listening were better prepared and had an auditor's inside perspective on what to look for. So those are the technical ones. But then I have some really good feel good stories. One of our good great episodes actually is my wife Brady did a very kind of candid interview about how she's had a very interesting trajectory in her career and thought she was going to be a business Official interviewed a few times. It didn't work out. She's taken different paths and I think just her raw vulnerability resonated with a lot of people. So I get a little bit of everything. I get a lot of great feedback from the episodes that, you know, hearing people as people and then really the technical stuff. So, you know, one of my favorite episodes as of late is the one that we just recorded with, with Ron, I think, because he's one of my best friends. So it was just kind of a different dynamic. And we have this one moment in the episode where he makes some like ridiculous analogy that I think he didn't mean it to come out that way, but we were just like silent laughing for like 10 minutes. But I kept a portion of it in because I thought it was good just to kind of demonstrate like, you know, we're just people, people make mistakes. It was just funny. But that was just nice because it was, it was comfortable, it was vulnerable. And I like those episodes most well.
- [50:19]
Amanda Wing
And it sounds like John too. You know, you're sort of. You grew a listenership based on content, right? So people weren't necessarily originally coming to you maybe for some of the more feel good stuff. But it's like now people come to you. They know I'm going to get really important need to know information that's going to help me in my job. But, oh, while I'm here, actually this is also a great episode. And you know, sort of, I think you've created that dynamic where people know they're getting great content. It's not sort of everybody's time is so limited. Right. So if they're dedicating 40 minutes to you and to the podcast, they want something out of it. But then it's like, oh, now you also gave me something I didn't know I was looking for. And so that's, I think, how you sort of keep people. Right. Because you can always only go through so many of these. You're going to eventually be like, all right, well, I've gotten enough. And I've even had people say, right, like, I don't always want to listen to a industry specific podcast because I'm working all day and sometimes I just want to break. And so knowing that you also can get something that's a little, you know, it's adjacent to your profession, but not maybe a Gasby update, right. Maybe today I'm not in the mood for a Gatsby update.
- [51:30]
John Brucato
Yeah, I try to balance it. I mean, we had one last year that was really well Received in terms of work, life, balance. And I had on Heather Taylor from Frontline Education and Aubrey Kirkpatrick from He's a business official up in New Brunswick. And we just had. It was kind of like the three of us were just hanging out around a table having a conversation. It was awesome. And it was one of my favorite episodes because it was just so natural. And we got a lot of good feedback from that because to your point, Amanda, it was adjacent in the sense that we all feel burnout at one point or another, and all of us on that episode had families of varying ages and different responsibilities. So we all kind of just. It was like therapy almost. We just kind of talked through, like, what was important to us and how to strike that balance between being in leadership and still prioritizing your personal life.
- [52:17]
Amanda Wing
Absolutely. If there are any last minute questions, feel free to put them in the chat. I'm going to leave that open for a minute or two longer. In the meantime, John, I've got a couple rapid fire questions for you.
- [52:30]
John Brucato
For you.
- [52:32]
Amanda Wing
So do you have a dream guest, somebody you would love to get on? Maybe it was Ron. Maybe Ron was your dream guy.
- [52:38]
John Brucato
Yeah, yeah, dream. Dream fulfilled. Ron was like, do I have a dream guest? I. I know. Elica Yost, if you're listening, I'm sorry, she's probably cringing when I say this. I would love to have someone from federal government on, like a legislator, to talk about the process. It can be sticky just because, you know, we don't, we don't want to necessarily be affiliated with one party or another or advocacy and all that stuff. But I would love to have like, I don't know, like a Chuck Schumer or something like that. I think that would be really cool. But, you know, there's certain rules I have to follow and Elica's probably cringing with me just saying that. So.
- [53:13]
Amanda Wing
Sorry, Elka, you'll get an email after this. Do you have a favorite podcast that you listen to or a podcast, maybe a host that you've learned a bunch from?
- [53:27]
John Brucato
Yeah, so like I said, I don't know why I torture myself, but I listen to a lot of political podcasts, so I should have mentioned this earlier, but when I, when I thought about podcasting myself and I thought about what I wanted it to sound and feel like, I thought about, I listened to a lot of the crooked media podcasts. I mean, Pod Save America, Pod Save the World is great for, like, international politics, and their production is really high quality, and I wanted to kind of model my My quality off of there's their flow in terms of intros and things like that. So I like that a lot. I also like, my favorite right now is the Dispatch podcast. It's a very center, center right podcast. And I, and I like that a lot because it gives you what I feel is the most objective view in terms of what's kind of happening not only in the United States, but in the world. So that's been kind of, kind of a breath of fresh air because a lot of these podcasts are hard left, hard right. It's nice to find something that's kind of in the middle. But I wish I, I wish I. Oh, and there's one called this Car Pod. I love cars. And it's just an automotive podcast of this goof, goofball YouTube guy that started years ago who I've been just randomly following on YouTube and watching his car reviews and his, his social image has taken off. He has a car auction website and now he has a podcast. So it's fun to listen to, to his podcast about. They just digest the news on cars and things like that. So that is my spectrum. It's politics and automobiles.
- [54:58]
Amanda Wing
Love it, Love it. Mine is a lot of true crime. So it's a lot of true crime on mine. So Michael's going to get the last question. So he says, this all makes sense to me. Strong technical content. Balance with some softer features and start technical. Enlighten a little bit as the audience grows. Do you have an ideal mix? How far out do you schedule episodes? How is it? Is flexibility built in? Great question from Michael.
- [55:23]
John Brucato
Yes, all great questions. So do I have an ideal mix? No, I don't. It's tough because I think to the similar sense of if you, on the onset you say, I want to be a weekly podcast and then eight weeks in you're like, this is too much and I can't sustain it. I kind of take the same frame of mind in terms of a mix. I don't want to say I want 50% feel good soft stuff and then 50%, you know, really Gatsby type episodes. I kind of go with my gut. I've been a business official for 10 years and I just try to keep my, my ear to the ground in terms of what I think people would want to hear. I know that's kind of generic, but whether it's something that's happening in like the, the one we had recently with the, the Sonya Trainer, with all of the Supreme Court decisions, that, that was like a totally relevant, super technical we should talk about this kind of thing. I also look at school business now and what school business officials and other people have published in terms of their articles, because that's an, that's also an opportunity for me to do a deeper dive with that author to kind of talk about it or have something that's adjacent to their topic. So I don't, I don't really have an ideal mix. It kind of is just what comes at me and in kind of my gut feeling. And then in terms of how far out do I schedule episodes? If I could have something scheduled for the entire year, that would be awesome. But it's just because this isn't my full time job. It's just really challenging for me to do that. So I try to schedule as many as I can just to give myself some breathing room. So there's been weeks where I've recorded three to five episodes in a week, which is grueling for that week. But for the next five weeks, I don't have to scramble and try and record anything. And I may have mentioned this already, there are weeks, sometimes months, where it's a dash to try and meet that weekly podcast deadline. So I don't necessarily recommend trying to do a weekly podcast. It's just, it's a lot of work and there are some weeks I'm like, why did I, why am I doing this? But it all works out and people are gracious with their time and I am so grateful to my guests being able to, one, willing to be able to come on and talk about whatever topic it is. And two, just being flexible with their time and coordinating. So scheduling probably is one of the most challenging aspects of it. I mean, if you can farm out scheduling, that would be like a great place to start. Because if you're trying to do it all, it can be a lot. And again, we all are not doing this for a living, at least not yet. So it's tough to kind of balance all that. So, for instance, I'll be completely honest, this audio here, I'm glad it's working out because I had a interview fall through earlier this week. So now this is going to be published the following week. So now I'm not scrambling to try an interview. So if anybody listening wants to jump on next week, let me know. Would love to have you. But seriously, the scheduling pieces is really challenging. So sometimes. But I try to get everything preloaded. So I'm not going week to week if I can. You know, it's much better to, you know, record a few episodes and then pace them out.
- [58:37]
Amanda Wing
Thank you so much John. And thank you all so much for joining us today. We are at time. I hope everyone enjoyed today's webinar. Huge, huge, huge. Thank you to John Barcado for his expertise and giving us a look behind the podcasting curtain. I'm very inspired. This definitely made me feel like it's not as daunting as it feels like. And for those of you that are thinking about one starting one at your affiliate, hopefully this gave you some confidence to try it and start small. I think John painted a great picture of how you can start small, grow and learn and have fun as you go. Don't forget today's session is being featured, as John said. So you can go back and you can revisit this episode and you can share it with your team on behalf of ASBO NY as what International, our affiliate planning group. Thank you for being here, for your thoughtful questions and for all the work you do to support the school business profession. I also want to thank all of the executive directors of our affiliates for their support and the important role they play in guiding our team teams. Please have a wonderful day and we hope to see you on our next webinar or and or at ASBO International's 2025 Annual Conference and Expo in Fort Worth in October, October 21st through 23rd. So thank you so much. Have a wonderful day everybody. And again John, huge, huge, huge. Thank you. It's wonderful to see you as always.
- [60:09]
John Brucato
You too. And I will just quick shout if anyone wants to talk about this more in depth offline. I am happy to make myself available. Just email me podcastbointl.org and we can set up a zoom. I can go through everything in depth, so if you want to let me know. Happy to be of service.
- [60:27]
Amanda Wing
Thank you so much John.
- [60:29]
John Brucato
Thank you for tuning in to School Business Insider. Make sure to check back each week for your favorite topics on school business.
- [60:37]
Amanda Wing
SA.