A (0:00)

And we're back folks. It looks like Jim from sales just got in from his client lunch and he's got receipts. His next meeting is in two minutes. The team is asking, can he get through his expenses in that time? He's going for it. Is that his phone? He's snapping a pic. He's texting Ramp. Jim is fast, but this is unheard of. That's it. He's done it. It's unbelievable.

B (0:20)

On ramp expenses are faster than ever. Just submit them with a text. Switch your business to ramp.com hey o. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the show that helps you grow every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 20. And today's episode is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday to see who won. We announce this week's winner a little bit later in the episode. We're giving away lifetime access to our hundred dollar MBA program, the only program that 100% guarantees that you'll become a better entrepreneur. Go ahead and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts because hey, you could win a free ride. In today's episode, you will learn all about my podcast recording setup. We've been fortunate enough to have an incredibly successful podcast. And one of the most frequent questions I get asked in person, online, in interviews is what's your podcasting setup? And of course the tech and the audio and all the gear doesn't really make a great podcast. The content really is what makes the difference. But you do need to sound professional. You do need to compete with other great sounding podcasts. And that's the truth. So if you want to start a podcast, I'm happy to share my setup so that you can create one just like it in your home office, your team office. So maybe more than one person can record with you or even just a corner in your house. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode is sponsored by NordPass Business. As business owners and decision makers, we're constantly juggling countless login and password information to access all the different apps we use to run our business. Getting into these apps without a great tool and system can be a productivity nightmare. NordPasses eases the burden of access to business accounts, making it possible for your team to work across devices and apps uninterrupted login share and make payments efficiently. Backed by the highest standard of cybersecur business owner or a decision maker in the business, this is a must have see NordPass business in action now with a three month free trial. Just go to NordPass.com100mba and use code 100mba to get three months for free. Again, that's NordPass.com100mba use code 100mba having a great sounding podcast is all about recording great audio so many people think that you can just fix everything in post production. Meaning like I could just send it to an editor and somehow they're gonna be able to clean it up. When your audio is not clean and there's noise in the background or you're far away from the mic or there's an echo or whatever it might be, this is really hard to fix in post production. Even with all the technology we have today, the science of audio doesn't change. Meaning you're going to have to distort the audio to make it sound better, to drown out that background noise to get rid of that echo. And by making those edits, the actual audio will change and sound a little tinny, a little weird and not deep and rich and professional like you would want to have it sound. So this is why it's so important to capture the audio properly when you're recording. Don't rely on post production, meaning when you record your podcast, when you record your audio, you should be able to play back that audio on your computer and be like, that sounds great. If we just edit it for content, we should be good to go. Now obviously, just like you will have a hard time fixing bad audio input, when you have good audio, good quality audio recorded, you can really work with it and make it sound even better. But in today's episode, we're going to focus on the actual recording setup. My studio and I'm going to start with the must haves. These are the must haves you have to have in your recording setup. The first thing is you need to have a recording setup you can go to every single time it's all set up. You don't have to, you know, assemble it and disassemble it every time you record. Why? This allows you to have consistency of quality of audio. It also makes it just easier to record knowing that it's all set up, you can just step up to the mic and record. So wherever you set up your studio, whether it's at home or in the office, you want a dedicated space that no one else is going to be using. Don't use the meeting room or the lounge or your living room at home, because you're basically not allowing anybody to be around that area when you record, because you want great audio. You don't want any distractions. You don't want any sounds in the background. And that brings me to the next point. Quiet. You want a quiet space. You want a space that has zero interruptions of audio. Some people think, oh, you know, I'll just put it in the corner of my living room or in the corner of the lounge in our office. And when it's time to record, I'll tell people, hey, I'm recording. Don't bother me. Now, you might think that, you know, they're being polite and they won't talk, but even just walking behind you, the footsteps, the creaking of the floor, the other sounds they're making, unwrapping the wrapper of the granola bar, that sound bounces off the walls and finds itself in your recording somehow. This is why highly professional productions are done in a recording booth in a recording studio, because that's all you do. You record. You don't eat, you don't drink, you don't do anything. No one's walking behind you. No one is there to cowork with you. No, this is a place of recording, and that's how you get great audio. And you can create the same environment in your own office, in your own home, where this is just a dedicated space for the podcast. Now, I work from home. I have a home office. I have my own office. I don't share that office with anybody else. I have a door to. This office is not like a corner of a room. So right off the bat, this setup is primo, okay? I can make sure no one can come in or out because I'm closing my door. There's no sounds outside. I can close the window. I can make sure that when I'm recording in the room, the audio is pure and the only sounds are coming out of my mouth. Okay? That's really what we're looking for here. Now, in my room, I have sound absorption techniques, okay? So, for example, my room has a carpet, so it absorbs the audio. So the way audio works is, like I mentioned, it bounces off surfaces. The floor, the ceiling, the wall, and that causes a bit of distortion. You Want as much as possible that not to happen. You want these bounces to be absorbed by things like carpet on the floor. The other thing I have to absorb sound is sound absorption panels. I literally just bought these off Amazon. They're like these one foot by one foot squares of sound absorption. It's like these charcoal looking char triangles. And I have these panels glued to my wall. In fact, they're put up with some 3M double stick tape. But basically the two major walls in my office are lined with these sound panels. Now these sound panels are actually quite expensive. You can get like a pack of 30, I believe for less than $50. Installing it takes maybe an hour or so on a weekend. Pretty simple. I also make sure my office is not empty. It's got lots of stuff in it, right? It's got furniture, it's got a desk, it's got a bookshelf filled with books. I have like a lounge be chair also great for sound absorption. I got my Yamaha piano in there, my digital piano. I got pictures on the walls, I got planners on the walls, I got plants, I got a whiteboard. And all this actually helps to bring the sound down to make sure that there's no echo in the room. You ever notice when you walk into an empty house, like when you're looking at an open house and you're buying a house or maybe renting a place, it's really echoey because there's nothing in the rooms. The more you put in there, the less echoey it is. Okay guys, we're going to go a little bit deeper. Yes, I record in my office, but I record even further in my office where I have a bit of a walk in closet. It's more like a step through closet. And that closet is inside the office. And I carved out an area where I record in the actual closet. So now I am now talking inside the closet, not even in the room. And this is allowing me to get even more high quality sound with very little outside noise. More so in that closet. I don't just record in the closet with the mic. I have my mic placed inside what's called a porta booth. Now if you go to portab-booth.com, you'll see what I'm talking about. It's basically a one foot by one foot cube with five sides rather than six because obviously I have to have a place to talk into, right? An open panel. And my mic is placed inside this five sided cube. And this cube is lined with those sound absorption panels I talked about. So I'm literally talking into nothing, right into sound absorption heaven. My mic is inside and my face is basically right inside the cube, right at the surface of that missing six side. Now, what I love about this setup is that now I'm in a sound absorbed room. Inside that room is a closet. In the closet I have this beautiful porta booth sound enclosure, right? My mic's in there. I'm recording sound inside this cube. And I also have a nice little setup where I can put my iPad behind the mic or I can have my notes in front of me, where I can have a laptop right below me on a shelf. And we'll get to that in a moment. And this is my go to place. This is my actual happy place because I love recording the podcast and this is where I go. Now, depending on the shelving of your closet, you might need something to prop you up so that your mouth is aligned perfectly with the mic inside the recording booth. I use what's called an Apple box. That's what they call it in the biz, but basically it's just a wooden box that was used for a crate of old wine bottles. And I kind of fashioned it so it's perfectly my height, shaved off a few inches. I stand on this box and I'm perfectly aligned to the mic. Perfect. Now, depending on your setup and the level of where you're recording, you might not need an Apple box. But I'm just saying you got to make the effort to make sure that your mouth is perfectly aligned to the mic when you're standing comfortably straight. You don't want to have to hunch over or be on your chippy toes every time you record because you're going to get tired and your mouth is going to move from alignment with the mic. Now, you might be saying to yourself, omar, you haven't talked about any technology. I was like, that's true. Because if your setup is like this and it's so well sound protected, making sure that your sound is pure, then pretty much any technology is going to make you sound great. Okay? Because you, you've created an environment where you really can't sound bad. But I'm going to give you my tried and true mic that I really recommend to most people because the quality of this mic for the price is incredible. And it's the Audio Technica ATR 2100. I'm sure you've heard of it before. It's very popular on Amazon. It's about $80 or $90. And it's really, really great because you can just plug it straight into your computer with a USB cable. It's not huge, it's not hard to travel with if you need to take your mic with you and you travel more about traveling and recording a little bit later. So I recommend using the atr. It's a great setup and it works perfectly for this environment. Of course, you can go with other options. Shure has a lot of great mics, Heil has a lot of great mics. But I like how easy it is to use the atr. It's plug and play usb and the audio is fantastic. The only thing I would add to it is a foam cover to that mic. And you can buy these on Amazon again for like five bucks or something like that. And this allows you to get a little bit more protection for your plosives. That means the things you say that start with the letter P or B where you're maybe pushing a bit more air out of your mouth. And this kind of protects. It's like a wind protector. You can also use a pop filter for this, which is that big round circle that you see people kind of clip to the front of their mic. I personally don't use a pop filter because I find the foam cover on my mic does the job. I then take my mic and I plug it straight into a laptop that I have that is right below my sound booth. It's right on a shelf right there. And what I love about this is everything gets recorded directly to the computer. I use Apple QuickTime. Cause I'm on a Mac and I have a dedicated laptop for the podcast. That means this laptop doesn't move from this position. I don't have to unplug it and plug it back and forth from my other laptop. Now, of course, if you have one laptop, you could definitely do that. I've done that for years. But I've been recording the podcast for over eight years, and I've upgraded my laptop since then. And I just use my, you know, older laptop that runs great and it's fantastic and works brilliantly. And I just use it just for the podcast because I want to make sure that I can just keep it here, save my files, pop them in the drive. When I say drive, I mean Google Drive. That's how we share our files with the team. And as you can see, this is a pretty simple setup. But most of my work is making sure I'm recording fantastic audio into any technology. Today's episode is sponsored by NordPass Business. Did you know that over 60% of organizations report that Access issues impact their productivity regularly. In the same report, 31% said access issues are the source of daily disruptions to their workflow. That's a lot of energy and time lost in your business. Luckily, there's NordPass business to save the day. We highly recommend that every business get NordPass business. Why? Because NordPass business is a password manager that will save you time and energy, allowing your team to focus on what matters most. You can store and access all your online accounts from anywhere. Stop storing important credentials in Google sheets and Excel files and popping it on your desktop. Or God forbid, you're writing your passwords in notebooks and sticky notes. You and your business deserves better. But it's not just passwords. You can share your company credit card with other teammates securely. NordPass lets you keep an unlimited number of company cards close at hand and offers a simple and secure way to share that information with teammates and whole departments on demand. Give and revoke access effortlessly. So when new teammates join or leave, NordPass has got your back. NordPass is so confident that you're going to love NordPass Business. They gave us an amazing, amazing deal. See NordPass Business in action now with a three month free trial. Just go to NordPass.com 100- MBA and use code 100- MBA three months of NordPass Business for free. Just go to NordPass.comb-100, MBA and use code 100- MBA and we're back, folks.