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Six Unexpected Upgrades for your Podcasting Workflow. Thank you for joining me for the Audacity to Podcast. I'm Daniel J. Lewis. When thinking about upgrading your podcasting workflow, you probably immediately think of actual podcasting tools like microphones, recorders, mixers, interfaces, or combinations of all of those things or or podcast hosting, podcasting software, cameras, lighting and such. But that's not what I'm going to share with you. In fact, none of these recommendations for you are explicitly podcasting tools. Well, one of them is kind of on the fence, but still, it's not explicitly a podcasting tool, and not a single one of these is yet another AI tool. I would love to recommend podcasting tools to you like podgagement or pod chapters, especially pod chapters, because I went from using five tools for about 30 minutes for every episode down to now just one tool, taking me only about 30 seconds per episode. That's a huge win. I'd love to tell you to go to podchapters.com to try it on your next episode. I'd love to tell you about all the cool features that are in that that will save you time helping you transcribe and chapter your podcast so that you can boost engagement and even profit from your podcast through Chapters. I'd love to tell you to do that. And I'd love to remind you to go to podchapters.com to try it out for free on your next episode. But I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to give you these six unexpected upgrades for your podcasting workflow, and if you'd like to follow along, they are as simple tap or swipe away in the show notes or the Chapters, or go to the audacitytopodcast.com unexpected upgrades quick little Disclosure yes, some of these products I have affiliate relationships with the providers or the links that are in the notes. But I am not paid to talk about anything I earn only if you purchase through my links, if they're even affiliate links. And some of these things are not affiliate links. And I earn absolutely nothing if you purchase them. And I earn only if you purchase through my links. But I recommend things I truly believe in regardless of earnings. So with that disclosure out of the way, here we go with number one, your keyboard and mouse. These are the two things that you are touching constantly. No matter what you're doing on your computer, but especially with podcasting, you are constantly touching your mouse and keyboard, maybe even keeping your hands on them while you are recording your podcast and you're Certainly using them while while you're preparing your podcast, while you're producing your podcast, while you're publishing your podcast, while you're promoting your podcast, and every point in between. And beyond that, you are using these the most of everything else you work with. These are your most common tools, so maybe they are due for some upgrades. I recommend a few things to look for with this, and there are some specific keyboards and mice that I might recommend, but there are some specific things that I recommend that you look for. First, look for something that's quiet, because this is what we typically think of when we're getting accessories, or at least I hope you think of this since we're recording podcasts around our podcasting workflow. Whether you're recording audio or doing video, you want something quiet. So maybe avoid that mechanical keyboard that makes really loud sounds. It if you even look at it, maybe consider getting a quiet keyboard, even if it's only for while you are recording your podcast or a quiet mouse. So definitely look for something that's quiet, but also look for something that's comfortable. You want it to be comfortable for you to use and not cause strain on your wrists, on your fingers, on your arms, elbows, shoulders, anything like that. Just think of the whole workflow, of how your energy goes from your body into that device and make sure it is comfortable all along the way. There might be some adjustments you can make in other aspects like with your chair, with your desk or positions or wrist rests or anything like that, but make sure it's comfortable. And the third thing is make sure it is customizable. Don't you like that? Quiet, comfortable, customizable. The hard C sound in each of those. I could be a pastor. That's what you want these devices to be quiet, comfortable and customizable in. And you want them customizable so that you can make them do things inside your podcasting workflow. For my mouse, I use a Logitech MX Master 3S from Mac and there are different versions and now there's even a newer version that replaces this that has some kind of minor adjustments to it. But what I love about this is it has multiple buttons that I can customize. It also has a really nice scroll wheel on it that can free flow or it can click and it has a horizontal scroll wheel that is great for things like scrolling through a timeline in an audio editor or video editor and doing other things like zooming or all kinds of cool things. And any of the buttons on the mouse could be customized to do certain things within specific Apps, I think now all the major mouse providers with their drivers offer customization at an app level. I remember a day when you had to buy extra software to do that kind of thing. So for example, in your browser a button could switch between tabs, but in your audio editing program, that same button could do something like silence a section that you've got, or maybe it's the export or anything like that that you find yourself trying to remember the keyboard combination for it or going to the menu. Consider mapping that to your mouse. Or if you have a special keyboard that gives you extra keys that you can customize, then customize those and map those little shortcuts to those keys. One of the things that I do that might sound crazy is I use two mice for my computer on a regular basis. I am on a 27 inch iMac, it's the last intel imac that Apple created and I use two mice. I have the Logitech mouse in my right hand and that's what I'm doing most of my computing with when I'm using a mouse cursor. But in my left hand next to the keyboard, to the left of the keyboard, I have an Apple touchpad. That's all that it is. It's the big, nice big touchpad that's even bigger than my hand. And with that I can do really cool multi finger swiping gestures too. That's how I swipe spaces between full screen apps. That's how I easily swipe between certain tabs or scroll more easily and more fluidly with my mouse instead of the scroll wheel even. And certain other things like pinch to zoom and stuff like that. Really nice things that can be done with multi finger gestures that are possible with that. So I've always got these two mice on either side of the keyboard and that really helps my workflow and my productivity and my station. You could consider something like that too. Maybe you have two different mice. Maybe you have a trackball, maybe that's what you like. Maybe you want a vertical mouse because that would be more comfortable for you. You find out what works for you. But I recommend that you look at something that's quiet, comfortable and customizable. Number two, kind of related to this, a control interface. That's why I'm going to call this genre of devices. Like my favorite one is the Elgato Stream Deck. I have a Stream Deck mini. It is a 3 by 5 button interface. It doesn't have any knobs, dials, sliders, anything like that. It is only buttons. But what's nice is that the buttons have little screens on each of them, so I can customize the text or icon or color that goes in those buttons. Those buttons can change based on which application I'm currently in. Those buttons can also do really cool things like be toggles in and of themselves. So if I press play, then I see a pause button, and now it's a pause button. And then when I press pause, now it's a play button or a stop button or something like that. And you can have multiple stages. You can even do certain automations just within the stream deck workflow. And like, I've got a button for whenever I'm doing my episode images for the Audacity to podcast. I press this button and it instantly opens up three different applications I need. It opens up my browser to my image library that I choose images from and icons and try to find something from there. And it opens up all of these specific folders and locations that I need for that. And that automation is done simply with the Stream Deck software. What's really cool now is you don't even have to have a hardware device for this. Elgato does make a virtual stream deck that you can have on your computer. So you have these buttons on your computer that you can then press. Kind of like if you had a hardware thing, it's a little less convenient than the hardware because it means you have to move your mouse up to that position. Or maybe you can activate some of those things with keyboard shortcuts, but again, that gets more complicated. Whereas with a physical separate interface, you can just reach over and press the button and very quietly press those buttons and trigger certain automations or even see certain information. Like right now I can look at my Stream deck and I see my current CPU usage updated every couple of seconds that's displayed on the Stream deck. So that way I can know if my CPU is starting to overheat and I need to pause the recording and run my CPU fan at a higher speed. Right now it's at a lower speed, so it will be quieter and and not interrupt and mess up the quality of this recording. I really love the Elgato Stream Deck line because they do more than only these buttons. They have really big stream decks that have lots of buttons on them, but they also have other devices that are unique in the controls that they offer. Like that have knobs and sliders and bigger displays on them and certain things like that, and in different shapes and such that you can do really cool things with them. Like the slider could be for scrolling through your audio. Or you could have a knob that allows you to very quickly jump to a certain tab or scroll in your audio also. Or just volumes of certain things. It's limitless, pretty much what you can do with this kind of stuff. And there's automation built within it. There are other makers of devices like this and there are some really cool things that you might be able to find on places like Kickstarter and things where you can get some modular things where you get a slider, there's a couple of buttons and a screen and different things like that that can be really cool too. You figure out what works for you. But I love these kinds of control interfaces because they can bring automation literally at your fingertips by just pressing a button. And maybe that's all that that button does. So you don't have to remember a keyboard shortcut. You don't have to do multiple steps. You just press this button that is right there and it's a physical button. You might not even have to look at it. You could just feel it with your fingers, which would be great. If you're recording a podcast with someone and you need to maintain eye contact with them, or you're trying to maintain eye contact with the camera, you could just reach down, feel the button that you want to press when you know which button it is, and press that button to take whatever that action is that you want. So that's why I love this upgrade. This is the one that is kind of on the fence as a podcasting tool. But some people frequently think of these kinds of devices as only being for live streamers. And certainly they are fantastic for that, like camera switching. I really wish I had a stream deck back when I was doing multi camera live streaming for my Once Upon a Time podcast. Because I would always forget to switch the cameras. And the keyboard shortcuts were complicated with that. Trying to remember that and press all those keys. Something like a stream deck would have made that much easier. This is often thought of though for more video or streaming use. That's why they call it a stream deck. But that's not all it is. I use this thing so much outside of a typical podcasting workflow, doing other automations for me and it is so powerful, saves me time, saves me frustration, saves me brain cells. I definitely recommend it. That's number two, a control interface. Number three, automation and shortcut tools. These are software tools that you could use to to make certain things go faster for you. I hinted at this a little bit with the stream deck. That does have some of this automation built in. But look at tools like Text Expander, or what I really love from macOS that I found in the last couple of years is Keyboard Maestro. Or an alternative for Windows would be Auto Hotkey. Or look at things like Apple shortcuts built into macOS and even iOS. And another new app that I've started using recently is Raycast that allows you to jump to certain features and functionality by typing things with your keyboard, and that's available for both macOS and Windows. But the point of all of these things is automating certain repetitive tasks or even doing certain things for you in a more intelligent way. And these can play out in all kinds of different contexts for you in your podcasting workflow. For example, I just recently set up an Apple Shortcut automation on my Mac OS so that I can right click on an episode folder from the Audacity podcast and choose to archive that folder. And it automatically then moves it to the specific archive folder on my separate hard drive where I put all of my archived episodes. Now you might think, oh, come on, that's just moving a folder that's not saving you much time. Well, it is, because before then, what I would have to do is I would have to open up two finder windows on macOS so I could see folder I wanted to move and where I wanted to move it to. And in that second folder, I would have to go to the drive, then go to the Audacity to Podcast folder, then go to the Episodes folder and drag it into there. Now I can just right click choose the option to archive it and it moves it for me. That's an Apple shortcut. You can do that kind of stuff with other tools too. With Keyboard Maestro. Oh man, this thing is so magical. I don't think they have an affiliate program, by the way. If they do, I would totally love to be in it. Maybe I am in it already, I don't remember. But whatever the case, just expect if there ever is an affiliate program, I'll be using Affiliate link for it. But even if it doesn't have an affiliate program, I still love this. You can do similar things with autohotkey, but with some of the stuff that I do with Keyboard Maestro is System Wide Automation. Because Keyboard Maestro, even though the word keyboard is in the title, it can do stuff with the mouse. It can simulate mouse movements for you and click things, not only specific locations on the screen, like certain pixels down from the top and from the left and such, but it can also look at your screen to find something on your screen, like a button that might move to different locations. In my accounting software that I use, which is currently Odoo, I'm not necessarily a big fan of it, by the way, but it has the features I need so I'm using it. But it's a little complicated with some of its workflow stuff. I've made about a dozen automations with Keyboard Maestro and mapped all of those automations to buttons on my stream deck so that I can do things like record payments and create new invoices and reconcile deposits and transfers. And all of this stuff in my software. And some of it is using keyboard shortcuts that Keyboard Maestro triggers. Some of it is using the clipboard, and it has multiple clipboards so it can copy multiple fields of text from my email reports and then paste each of those into different places. It doesn't have to go back and forth. Copy, paste, copy, paste. It just copies, copies, copies, copies, copies, and then paste, paste, paste, paste, paste in the different places where I want it to, and it clicks what I want it to. It can wait for certain things to appear before it takes action. All kinds of really cool stuff. Textexpander I've done a whole episode previously about the power of text expansion where I can type in an acronym of some sort and it will automatically expand out things. The easiest one that I use for the Audacity to podcast is tap that then expands out to the audacity to Podcast URL, but it pops up a little prompt that gives me the option to add something after.com/like for example, my affiliate link for Textexpander would be the audacitytopodcast.com Textexpander so for that, instead of having to make a textexpander snippet for every single affiliate link I have, I just dot tap and then I type in textexpander into that URL field. I press enter and then it pastes that full URL for me as the audacitytopodcast.com textexpander except also with the HTTPs, so it's a full valid URL for hyperlinking and such. There are all kinds of really cool things you can do with textexpander too. For easy email correspondence, for social posts, like if you ever do live streaming, you could make a textexpander snippet for we're going live. Visit this URL to watch or listen live right now or share the show. Anything like that could be a textexpander snippet. You can make entire email templates where you change certain things in the templates. With textexpander, you can even do some of this kind of stuff with KeyBoard Maestro or Autohotkey as well. But I've used Textexpander for now, I think two decades. Textexpander is now available on Windows as well as macOS, but back when I started using Textexpander, it was only on macOS, which back then was called OS10. And that was a big thing that got me to switch from Windows to Mac because I wanted textexpander and Raycast. I'm discovering more and more cool features inside of Raycast and the ways that it can jump straight into certain things. Just for example, I can tie it into Zoom so that when I press on my Mac it would be Command Spacebar, it will automatically show my next meeting in Zoom. So I can just very quickly with my keyboard select that meeting, press Enter, and it opens that meeting in Zoom. So I'm jumping straight into my Zoom meeting or certain other things like that I can do. It can also do silly things like provide animated gifs for me or help me find emoji better or all kinds of cool stuff. There's even a domain availability checker built into Raycast and yes, it can have some AI features in it as well. But I don't use the AI features in it, but if you want to, you can. They're in there. That's not why I'm listing it because of AI, but because of everything else it does. These kinds of things are software based ways to improve your workflow by automating things and by giving you shortcuts to certain things, remembering things for you so you don't have to, or doing multiple steps so you don't have to. Number four Smart home accessories. You might think, wait a minute, we're talking about podcasting, not automating your home. Well, yeah, but many independent podcasters podcast from home and work from home maybe too. So smart home accessories can be a great podcasting workflow improvement because of different things that you can do with smart home accessories. For example, you could use a smart thermostat so you can make your H Vac quiet while you're recording. Like I do every time before I record an episode of my podcast. I turn off the thermostat, turn off the heater, the ventilation, the air conditioner, whatever's running. I suffer for the craft so it's not running in the background and being really noisy. I turn that off whenever I'm recording and and Then turn it back on afterward. I also have smart light bulbs for special effects. Like, if you ever watch some of the videos that I have, I'll have my acoustic panels behind me have LED strips in them that can change colors. Those turn on and off. And I can change their colors through my smart home devices, like my Amazon smart speaker or even some iPhone or macOS automations. I also have LIFX smart bulbs that can do things like change colors or simply turn off. And I have studio lights that are on. This other thing that I would recommend would be smart switches or outlets for even simply controlling the power to things that might otherwise not be smart. So my smart bulbs can do some really cool lighting effects or even simply turn on and off, but the smart switches can turn on and off those things that I can't reach, like a room heater or a fan or, or certain light bulbs, or turning on things. Like, I have this automation set up with my smart speaker that I just tell it, switch to podcast mode. And then what it does is it turns off all the normal light bulbs in my room, which are all smart light bulbs, but it turns all of them off. Then it turns on the smart power outlets that turn on my studio lights, which are LED light panels. And they're not smart devices. Well, they do have a remote, but the remote is a little bit cumbersome to work with. If I'm simply turning on and off each light, I don't want to have to mess with that. I just want everything switched automatically. So it turns on the studio lights, turns off the room lights, it turns on my pretty LED background behind the acoustic panels. And it can do some other automations too, like turning off the H VAC system and any kind of other heaters or fans or other appliances or anything like that. Or. Or I've heard of some people having a little code in their home where they have a smart light bulb outside of their recording space. And whenever that light bulb is red, that is their now recording indicator. So everyone knows, oh, when that light is red, let's try to be quiet. Let's keep the kids out of that room, keep the pets out, whatever. Let's not decide. This is the moment to vacuum and move furniture around. This is the moment to be quiet because someone is recording something and shouldn't be interrupted. Or. Or there shouldn't be loud noises. These are really cool things that you can do to help your podcasting workflow by using these smart home automations. And it means that you could then do this right from wherever you're sitting right when you're ready to record, instead of getting up and remembering, oh yeah, I need to go remember to turn off the heater or air conditioner. I need to turn on the studio lights, I need to close this, open that. I need to switch this over, I need to change this light color. You can just do that maybe with a button on your Elgato stream deck, Maybe you do it through your smart speaker, but switch it over. And for me, then when I say turn on the office, although most of the time the Amazon and some of the other smart speaker devices just recognize that as turning on the power to the room and the room lights, I've actually overridden that by making an automation that's triggered by those same words. So instead of simply turning on the lights, when I say turn on the office, it turns off the podcast mode. So it turns off the studio lights, it turns off the LED RGB background that I have with my acoustic panels, it turns on the normal room lights and sets them back to normal brightness and normal colors for me and turns on the H vac system and anything else like that that was turned off by the automation, it turns it back on. And then if I say turn off the office, this simply turns off the outlights. So these are some of the things that you could start thinking about with smart home automation tools. Number five, furniture. Especially think about your desk, your chair and storage, both visible storage and invisible storage. So think first about your desk. This is the thing that your podcasting gear is probably sitting on. Your computer, your keyboard, your mouse, anything that you're working with, space for you to maybe write something on, jot down notes, anything like that. This could also be the space where someone else is sitting with you. Maybe you need to upgrade what you're working with. There was for a while when I first started doing in studio co host podcasts with my clean comedy podcast and also then later the Once Upon a Time podcast. It was a bit awkward. The setup that we had initially I had to share a microphone with someone, which I never recommend doing that. And also just the if we wanted to do any kind of video streaming, just the angles weren't right and all this kind of stuff was complicated. And so I figured out a way that I could move my desk in the room. I could also modify the desk a little bit because I have one of those very old desks that was built for CRT monitors. So it's very deep, but that also means it's table size. So someone could sit on the other Side of the desk like it was a table. And then I got one of those little arms that you have for your monitors. I got one of those so I could move the monitor out of the way easily and look at my co host while we were speaking. That was cool stuff that I was able to do with my desk. You could also look at your chair. Think about how quiet is your chair. Does it make squeaking sounds every time you move around? Especially if you've got a leather chair. You might get some little awkward sounds in your podcast recording whenever you just twitch slightly and then you have to say, sorry, that was definitely the chair, believe me. Look at these things from a similar perspective of your keyboard and mouse, but in a slightly different order. First priority, I think should be the comfort. Second priority should be supportive of whatever it needs to support. So your desk needs to support all the gear that you're putting on it. So think about what kind of gear you're putting on it. And might you need to modify the desk. Might you need to drill holes through the desk, which that was really difficult for me the first time I drilled holes through my desk, but now I'm glad I did because the cables are really nice going through these different holes and certain things stick through certain places and it's much cleaner now and I like that. More about cables in a moment. But also if it's something you're sitting in your chair, it needs to be supportive of your body and your posture, not only for the sake of your health, but also your energy level. Just think about how different your energy feels when you're sitting up straight with a straight back versus when you're slouched or if you're hunched over. Your energy level is different. So make sure that your furniture supports those things. And the last point here for what you should look for in furniture is that it be quiet. You don't want your chair making sounds when you move in it. You want something quiet. So if you're looking at buying a new chair, I recommend look for something that has no hard plastic that is touching you and no leather at all. Make sure it's all fabric or mesh, something like that. Make sure it has good lumbar support. And all that other stuff you have to think about. You might even need to think about should it have armrests or not. There have been certain chairs that I've had that had armrests that always caused me to have bad posture. It was really because of the position of the armrests. So when I got a different chair Where I could adjust the position of the armrests. That improved my posture because I wasn't slouching over or hunching over in order to rest my arm on this, I. I could raise the armrest. So then that helped the rest of my posture. And the chair I have now is a quiet chair. Well, there are little parts that are kind of loose, but as long as I'm not moving too aggressively, then that part stays quiet. I also mentioned storage. Think of this not only as where you put things away, but also where you put things that you want to access and things you want to show. Maybe it's a shelf that is visible in your live stream or if you do any kind of other video, something that you want people to see because it looks really nice. Think about that storage. Maybe upgrade that to be something nicer. Something that maybe you have to move things around because of the space that you're using. So think about what's more movable. Maybe if you have a live streaming station that you need to move your computer or screen or different things around, look at something that can be on wheels so you can just move it around like that or One of the really cool investments I got for my original remote office before I brought my office back in the home is some light stands that drill into the wall or ceiling. So it made it really easy for me to position the lights exactly where I needed them to be and move them out of the way and easily move them back to where I needed them to be without messing with cables and light stands on the floor. Storage might also be where you're putting things away. Make sure that you're making good use of your storage. That stuff is staying dry and the right temperature and all of that stuff. And you're not just throwing things in the closet, but you've got good storage management there that can be really good for your podcast, especially whenever you need to try and find something. It's so much easier when things are organized. And if ever someone comes over to look at your space, you want it to look nice too. And speaking of looking nice, number six Cable management. This could be zip ties. This could be cable tracks or rails or even stapling or gluing things down. Try to keep your cables in the same places looking nice so you don't have all of these loose cables around. Tie up the loose ends, maybe even invest in shorter cables or longer cables, depending on what you need. You could even look at things like angled cables or angled connectors. Like maybe it's a 90 degree connector. So instead of something sticking straight out of the back of your microphone for your XLR cable, Maybe it's a 90 degree connector so it points up, so that saves a couple of inches from behind your microphone. Or it could be the same thing with USB cables or other kinds of data cables or power cables and such. Consider your cable management. Keep this in mind though. As much as possible, keep your power cables away from your audio cables. Data cables, I think are mostly insulated, so you don't have to worry about them being around either audio or power cables. But your audio cables are not as well insulated unless you buy really expensive ones, especially from the kind of interference that can happen from power. I don't mean power like just the USB C cable that's powering some little device, but I mean the power that's coming from the wall or from a power adapter of some kind where there are a lot of volts and amps going through that line that can sometimes cause some little interference in your recording that sounds kind of like constant mice squeaking in the background. So keep your audio cables separate from your power cables and keep these things looking nice as much as possible. And it can be a thing of beauty when you have your cables managed really well. It's wonderful. It can look so much cleaner. And for many people, maybe it's not this way for you, but for many people a cleaner space is a less distracting space. I know some people, I don't know what type letter it is, but some people can get really distracted being around any level of clutter. Even if you're not that type of person, I would still suspect that it's a little bit easier for you to focus on things if you're in a cleaner space. I'm not saying you can't have your little memorabilia around. Like if you've got podcast awards or fun little things that your audience sent, you definitely have those things sitting out on some nice storage, perhaps like I mentioned in number five, but have these things orderly so they look nice to you. If you do any kind of video work, they look nice in the video and their positions are not in the way of anything that you're working with. So these six categories of things that I recommend as unexpected upgrades for your podcasting workflow Number one a computer keyboard and mouse Number two a control interface Number three automation and shortcut tools Number four smart home accessories Number five furniture and number six cable management. I've got a few links to some suggestions under each of these things. If you're looking for certain things to solve some of these problems, like the mouse that I use and the stream deck and some of these other apps and tools and software and such. So you can check those out in the notes over@theaudacity2podcast.com Unexpected upgrades I am going to PodFest in Orlando and I'd love to see you there. And when this episode is publishing, maybe you're even listening to this on your way to PodFest. So if you hear this before seeing me at PodFest, come to me and let's record a little answer, because I want to ask you what kinds of unexpected upgrades you found for your own podcasting workflow. It can't be the normal podcasting kind of thing, like no microphones, mixers, podcast hosting, anything like that. Something that you wouldn't think of as a podcasting tool, but when you upgraded it or maybe you purchased a new kind of kind of tool, it really helped you in your podcasting workflow. So find me at PodFest so I can record that answer from you. Or you can send your answer in to me@podcastfeedback.com Audacity now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J. Lewis from the audacitytopodcast.com thanks for listening There.