You know, past couple of weeks, I have put together 2 podcasts, to a much higher standard than I think I've ever been able to do before. I don't know. I've not done a podcast before, but what I'm talking about is I've got equipment, but I have not invested in like a really good microphone or a really good camera yet. I've got my laptop. I've got my phone.

I've got this wired in headset that I'm talking through. And the quality coming from those things alone is amazing. Like, it rivals production quality stuff from a decade ago, Maybe even less than that, which means like this I I know it's been happening, and I know this is super obvious. And but it just kind of dawned on me more than ever because I think I'm now starting to get involved in doing these things. Like, how good it is if you've got something that you want to tell people that you can create content with these tools that's of a really high caliber with no real extra cost.

I mean, obviously, these are expensive. You know? I've got a MacBook and an iPhone. Those are expensive. Even cheaper alternatives are still expensive.

So I'm not saying you're not gonna have to shell out something, but the likelihood is that you already have those kinds of things. And then you'd you basically at this like, there's a level playing field now in terms of quality of what people can produce. The other thing that's helped is tools. So, kit is one thing, but the tools that are available are amazing now too. So for the podcast, I've got transistor FM, which I'm hosting the Think Group.

Just to be clear, the they're not sponsoring me in any way. I pay them to use this service, but, you know, these are the this is what I'm talking about, but it's minimal. So there's transistor f f m, which hosts the the audio files and the the podcast feed and helps me push it out to all of the different podcasting platforms. That's just too easy to use. Like, it's ridiculously easy.

A few years ago, you would have had to manually handle publishing your podcast out into all sorts of places. Now now you just like few clicks. You might have to jump over to one service to just, like, set something up. Once it's all done, it's it's like it's going out and it's everywhere, and it's amazing. And then you've got YouTube.

You know? Like, I can host 4 k video for free. That's that's crazy. But, I'm using a platform called Riverside, which is letting me do interviews with people and and set up the video in a really nice way. And that's, like, good enough on its own to just, like, record video and do some basic layout edits and and things.

But then if I export that video, I can use something like DaVinci Resolve, which for my users is completely free, which is it's nuts. DaVinci Resolve is an incredible piece of video editing software, and I've been able to, like, clean up the audio using free tools, splice bits of other video in from things like Canva. So because Canva's got like a video catalog, which is amazing as well. So I can just get bits of video, royalty free video and audio as well, Take that into, DaVinci and then splice these bits of video together really well like, with audio ducking and you know? What?

It's just nuts what you can do, and it's just so easy. I mean, there's a bit of a learning curve to some of the tools like DaVinci's quirky, but once you get used to it it's amazing. I think I've said amazing a lot. The only thing that's left with all of these tools being so readily available, and they really are readily available. I know, like, not everybody can afford to pay for all of these subscriptions and things, but, generally, these things are readily available.

The only thing that's missing then is your time and effort to make something. And it does take a lot of time, and it does take a lot of effort, especially if you wanna do something good, high quality. But I tell you what, I am enjoying it. And even if I don't get anything else out of the experience, which I'm sure won't be the case, but if it leads to nothing else, I've really enjoyed the process of kind of using these tools, hooking things together, coming up with a process for how I'm gonna produce these things, and seeing it all just work. It's really nice.

And that is this kind of thing that I strive for in building solutions, across, like, clients and my own products. It's great when it just works. But to get to that, take some time. You know, podcasts have been around for a while. I remember messing around with podcasts probably 12, 13 years ago.

It's only in the last few years that they've really taken off, and I think that's exactly because it's so much easier now because of the technology that's available to produce something of really high quality. And that takes effort. You know? The fact that it's taken that long to get to this point. So the lesson is don't spend loads of money.

There's many lessons. Don't spend loads of money on new kit. Try and use what you've got. Get something going. Refine it over time because in a few years or a few months or whatever, it will get there.

It will be better if you keep on putting in the time and the effort. That's it. Bye.