The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
welcome to scaling up the podcast where
we scale up on our knowledge so we don’t
scale up our systems i’m trace blackmore
the host of the scaling up h2o podcast
welcome to the show folks i want to
start straight
out with something that everybody seems
to love everybody’s getting behind it
they’re stretching their minds they’re
they’re doing something different each
and every week
well of course i’m talking about james’s
challenge
so here is another installment of
james’s
challenge
[Music]
hello scaling up nation it’s time for
another james’s challenge to help you
grow as an industrial water treatment
professional
drop by drop james’s challenge is
[Music]
leave the customer’s lab space or work
area cleaner than you found it
you don’t want to be that person the
customer dreads when they see you coming
in
because you leave their area a mess many
people take pride in an orderly and
clean space
and if you are someone they always have
to clean up after well
i think you know that’s not a good thing
i was taught early on that i should
always leave the customer’s work area
cleaner than i found it
that has stuck with me throughout my
career it doesn’t take much time or
effort
be sure to share your experience on
linkedin by tagging it with hashtag
jc21 and hashtag scalinguph2o
this is james mcdonald and i look
forward to seeing what you share
well nation today’s episode is going to
be
very different than what we have
ever done before in fact
when we did our episode planning i was
really shocked that we had so many
scaling
up listeners that wanted to know how do
we create
the scaling up h2o podcast
i didn’t think it was that interesting
but apparently the nation
you want to know about
what are all the behind the scenes
things
that we need to do to put on this
fantastic podcast well let me tell you
they have changed tremendously from
where it was on the very first episode
to where we are right now and
what i’m talking about specifically is
it’s not just me doing it when i first
had this idea to do it
i researched what i could and i found
the tools that i could use and i
started doing this podcast by myself and
i did that for a
a good amount of time but i also know
that there is no limit to what you
can create if you have a strong
team behind you and that’s what you’re
going to hear today you’re going to hear
what we do to get a show to you
what you are used to each and every
friday you’re going to hear what
we do from the team members of the
scaling
up h2o team scaling up nation i have not
one
but two lab partners today yes that’s
double
the value for your listening pleasure
i have the people that are behind
the show behind the scaling up h2o
podcast
all i do is talk these people make the
show
actually worth listening to i can’t do
that on my own
obviously so my lab partners today are
lauren
vonfeldt and sean dooley how are you
guys
doing great thanks for having us great
happy to be here
so uh lauren let’s start off with you
you and i did an episode before you and
i have been working together you helped
me keep
everything organized including the
podcast
and you’ve helped several people in the
scaling up nation
with your virtual assistant placement
service
but if case the scaling up nation didn’t
catch that episode
what do you want to tell the scaling up
nation about yourself
well a couple years ago i got a call
from a guy that needed help
with his admin assistant kind of work
and that was trace and little did i know
it was going to be
a lot of stuff helping with the podcast
which
has been really fun and exciting and i
love how creative you are and that i get
to help you with all that stuff
but also i do project management
and all sorts of other kind of
administrative tasks
so that has all grown so much since you
and i started working together
i get to help lots of business owners
and executives help them with
all of their administrative tasks and
just make them
look good so yeah that’s kind of where
how i come into this
well sean where do you want to start
with that i am
an audio engineer and podcast producer i
got introduced to
scaling up when trace contacted me
looking for an editor for a show
and have been working with him for
several years now
sean i don’t know if i ever told you
this but i was interviewing several
people
to help me edit the podcast you were
actually my third editor that i had i
had
not excellent experiences with the other
two
and uh again i was interviewing some
other people
and and you just knocked it out of the
park you said
uh any chance we can get on a video call
and we can we can talk through this
nobody else offered that
and then as we did that you were
checking out my equipment
and you were having me make adjustments
on that call
that was so awesome yeah i i know a lot
of it can be
overwhelming for people when they first
get started on it there’s just so many
moving parts when it comes to making a
podcast
and if someone doesn’t have the
technical knowledge
it just seems like there’s just so many
things to
tweak and try to get perfect and
it’s something that i’ve been studying
for a long time and i’ve just you know
been in the trenches dealt with so many
situations and it’s just
it’s kind of fun for me to kind of help
people get
the most out of what they have well
you’ve definitely helped the audio
quality of this show you made things a
lot easier for me
on my end you know i’m really surprised
that so many people
are interested in how we get a show
to the finalized state to something that
they can listen to
and enjoy so i’m really excited about
this the scale up nation has
asked for it so we’re going to go
through what we do
from beginning to end to get a scaling
up h2o show
out to the nation so uh lauren what’s
our first step
well it’s usually i get an email from
trace saying i have this awesome guest
can you reach out to them so i i just
love that i love your enthusiasm
for the people that you meet you’re
constantly looking around
thinking so people better watch out
because they could be the next guest on
the show
but you make it such an easy process so
i would say that you tell me who you
want to interview
and i shoot them a quick email and just
say here is a scheduling link
we’d love to have you on the show fill
this out and give us some more of your
information let us know what you might
like to talk about
what are you an expertise in give us
your headshot
your bio some information about you and
we’ll set up a time to record so
and also through that process we’re
constantly planning
you guys do a great job of finding
what are the industry related events
that are going
on throughout the year and sometimes
we’ll
not interview a guest today we might
wait for another month because that’s
going to coincide
better with the industry related event
that’s going on so
i want to thank you for that great job
because i don’t have to go to 40
websites i just go to the spreadsheet
that you make
yeah we really try to keep a pulse on
what’s going on
throughout the industry and so finding
out
what events are going on if people are
having a call for papers
or just any sort of news or events that
are going on that we would be able to be
your one-stop shop to share that with
you and to give you that information so
once we get the guests
invited and we have different types of
shows we have
shows that have guests and then
sometimes i’m the only person on the
show and typically we’re answering
questions from the
audience people are curious how do we
get those questions what do we do with
those questions
so can you answer that yeah so we have a
spot on our website
where people can submit questions
sometimes we get
them via email they’re sent straight to
trace
and we file those away and have a big
spreadsheet in place that we keep
all of those so that when we’re planning
out the calendar
we know where to fill those in so we try
to do an episode with the guest
and then the next one would be an
episode where trace is answering your
questions
and sometimes it’s a fun episode like we
did about
legionella where we can ask some experts
and invite people from the field on to
help answer those questions
but we’re really trying to research and
get the best answers
for you guys as possible you brought up
legionella
and that was something that came up
during
i guess q2 or q3 strategy meeting that
we had
and we were talking about all the events
that were being cancelled because of
covid19
and and you had the idea well hey what
if since we can’t have
that event in august what if we
do a legionella month and i can’t say
celebrate legionella but at least make
people more
aware of legionella and i’ve gotten so
much feedback
of how people have learned how they’ve
enjoyed that
and and that all came from a
brainstorming session so that was
awesome
yeah i think one of the best things that
we do is
uh meeting together to kind of put our
heads together what
what can we do to really help the
scaling up nation
and collaborate more instead of just
working by ourselves and placing
episodes on the air
you know once we figure out what shows
we’re going to record
then we go into fact-finding mode
and i know you’re finding items that
maybe the guest has
written posts that they’ve done if it’s
a pinks and blues episode where i’m
answering questions normally i’m now
researching those questions to make sure
that i might know how to answer it my
own way
but is there a better way to answer
those questions so
i’m not sure people realize how much
research we do for the shows
yeah for sure and we’re out you know on
social media with
our guests trying to learn more about
them and
what they’re putting out there and just
really trying to find the best
information that we can
to you know pack the show full of
good helpful teachable information for
people
when we get the guests booked we
normally
invite them to a service we use and
tell the audience a little bit about
that process so i use a thing called
acuity to book
their meeting so it’s a great free
booking tool
i get an email once the guest has booked
their time
and from there i create a calendar
invite
and traces outlook calendar and
using that tool i plug in a zencaster
link
and zencaster is a great way that we’re
able to record
every episode and i believe because it
natively records
uh on each computer so that we get the
best audio quality so it doesn’t sound
like we’re talking through zoom or
whatever um but i share that link with
them
we also like to share a tutorial video
with them if they’re not familiar with
the tool
so they can go watch a short video on
how to
best use that tool so they feel prepared
and then
trey starts writing some interview
questions for them that we also attach
and share in that calendar invite so
they have everything they need
to show up on that day and hop on
zencaster and record with trace
now some people that we’ve invited on
the show they
get a little stressed out oh my gosh i’m
coming on the show
should they be stressed out what do you
think about that how do we help that
absolutely not i mean i’ve been there
i’m not a public speaker i don’t like
doing that kind of stuff and so i was a
little nervous and hesitant but
i knew it was gonna be a good thing and
i believe in what trace does and so
trace just has a really great way of
making you feel comfortable
not afraid making it really fun and at
the end of the day you’re the expert
we’re inviting you on here because you
know
you know your stuff in and out whatever
you’re talking about
so i think that’s a helpful tip and then
uh the great thing with
zencaster is that we’re just recording
and we can
pause and let you take a break we can
let you resay something and then with
sean
our editor he’s so good at um just
making it sound seamless like a seamless
conversation
that you’re having with trace yeah and
sean you are a magician you make me
sound good
thank you i mean it’s not not much work
to make that happen
well i’m not going to bring you into the
conversation and thank you for that
i know we’ve come a long way together
with that process
and speaking of that i’m going to talk
about recording now
but you know you and i have come up with
a way to
cue each other so you can edit more
quickly
because i can i can say certain things
that you can look for
so we’ve got a lot to talk about in our
process so once
once we get all of those things
scheduled we do all the
the back room work now it’s time to
record the interview and uh so that
that’s my job
and i have a spreadsheet or a task list
that i use to make sure i don’t forget
anything
and audience i’m i’m kind of embarrassed
to tell you this but one of the things
on there is use the bathroom
and i get busy doing things and you
might not have to go to the bathroom at
the beginning of an interview but at the
end of an hour
that might change and that’s not good to
do
on a podcast so i just thought i would
share that with
the audience i always do the podcast
from a standing position i find
that i just do a better job of thinking
on my
feet rather than not on my feet so i
always
raise my desk shawn tells me the exact
settings that my microphone needs to be
at so i make sure that it’s in the right
position
there’s a pop filter that i use sean how
would you explain a pop filter
a puff filter is usually uh some sort of
thin membrane that goes over the
microphone to kind of block
any powerful airwaves from
hitting the microphone directly so you
won’t hear the you know that
popping kind of booming sound that a lot
of peas and
bees cause that are plosives and you
taught me that word when we first
started working together i
had no idea what a plosive was but
that’s what that is so
so now the scaling up nation has learned
along with me
so um i do some sound checks i’ve got
some software
that i pull up on my computer so in
addition to recording on zencaster
i also record a separate file for
my voice so that way what you hear in
the intro and outro
is consistent with uh what you hear
in the interview and i didn’t know to do
that that was one of your
recommendations sean
yeah that’s something that i kind of
figured as i was going along
i just wasn’t happy with a lot of the
sound quality that
you know these programs where you’re
recording online it always compresses it
and always they could be little glitches
and stuff i always try to eliminate that
as much as possible so
recording direct from the source and
then i take that and i just
put that in with the guest audio and it
just
ends up being seamless yeah so
essentially you now get two files
with me speaking have you ever had to
use one or both files at the same time
no i don’t think i have i think the way
that we’ve set it up
with you recording directly that is
always just
the the best sounding audio in there i i
can’t think of any times where
that’s failed or anything and we’ve had
to use the other one but that’s a great
thing about it too
is if one of those methods of recording
fails i always have
another one as a backup so again
i didn’t know these things when i
started the show four years ago
we’ve come so far in in the quality
and the efficiency really of this show
so we record the guests you know
something sean
also you taught me was before we start
recording
you always want me to do a minute of
silence
uh now the the audience never hears that
you
you do something with it what is it you
do yeah so
once trace sends me the audio i take
those files
and i uh run them through a few programs
that i have
and what i’ll do is i’ll take that one
minute of silence that he sends me which
is room tone
which a lot of the time is
whatever is going on in the background
all these kind of
subtle sounds that people have all
around them
all the time but they don’t really
notice it’s the air conditioning it’s
the fan from your laptop it’s just
whatever the ambience of the room is and
this
sound that just the microphone itself
makes so i take that
and what i basically do is subtract that
from
the rest of the audio so it eliminates a
lot of
the background noise and just gives you
just their voice
clearly so then i course come in i
introduce the
the guests uh we start the interview and
as lauren mentioned
you know again if if the person feels
that they didn’t say that in the best
way i don’t know why people do live
shows i don’t know why they put that
pressure on themselves
we just re-record it so that way they
get the best information they can
to the audience and when we do
something like that sean i talk to you
like you’re right here
sitting beside me i’m curious when you
actually listen to that
what do you what do you think about that
well i kind of feel the same way too
it’s like i’ll be sitting there editing
it and i’m here in my studio
and i’m playing it back and you’ll you
know be talking to me
like okay sean you know take this out or
this is a
little note for you sean and a lot of
times in my mind i’m kind of almost
responding to you i’m like okay trace
gotcha you know and i just started
taking all that stuff out and so yeah
it’s basically like i’m sitting in
in the room with you yet we’re separated
by you know days of when you actually
recorded it
so i’ve started prepping my guests for
that
because i didn’t tell them that i talked
to this third person that they’re never
going to see and is not listed
on the uh on the program and somebody
stopped me like who’s this sean guy
okay i better i better tell somebody i
better tell the guest
who sean is and why i’m talking to him
yeah and i think that helps with the
guests too to kind of
set their mind at ease where it kind of
takes the the pressure off of them
because they know that
if they you know start saying something
and they flub a line like
that’s okay because we can just start it
over again
and i’ll splice it all together to make
it seem like it never happened
yeah you do an excellent job with that i
remember i
mispronounced something that was
technical
i think i said phosphate and i meant to
say
phosphonate and i called you
and and you said no problem and
you didn’t have me record anything new
you just had it so i
said that how did you do that yeah i
remember that
i had to remember that earlier in the
episode you had
used the correct term phosphonate so
what i did is i went back
and i copied you saying it earlier
and i slid that in where the other word
was
and luckily the intonation was similar
enough
where it wasn’t noticeable lauren and i
both listened to it and it was
as if i actually said what you
did on the final edit i was amazed a
matter of fact i think you can take
words and you can record an
entire episode without me even doing
anything it is i
i probably do have enough audio view
where i can
make you say anything pretty much that
that that’s intriguing and very scary at
the same time
it can be but that’s the future you know
so soon you won’t even need trace black
more for this show
hopefully that day won’t come because i
really enjoy working here
so then after we finish recording
we then send the files that
we’ve recorded to you
and now i have no idea what you do
after that so can you let the scaling up
nation know
what you do when you receive all the
audio files
yeah so what i usually do is i take you
know the raw audio when i process it i
take out any little mouth noises
and the background noise and stuff like
that and then i load it up into
the program that i use is called reaper
that i use for all my editing
and i’ve developed a lot of shortcuts
with that program where i just hit one
key and does you know
chop up the files and then delete the
parts i don’t want and slide it together
and kind of
combine everything to make it go
seamlessly
and i’ve also created these templates
that has you know the music and our ads
and tracks for everything so you know i
just take your
your intro and your outro and i slide
that into the appropriate track
and then i take the main part of it i
take
your voice i slide that on that
corresponding track your your guess
audio i slide that in there and then
chop it up tweak
the eq settings a bit try to get it as
clean and as
try to bring out the best of each
person’s voice in there and then i
just export it and then send it off to
lauren
and then she sends it to me and uh
i i get the privilege of doing final
approval
so i listen to it uh i normally listen
to it with headphones so i can hear
everything
and occasionally i’ll find something
like the the phosphonate phosphate issue
so then i i contact you and i say sean i
made this mistake
can you fix it you kind of told us how
we how you fixed
that but but i’m curious do you have to
redo the entire file
what’s that process like no what i use
is it’s called non-destructive editing
so
i have everything just set up in there
and all i got to do is just
go in there and make whatever changes i
need kind of drag everything back
together
and then re-export it and then send it
to you guys for
approval again and then it’s it’s good
to go so
it really takes no time at all to make
changes like that
so glad i have you guys on my team we’re
glad to be here
so you send that back to us we approve
it
and then lauren that goes back to you
yeah so it’s back to me i upload
the new file into our final folder so
that way we know that there’s
this is the good to go ready final
episode
and from there then we work on
listening to the entire episode we get
out those
time stamps for you all of those cues
and everything that
have come throughout the episode so that
way if you need to be able to
find something really quickly from the
episode we have that all written out for
you
and then we write show notes so
trace used to write those but as you all
know he’s very busy and so
since we’ve listened to the whole
episode and we kind of know
um what trace how he kind of thinks and
so we get to write out some show notes
for the episode that will kind of give
you an overview
we include the person’s bio and kind of
talk about who the guest
is and then we pull out some key quotes
that might be helpful for you because we
use those as we promote the episode
and then we also find all the links that
you need so anything
that trace has mentioned we want to make
sure that you have a quick easy way
to navigate to those pages and then from
there we just send it to trace for
approval on the show notes yeah and
lauren i i think i shared this with you
but i get so much feedback
that you know people are driving they
can’t take notes but they’re okay with
that because
they know where to go to get that if if
we mention a book
if we mention a white paper or anything
they know without a doubt that they’re
going to have an easy way to find that
yeah absolutely and every episode
there’s an easy link
for it so if you know the episode number
you can get to
the webpage that’s gonna have all that
information for you so it’s always
scalinguph2o.com whatever the episode
number is so that’s always really easy
we use
a plug-in called pretty links on
wordpress because that’s where our
site is hosted so that is a really
helpful tool to be able to get you guys
to navigate to any page
that you need yeah otherwise the the
urls are like 10 feet long
a mess yeah not helpful at all and very
hard to
quote on the air yes yeah that’s other
thing
we want to make it as simple as possible
for trace to share
whatever that is for you so now that we
have
uh this perfect wonderful episode the
next part of the process is how do we
get it out to you guys
so we use a service called libsyn where
we upload the episode
and that distributes it to all of the
major
podcast platforms so if you download our
episode if you
have it you know saved to your library
it’s gonna put the new episode in there
for you
but we also come up with a marketing
plan for every episode and so we create
social media graphics
and then we always post to linkedin
articles
we post to the water network we have a
few different places
that we try to reach out to and post
about that episode when it releases
so it’s getting into the hands of all of
you guys
i think it was about a year ago sean
brought an idea to us
called an audiogram so
what is that and uh how do we do it yeah
so audiograms are something that i
started using
on some other shows and they just seemed
like this cool kind of
tool to not only promote the show but to
kind of highlight
some of the best parts of the show and
so what i normally do is as i’m
listening to the show
i will make a note being like that’s a
good little clip or that’s a good little
clip
and then once i’m done editing i’ll go
back and listen to each of them
and try to find the best one minute
clip of the show that best summarizes
what what the show was about
and so i’ll i will take that and i will
pass that along to lauren
where she works her magic and creates
the
actual audiogram itself which is kind of
a
video representation of that
one minute clip of audio that i pulled
from the show yeah we use an
app called headliner where we upload
that sound clip that sean gives us and
put a graphic behind it and it actually
gives you all the words so that way
like if you don’t have your sound on
when you’re on your computer and you’re
scrolling through
linkedin and that pops up it gives you
the text and so you’re able to
watch that and get a one minute
clip of what the whole episode is about
so it’s a great tool to kind of draw
people in and
help them kind of know what what to
expect what the show is going to be
about
and to hear you know straight from it’s
either trace or the guest
something like that but it’s a good
promotional tool for
anything that you record and i think
that’s a great example of how
we as a team are working together to
figure out okay what can we do better
how can we bring
more information easier information to
the audience
so they know about the next episode yeah
trace and
that’s one thing that i i really like
what you bring to the show in that you
are always
open for everyone else’s ideas on on how
we can make the show better
so when i’m out there and if i’m working
on
a different show or if i’m scrolling
through social media and i see something
that stands out to me
that i think would help us promote the
show or
get the message across or reach out to
you know the members of the scaling of
nation
i bring it to you when you’re like well
yeah let’s let’s try that out let’s
see how that goes you know and every
time that i brought an idea like that to
you
you’ve always just been so open about it
and because you just want to make this
the best show that it can be
absolutely i do and i appreciate all the
ideas that we come up with
another thing i’ll add i didn’t i didn’t
think about this until now
is we as a team get together monthly
just to talk about how things are going
and if there are any of those new ideas
out there
yeah we get together and we just kind of
brainstorm and just
throw ideas out there and you know
sometimes one of us will just have a
kernel of an idea and the rest of us
will kind of
expand on that and see how we can make
it
so it works best for for this show the
only other thing i was thinking is
for something we’ve improved on is
giving the guests
tools to be able to promote their
episodes so
giving a plug you know for if you come
on this you have something to
give out to your audience to help
them know more about what you do and i
have to say
i’m always humbled at how proud people
are
to to come on this show i think it’s an
honor to have guests on the show
but for them to really be proud of the
product that the three of us are
producing
and and then post it on their social
media call their friends
tell them that they’re going to be on a
scaling up episode
in two weeks or whenever it is uh i i
just i’m just so delighted by that yeah
i love that we
have the chance to help any of our
guests with their businesses help them
grow help
them find more clients or whatever it is
but
we’re able to send them some social
media graphics or whatever we always
send a follow-up email and just say hey
your
episode’s releasing this week here’s
some tools and ideas for sharing this
with your audience
so that that way you can you know
hopefully get in front of some new
people
you know something that came out uh in
addition to the things that we’ve
already talked about
in one of the brainstorming sessions was
the very last episode we did
last year and the idea was what if we do
a
best of episode so um
i’m i’m kind of curious how did we
figure out what was the best
of last year well we kind of went back
and forth because we were like what
should we do which one should we pick
we were like well instead of us deciding
let’s look at what
everybody else liked so we looked at the
stats of what were the top
most listened to downloaded episodes
the best feedback we got and
that’s how we kind of came up with those
top five episodes
and then sean was able to take it from
there so sean i’m curious
so now all i did was record the
introduction
and the ending of the show so you have
already made shows how did you take
those already made shows
and lump them into a brand new show what
i did is i basically just
queued up each one of those episodes
that lauren had told me you know were
the most popular episodes and i listened
to them and i just you know kind of just
skimmed through them and just you know
try to find the best
clip in each one of those that i thought
not only best represented the show but
combined kind of told the story of
what had happened on the show throughout
that
past year i found some clips you know
that were like a minute long but then i
found you know these
great in-depth conversations that you
had with people you know
and took a ten minute clip of that and
then just try to find
a great balance between technical
knowledge
and how you always bring these kind of
productivity tools and stuff to the show
to try to help
the listeners kind of be better at their
at their job and in their personal life
sometimes
and just try to find the best
group of clips that encapsulated what
2020 was for for scaling up
well i don’t mind telling you i was a
little nervous at that idea
but the fact that i had you guys behind
me that made me feel a lot better
but i was really worried people are
going to say oh come on trace give us a
new show that’s just recycling an
old show but the opposite is what
happened we’ve gotten some great
feedback on that people told me they’ve
gone back and listened to those episodes
again
so it was a great idea yeah and i think
a lot of the
value that this show brings is you can
sit down and you can listen to each
episode as it comes out each week but
sometimes there’s just so so much depth
and so much detail and so much
technical knowledge that comes from the
show that it lends itself to
repeat listens where each time you you
listen to those episodes you end up
getting more and more out of it
i agree and i think that if there’s any
topic that somebody wants to know about
all they have to do is go to our site
and search
and they can find some really helpful
information
they maybe find a guest that’s an expert
in that and they can learn more than
from going to that guest’s website or
whatever
it’s just such a great resource to find
exactly what you’re looking for or
listen
week to week and hear new stuff that’s
going on
yeah and lauren to that end you do a
great job with keywords
and metadata and things i know nothing
about
but you put those in the episode to make
them very
easily searchable and i’ve i’ve heard
from several people that they were
looking for some sort of technical
document
and the first thing that came up on
where to find it was scaling up h2o
yeah i think that’s pretty cool that
we’re a trusted resource
if you’re you’re looking for something
and trace you make it so practical and
easy to use
but we do some research on keywords and
what are people searching and what are
people looking for
when it comes to a certain topic so
instead of just
putting a guest name on each episode
trying to figure out what’s the guest
talking about what would people be
searching and looking for
and then we kind of include all of that
so that it’s easy for anybody to find
that’s in this industry well you both
have
listened to every single one of our
episodes multiple times
i’m curious can i just give you a test
kit and you guys can go out and test
water now
sure i kind of feel like i know
more about water treatment than i
probably should from somebody who’s just
a civilian
in that field but it’s like i find
myself as i’m editing this show i’m kind
of
anticipating like i’ll be listening to
you talking about a topic and i know
you know it’s like i’m almost finishing
your senses because i
have been submersed in this this this
field for
for years now you know like every like
every week listening to the show and
going through it and
i i feel like i’m like you know like an
honorary water treater now you know
i love that that’s awesome well sean
lauren this
this has been a lot of fun i i’ve
learned some things i don’t think i
fully
understood on some of the things that
you do behind the scenes and i know the
scaling up nation
is finally getting that question
answered what are all the steps that has
to happen
in order to get the product that they
listen to
each and every friday well just like
every episode
i ask lightning round questions and i
know you guys have listened to every
single episode
you’ve heard me ask those questions to
all the guests you know how the guests
have answered those so i’m going to mix
it up a little bit
with you so these are brand new never
before
taken out of the bag questions for the
lightning round you guys ready
yes i am ready all right so
first question what is the most
difficult
item about producing the show i would
say
for me it’s understanding all the
technical stuff when there’s episodes
with a ton of math
or any of those items
trying to understand that which it’s
awesome and so interesting i think but
uh trying to understand that so that i
can write about it and promote it
and know how to speak to people who
understand and deal with this every day
to know how to talk about it with them
yeah i would say for me probably the
most difficult item and this
very rarely happens but i know that
now um just due to the nature of the
show and because everybody’s you know
in lockdown now because of covet and
everything where all of the
interviews have to be done remotely and
a lot of the times you know not
everybody has the best internet
connection or has you know the best
microphone
or whatever that sometimes it takes a
little more massaging than usual to get
the guest
audio to be as great as it can possibly
be but we’ve never really had an
issue where you know anybody’s audio was
unusable it’s just
sometimes just takes a little bit more
work to get everything up to the
standard that we’re used to for the show
what do you think is the most improved
item
since we started the show which has been
about four years ago
i think we just continually refine and
improve our process
using better tools and just cleaning
things up and
using the planner to keep everything
organized
now that we have so many hands in it
we just have to have the best cleanest
process and so
i think we’re constantly figuring out
how to make that better
just so that all the handoffs are
seamless as it goes from person to
person to make sure that we’ve got
everything the way it should be
for me i think the most improved again
would just be the
the sound quality that we have trace has
been able to upgrade his equipment you
know he has this
high quality broadcast microphone that
just makes it so much
easier to get an amazing sound out of
the equipment that he uses and we’ve
have just
refined and tweaked all of our little
processes to get
the highest quality sound that we can
for the show
now this next one i normally don’t get
nervous about asking guests lightning
round questions
but i’m a little nervous about this one
so what is something
you don’t think the audience knows about
me
um i would say that
trace has an actual other full-time job
and he does scaling up on top of
everything
so i just am continually impressed at
all that you’re able to do and juggle
and
just how much work you put into this and
how much you care about
the water treatment industry and
developing everybody and making
everybody
better just you put so much effort into
the show and you do it all
on top of uh running your business and
doing all the other stuff that you do so
we usually work
probably is two days a week of actual
work that you’re putting in on top of
the rest of your job and truth be known
i could not do that without the both of
you
thank you thank you i would say for me
the most surprising thing would probably
be that trace is the exact same person
that you hear on the show that that he
is in in real life
i mean he’s one of the nicest guys that
i know
and i i know that that he created the
show
in order to kind of share not only his
knowledge but the knowledge of all the
people that
that he knows with the audience and
that person that you hear on the show is
exactly who traces
in in real life my next question
do you have a favorite episode yeah i do
i think my favorite one that we’ve done
was probably
uh the one that we spoke about earlier
which was the last episode
of 2020. normally trace will just send
me his interviews and i
edit that for what that is but
that episode it allowed me to kind of
have some creativity and also just to go
back through
the previous year’s episode and kind of
revisit a lot of
my favorite moments in the show and then
assemble that
as something that i thought can be as
entertaining as possible for the
listeners
um for me my favorite episode was the
jeff henderson episode 115
where we talked about marketing and just
i felt like i learned so much that i was
able to even
apply in my own business and all that i
do
um i thought that was very helpful and i
just love that trace is able to bring
all different types of guests on that
have all different experts and help
really holistically help you with all
areas
of life and not just in the technical
stuff
so my last question you now have an open
mic
a direct line to the scaling up nation
what do you want to tell them i would
say
since we worked so hard to make this the
best and it’s such a collaborative
effort
between everybody and all of our guests
i would just ask you guys to share
and tell your friends tell one person
about the show that may not know about
it
and share it on your social media
platforms when you get a chance
and leave comments for us and give us
feedback
and let us know because we just our
heart is really to make this the best
thing
possible for the water treatment
industry
i would certainly like to reiterate what
lauren said of yeah just
helping get the word out about the show
and i also just wanted to
thank the audience because i know how
involved they can be and how much the
audience cares about the show and how
the feedback they give trace and the
questions that they send him and
i just really appreciate everything that
the audience does for the show
well i want to thank you both for coming
on this episode of course you’re part of
every episode but i think now the
scaling up nation
realizes that you know it’s not just me
it’s a team
there’s a lot of things that have to
happen in order to get the final product
that they
get to listen to and i just want to
thank you both for making that final
product
so awesome thank you trace thank you
nation i have to tell you that was a fun
interview i can’t tell you
how high i hold those two individuals in
regard
they they are amazing the the podcast
is is this living entity uh it’s not
something that’s that’s just mine
uh it’s something that i created
originally but the the two individuals
you just heard from
help me take that idea and we’re
continuously
figuring out what the next level is
and the exciting thing is they
are just as proud of it as i am and
and as being the creator of it that is
incredibly awesome
i will tell you that there’s probably a
point in my life not with the podcast
but earlier than that that if
if i had something i had to be the
person that did
everything with it otherwise it wasn’t
mine and i realized
one i wasn’t going to get as far as i
could get if i had help
and two that was a really selfish
attitude because you could hear
how passionate sean and lauren
were as they were talking about this
show
so so who am i to keep all of that to
myself so
the next time that you’re thinking about
a big project
you’re thinking about something think
about how you could get that
accomplished even better even bigger if
you
had people to help you and again i
could not have better people on my team
and a couple of shout outs to the people
on my team
so lauren congratulations uh she’s
expecting
her second child and shawn
is uh getting ready to do an endeavor to
come out with
his own podcast super proud of him
with that and and i have to tell you i
always
i always laugh when i do my recordings
and i think everybody knows especially
after this show
that i don’t do live recordings i record
them
occasionally you get tongue tied
sometimes you even hear those on the
show because they’re just funny and we
want to put them on
there but i will have conversations with
sean as i’m speaking and
i remember on one of my guests i just
started having this conversation with
sean
and i didn’t tell the guest that who
shawn was
and they thought i was absolutely nuts
and i took time out after we were asking
questions and i said well is there is
there anything else you want to talk
about
and and she kind of looked at me and she
said well yeah who’s
who’s this sean individual is this an
imaginary person in your head
and and i had to explain that so now in
our procedures and as you know
i’m a huge procedure guy it says that
i’m going to explain
you know how we do the editing and how i
give audible cues
to sean just to make it easier so i
don’t have to go back and make notes
they’re all in the in the file right
there
by the way the the checklist method is
something that i’ve used for years
and the reason i do that is i think
really hard whenever i do something for
the first time
and then maybe it might be a while
before i do it again
i don’t have to think about it anymore i
just open up that checklist
and i can just check off the items as
i do it so i i highly recommend that
sean lorne thanks again for coming on
the podcast of course you not only came
on the podcast you are part of each and
every
episode really could not do this without
you
folks another thing i can’t do without
you
is continue to answer your questions
and interview the guests that you want
me to interview
so if you will please share that
information with me by going to scaling
up h2o.com
you can do that in two ways you can
navigate over to our show ideas page and
let me know what you are thinking
you of course heard what we do with all
of that information
and that really helps us with our
planning and getting the right stuff to
you
or if you have a question you can leave
a voicemail for us
folks this episode was possible because
many of you did that very thing and
again i wouldn’t have come up with that
on my own i didn’t think that you
thought that that was interesting
and because you did that i can’t tell
you how much
i enjoyed this interview this show
so thank you for all those people that
wrote in
with that question folks i i don’t know
what else to say so i’m going to tell
you to have a great week
we’ll have another new episode for you
next week in the meantime
learn something new and take care of
each other take care everybody