Khush: 0:09

Welcome to the curacy crisis, we challenge ourselves to explore the world of business tech Investing Insights, get curious and be part of the journey as you discuss, challenge and learn. So today, we're actually doing a how to make a podcast episode. So it's a bit of fun. And obviously, we're only at episode nine, but we didn't want to wait till you know, potentially other podcasts get to hundreds of episodes, and then none of the interesting and useful tips of how to start a relevant anymore because, you know, they might have resources and big studios and all that sort of stuff. And a lot of it is actually, you know, from the learnings that we've gone through, particularly Luke, this is his second podcast. So I know we've learned a lot from the journey and picking up things, you know, has been a lot easier for me learning from Luke experience. So yeah, we think

Luke: 0:58

that it'll be, you know, applicable through more than just this medium. You could apply this to other things as well, some of the learnings. Yeah, absolutely.

Khush: 1:05

For example, like, you know, say blogs are a little initiatives that you're trying to run yourself. And we thought we'd go through some of the physical stuff and the workflow of making a podcast. So hopefully, if you're just curious, it's interesting. But if you also wanted to start a podcast, hopefully it helps, because I know it definitely did help me. So looky How are you feeling?

Luke: 1:24

Really good. Yeah, I think it's going to be another good one. I think it'll be informative. And yeah, there's definitely a lot of learnings to go through. So yeah,

Khush: 1:33

yeah. Plenty played out. Do you want to start us off by letting us know what's keeping us? Yeah,

Luke: 1:39

so this week, open aI had their first dev day, which is pretty interesting. So they went through a bunch of different things that they're looking at, for developers, they have like a copyright protection, which is pretty cool. They have a new chat GPT for turbo, so it's faster and API access to that, a lot of really cool things. And also, Elon Musk's x.ai released grok, which is going to be their LLM. And I'm just curious to see how they'll all stack up against each other. Obviously, I'm a developer, I use the open AI, their API. So yeah, it's just interesting. I'd be really interested to see how they perform. And just Yeah, I don't know, just innovation in the space is always good. So yeah. What about Yeah, that's

Khush: 2:20

cool. It sounds like you know, and a lot of these, these are heavyweights, and there's gonna be a lot of, you know, smarts and a new take out there. So it's just going to, could just keep blowing us out of the water, keep building on building, which is epic. I am particularly interested at the moment in sort of the build out times in the lead times of a lot of new technologies, I was listening to another podcast, actually recently, and they just sort of waved off modular nuclear reactors, saying, you know, there are Mithuna so long, they're so far away. But I'm just thinking, like, I was sort of thinking about, you know, the whole energy transition and what needs to happen. And I'd love to see like a, like an analysis or breakdown of, you know, the most promising or particularly ideal solutions to all the different subproblems as part of the net zero problem, and how far away some of these ideal technologies are projected to be. And then, you know, just sort of trying to understand what the difference of that is between, you know, having just getting on the job and installing a lot of the technologies we have ready today. Versus is it worth, you know, pumping a lot of money and research and development into commercializing these more ideal solutions, you know, and 510 years down the track, because they'll actually make a lot more strides a lot quicker when they're ready. So yeah, it's just kind of interesting. I'm kind of curious to not, you know, wave off. Technology's just saying, oh, yeah, they're not ready yet. Because, you know, maybe they need the funding in the the energy to get ready. And the effort. So yeah, yeah.

Luke: 3:52

I mean, just as a bit of a comment on that, at least, I've always found that predictions on things coming to fruition, usually end up being a longer than expected, and things that we think are further away than, you know, we often think things are also further away than they are. So yeah, I don't know, I think we're very inaccurate at predicting the future, especially when it comes to technologies.

Khush: 4:13

Yeah, I suppose it was the only thing that you know, you're guaranteed with a model or prediction is you're wrong, but just not by how much? And ideally, you want to tighten that down. But anyway, all right. Well, let's let's get straight into it. The first one is not really a technical question, but more just looking at the concept like what inspired you to start a podcast? So this is your second? You don't do now? Yeah. Where are the origins?

Luke: 4:40

The first one came about during COVID where me and another software engineering mate, we're just chatting and and we just decided we had a lot of time on our hands. And it was best to, you know, occupy that with something productive, so kind of just came about, which is funny because it's not really something that we've taught About heaps previously, it kind of came out pretty spontaneously. And then yeah, just said, Let's do it. And then just Alright, let's chip away at things that we have to achieve. Yeah,

Khush: 5:09

nice. Actually, I might jump on the second one. I think the second one was, you know, when your old ghost Isaac, and you were going to sort of wrap up the first one. And then you asked me, if I wanted to jump on. And I was already sort of thinking that I'd love to do something sort of in the space, because at that time, I was writing a lot on my blog. And I was writing sort of around the same space around investing in a new ideas that I'd had. So when that opportunity came through, I was like, yeah, go down. Sounds like a perfect sort of, of merging the two. And I was good.

Luke: 5:40

Yeah. And to be fair, you also had a little bit to do with it already. Because as I can I talk to you about your thesis around electric vehicle uptake. And so I guess you had a bit of exposure to it as well. Yeah,

Khush: 5:51

true. True. True. True. So for this one, why don't you like why don't we start on the contents side? How do we create content? How do you come up with ideas and themes? podcast? Yeah.

Luke: 6:03

So I guess the first thing is to establish, you know, what are you aiming to do? So what is it that you're going for, to try and discuss, and then you brainstorm from bear that fits into what you've decided on. So whether you decide on something really niche, or in our case, we've gone a little bit broader? Some listeners may have realized that curiosity is a bit of a theme here. So you know, it's a bit broader. But that means you need to decide what fits in and what is kind of aligned with the future of it, I guess. So for us, you know, we've sat down and talked about what we want to do. But in the previous one that we did, we would do more like time sensitive things. So whether it was more of like a news topic or something. So something really relevant within that, you know, the next few weeks or something? Yeah,

Khush: 6:48

yeah, I think, with this one, as well, like we sort of talked about, like, you know, stuff that we have in common and have shared interests in, and passions and stuff like that, and sort of built out around those themes that, you know, we already have, we already do reading and just particularly interested in in certain fields. So let's let's dive a bit deeper into those and explore like the laterals of those. And, you know, as it turned out, we already knew that, because because we just used to chat so much. It's not nor on air, that there was a lot that was going to cross over.

Luke: 7:20

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I guess, you know, something that we've kind of gone with here is we want to be the short form of long form. What we mean by that is, you know, in general, this medium is very long form. And we want to try and condense that and add as much value as possible within a shorter amount of time.

Khush: 7:37

Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of adding value, let's talk, the physicals. What is your recording setup? Like? And how have you developed it?

Luke: 7:47

Yeah, it's pretty bare bones. And initially, we kind of sat down and said, Okay, well, what do we 100% need? And that was, okay, we need a microphone. So that was a good start. And after that, we were like, Okay, we need a camera too. So we got both of those things. But other than that, you know, all the software that we use is free. And, yeah, I mean that there wasn't really anything that we added. Besides that, that was just the bare bones startup. And I'm still using the same MAC. So yeah,

Khush: 8:15

yeah, absolutely. So you know, we were remote. So we jump on a call and do it. So personally, I have two laptops going but you just have the ones that up. And then because we're just chatting on that, then we can record it individually on ours. Yeah, we'll get into that that sort of production process a little bit later. So recording episodes? Well, we do. Yeah, sometimes in batches, and sometimes individually just depends on I suppose the topics and what we're ready for at the time and how we want the pipeline to come out during a podcast recording and I think you are interested to hear Kay used to do it. When we make mistakes. Did you used to just roll with it? Or what? How'd you do it?

Luke: 8:55

Yeah, it was, it was definitely a slow process to begin with. Something else to note was that we did all of the editing ourselves. And we actually used Ableton, which if anyone knows is a composition software, it's not intended for that at all. But basically, we would we sometimes we'd stop and sometimes we'd be like, Okay, we need to, we need to, like redo that. And sometimes we'd run with it, but the editing process was we would go through and we were, you know, extremely meticulous at finding every error and getting rid of it. And one of the downsides though, is that you just lose the flow a bit. And so one advantage is it sounds really clean, but it doesn't necessarily sound authentic. And then we discovered that a bit later and then so we started to ease up a little bit on what we were cutting. But yeah, have you found anything with with ours? Well,

Khush: 9:46

I Yeah. Initially, I probably got pretty, pretty nervous before and like had really been meticulously prepared and, and sort of noted out as to what we wanted to talk about, and I needed to have myself there but now with the editing process that I know that We can sort of just flow with it. And it sounds better anyway, if we're just having a chat, and then you can edit out any actual proper issues. Yeah, I found it really, it's a lot easier now that we've done a few. And I realized that you just roll with it, and then you can use it as needed.

Luke: 10:16

It's very reassuring to know that a mistake doesn't ruin it. Absolutely. Once you realize that it's a lot easier,

Khush: 10:22

otherwise, we wouldn't have got past episode one,

Luke: 10:24

yet? Sure.

Khush: 10:26

So we use OBS as our software, and you had a particularly set it up for recording. And obviously, we've refined it a little bit. But can you tell everyone about the techniques that you sort of set us up with through like audio quality and stuff?

Luke: 10:41

Yeah. So I mean, I knew that it existed mainly because of, I guess, streaming really, which I actually haven't done, I don't really know how I knew about it. Maybe it was eyes, I can do about it. But either way, the main thing that we discovered was, the requirement of a noise gate is very useful. And we still haven't dove super deep into adding compression or anything. But that was really, really good. And all it really is, is that anything below a certain decibel range will get cut. And that's the main thing because it removes background noise.

Khush: 11:14

Yeah. So at the moment, I'm tapping the table lightly, and I'm not sure if that's gonna come up. But then we'll get past the noise gators have I? Like hit the table? So yeah, that's just to sort of illustrate it. Cool. Well, moving on. Once we have recorded what do we do for editing?

Luke: 11:34

Yeah, so currently, we have someone who does it for us, which is super useful in terms of time efficiency. And then there's a few other things. So there's a distribution of it, which in our case, we use something called Buzzsprout, which is a service which lets you distribute to a bunch of directories. But our main one is, yeah, it's definitely Spotify. And yeah, I mean, other than that, we add all the necessary things to that in terms of a description and anything else that's required. And then we we kind of look at the promotional front, I guess.

Khush: 12:05

Yeah. So Well, one thing I've definitely learned out of it is like, you know, one thing that probably was a barrier to entry for me to do any of this. And that's why I just started with a blog, which is very easy, is that I don't know how to edit, it's gonna be a lot of time and effort. And then, for example, the music that we started episodes with, but the beautiful thing is, I suppose in this day and age and gig economy, you know, we were able to get any of that done. For example, on up work, we found asthma, shout asthma, who edits our episodes, and then you've got a friend to produce the music for the start and end. So you can you don't have to know it all really? Yes. Which is one of the big learnings for me.

Luke: 12:47

Yeah, for sure. Leverage the people around you is definitely very useful. So that came in with Yeah, that composition. So which is really useful. And then, yeah, obviously, asthma is fantastic. She actually did our first one, Isaac and I, she helped us out. And then yeah, now we're using her again. So she's fantastic.

Khush: 13:03

And then in terms of one of my favorite things about this podcast, is that artwork, how do you know how to get that done?

Luke: 13:10

Yeah, that was it was the same. It was part of the gig economy, found someone that was able to sketch something out hand, draw it, and then really add some some depth to it. And I think it was two or three iterations, I think, and we'll stick to that. So yeah.

Khush: 13:23

Yeah. And that was on Fiverr. So to even start it up before, so we didn't have to do everything we had. We used Fiverr, Upwork, Buzzsprout. And all of it, it was just super, super clean, super easy.

Luke: 13:35

Yeah, pieced together really well, actually. Yeah,

Khush: 13:39

absolutely. Now, obviously, you know, we're pretty Junior pretty early on at the moment, but you know, working on building that presence and stuff. What's the initial plans in terms of promoting podcasts? Because obviously, we can get it on onto Spotify. But then beyond their, you know, what, what have you done previously in the last one? And what are we doing now?

Luke: 13:58

So previously, we worked on posts, and we would do a detailed description of each topic associated with the posts. But one of the downsides to that was the difficulty of summarizing some of the things that we're covering. So I remember there was one week that we did, like physics Nobel Prize winners, and it was, it was so much reading to try and understand enough to then be able to summarize it, so that someone could, you know, read like a paragraph and get the gist of it. It was incredibly difficult. And so we've kind of moved away from that now. And yeah, I guess now we're looking mainly at LinkedIn and Instagram. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Khush: 14:37

And just sharing, you know, sort of relevant content, and then ideally, getting eyes on it, but being able to, you know, get get the juice out of the squeeze that you've sort of put into the podcast and sharing it initially. Yeah, this is actually definitely an interesting one. And this is this is broader. So obviously, you said at the start, we're not just talking about podcasts, but like any thing you do outside of work your day to day, sort of grind, sustainability like Kenny balanced your podcasting with your life? And yeah, other work. Obviously, you did it with the last party and you got some lessons out of that. Yeah, yeah. How are you finding it?

Luke: 15:09

Yeah. So I think that was a big learning curve on the first one, for sure. Especially when it came to doing all the editing ourselves. That was quite time consuming, in addition to trying to do all the content. And I guess something else that we found was, you know, what we're doing now is trying to deep dive into things that we already know, have extensive knowledge on, right. And I guess the challenge doesn't disappear. But it moves. So now, your new challenges trying to convey something to you know, whether it's in layman's terms, or whatever, and concise and interesting, interesting way, but still being like time consider it. So I guess there's advantages and disadvantages to both. But I also think that it's better to start infrequently, and then to ramp up rather than to the opposite. Yeah,

Khush: 15:56

yeah, absolutely. There's, I can definitely agree to the last couple points there, like, you know, we consciously sheduled it to make it, you know, ideally, easily fit into the rest of our life. But obviously, it is extra effort to create something or makes a podcast if they can't be bothered, I think what I've found is once you find your flow, and once we've gotten into it, the workflow, that episode just feels much smoother, and it's getting better. And I think it will continue to get better. Albeit, you know, new challenges come along the way. And then the other thing is just like, you know, if you want to do it, if you're passionate and interested, which obviously we are, and I have a bit of fun with it, that makes it easy and easy to spend the time on it. So

Luke: 16:34

yeah, you definitely have to try and enjoy it. But at the same time, if you think that there's going to be little to no effort involved, I don't think you fully understand what you're what you're getting into. Absolutely.

Khush: 16:45

The other thing is like also doing it with a mate is so much better. When I was before this, I was you know, running a blog, outside of work and just like, trying to put my interest in and passionate stuff into that and my thinking into that. But it felt like much more of a slog and a grind when I was just slugging away at it at night and stuff like that. But this is just like, we get to chat and hang out and like bounce ideas off. And then like, oh, we could we could record that, which is pretty cool.

Luke: 17:10

It's actually it's kind of funny. It's like the power of a co founder. It's like how, like, Why say Don't let anyone in if you don't have a co founder, it's like in this case, you still get all the benefits, where it's like whether, you know, someone's you know, not as committed at a certain time or whatever, then the other person can carry and then it goes, you know, switches between, but it also just makes it more enjoyable. So yeah,

Khush: 17:33

yeah, I mean, I'm going to the pool for a month, and you're you're gonna have to carry a ship. But we've done a lot of work to prep for that. So yeah, it's kind of fun. All right, well sort of get to wrapping up. This is this is pretty interesting. What challenge it like challenges and lessons learned. So what challenges have you faced, obviously, the first one big learning curve, this one definitely a learning curve for me as well. What are the big ones that have stood out to you?

Luke: 17:59

I think the initial thing, one of the biggest was that there wasn't really a playbook to follow. When we didn't have, you know, something that was like, follow these steps. And then this is the end product, we didn't really know. So we had to figure out, okay, well, what do we actually need to do? And then after that, what do we need to do after that? And so everything was all uncharted territory. So that was one thing that made this significantly easier was it was like, Okay, well, we kind of have a bit of an initial playbook anyway. Yeah. But then it Yeah, I think the other thing is definitely consistency is is tough, especially if you want to ramp up as well. It's really tough. But yeah, I mean, I think those would be the two standout ones to me. Do you have anything?

Khush: 18:39

Absolutely, I can think the unexpected stuff was if I was doing this myself, or you know what, again, like like, what you and I was like doing the first one completely new, I would have been so lost mate, like I had any of the any of the gear and like the software recording, editing, the production, the distribution, all that sort of stuff. It there's no necessary guide on it. And I'm like, you know, that's why we're doing the episode. Because if anyone else wants to have a crack, or just yeah, you know, starting something like that, there is a lot of unknowns, and you're completely swimming through it yourself. It's pretty hard, for sure. For sure. It's definitely helped. So yeah. All right. Well, the wrapping up look into the future. This is I'm very keen to be able to ask this question. But if you're the pod, what do you want to be when you grow up? Yeah, it's,

Luke: 19:30

it's a great question. I think we've talked about it before, which is the Minto pyramid principle. Yeah, just essentially, you know, it's flipping things on its head. So it's the most value the most important first, I think that's what we want. And then is to get that across to the to the largest audience possible about what we think is the most important stuff. I think that would be it for me. Yeah,

Khush: 19:54

absolutely. I think what are just two things and reflecting on what you've said today is that I love it. Is the respecting people's time. So, you know, knowing that if you're trying to do a commute length podcast, people don't want to listen to, you know, an hour and a half necessarily if you're trying to educate on a topic or whatever. So at least not regularly. Exactly, exactly. So having that respect and giving that value early doing the short, long form content. But for me, the most exciting is picking other people's brains. So getting curious about what other people are experts on and getting them on. So hopefully, this is a little teaser. Might be a little bit of a hint. Yeah. Very, very excited. Anyway, mate, I think that's really all we have time for unless you have anything else.

Luke: 20:40

No, that's, that's perfect. Awesome. Well,

Khush: 20:44

thanks for listening. Find us at curiosity crisis.com and the curiosity classes on Instagram and LinkedIn. Were on the major streaming services so you can listen to your like, if you got anything out of this episode, or if you had a bit of fun, you're curious. Please send it to a friend your recommendations always worth a lot. But other than that, thanks and catch you on the next episode. Looky. Thank you. Cheers.