Know Your Limits | Season 12 Premiere

It's a new season! Let's kick things off with a discussion of what it means to know your limits without creating self limiting beliefs.

🎙This week's  mic:
•Rode NT1 Signature Series
https://geni.us/nt1signatureseries (Amazon)

•The NT1SS was running through the Rodecaster Pro II with on the NT1 preset.

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S12E01 | Series Episode 165

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Podcast Artwork by Kevin Ramirez
Original theme music written by Patrick Boberg and performed by Mike Alvarez 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hello and welcome. My name is Tom. This is the Enthusiasm Project season twelve, episode one. Can you believe it? I can't. This is season premiere of a brand new season, which is a very exciting thing. I've missed y'all. I've missed doing a podcast, and it's fun to be back with a new batch of episodes. So let's just dive right in and talk about things because I wanted to start this off with sort of a, you know, whenever there's a season premiere and it's been a bit between episodes, stuff happens, right? You know, like equipment comes out, revelations are had, experiences are had, and it's fun to kind of like in a way, sort of report back and and share that and just kind of let you know what's going on, and we can kind of continue on our discussions that we've normally normally had with stuff like that. So that's what we're gonna talk about today in an episode titled Know Your Limits. And I think that's sort of a little bit different than my typical the way I would frame something normally, because I'm a big fan of not imposing self-limiting beliefs onto yourself. But I also am learning the importance of understanding your limitations, which do exist, and maybe they can be pushed and changed from time to time. I don't mean to limit anybody's, you know, potential or anybody's self-beliefs or anything, but there are there are limits, right? We all have them for different reasons and different ways, and I feel like I've been reminded of that thoroughly over the past year or so. And I I wanted to sort of touch on that and share a couple things that I've learned about that with you and hope that it's helpful for you as well. So before we do that though, as we always do, gotta talk about equipment and gear. This might be a little bit of an extended gear segment. Not that I'm using anything different or or crazy or anything, but just some little stories and some updates about gear that has come out and things that have changed in the weeks since I've done a podcast episode. So, first things first, what am I using right now? Today I'm on the Rode NT1 Signature Series microphone, going into the Rodecaster Pro 2, and I'm just on the NT1 preset. So I haven't changed the preset at all. I very much enjoy the NT1 sound. It's just such a nice microphone. I haven't used it in a while. I've been using actually lately, I've been using the Podmic USB a lot, which I'll talk about. Uh maybe I'll use that next week, depending on what my gear itis decides that I want to use next week. But uh this NT1 Signature Series, Rodecaster Pro 2, and let's see, where do I want to talk about gear? I guess the Podmic USB. So a reason I've been using that one is the silliest reason ever. I got to actually meet a few folks from Rode in person, which is very cool, despite what people say on my channel a lot in the comment section where they think Rode pays me or I'm like a secret road employee or not. I'm not, they've never paid me. I mean, I've been sort of like connected via email and stuff, you know, and they've sent me some products before launch from time to time, like the Roadcaster 2 being a big one, obviously. Um, but we never met in person or anything, and they just happened to be in the Southern California area, and they they made a special trip out to my neck of those woods, and we got to kind of meet and hang out and talk about gear. I got to ask them all kinds of questions. It was really, really cool. Um, bunch of people from the road team, which was great, including Ryan from Road, who is in you know most of their videos for gosh, I don't know, 10 years or something now, uh, which is very, very cool. It was like, I don't get starstruck. Like, I don't know, if Brad Pitt was in a room, I'd be like, that's cool, looks Brad Pitt. But if Ryan from Road walks in a room, that's like, let me not pull out my autograph book. Do my best to prevent myself from doing that. So that was really fun. It was very cool to sort of touch base with people behind the scenes and and then ask questions, questions that I'm curious about, but also raise up issues, you know, why which I didn't I didn't want to like air grievances or anything, like let me unfurl my scroll and you know, issue number one, why does this thing do that thing or whatever? But it was fun to to to sort of get some inside, not inside info, insights, I guess, from people who are on the inside. And obviously, I don't know what uh obviously they're aware they're whatever they're saying to me. I'm not someone who works for the company, so I don't think they're divulging the secret recipe or anything, but it was really cool, you know, just sort of ask about questions I've had with stuff. And the the biggest takeaway there was that I feel uh it was really cool to see that the people involved with Rode and behind the scenes are very excited about what they're doing and are genuine nerds in the best sense of the word and love audio stuff. I got to ask them a little bit about Mackey because I was worried about that. Uh as Rode, well Rhodes' parent company acquired Mackey. I was kind of worried that that meant Mackie would be taken out backy and not around anymore. And it doesn't seem, at least from my understanding, it doesn't seem that that's going to be the case. The two companies uh don't even operate on the same continent. So that's you know, for us as customers, hopefully a good thing. And that was just it was fun. It was great. Part of that, though, is one of the things they were like, oh, here, here we brought a gift for you. And it was a blue windscreen for the pod mic, but not it's not a custom thing. It's uh, I believe it's something, it's in a retail box, so it's something that they're going to be selling soon, which are colored pod mic windscreen. If you bought the pod mic USB or you saw it, you know it comes with a big black windscreen, which is awesome because it's incredibly helpful. It works great, it fits on the original pod mic as well, but they don't sell them separately. And that was like such a big question when that microphone came out was hey, can we buy these separately and and have them on our like you know existing pod mics we've had? And the answer was no. Well, it seems like in the not too distant future, the answer will be yes, and they come in really cool colors, including basically the perfect shade of blue. And so they gave me that and I put it on my pod mic. I was like, ah, I really love this. So now I want to keep using the pod mic just because I like the windscreen that's on it, uh, which was fun because what it what it made me do, basically, you know, if you know my history with the pod mic, it was like the first quote unquote broadcast microphone that I got after getting the original roadcaster and really trying to like level up my podcast at this point. I don't know, five or six years. No, the podcast just passed its fifth anniversary, so just over five years ago, I guess, is when the pod mic came out. And I wanted to stop using just old video equipment, you know, shotgun microphones and things, and and have some actual dedicated podcasting gear. I dove right into the pod mic because it seemed like it was gonna fit really well with this new roadcaster thing I had just bought. And I really like the pod mic, it really helped a lot, but as time went on, I just I felt like I didn't like the sound of the pod mic as much as I thought that I did. And and I just well, I experience other microphones too. And what I've learned over the years with the pod mic is it's a microphone that can sound absolutely phenomenal on some voices, but absolutely not phenomenal on other voices. And you're not gonna know until you get it and you use it. But it's a it's at a good price, it's extremely well built. It's just it has it definitely has a pod mic sound, for better or worse. And once I got other microphones, and even though this one I'm using right now, which is another road microphone that I prefer the sound of, it just kind of got harder and harder to go back to the pod mic when I knew there's so many other things out there that I can take and prefer their their sound on my voice versus the pod mic. But they don't come with these really cool blue windscreen. So then I was like, you know what? One thing I've been trying to learn a lot of lately, when I say lately, now it's really been over the past like year and a half, is more about, you know, proper EQ and proper audio signal chains and processing and all that kind of stuff that I just wasn't really spending a lot of time on before. And so I spent some time really tweaking the pod mic. In fact, I will pause this recording and switch to the pod mic. So you're listening to me on the NT1 signature series. And now you're listening to me on the pod mic USB. Uh, hopefully that was a relatively smooth transition you heard there. So this is the pod mic USB with a preset that I put together on it. If I take off this preset, this is the pod mic straight out of the box. And, you know, Peter Piper pitched a podcast. I do have my blue windscreen on there, so there's no plosive issues. But for me, on my voice, I'm hearing a lot of like high-end frequencies. Maybe even you could call it siblance, where kind of those sounds become very prominent and you can you can hear them pretty well. And it's it's a good clear-sounding microphone, but on my voice, it it's if you had to listen to just this signal for an hour or more, I feel like that would get pretty fatiguing, even just in my headphones right now. It is so turning on a preset that I made, I've I spent some time really trying to dial some things in with the EQ and round out that sound a bit, um, primarily by taming some of the high end on the EQ, boosting up a little bit of the low ends, and then in the Rodecaster Pro 2, playing around with the the big bottom and the RL exciter and all that stuff, in addition to like the noise gate and everything. So, this is the sound I've been able to get out of the uh pod mic USB, which I actually quite like a lot. And so I'm really grateful for this little windscreen here because it made me go back to the pod mic, tweak it around a bit, and now I feel I feel, you know, my perspective and opinion on it has changed again, which is great. And that's that's what I want. So now instead of kind of like, yeah, the pod mic's great, but there are other options out there, now I feel like it's a pretty darn solid choice if you are able to go in and dive into the EQ. The Rodcaster's onboard EQ is great. Lots of other mixers have onboard EQ, or if you go into your editing software and you play with it, and it's going to take time. Hopefully, once you dial it in, you can you know save a preset or something. Like, right, I have a pod mic preset that I made on the Rodecaster, so I can just turn that on at the push of a button, and it's super easy. But it's gonna take a little bit of time to sort of figure that out. And if you're willing to do that, then the pod mic could be a good choice, again, depending on your voice, your budget, all those things. But you know, there are other microphones out there that as soon as you plug them in without effects or processing, just sort of sound better right off the bat. But the pod mics do have a lot of versatility. The original ones being relatively affordable and extremely well built. And this one that I'm using right now, the US Podmic USB, obviously has the benefit of also being a USB microphone. And when you connect it to your computer through USB, you have all of the same processing that is in the Rodecaster in the mic itself, so you can do the same the same presets and everything, which is very cool. Um, but yeah, so this is the pod mic. I am holding it right now, it's not attached to anything, so I'm gonna pause and switch back to the signature series. This is the pod mic USB with my preset. And this is the NT1 signature series with the NT1 preset. If I turn off that preset, this is what it would sound like straight out of the box. A little more um, I guess a slightly more harsh, but still a good sounding microphone, and then that NT1 preset, turning that back on. Really love how just warm and full this microphone sounds. So, anyway, that's what I'm using right now. That's kind of my behind-the-scenes road story, which is really, really fun and something I'm super excited about. It was cool to just geek out about that kind of stuff with them for a while. Um, but other things I mentioned Mackey. So, in the time since uh last season, something came out which is really cool. I sort of alluded to it maybe on one of the last episodes of last season, which is the Mackie DLZ Creator XS, which is a small two XLR channel audio mixer, basically a direct competitor to the Rodecaster Duo at the exact same price point, $500. And it is awesome. I did a video comparing the duo to the XS, and it is excessively cool, and I really like it a lot, which is why I was worried when Mackey was acquired by Rode. Like, oh, is this really cool, you know, this really cool competition gonna go away? Seems like no, at least for the time being, is the case, and I sure hope that's that's true because I really quite like the Mackey and I like having different options and you know, different devices that are sort of pushing each other to compete in different ways, which is very cool. Um I was planning to use the Mackey for this episode, but then I had to take it down and move it for a another project I was working on. So uh hopefully next week I think I'll be running through the Macy DLZ Creator XS, which is really cool and has tons of awesome EQ options and everything. So that's really fun. That's a thing I'm very excited about. I've also still got my boss gig caster sitting over here. Can't remember if I mentioned it or not, but I had to send mine in for repairs, unfortunately, which is why I never used it on a podcast episode because something was wrong with the micro SD card reader of mine where it would not record. You would press record, it would say it's recording, you would see all your levels moving, you can monitor all your audio, but when you went to play it back, there was nothing on the card. Sometimes there wouldn't even be a file, sometimes it would be like a semi-corrupted file. And I tried all kinds of different cards, tried everything, ran through troubleshooting with boss and didn't come to any solution. So I had to send it in for repairs. It's gone for a long time, it's back now. I've not heard of this being an issue, so it's like as someone who hasn't yet made a review or anything on this, that's a pretty big red flag, which obviously is something I would mention in the review, but I haven't heard anybody else having this issue, so I think it might just be a freak thing that happened to mine. I don't think it's a common thing with the gig casters. So that's another one, a future episode. You know, it's always fun to mix up the gear a little bit on episodes. Um, and speaking of road gear and updates and things, I dug my streamer X out of the closet, which where it had been sitting uh since I got frustrated with it last summer, which was a thing when Rode announced a bunch of new stuff like the PodMic USB and the Rodecaster Duo and the Streamer X. The Streamer X was the one I was most excited about, and then the one that I literally like didn't use because I was so frustrated with it, because I could not get it to work well with 24 frame per second video, even though everything in it says up to 4K30. I know I'm an English major, I still think 24 is less than 30, which means it would be up to 30. I could not get smooth video out of the streamer X at all. It drove me absolutely insane. So I just went back to using a cam link. But after talking to everyone from Rode and specifically bringing that issue up, they were like, no, it should work with 2398, 24, like it should work literally with everything up to 4K30. Um, and they were like, just try yours again, make sure the firmware is updated. If it's still giving you issues, you know, then reach out and we'll replace it or it has an issue or something. Um, and so there had been a there had been a firmware update since I used mine. It didn't mention anything about frame rates, but of course it mentioned like bug fixes and stability or whatever. Updated the firmware, and then then it seemed to be working fine with 24 frames per second audio, which is very, very cool, and now makes me want to revisit the Streamer X as a as a more viable option. But I still really like my Cam Link because I don't have to plug any extra power sources or anything to it. It's just I don't even know it's there, you know, it's just always there working. It's the most unobtrusive piece of equipment there is. So I think that's a good rundown of gear stuff lately, which is pretty cool. Uh so let's dive into the topic of today's episode, the actual meat and potato here, uh, which is knowing these limits, right? Maybe when it came to my Streamer X, I just needed to know the limits of the device. That's a transition attempt to make it work for me. Basically, if you follow, if you followed along at all through any of the episodes and stuff last year, in 2023, I spent a lot of time reevaluating sort of all of these systems I had built when it comes to content creation, YouTube, the whole thing. Like I started my channel back in 2017 and just kind of went and never never stopped, you know. So, and and when you do something like that, you develop systems, you develop processes, approaches, points of view, all of those kinds of things. And I it was working for me, but everything was getting it was feeling a little bit complex and a little bit overwhelming at times. And one thing that I kind of did last year, sort of in the middle of the year, was kind of blow it all up. Like the analogy was sort of, you know, if you've ever seen a tree, like a small tree that's planted, and you kind of need to have one of those like support sticks in the ground next to the tree to help it grow straight and sturdy and stuff. I sort of felt like my channel, my whole process was not just a tree with a support stick, but a tree with like 50 support sticks up, you know. But if you've ever seen a tree that grows really big, sometimes then the support stick is like it's like doing nothing, you know, like it's just sort of bent off to the side or it falls down. It's not needed anymore. And I kind of wanted to see, I sort of wanted to take away all of my support sticks and then see if the tree would stand on its own or if I needed to add some back or whatever, and then add them back from there, which is what ended up happening. Like I turns out I still needed some of these support sticks for my little YouTube tree over here. And what I've been doing, I would say since then, but it's really been since like November-ish, like months at this point, is what feels like just trying to get everything back on track. And sometimes that's been frustrating because it's like, why it's like you shoot yourself in the foot and have to wait for it to heal. Like, why do I do it just to get back to zero, just to get back to where I was before any of this? So there's a little bit of frustration there, but the benefit, the silver lining, is that now in now I think I have been able to remove a few unnecessary support sticks, but also the ones that are there, I feel a renewed confidence in knowing why they are there. It's not just something because like here's a good example. I I might be butchering this story, but this is kind of like an old, I don't know what you would call it, um not a fable, but it's like a story, you know, a story that has a moral or a purpose to it. Can't remember the term for that right now. Maybe a fable is that, but I don't think that's what this is. Anyway, it's something like this. There's a, you know, there's a girl, she's trying to make uh like a holiday or a Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving ham. No, you wouldn't have ham for Thanksgiving. She's trying to make a ham for some reason, a holiday, we'll say. And she's using her mom's recipe. Her mom's recipe says that you cut the end off the ham, you put it in the pan, do all the glazed ingredients, put it in the oven, and it tastes amazing. And she asked the mom, like, hey, why do why why do I cut the why do I have to cut the end of the ham off? Like, how does that make the thing taste better? The mom goes, you know what? I'm not so sure. I learned this recipe from my mom, and that was just part of it, was cutting off the ham. So they call the grandma and they're like, Hey, why do why do we do the ham thing? And the grandma's like, Oh, that's a great question. I've it's always worked really well, it's always tasted great, and that's how my mom taught me. And fortunately, their great-grandmother was still around. She was like 180 years old at this point, but she's still around somewhere. So they called the great-grandmother who developed the recipe, and they said, Hey, why why what is it about cutting the end of this ham off that makes it taste so good? And she says, Oh, I just had to cut the end off because that's the only way it would fit in the pan that I had at the time. And that's that's the story. And that it's a good example of the kinds of things that are sort of done because that's how it's always been done, without questioning it. But some of what you're doing might be because of a reason that's not even relevant anymore and not even needed anymore, or not even practical, or whatever it might be, in the case with this ham. Cutting the ham had nothing to do with the recipe, with the taste, the end result, whatever. It was just because that's what she needed to do, you know, 80 years prior to make it fit in this pan that she happened to have all that time ago. And I wanted to make sure I wasn't, you know, using the wrong ham pan for my YouTube channel. We've analogies are getting a little a little wonky here. And so that that does feel good. It does feel good that when even if I'm putting things back in a lot of ways exactly how they were before, I know why they are there. A really good example, too, is uh a couple months ago, I was like, you know, I really want to just shift my studio around a little bit, which I still kind of do. There's something that's not not clicking right with me, but I was like, you know what? Instead of staying with how things have been since the first time I rearranged it as a YouTube studio instead of just like an office. Let me let me figure out how I would really want this. And I, you know, I literally turned the whole thing different. Tried to I try I changed, I spent so much time tearing everything apart, moving everything around, switching it up. It was awesome. And I found this kind of like arrangement and this setup that was very it made my desk working filming area more practical. It gave me more space to film stuff and kind of more versatility, especially for backdrops and things. And I was like, this is perfect. I should have done this before. And then I realized, oh, that's right. There's a lot of cables involved here, a lot of power cables and computer cables and different connectivity cables and things. And the reason, a big reason my studio is set up the way that it is, has to do with that, with just running cables, running power, getting all this stuff to actually work. It's very easy to set things up if you don't need any kind of cabling to go with it. But when you need stuff to actually work and to be sort of sane and not completely, you know, a huge mess, it's a little more difficult. And so I ended up essentially, I cleaned up a little things, changed a few things here, but for the most part, ended up just going back to how it was. So within 24 hours, it was totally blown apart and then put back together where no one could tell. Still not 100% satisfied with that, but at least I remembered there's a reason. There was a reason all this was here. It wasn't something that's outdated and unnecessary, and there is a purpose before it. So that's you know, after doing something like YouTube for a long period of time, that's something that feels better, is to know that, okay, I I have I do there is a reason that I do these things and I approach things this specific way for myself, and it's okay, and it's okay to keep doing that and all that kind of stuff. So there's there's I want to talk about some of those things now. The biggest one, especially if you've been following along in the podcast and you've been listening to the season finale of season 11 and maybe a couple of those episodes there, as I was talking about my blue windscreen and I was talking about them the equipment and the gear that I'm using and stuff, you might have noticed that you couldn't see any of that because there is no video for this podcast, even though I really wanted to do a video version of the podcast. And part of the reason that there was a little bit of an extended break in between seasons was me trying to figure out this whole video podcast situation, and there is no video podcast for the Enthusiasm Project, because turns out that was a limit that I needed to know about myself and about my workflow and about this show. And I think it's a great example to share, though, because it's such a massive should. Every bit of good advice, every bit of best practice, whatever you want to call it, growth strategy, which I've very never successfully applied to this show ever, um would say though, you should have a video podcast. You should do a video version. If you're not doing a video version of a podcast, you're wasting time. And honestly, it's probably correct, but it got to a point where I was realizing if I need to do a video version, I think I'm just not gonna do it anymore. So do I end it or do I just continue on with the audio only version? And that was a weird thing because I love making videos. I do, I do a video podcast with my wife every single week. We do the couples table over on my wife's channel, youtube.com slash heather just create, if you want to check it out every Friday, Pacific Standard Time, 1 p.m., 1 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. That was a weird way to say the time. So it's not that I'm against video podcasts. I like I like them a lot. I like making them, I like listening to them, I love using tools like Ecamm Live, you know, and something like a Stream Deck or whatever. Such awesome tools for video podcasting because you can create, you can automate so much of it. So I did put together, I made custom intros, I made all this cool stuff where literally I could do in terms of producing a video podcast, it wouldn't be that different than the audio version I'm doing right now. It would kind of just be this with the camera turned on, which isn't really that different. And through the magic of eCam and stuff, I can have my Stream Deck sitting right here and just push a few buttons and the whole thing, the intro plays automatically transitions to me. If I want to show something, we can do screen shares, we could do a second camera angle, we can do the outro, and then it's all done, you know, edited live, ready to go right afterwards. So there's in terms of workflow for producing it, there was very little that would need to be added on. And it was very cool, like it was fun to make that stuff, it's fun to put those things together. I love using all those tools. So, why, in my mind, for me right now, that did not work for this show. Like, why didn't it work for this show? And the reason is, believe it or not, very simple, because I didn't want to. And I kind of just needed to give myself permission to say, I don't want to do that. Not it has nothing to even do with how easy or difficult. Although, even if you are creating a video podcast that requires no post-production or editing, managing the uploads and things is still a little bit annoying. In my case, it would have meant ripping the audio to upload to BuzzSprout so I could still send out an audio version. That's super easy, that's not hard. But then uploading the video version twice because I need to upload it to Patreon and then I need to upload it to um to YouTube as well, and then also figuring out how to merge the RSS feed. I guess I would have to stop the audio RSS feed from being imported automatically to YouTube so that only the video versions are uploaded and added to the podcast playlist. Point being, it would it'd be a little bit of a clunky workflow. And just unfortunately, where I'm at right now, we do not have the best internet in the world, uh, which I know is sort of strange considering what my job is, but our internet connection is it's the best we can currently get, and it is terrible. So having to upload two versions, in my case, of an hour plus long video podcast is like half a day to get that taking. Probably four to six hours, maybe to get everything totally uploaded, which sucks. And that's it's not like I have to be sitting here the whole time, but you know how frustrating it is when you you go to upload something and you're like, okay, it's gonna take four hours to upload, and you leave and you come back and you realize you know, 30 minutes in there was an error and it didn't do anything, and it's just been like, oh, gotta start all over from scratch. Plus, it means you can't. I'm not done, right? Like, I'm I might be done making the episode. I might have all the the descriptions and the titles and all that cool stuff finished, but it's not done until it's actually like uploaded and scheduled or published or whatever it might be, and now I just have to wait until it can get uploaded. It basically does create some roadblocks in the workflow. But even beyond that, even in a world where I had decent internet where imagine it took pretty much the same amount of time to upload a video as it would audio, so that's not an excuse or a reason. There's a big difference for me as a creator. I don't know that this applies to everybody, but for me, in doing a video thing versus an audio thing, it's a totally different experience as the one making the thing because there is a different feeling when the camera is on versus the camera off. And it essentially comes down to being, you know, quote unquote camera ready. It changes the vibe in a lot of ways. Because right now, when I do an audio version of this show, in my mind, I associate making this podcast with being very comfortable. It's something that I can just sort of I just feel really comfortable, right? Like I sometimes I've done it right now. I'm wearing you know jeans and a t-shirt, but sometimes I've done it in my pajamas. Sometimes I have, you know, snacks or something to drink or whatever nearby. My studio is right now, it's kind of a mess because I just finished working on a video, so they're like crap everywhere. And and that's fine. It's like comfortable. It's literally, I can go from you know, finishing up eating lunch. Okay, I'm gonna go make a podcast, come in, start making the podcast. You know, of course, it's probably been outlined at that point, but to me, it's just comfortable, it's easy. As soon as the camera gets involved, more things get involved, right? And this is what it means when you add video to a podcast. Then now it's not just me hanging out in the studio with like the comfortable lighting and all that kind of stuff. Now it's the video lighting is all turned on and the studio lighting is all turned on, and I need to be camera ready, so I'm paying more attention to, you know, am I wearing a shirt that has a logo on it or not? Those things communicate things. I'm always kind of aware of that. You know, did I go to the gym that morning and take a shower? Now my hair is a mess, but now I gotta like brush my hair or what it. I know it sounds very simple, but getting camera ready is kind of a pain sometimes. And the easy thing that some people would say, especially kind, supportive people, maybe like yourself, is we don't care about that. Just turn on the camera. We don't care if the studio is a mess, we don't care if the lighting is bad, we don't care if your hair is a mess or whatever. And I appreciate that, and I know, but the fact of the matter is, uh so okay. My first year teaching was coincided with the first time iPhones had front-facing cameras. It was when the 2010, when the iPhone 4 came out, was the first iPhone that had a front-facing camera. And that was really when selfies became like a big thing. Obviously, people were taking pictures of themselves before, but selfies where you could you could see yourself on a phone screen, a phone, you know, everybody has their phone. You could start taking selfies. And I remember I would so many times throughout that first school year, I would see kids taking selfies, they're holding up their phones, and it looks like they're taking a picture of me, and I would like wave, and they would look at me really weird, and I would realize, oh, you're not using the rear camera. You have a phone with a front camera and you're taking a selfie. Okay. Uh, but that's also a thing, though, where teaching high school in the 2010s to 2020s, even in low-income, you know, poverty-stricken schools, every kid has a smartphone, pretty much, of some kind. And kids, whether or not they're supposed to, whether or not you want them to, whether or not you're where they're doing, they film a lot of stuff, they take a lot of pictures. I definitely saw lots of clips of myself on Snapchats and whatever Vine or uh whatever social media platforms don't even exist anymore over the years, like something happening in class. Usually it was just goofy or whatever, but it's like I didn't even I honestly had no idea this was being filmed. I had no idea this this part of my classes, part of me was going out there. And there's nothing, there's nothing you can do about it. So what I learned very quickly was like just you know, act as if you're always being filmed. Like, cool. I'm not doing anything that I if you filmed it and put this out there, you know, we have we can have talks about you know respecting others and privacy and stuff, but I'm not doing anything that I would be worried about or you know, would have a problem with if it got out there. It's kind of the same thing with being camera ready when you put yourself out there on a platform like YouTube. You might not care that that things look messy and weird or you know, have maybe are a little extra rough around the edges, but I don't always know where these things are going to go and who's going to see them and what could be taken out of context. And so as soon as a camera turns on, as much as I want it to be natural and genuine, I also am aware I also want it to be I also want to be sure that whatever I'm sharing, whatever's on camera, is something that I'm 100% okay with being on camera and potentially taken out of context. And because that's the thing that happened. Just recently, I discovered a channel, or I didn't discover it. I got a message from somebody who said, Hey, are you getting into AI content creation? And I said, Nope, that's definitely not something I have any interest in. And they said, Oh, because I found this channel, and I won't name the channel, even though I guess I don't know, maybe I could or should, but there was a channel, several thousand subscribers, that essentially centers around uh using AI tools to make low effort content that can be monetized. So anything from you know outlining a podcast episode and even having an AI voice read it, uh making short tutorial type of videos, uh doing like kids stuff where you can you can have an AI write a script and you can use stuff to just make like you know crappily animated characters. Now you have a kid's show, and because kids will just watch, you know, the whole thing or whatever, you can get a lot of ad revenue. That really kind of is not necessarily against terms of service. It's not necessarily against any rules, but it's shady, right? It just feels not right. It's definitely not something I would do. Basically, it's a whole channel centered around those kinds of things that was started up last year, and they don't have a ton of videos on their channel. They have maybe, I don't know, 20 videos on their channel, and about halfway through the run, turns out they wanted to start having an AI uh host, I guess, which is almost like a VTuber kind of like avatar sort of thing, like a an animated looking person. There's there's always a voiceover in the videos, and the there's like an animated person that's that's saying the stuff in the voiceover. Well, this animated person is just sitting at my desk in my studio in these videos, and that's not an AI background. And that's what I thought when the person said, Oh, it's an AI channel. Here's this. I thought maybe someone created like an AI version of my studio or something, which I kind of thought would be sort of neat to see. This is just a photo I used uh in the end screen of some videos like two years ago, two or three years ago. Um, I know I know exactly when it's from because I'm the one that took the photo and made the photo and edited, and even has like goofy stuff like the ridiculous lens flares I add on my lights and things. It's just a photo of the empty studio with the desk kind of in the middle, and then this person just superimposed their avatar, sort of so it looks like it's sitting at the desk. And that's the talking head portion of all their stuff. It's got my photos on the wall, my name is on the wall in the background. Like it's just my it's so weird, right? It's so weird. Um, and there's not much, you know. I was kind of like talking to some friends about like, should I do I do anything about this? I was even gonna reach out to YouTube. I don't think there's anything that can really be done other than like, hey dude, this is sort of crummy. Could you not do this? But that's I don't think there's anything I could actually do to stop them. The the negative part to me is that I don't want people to do what the person who sent the the message to me originally thought was like, oh, did you start a second channel? I don't want if somebody happens to be familiar with my channel, my setup, I don't want them to think that's that's me and that's my stuff, especially because the the virtual avatar in these things has a face mask on. So, like, which I don't really know why, but I do. So you can't really see the face, so it's like you don't really know, is it me trying to like take on a persona or something? It is not, but I don't want people to think that it is because I don't agree with well, because it's not me, first and foremost, but also on top of that, I don't even agree with you know the the whole premise of this channel in these videos. And the closest thing I can figure is that the the voiceovers in the video, the person who's like explaining stuff, do sound really good. Like the person has a good voice, the audio quality is great, um, everything is is produced very well, and so I kind of think that they must have come across my channel for a tutorial or a review on something, and then just I guess liked the background and took it. I guess. Anyway, the reason I share that story is because two or three years ago, when I had this little photo that I put up as an end screen on a video to just put, you know, like the subscribe button and the next videos to watch over, I didn't really think someone was gonna take that freeze frame and use it as the main set for a whole different channel. And that's the kind of stuff when it when I talk about never knowing where visuals are gonna go, that's that's kind of what I'm talking about. And so not that there's any real risk or any any real issues or anything when it comes to doing a video podcast. But as the person who makes those things, there's a huge difference between me going, oh, I'm gonna go record my podcast. Let me sit down in a comfy chair and comfy clothes and press record and share the stuff that I'm excited about. It it comes down to that whole thing, that kind of mindset to get into where it's like, okay, let me make sure everything that's in the frame is something I want to be in the frame. Let me make sure everything I'm wearing communicates, whatever I want to communicate, let me make sure that I look presentable. So if some weird freeze frame or something of me gets, you know, taken somewhere that it's everything is as presentable as possible because this is going out into the public sphere and I don't have total control over it. It's like whenever uh, you know, Beyonce tried to get her team to get that weird-looking photo of her from a Super Bowl halftime show many years ago, there was like a photo of Beyonce performing, and it was just like not the most flattering snapshot. Like it was just sort of in a in a strange facial expression, just kind of a goofy thing. Nobody would have thought twice about it except that she really didn't want it on the internet, and then her whole team tried to take it down, which of course you can't because now it's already on the internet, and the reason I even still am telling you about this, probably 10 years later at this point, is because it became such a bigger deal because they tried to remove it. So, my thought is just make sure everything that goes out is something that that you're okay with going out. And I can totally do that with a video podcast, but that adds another layer of effort and I don't want to call it stress, but it's just another layer that I don't really, even if it's not evident to the audience, even if you as a listener or the viewer would have no idea, and and my, you know, me being on camera, me hosting the podcast sounds and feels exactly the same. This is something that I feel as the person making the thing, even if it's not always evident in the thing that's being made. And so just taking that away is very helpful and you know, and works. Even when I film my videos, you know, I kind of know usually a day or two in advance. Okay, I have an outline done, I have things planned out, I want to film this video on this day. Maybe Tuesday is gonna be my filming day or my talking head filming day. Okay. When I wake up that day, I kind of wake up knowing that. And it's like it's it kind of helps because it is there's a performance, there's a performative aspect to it, there's the you know, there's the physical side of it, and there's there's a lot that goes into it, into being in a good headspace physically and mentally, that makes you a good presenter on camera. And I don't want to have to do that every time I want to make a podcast, which is something that I like to do for fun. So even though I do know that a video version of this podcast would be better and smarter, every guru and expert out there would say that's definitely the thing to do. For me right now, and for this specific show right now, it's just not practical because this show, The Enthusiasm Project, I love that I associate it with fun and comfort and feeling relaxed and no stress and just it's just pure enjoy, it's pure enthusiasm. And I love that. And I don't want to add something to the workflow that's going to take that away. When we talk about the Couples table with Heather and I, where we do a video version of a podcast, we've been able to develop a workflow there, especially because there's two of us kind of handling it, where it doesn't feel I don't feel like those levels of of stress or overwhelm or anything that I would feel trying to add a video version here. And I've experimented, you know, in the past with like members only and Patreon only videos, video versions of the podcast, because I felt like, okay, if the video is behind, beyond a paywall, then you know, I'm gonna feel a little more comfortable with the people who are seeing if they see the roughness around the edges. I kind of trust these people to see that more than I would when it comes to just putting that out there for the general population. But it was funny because I was feeling sort of um like crazy about feeling this way, and especially as someone who likes making videos and someone who has podcasting courses and the whole thing. I it felt I was feeling guilty, I think, for feeling this way. And then I saw a video from Becky and Chris. This was, I think this video came out sometime in January, and it was sort of their like New Year, what's next for this channel? Sort of video. They have a podcast, and I guess they haven't done it in a while, but they had a video version of a podcast, which is pretty simple. Like the video version was, you know. I think it was a two or three cameras set up, but the cameras were stationary. It was just them sort of talking. And then I think Becky was the one who edited it together and stuff. But they hadn't done their podcasts in a while. And in this video, they were talking about yes, we want to bring our podcast back. But specifically, they were going to I don't know if they made the the actual decision, but it sounded like they made the decision to move from a video version to an audio only version, specifically for the reasons I talked about to be able to enjoy making the show more without having it turn into a big production and a big thing. And it made it just kind of validated how I was feeling. Maybe I didn't need somebody else to say something to validate, you know, my thoughts, of course, but it was kind of nice to make me feel like, okay, I don't think I'm I'm super crazy for this. And so that, even though it seems like a relatively simple decision, right? Do you want your podcast to have video? Do you want your podcast not to have video? It's a really good example of like accepting and knowing, learning your limits and how to accept those limits. For me, a limit that I have is not like I video podcasting, there's a limitation there in how I feel. And similarly, you know, speaking of the beginning of the year and stuff, live streaming is another example where I really wanted to change things this year. That was something I very much wanted to focus on. I've wanted to live stream more because it you can do things in a live stream that you can't do in a video or a podcast or whatever, and they're very cool. And so I had this whole thing planned out for okay, I'm gonna do two public live streams a month. One of them is going to be, you know, kind of a general hangout, questions and answers live stream, and the other one is going to be a help desk live stream. So past couple seasons of this podcast, I've done those help desk episodes where we dive deeper into you know A V technical issues and stuff and workflows and things. Doing live stream versions of those I thought would be really fun. So I schedule those in addition to a third members only live stream every month. So three live streams every month. I know some people stream every day, so it's like, oh, you do three in a month. Oh wow. But that's also on top of the podcasts, on top of videos, on top of client work, on top of life, you know, all that other stuff. And I was so excited. I built out a whole calendar, I scheduled things, I created custom thumbnails for everything, custom descriptions. Like I was building a system, I got my e cam scenes and show profiles all ready to go. And then I was reminded, uh I think it was the day of yeah, the day of I was supposed to do my first live stream. I was reminded that there's there's just a few physical, physical health issues that I have that aren't super serious, but are things that I have that sort of make it not practical to have that rigid of a schedule. And that kind of sucks. Like I really I was very excited about it, and it was kind of a big reminder of maybe that's just not something that I can do consistently the way that I want to. And I know that there's nothing wrong. I don't have a boss, right? Like it doesn't matter if I say there's going to be a stream and then I end up canceling the stream, but it's also not a vacuum. There's people, there's an audience, there's people who care. And so, you know, I send out an email at night that says, hey, don't forget, live stream tomorrow, tune in, and then the next day it turns out I'm not able to do it, and then I have to uh tell a bunch of people, never mind. And that sucks. Uh, it feels it feels crappy. It feels like I'm letting people down. It feels like I'm concerning people, it's shining a spotlight on things that I don't want to have a spotlight shined on. And then and it's also worrying people because then I get multiple messages like, Oh, hope you're okay, hope you're okay. And like, it's I am fine. I'm just not able to like manage a live stream at the moment. That's all. And that that kind of sucks. And so it was just sort of a limit where I was like, okay, all these plans I had for like going real big on live streaming this year, it's not gonna happen. It can't, it I'm not capable of it, and I hate feel I hate that I hate feeling like I'm not capable of something that I want to do, but I'm not capable of it, at least in that way. So instead, what I've realized works is okay, I cannot publicly say there will be a live stream every other Saturday or whatever it might be. But if I know, like, hey, I think I'm gonna, I think I want to live stream on this Saturday, basically just don't tell anybody that when Saturday rolls around, if I'm able to live stream, guess what I'll do? I'll live stream. And the part that sucks is in terms of like, you know, building consistency and community and all those very important best practices. None of that is there because it's like if I'm able to live stream, it is it's just a spur of the moment sort of thing. And yeah, and that's kind of that's the best I can do. And that sucks. Like I wish I could do better, you know, but I can't, and that's that's it. And so that's like that that is hard because it's it's one of those things where the spirit is willing, but uh the body is not capable of doing that. And so that's just you know, that's just sort of a thing that that's a limit that I've had to learn to deal with. And obviously, these kinds of limits that we're talking about go beyond creator stuff. I think the creator examples are really helpful because as a creator, it's very easy to see what other people are doing and to hear best practices and think of all the things you should be doing and and the ways that other people are doing things better than you. And really, you know, if you're not confident in your approach and what you're doing, it is so easy to kind of like bend to the bend to the to the greater masses or to the flow of whatever else is going on. And you can find yourself then in a situation that you really don't want to be in. You know, my whole thing with with thinking maybe I don't need to have videos scheduled out in advance. Turns out I do. Just I'm not saying you do, I do. Having videos scheduled out in advance really works for me. Like I love it, gives me it gives me a peace of mind, it gives me a sense of stability, security, it makes me feel like my channel is taken care of. I can see sort of at least a long-ish term trajectory for the channel because I know what the videos are, I can play with the order of the videos, I can, you know, it allows me to take time off without feeling like I'm neglecting anything. It just works for me in a lot of ways, but I have for so long felt like an absolute nerd for wanting to schedule things out in advance. And so many, you know, so many people will tell me like you don't need to do that, and that's like the worst thing you can do, and you just make videos whenever you make videos, and it's like that. I wish. I wish I could. I can't. Um, yeah, what is I would if I could, but I can't, so I shan't, is sort of where that goes. And and just kind of learning, like, you know, it's been frustrating to then spend months trying to get back on track to just where I was last year before I blew everything up. But having you know, having videos scheduled out, making the types of videos that I make, all that sort of stuff, those are things both positive and negatively, those are all different limits that I've had to learn to accept. And when I, when you feel confident in your thing, when I feel confident that having videos scheduled in advance is a good thing for me, and then I go into a room or an event where there's lots of other creators there and they do they have all their different approaches, I can appreciate their approaches. I can maybe if I want to glean something from it, cool. But I don't feel like if somebody I look up to or somebody who seems to be seeing more success than I am is doing things a certain way, I don't feel that push to suddenly do things the way they're doing it as well. Because I know that that might be what works for them. That's not necessarily what works for me. And so having that sort of that confidence and that understanding of why you're doing what you're doing and what your limits are personally, individually, professionally, creatively, whatever it might be, is very important so that you can you can kind of stay true to what works for you the absolute best. And this does apply to things way beyond content creation, you know, your age, your health, your financial situation, your family situation, all of these things are different limits, which isn't again, it's not like self-limiting beliefs. I don't I don't want that where it's like, oh, I I'm never I'd never be good enough to have a podcast, start a YouTube channel, do this thing. I don't like those kinds of self-limiting beliefs. But understanding your limits are, you know, it is an important thing. I've been playing a ton of hockey lately, um multiple leagues and teams and stuff now, and sometimes I'll play goalie for you know five games a week or more. I played two games yesterday. Like that's you know, by the time I was putting my gear on for the second game, it was still wet and gross from the first game. Like it, you know, that's a lot. That's um that's a lot, and that's a thing I'm learning also as someone who's nearing up on 40 years old, is boy, that's uh very punishing on the old body there and the joints and the you know, the muscles and the bones and things. So even though maybe I do want to play one or two, and the spirit wants to play, you know, every single day of the week, maybe I need to understand that physically it's probably a good idea not to do that every day and not to do that, you know, quite that much to give myself time to recover and stay healthy because then I will be able to do it longer instead of you know being like a firework and just going crazy, blowing out right away, and then I'm done due to some kind of injury or something that's beyond my control. Let's keep this a sustained burn, right? Like let's let's let's do this as long as possible. Applies to sports, applies to YouTube, applies to personal things, all kinds of stuff. But again, not advocating for self-limiting beliefs, things like I can't do that, or oh, only other people could do that. That's for other people. Not about that. More about knowing your limits in a way that means you're not beating yourself up for things that are way beyond your control. And something that's kind of helpful for that is uh something is a really cool thing I used to use with my students. I think I've talked about it on here before, but it's called the million-dollar question. I know I've talked about it on here before. Because what I used to do with my students, if we were going on a trip, uh sometimes we would go on field trips and things, then it'd be earlier in the morning where I would need students to like literally be at the campus at 5 a.m. on a Saturday or something. Because we'd have to get on a bus and you know, go on a long trip or something. And I would tell them, like, hey, if you're like you need to be here at 5 a.m. If you're not, we're leaving without you. Like you are you're not going. And I was serious, like 100%. I left kids. Not where they went, I left them at home, you know, like at the school or at home. Like we went on the trip without them. And that, you know, part of that is important too, because you kind of only have to leave one or two kids behind before everybody knows, like, no, he seriously will leave you. You need to be there on time, and then it's never a problem again. So sadly, you kind of have to make a few examples. But also, it was so it was a good learning experience for students, I think, because some of them would say, like, you know, oh, Mr. Buck, like I'm really worried that I'm gonna oversleep tomorrow and I'm not gonna be able to get there. And I said, Well, set your alarm. I know, but I'm worried, like, my alarm won't go off and I'm gonna oversleep. And I would tell them, okay, if you were gonna get a million dollars to be here at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning, would you be here at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning? And they were like, Absolutely. Okay. So it's not an issue of whether or not you can, it's an issue of motivation and how much you want, how much effort you want to put into being here at time. And that is a really good thing to use with students. You know, even something like a project is due. I can't finish this project by Friday or whatever. Okay, if you were gonna get a million dollars instead of a grade, would you be able to turn it on Friday? Of course I would. Well, there you go. Obviously, you can finish it by Friday. And I use it, and I use this on myself because it was such an effective thing where if there's something where it sort of seems like, I don't know if I can do that, okay. If I was gonna get a million dollars to do this, would I be able to do it? A lot of times the answer is yes. But there are times when the answer is no. If someone said, you know, hey, I will give you a million dollars to go walk on the moon by Friday, uh, it doesn't okay, I can't do that. Like I, and that's not me like limiting my self-beliefs or anything. That's just like I it's not a thing that's possible. So it's a good it's a good tool to use for deciding what is, you know, what's a what's an issue of motivation versus an issue of what's possible versus not possible. And that's that's a cool thing to kind of help you understand, maybe differentiate a self-limiting belief from a genuine limit, a limitation that you should be aware of. That's maybe a healthy thing to be aware of. So I do want to put a limit on the crazy length of this episode. So we're just about approaching an hour. I think that's kind of where I want to want to pause it for right there, and we'll pick back up uh next week with some cool stuff, and I'm excited about that. It feels nice to do this episode again in a way that feels comfortable and natural in the way that I want to do it. I love it. Um as has been the case for all but one season, no sponsors, no ads or anything on this. But what does support this podcast very much, other than just how much I appreciate you sharing your time with me, is everyone who enrolls in my courses. So I do have three courses available. I've talked to them, I've talked about them before. If you want to learn about podcasting, I have two podcasting courses: the podcaster playbook, which is a DIY production workshop that takes you from start to finish to developing a full-on podcast production workflow, mainly audio podcasting. We touch a little bit on the basic elements of video, but it is an audio podcast production course primarily. And then I also have the podcaster idea book because sometimes you might have the technical skill. This is where I was personally. You you have all this gear, you have all the technical skill, but you're like, what the heck do I make a show about? If you're having a hard time coming up with a concept for a show, that's what the podcaster idea book is for. It is going to help you. It's it's stuff that I developed as a teacher. I've used it with students many times. I've used these techniques with myself many times to go through in the idea book. It's to help you not only come up with an idea, potentially come up with several ideas, but also develop them out in a way that you can help find the one that's most sustainable to start with. So that way you know that you're not just making one or two episodes, but you can keep making your podcast as long as you want into the foreseeable future. And if you want to dive more into the video production side of things, maybe you have a video podcast, maybe just like making videos, there is Rough Cut to Final Cut, which is my Final Cut Pro editing course where I share literally everything I know about editing with Final Cut Pro, walk you through start to finish how I make one of my YouTube videos, but also there's a ton of supplemental, uh supplemental lessons and things, and I'm adding stuff very regularly to that. Uh, if you just want to learn all the ins and outs of Final Cut Pro, which is my favorite editing program of choice. Everybody who enrolls in those courses also gets access to a private old school PHP BB message board. So if you're interested in any of those courses, you can go to high my name is Tom.com slash courses, and they're all there. All the info is there. And I hope please only sign up if you think one would actually be helpful for you. But uh, that is something that really does help support this show and keep it going. So thank you to everyone who enrolls in those courses. They do come with lifetime access, by the way. But I also don't want to take your entire lifetime with this episode. So with that being said, thank you for listening. Appreciate you. If you have anything you want to share, you can email me, Tom at enthusiasmproject.com, or you can go to high my name is Tom.com right there on the home page before you go browse the courses. Right there on the homepage, you can scroll down and leave a voice message for the show. So with that being said, I hope you have a safe, happy, healthy, fun rest of your week. And I will see you next time.