A Podcast After-Action Review

Blair and David share what they have learned as they have recorded 2Bobs podcast episodes for almost 4 years - what has worked well, what has been challenging, and what they would recommend to those agency principals who might be considering their own podcast.

 

Links

The Soul of Enterprise Episode 15: “The Best Learning Method Ever Devised: After Action Reviews” with Ron Baker and Ed Kless

Build a Better Agency with Drew McClellan

EconTalk with Russell Roberts

Marcus dePaula, podcast producer and consultant

 

Blair’s Podcasting Setup

  • Telefunken M82 dynamic XLR microphone

  • Audient iD4 audio interface

  • Rolls MS111 Mic Mute

  • Senal SMH-1000 Professional Field and Studio Monitor Headphones

  • Apple QuickTime Player app for AIFF audio recording using the Maximum quality setting

  • Skype for the conversation (audio only)

 

David’s Podcasting Setup

  • Sennheiser HMDC 27 Professional Broadcast Headset with custom extension cable (so David can roam as he records)

  • Audient iD4 audio interface

  • Rolls MS111 Mic Mute

  • Rogue Amoeba Audio Hijack for WAV audio recording of both David's mic and the Skype call (as a backup)

  • Skype for the conversation (audio only)

 

Marcus prefers using Cleanfeed.net or Squadcast.fm in Chrome both for the conversation and to record.

Transcript

Blair Enns: David Baker, it's been a long time.

David: Is that because I've been busy, you've been busy, you're avoiding me?

Blair: I'm not avoiding you. In fact, we spent like five days together in rural Tennessee at your cabin on a writing retreat with a couple of other guys. That was a lot of fun.

David: It was, and you said before why don't we grab some time and do a podcast? I knew it wouldn't happen. I brought my equipment anyway in case you--

[laughter]

David: It was fun.

Blair: It's probably the fourth time we've been alone together and thought we're going to be together. Let's bring the equipment. We'll record a podcast, but this doesn't work when we're face to face. Does it?

David: [laughs] That's true. I need to add that to my list of what makes a successful podcast. Don't be within smacking distance of your cohost.

Blair: And that is the topic of today's podcast. I think we're three years in. We've been recording for more than three years and I thought because we haven't recorded in so long what's been happening, the last few episodes have been-- I think the one that aired before this was recorded in 2016 and the one before that was somewhere around in a similar time frame. As I'm listening to these podcasts, the most recent episodes and cringing, I'm realizing we've actually learned a little bit about how to podcast. I know you've got a lot of clients who are doing podcasts now, don't you?

David: Yes, 11. I've had some degree of input in them starting them and shaping them. Yes, a lot.

Blair: I've never counted how many clients of ours are podcasting, but it's the medium. It just seems to me this would be a really good time for you and I to do an after-action review on our experience with the podcast so far so we can share what we've learned with the audience. If you, dear listener, you're thinking of launching your own podcast or you've launched your own podcast, maybe just benefit from our mistakes. How's that sound?

David: I mean, another way to look at this is we've recorded 68, we published 68 episodes and 42 good ones. What happened to the other ones?

[laughter]

Blair: Who's to blame? That's the theme today. It's finger-pointing. We've said before, it's always been an experiment. Let's go to 50. We made the commitment to go to 50 and then at 50 we said, "Let's go to 100." We're not quite halfway between 50 and 100. I think we're looking at the finish line thinking, "Yes, I think a hundred is about it."

David: We're going to run out of good stuff to talk about unless we suddenly get smarter at a faster rate than we have over the last three years, for sure.

Blair: That's not necessarily a truism or a risk for all podcasts, it has something to do with the format, and we'll talk about that. I wanted to use this idea of an after-action review. If you've never used an after action review in your business, it's a really simple tool invented by the US military after a mission to basically discuss what happened, what went well, what went wrong, what would you do differently in the future?

Ron Baker and Ed Kless have a podcast called The Soul of Enterprise. We'll dig it up and list it in the show notes, but there's an episode from a couple of years back where they're making the claim that in their minds, the after-action review is the most valuable knowledge tool ever invented. We use it in our business regularly, after every workshop, after every initiative, any big initiative or strategic initiative, we conduct an after-action review.

That's what we'll do here live about our podcasting experience. The format is simple. First of all, it's what was the objective? Then what went well, what didn't go so well and what would we do differently next time?

David: Before you do this, I want people to know that we have not compared notes. I could say this went really well and then you could jump in and say, that was on my list of what didn't go well. This will be very interesting.

Blair: I have to ask, do you have an alternative cohost lined up?

David: I have many of them, yes. I do.

Blair: Let's start with the objective. Thinking back to the beginning, what was the objective of this thing?

David: It was your idea for sure. I was a little nervous about turning you loose on the public without my influence.

Blair: You're here as my chaperone, basically.

David: I obviously jumped at the idea when you mentioned it. I didn't have any idea where it would go, but in my mind, there were two reasons why I was interested in it other than just doing something with a friend. One was to force me to keep developing a point of view. That might sound crazy to people, but I get stupid really quickly if I'm not forced to either be on stage or write an article or do something like this because the shame of sounding stupid in front of people is a pretty big motivator for me.

I love the idea that this would be an opportunity. We would pick a topic and I'd have to think about it. I just love that pressure. That was one and I've done that at a previous era in my life where I committed to write 55 articles, each one on a different subject. Then when I finished 55 articles, I stopped and I found myself going back to that so many times and updating it and so on.

The second reason was that I just felt like it had the potential to be a really good new business driver in that we're not selling what we're doing here. We're just trying to offer help, but in the process, people will spread the word. They'll be familiar is what we do for a living and it seemed like a real high impact, really good ROI. It didn't take a lot of work, but it had the potential to be a pretty high impact thing. Those are the two things in my mind.

Blair: I would agree with those. I was a little surprised by the point of view thing, but as you're talking, I have an article that I haven't even started yet. I've been forming it in my mind and it's a similar idea. One of my goals this year, we're recording this the end of October 2019. One of my goals this year was to read as few nonfiction books as possible and to focus mostly on fiction and just give myself a break from absorbing information. What I have discovered is it's been great.

It's been a really great experiment, but I'm ending it a bit early because I'm getting stupid and I can feel myself getting stupid. I relate completely to this idea of having a point of view of forcing us to have a point of view. The goal of this is it's a marketing endeavor. We thought it would be, as you say, a pretty good ROI because we thought it would be not too much effort, a lot of fun and it was a way for two friends who were both busy and getting busier to force themselves to have some more regular conversations. I think on that front it's done great.

David: That last point, that's so important to me because you and I will chat before we hit record. That means a lot to me. I'm checking in with your life, you're checking in with mine and it's the kind of thought I probably wouldn't pick up the phone and do it but the fact that we're here doing something anyway, it just facilitates that. That's more of a private reason, but it's high on my list, for sure.

Blair: Let's talk about what went well. It's not over yet. We still have a bunch to go, but what's working?

David: Maybe we should each throw one out, take turns at this at what went well and see if we have much overlap here. Some of these things that went well, I didn't think they would go well, which maybe that's why I am prompted to put them on the list that they went well because they surprise me that they went well. One of those was just being naked in front of the audience.

By that I mean being spontaneous and transparent and you have this little bit of angst rising as you say things and you immediately are thinking, oh my goodness, who's listening? Which of my clients is listening to this? Or I better not use any current examples of clients because they'll see themselves in it or something like that, but more, it's okay to think out loud without everything completely formulated.

That has gone well in my mind in a surprising way. I think if you go back to some of the earlier, especially my side of things, I was way too scripted. I had way too many notes that I'm just following as opposed to now I'm a lot more relaxed. I've got some basic ideas, but a lot more relaxed about it. That's gone well.

Blair: I don't know if you've ever gone back and listened to the first episode we ever recorded, but the audio quality is poor, it could never air. I've listened to the beginning of it a couple of times because it's so fun. We had a topic and I was going to interview you and then I decided, no, this is too scripted here. I'm going to change it. We get on the recording and I say, "David, we're supposed to talk about X, but I'm going to call an audible. We're going to talk about Y." You went, "What? No, wait." I just laughed and laughed.

David: That was my early panic I guess.

Blair: I forget what the topic was, but it didn't pass the quality test so it never aired. I would agree with that. One of the things I like about this is neither you nor I prepare a lot. I think there are a few episodes where I look back and I thought, I probably could have done a little more preparation on that. I could have structured my ideas a little bit better or gone a little bit deeper into a topic where I've maybe forgotten some things, but for the most part I really liked the lack of preparation. I think it's helpful. Plus, it's less work.

David: I added up the time it took me to prepare for this one and I think I have about 20 lines, just real brief, a couple words on each line. I spent about two minutes on the plane yesterday. It works pretty well, but I think it would require more preparation earlier before you've learned the cadence of things and learned how much detail to get into, and there is a craft that you start to develop over time.

Blair: Let me throw out another one, what went well. The first thing I wrote is it works. What I mean by that is, I can't quantify this, but you and I have this conversation a lot like, "Hey, you're getting much feedback?" You and I regularly get feedback that people listen to this. In fact, the last training engagement I was on, there's 40 people in the room. You said, most of the people in this room listen to that podcast and that podcast is the reason you're here.

Again, I can't quantify it, but in terms of marketing, you will do an event. I know you do an event, you ask for show of hands, how many people listen to 2Bobs and we're always surprised that anybody listens.

[laughter]

I think from a marketing point of view, it's worked even though we can't quantify it exactly.

David: Absolutely. I did an event last Friday and three fourths of the people had been listening to it. Today, I'm consulting with a firm in Atlanta, I'm in a hotel room, I'm looking out over Atlanta skyline, beautiful here. This morning I said, "By the way, how did we connect?" Because I didn't remember and one of the two partners said, "Well, I'm an EO with a guy and he was going on and on about this podcast, 2Bobs and he said he's listened to every episode twice, he's starting to listen the third time." This was the principal speaking. I said, "Well, he's not interested in hardly anything, if he's interested in that, then maybe I should try it."

Then they hired me. Those kinds of stories happen all the time. I think there's some secrets to why that worked in our case that we'll have to talk about as we get into the advice about how to replicate this for yourself, but that's absolutely on the list as well, it works. That's one thing that did surprise me quite a bit, maybe not as much as you, you had a sense it would work more than I did.

Blair: What else is on your list of what went well?

David: I think setting a regular recording time. I'm getting way down on the weeds on some of these things, but I've been the one that's messed that up recently because of some travel stuff, but we record every Friday at noon Central Time, unless one of us has something that comes up and sometimes we'll reschedule, but having a regular time makes this happen.

Which also means because both of us travel a fair bit, we've got to have some episodes in the can or it's not going to work. That setting a regular recording time and treating this seriously because if we don't publish something or if we publish it late, we do hear from people. It's a commitment you're making to the audience.

Blair: Yes, I would agree with that. What percentage of time do you think we end up bumping? I know neither you or I bumped this for any reason really other than we're traveling for an engagement or a speaking engagement or something. What percentage of time do you think we've made that standing commitment?

David: Probably three-fourths of the time, I would think. We're usually really good at it.

Blair: I was going to say half.

David: Oh, really?

Blair: Yes.

David: Well, we used to record two episodes at once. That didn't work too well for me. I found that my energy level on the second one wasn't all that fantastic. Well, you probably said that because I've forced us to miss a whole bunch of them in a row for the last two months.

Blair: I feel like I'm the culprit so it's probably fairly even. I think another thing that we've done well is right from the beginning, we hired a producer who is a total sound geek and that's Marcus. You're a sound geek too so if we hadn't hired Marcus, I suppose you could do all of the editing, et cetera, but I think it's been great to have a third party. We do the recordings, we use Skype, we record our separate files locally.

We're listening to each other over Skype, we're not looking at each other, we're just listening to each other. We record the files locally, we send them to Marcus and he takes out all the coughs, et cetera, all of that stuff. We had some audio quality issues in the early days, they were mostly on me and it was really just Marcus pushing, pushing, pushing to get the quality higher. I think just having a third party producer/engineer has been fantastic.

David: Yes, absolutely.

Blair: One more thing on your list?

David: A couple, actually. Don't rush me, man, don't rush me.

[laughter]

I think a limited amount of chitchat, maybe we're doing more chitchat than normal today because of the subject, but when I listen to other podcasts, I think they do way too much chitchat or not enough and I think what's worked for us is we have just a little bit of chitchat at the beginning and then we dive straight into the topic so people don't get bored and skip the episode and then there's just a little bit of banter during the thing, but not too much personal. I get bored. I'm not that interested in people's relationship. I want there to be evidence that they're humans and they like each other, but after that I want meat. I think that's worked well.

Blair: Yes, and I would say there were times when we had a bit too much chitchat and Marcus just goes in and cuts it out. [laughs]

David: That's stuff that doesn't even show up.

Blair: Ruthless Marcus.

David: Do you have anything else on your list?

Blair: I've got no sponsor. We've been approached by many people to sponsor this, many organizations, and I love the fact that we've just kept it without a sponsor.

David: In fact, one person just said, "You tell us how much you want." It's almost an open-ended thing and I like the fact that it's just pure without any selling. Well, let me just give you one other thing that I think has gone well and that's that we don't second-guess ourselves all that much. At the end of a recording, you or I or both of us will say after we stop recording, "Was that any good? Should we have said that?"

Blair: [laughs]

David: We did a lot more second-guessing of that at the beginning and now we're pretty much just not questioning ourselves too much. We have a third party who will axe something if it's really not good, or if the next morning we're thinking-- I remember we recorded one episode and both of us thought the next morning--

Blair: Working With Your Spouse?

David: That was not-- What were we thinking? We obviously weren't thinking. Not questioning ourselves too much and just doing things. That's it from my side.

Blair: And me as well.

  

Blair: That's what went well. Things that didn't go so well that we maybe had to learn or change along the way, I think there's a whole category of technology. How many microphones have you been through or audio setups have you been through?

David: Three now, right?

Blair: Yes. I would say the first thing I wrote down under technology was, I used a USB mic. I'm not a tech guy, I need something really, really simple. I was using a road podcaster and the gain was unpredictable. It'll be up and down and up and down so you can hear on some of those early episodes where you can hear the audio problems. I would just skip the USB mic altogether. What have you got under not so well?

David: This is really under the category of recommendations especially, that's how I was thinking about it. You have to have a certain size audience before you do something like this because I don't think you're necessarily going to build a massive audience with the podcast. You've got to start out with a seated audience. You've got to have a list of people that you can reach out to or a blog or something otherwise you'll end up discouraged with 100 downloads and people aren't listening to it.

I mean, there's still a reason to do it even if people aren't listening to it, you'll get smarter, you'll connect with great people and so on, but unless you have at least a basic size audience and a strong positioning, then you probably had to work on those things first, that would be a recommendation. As a part of that too, this might surprise some people, I'm sure that some of our listeners have violated this and they've still been fine, but I think it's a good idea for a host of a podcast to have been a guest on a podcast many times because you just figure out how to be treated.

You figure out the whole cadence, you figure out how long your answer should be, of course, the audio side, which you've talked about. Until you've been a guest multiple times and I think it's hard to be a good host, especially if you're going to interview people. Now, you and I aren't interviewing anybody so that's a little bit different, but if this were a format where I'm interviewing a different person every week, I would not do a great job unless I had been interviewed by a lot of people and seen what a sucky job they do at it generally.

Blair: Yes, you and I have both been on Drew McClellan's podcast, Build a Better Agency. He does a fantastic job of preparing the speaker, little touches. You can tell he's been on podcasts and he's had a lot of guests on podcasts because everything about that experience from a guest's point of view is just fantastic. He does a fantastic job. Here's the biggest thing that I've learned in terms of things that I've had to improve and things that didn't go so well. It's my own personal pace and energy level. What prompted the idea for this podcast now is me listening to the two most recent ones and thinking, oh.

The most recent one, I had a cold, I could tell it was in the middle of the winter and I was suffering my seasonal affected disorder. I could not stand to listen to myself. My energy was just low, it was clear that I shouldn't have been recording in that moment and then there are other times when I've just clearly had one too many cups of coffee and I'm going too fast.

Finding the right pace, I'm not saying that I have the right pace now, I almost never know if my pace is right when I'm doing it. I don't know until afterwards, but there are so many episodes where I just thought, "Oh man, Blair, you should have just slowed down." Or, "You needed another shot of caffeine because you were just lacking energy."

David: There needs to be some audio device, some software tool that can inject energy into a podcast guest's voice, right?

Blair: Like a taser.

David: Yes. [laughs] I've got some ideas and this relates not to the podcast you and I do, because most formats are you're interviewing a new person every week, right? These are just some things that I think, you really got to think about this stuff. One is, don't ask your guest to rate your podcast and promote it for you. If they want to do that they will. It's a low impact podcast when you've got to beg a guest to leave a five-star review on iTunes for you. That's just not really good form.

The other thing is, start out with some typical questions that they are asking, but then mix it up. Oh, my goodness. The way I would like to think about it is, I'm hoping that my host, the person who's interviewing me, would be able to pull some things out of me that I've never said on another podcast. That's a really great interviewer. Skip all this-- I know one of your favorite questions is if you could go back in time and give some advice to your earlier self, what would you say?

Blair: I got asked this last week at a conference.

David: Every host asks that question, "If you could go back in time and give your earlier self some advice, what would it be?" Now, you've developed some sort of smart elegance to that, I think, but don't do those silly things that every host does. Just have your own style. Be different. Be conversational. I'm starting to get animated here because I've been interviewed by so many great people and then by some really lame ones and I can really tell the difference.

Blair: Now we're speaking from our experience of being guests in other podcasts. Your guests do not need to see the questions in advance, and I don't think it's a good idea as a host to share the questions in advance. That's been offered to me a few times. On some level, I appreciate the offer, but if I'm going to be a good guest, I don't need to see the questions. Okay, what else?

David: Don't necessarily use a booking agency. If your format is to interview other people, you can get as many guests as you want by just going to a booking agency, and they'll shovel into you, and there's no charge to do that, but they are paid to put these people on podcasts, and they don't have your podcast's best interest in mind, necessarily. Sometimes it works, but your audience deserves really great guests who not only have something interesting to say but also they have an interesting way of saying it. You don't just go to sleep immediately.

I look through a list of who they've had on, and it's like there's such an unevenness on there. They would do their guests more of a favor, I think, by bringing better guests on and not just taking the ones that come their way. Aim high. Aim for some people that you don't even think you could get because that is the new speaking. You'll be surprised at how you could get somebody on as a guest that is really well known that you could never get to come speak at your event.

Blair: I would second that. I think that's great advice. We're kind of morphing into recommendations here, things we've learned and recommendations. Format's key, and we've touched on this a little bit. This format has been great because we're friends and our businesses overlap a little bit. We serve the same market, and even the area of guidance overlaps a little bit in the area of positioning, and we bump up against each other. Many times we've worked with the same firm. An agency that's hired you has also hired me or my firm. That's been a really good format.

What we give up is we don't talk about timely stuff. I alluded to this earlier. That's why I think this podcast has a certain life and it's probably a hundred episodes. At some point, it's like, "Okay, a hundred episodes." I know there's already somewhere we recorded and then Marcus goes, "Well, you kind of talked about this like 30 episodes ago." This idea of having a podcast with a friend where you're having a conversation about a topic, where the two friends are in a similar business or serve a similar market, I think that's a powerful idea, but that's just one format idea.

I also like the idea of the in-depth interview format. What I would caution you to not do is to have two people interview somebody. I listened to a couple of podcasts like that. I think Ron Baker and Ed Kless in The Soul of Enterprise, they do it live on VoiceAmerica. There's four distinct segments and they trade-off, where one is doing the interview for one segment, then the next one does the interview for the next segment, then they go to these commercial breaks. That's the only one that I am aware of that really works.

In other situations where you have two people interviewing somebody else, and I've been a guest where there are three or four people have been interviewing me, it's just weird. As a guest, it's weird. As a listener, it's weird. You're thinking, "How come that other person's not saying anything?" If you're going to buddy up with somebody for this, it should be you and your friend talking about a topic, rather than you and your friend interviewing somebody.

David: Yes. To build on that, I think what I was taking from what you just said is that since we only talk about evergreen topics, we don't talk about what's happening this week in the marketing or design world then we don't have nearly as much material to cover. That's why this thing needs to stop at some point. That's really true. I think if I could piggyback also on what you said about the interviewing style, the interviews that I enjoy the most are the ones where the person who is interviewing me will push back in a kind, gentle way, but isn't just automatically saying, "Uh-huh" agreeing with everything.

That's probably one area where you and I could do better. We could push back on each other's perspectives because we don't agree on everything. It's not ugly tension, but there has to be a little bit of surprise and like, "Oh, I wonder what's going to come next," because those two perspectives don't align. I think there needs to be a little bit of drama. It needs to be kind, but a little bit of drama. I've appeared on some podcasts where I thought the person who did it was really spectacular at it.

The Six Degrees of Separation guy out of Montreal is really good at that. We'll put his name in the show notes, but he does a really good job of pushing back. The first time that happened, it surprised me a little bit, but then I thought we had a much more substantial conversation because of that. Don't be so deferential to every guest that it's not interesting because your listeners are thinking of questions, they're disagreeing with some things, and if you're a great interviewer, you're anticipating what your listeners are hearing, and you're going to ask those questions that they would have asked and push back a little bit, and everybody will learn a lot more that way, I think.

Blair: A mutual friend made the comment about how we don't disagree much. I think we both made the point that, well, we tend to, if we have a different point of view on a subject matter, we tend to talk it out until we're on the same page. That's not always the case, but it's largely the case. Our thinking, as we both said before, is quite blended by now after all these years. You and I are recording an episode tomorrow on responding to RFPs.

I'm going to interview you on this, and it's already occurred to me that I might have different points of view on this than you so I'm going to push back on this if it's appropriate. I know what you mean because my favorite podcaster, and I know he's a favorite of yours too, is Russ Roberts who hosts EconTalk. I listen to him for the subject matter, partially, but mostly to learn how to be a good interviewer. I think he's the best long-format interviewer out there, and I love the way he has conversations with people he does not agree with.

David: They're very respectful but you find that you just start to listen even more carefully because of how he's pushed back on something, absolutely. I have one other thing to add, and that's the whole timing thing. For our format, what feels good is 25 to 35 minutes, but I don't think you ought to be religious about that. If you're really into something, and there are three or four episodes where you and I have been very passionate about something and we've gone to 35 or 40 minutes, that's okay.

I think it's equally important when you start running out of interesting stuff to do, just shut up and press the record button again and say, "All right, it's 20 minutes, or it's 25 minutes, we owe it to our audience to not just try to stretch something out, just because we've agreed to a particular kind of format." I think people's attention span is somewhere in the 30, 35 minutes. Now you've got hardcore history with Dan Carlin, four-hour episodes, but it's a pretty rare person that could make something that interesting, and I'm not one of those people.

Blair: Yes, Joe Rogan as well. It's interesting, I've seen a lot of acknowledgment recently where people are talking about the short attention spans that are driven by mostly social media, and then other people counter, "Well, I look at my kids listen to Joe Rogan for three and a half hours."

David: Right.

Blair: I think there's no kind of hard-line about how long it should be. I think you'll find out how long it should be. Some podcasts go on too long, some are too short. Ron Baker and Ed Kless, I listen to their podcast from time to time, and I'll occasionally send them a note saying the only thing wrong with that last episode was it was too short. They're constrained by the format, and because they're airing it live, they can't go longer.

It's nice to have in this podcasting medium, the freedom to go a little bit longer if you want or to keep it short. I think the lesson is find the length that's right for you. All right, so I had a couple of other things here, under not so well. Marcus is always giving us hell for this. We're not very good at promoting this podcast.

David: Yes. Partly because I don't see a lot of value in social media, and that would be one place we could do it. Then the other reason is because I forget to do it in my normal emails, although sometimes-- My weekly emails. Yes, we aren't very good at it. We actually bought some ads on Overcast when we first started, and they were very effective because you could track the new subscribers directly, and you could measure the ROI. That's the only time we've ever done anything, except for just tell our existing audience about it. This could be a whole lot bigger if we paid more attention to it for sure.

Blair: Do you have some overarching thoughts for our listeners on who should launch a podcast, what you should wait for, when you should just dive in, or?

David: Well, one thing I mentioned, you ought to be a guest a bunch of times. It ought to be the principal doing it, or a key management member. You ought to have an audience. You ought to be able to keep up with the frequency, which I think can't be any less frequent than every two weeks, might even need to be weekly. If you're articulate, and if all those things are true, then I think it makes sense.

I wish I could see around the corner and say what's coming next after podcast because, at some point, they'll be a saturation level. Of the 11 clients I have that are doing it, I'm really happy with the podcasts they're doing. I think they're brilliant. I think there's room for more people to do it as well.

Blair: I think so too. I don't think we've peaked at podcasts yet. I think it's a great medium. I think there's also some stuff in terms of recommendations. Maybe we'll have Marcus list our individual text X. You and I use different microphones, different mixers, et cetera.

David: Yes. It sounds good.

Blair: Okay. This has been great. It's really nice to record with you again. I'm keen to get to 100. I don't know what we're going to do after 100 because I really enjoy these conversations, but we will find something to do and maybe it will be captured and put out into the world. We'll be back talking to our audience in two weeks but you and I are recording that one tomorrow so we're getting caught up.

David: You have about 24 hours to bone up on RFPs and come around to my perspective, who knows. I am not prepared to take much lip from you tomorrow so just be careful, young man.

Blair: I'm going in hard. We'll talk to you tomorrow, David and listener, we'll be back in two weeks.

David Baker