My name is Ed Ryan and this is the podcast business journal spotlight.
In the spotlight today, Jacob Bozarth, co-founder of resonate recordings,
resonate recordings as a comprehensive podcast,
editing service and production source.
Jacob founded resonate recordings in 2014 with co-founder Mark Owens.
Since launching Jacob has partnered with over 100 podcasters and worked with
many podcasts at the top of the iTunes charts.
The goal of resonate recordings is to create quality podcasts that will resonate
with your listeners and listen closely folks, because following our interview,
Jacob took the file from this interview and had his team edit and produce
the final product.
Here's our spotlight on Jacob Bozarth.
So Jacob, the first question is who is Jacob Bozarth?
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Yeah.
So I am a audio engineer entrepreneur.
I own resonate recordings.
We're located in Louisville, Kentucky.
I've been married to my beautiful wife for almost nine years and we have three
kids, six, four and one.
So they keep us busy all the time.
How did you get into, is it podcasting first or how did you get into this field?
I did my undergrad at middle Tennessee state university down in Murfreesboro,
Tennessee.
So I was a wannabe rock star, wanted to play music and wasn't really sure what I
wanted to do.
My band recorded an album my senior year of high school and so really enjoyed the
studio experience, the studio environment, just found it really therapeutic and
relaxing.
And so I was talking to the engineer and he told me about middle Tennessee state,
went down, checked it out, kind of fell in love with it and thought what better way
to prolong my dreams of being a rock star than learning how to record and being in
the studio myself.
So fell in love with that.
Met a friend there.
And then long story short, after I graduated, my friend and I reconnected in
Louisville and we started Resonate Recordings.
It started out as a recording kind of demos for a friend and then helping out in our
church as well with a sermon audio from the church, mixing and mastering that.
And so then we had a friend that was a podcaster that asked us if we could mix and
master their podcast.
And we're like, sure, why not?
So we gave it a try.
That was in 2014.
And yeah, started doing that in exchange just for a shout out on their podcast and
kind of by word of mouth that grew from one client to 10 clients to 50 clients and so
on to kind of where we are today.
So it started out as one podcast that you were helping to edit it together.
Then you'd load it up or send it back to them or what was the process that you were
going through with that first podcast?
We had never really done a podcast, but we're like, you know, we can mix and master
music.
So, you know, podcasts, obviously just being dialogue have mixed and mastered a lot of
vocal tracks, but never just spoken word.
And so kind of through that, we we kind of explored and kind of developed our own
process for mixing and mastering for a podcast, which to my knowledge, at that point, I
wasn't aware of that out there.
Even kind of a space, there wasn't really anything online that I could find about how
to mix and master a podcast or anything like that.
And so, yeah, we kind of developed our own process using a podcast.
Using Pro Tools and all the professional recording and mixing and mastering background
that we we had learned from school and by doing in our experience to applying that to
the podcasting space.
And so they saw a need, I think, for just some help with their audio quality because
they were having listeners complaining that their, you know, one track would be louder
than the other and their levels were inconsistent throughout and just kind of sounded bad.
And I think kind of for me, that was the first time I became aware of, like, no matter how
good their content was and they had really loyal fan base, people were still complaining
because the audio quality wasn't good.
And so their message obviously wasn't being delivered in a clear format.
Do you remember the name of that podcast?
And is it still around?
Yeah, it is still around.
It's called the Happy Rant podcast.
And do you, do they still work with you or?
Yeah, there's still still a client of ours.
Yeah, it was three guys originally.
And then now it's one of the guys kind of phased out.
But there's another guy that's a part of it now.
But yeah, they're still one of our loyal client and partners and yeah, enjoy working with
them.
So is your focus completely on podcasting now or are you still doing other work with
Resonate Records?
Yeah, great question.
So Resonate Recordings, it is solely focused on podcasting for now.
And so I think that kind of through the growing medium of podcasting, we saw an opportunity
there to really help not only just providing these services for podcasters, but also kind
of help be a voice in the space to help podcasters to make it really just as easy as possible.
You know, from recording, selecting their equipment, to be frank, there's a lot of really,
there's some good but there's also a lot of bad information out there on, you know, just
kind of over complicating the process of what you need to get started.
I talked to a lot of podcasters that they just feel overwhelmed and really kind of like,
they don't even know where to go or where to start.
And so really, that's kind of our mission at Resonate is to really make podcasting as
easy as possible, not just by providing the ongoing services, but also by providing resources,
providing equipment recommendations, providing the appropriate training that's needed to
kind of be able to record just basic mic technique.
I'm really amazed sometimes at how really easy it is to help someone improve the quality
of their podcast and really after having a conversation with me on the phone of like,
this really helps, I was really feeling overwhelmed by just all the information and kind of not
even knowing where to start.
And so beyond just the services that we provide, we really enjoy helping podcasters kind of
get started so they can focus on their content and not on all the technical elements of the
podcasting space.
So what is the best equipment to get rolling with for those people that are confused from
the beginning?
I would say it really depends on kind of the format.
And so I would classify kind of two different categories.
One would be remote podcasts like you and I are doing right now.
I convinced you, thank you to trying out ZenCaster with me.
So yeah, we're a big fan of ZenCaster.
I think it's a great platform.
Initially they had some bugs that they have worked out in their platform.
So it still has a little bit of a bad rep for some people, but overall, we use it and
several of our clients use it and we have great experience with it.
We usually recommend ZenCaster.
So obviously you need a Google Chrome browser for that for this would be a remote recording
setup.
We like the Audio Technica AT2005 or ATR2100 microphone.
They're both great microphones.
There's a few others out there that are a similar build that I would recommend like
a dynamic microphone just because it's going to pick up a lot less room noise and background
noise.
And the reality is even for myself right now, I'm in an office space and so I don't have
appropriate treatment on the walls for sound absorption.
It's not like I'm in a studio.
And that's the reality for a lot of podcasters is they don't have that.
And so we always get asked about the Blue Yeti microphone.
And to be honest with you, I'm not a huge fan of the Blue Yeti for most podcasters because
it's a large diaphragm condenser microphone.
And so it's going to pick up a lot more of the room noise and it's going to pick up the
room tones more.
If you're in a really treated room, it's a good USB microphone, but I like the Audio
Technica style dynamic microphones for most podcasters, I would say.
So that would be for remote recording setup.
If we are doing in-person recording, for a lot of our clients, we recommend just a really
simple setup.
And we found that the preamps that are in the handheld recorders we recommend actually
sound pretty good, if not better than a lot of the interfaces that you would use.
So it really kind of depends.
But I would say for most people, we recommend a handheld recorder like a Zoom H6 with some
sort of also a dynamic microphone.
You can use the Audio Technica microphones.
They actually double as that I mentioned for the remote.
You can use them as a USB, but they also double as a XLR microphone.
So you can plug them directly into the handheld recorders.
The Zoom H6, Zoom H5, like I said, I think are both great options, very easy to use.
You turn them on, they have recorded your separate tracks.
So that's usually our setup would be a dynamic microphone plugging into the Zoom H6, Zoom
H5.
If you had two people, I would recommend be across from the table for each other because
you don't want to get a ton of bleed in your microphone.
Also, obviously all the accessories are really important.
And this is kind of what I was mentioning about.
I'm amazed at sometimes how simple of a recommendation I can make.
Or in my mind, it's such a simple recommendation, but what a dramatic change or improvement
it will make in someone's podcast, such as just adding a pop filter to the accessories
of the podcast.
You know, you get a pop filter on Amazon for like $5 and it really will cut down on the
pops and the plosives, what we would call of, you know, P sounds and stuff like that.
I'll just take my pop filter off for a minute and you'll hear some of the pops in my, so
I'm going to put it back on.
But just a few accessories.
So pop filter, obviously headphones.
We always recommend like listening to yourself so you can kind of hear if you're distorting
or clipping.
What about hosting?
What hosting companies do you like?
There's a lot of great hosting platforms out there.
That's one of the benefits of working with a lot of great podcasters is we've been able
to experiment and try out a lot of the different hosting platforms.
Lipsyn, Podbean, Blueberry, Audio Boom.
We are fans, honestly, of Podbean and Lipsyn are probably our two kind of go-to recommendations.
You know, we find that they seem to be the ones that are the most user-friendly.
And then also Buzzsprout is another one that we would recommend.
So Podbean, Lipsyn, and Buzzsprout would be kind of the three that we would recommend.
Cool.
When you're editing, is there like one or two tips or one or two edits that you find
yourself constantly doing on somebody's podcast?
Is there something that is a regular thing that you start to see when you're working
with your clients that it becomes consistent that maybe somebody can get a tip from you
on now that they should watch out for?
Sure.
As far as editing, you know, it really varies depending on kind of the style of the podcast.
If it's more of a conversational podcast where rather than like more of a scripted podcast,
it really depends on what we're editing out, what we're listening for, and that kind of
varies from client to client, to be honest.
I'll say, you know, one of the most common things we're editing out are just stutters
and filler words, which I'm sure you're going to hear in this podcast from me of ums or
ahs or just kind of things that we say whenever we're uncomfortable with silence.
It might be a you know or whatever that may be and just kind of filling space whenever
you're uncomfortable, I guess, or just not sure what to say.
So usually those are the type of things that we're editing out are ums, ahs, filler words,
mess ups, false starts, stutters, those type of things.
We have an in-house team here, so we train our engineers to listen for those type of
things that are obvious mess ups that would clean up the audio and make the podcast an
overall more like pleasant experience for the listener.
So if there's an um or an ah in the middle of a sentence, we may leave that in.
It's kind of a judgment call that we would make because we feel like that kind of would
compromise the integrity or the quality of the overall podcast because the edit's going
to be more of a distraction than the um or the ah and obviously that's just kind of a
natural part of spoken word are those type of filler words.
And again, it kind of varies depending on the client if it's more of a conversational kind
of a laid back like you'll hear in like the podcast that I mentioned, the happy rant.
They're kind of just joking.
They don't have a script or anything that they're following.
It's really just off the cuff kind of conversations between three guys.
They like to make a lot of jokes and kind of pick at each other and jab at each other
and stuff like that.
So they leave in a lot of the ums and the ahs and those type of things.
So for them, we're actually not really doing much editing.
We're more of doing mixing and mastering which is what I feel like kind of makes us unique
of what we do of our mixing and mastering process of doing noise reduction, making sure
the levels are consistent throughout cleaning up the audio.
If it was recorded in a bad room or a bad microphone, we're going to try to make it
sound not as bad.
Obviously there's only so much we can do on improving the quality of it.
We mix and master every podcast that comes through but we don't edit every podcast that
comes through.
Gotcha.
What programs are you using?
We are using Pro Tools exclusively.
We are familiar with a lot of the free DAWs that are out there such as GarageBand and
Audacity and even Adobe.
Not a free one but Pro Tools is kind of the industry standard for music and for albums
and producing albums in Nashville.
So that's what most of our team has a degree or either kind of extensive training or background
in that.
So we've all been kind of trained on Pro Tools.
Our DAW is not going to really change the way it sounds.
It's more of whichever one you're most comfortable using.
So like I said, most of our engineers are most comfortable working in Pro Tools and
are able to work most efficiently and whatnot through that.
We really feel like that's kind of the one for us that allows us the most, yeah, be able
to do our kind of mixing and mastering process to the professional level that we do it.
Are you spending your time on mostly 30 minute podcasts, 60 minute podcasts, or is it everywhere?
Yeah, it's kind of all over the map.
We have some that are longer than 60 minutes.
We have some that are 20 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes even.
It really varies.
We have around 200 active clients that we work with.
So that ranges all the way from really simple like one dialogue track, someone in their
basement just recording a five minute episode all the way up to someone with like sound
design and music and where we're adding in additional elements that may be more of a
long form like storytelling podcast.
So you've been able to make a full time living at this.
Obviously, you launched a company and your clients are podcasters.
So did you ever think that would happen?
To be honest, I did not know.
I really never dreamed or imagined that it would kind of grow into what it's grown into
today and to be honest with you, I have to give a lot of credit to my team and my staff
and really feel like the Lord has brought the right people at the right time as a growing
startup.
There's a level of uncertainty on what's going to happen next, kind of where is this thing
going.
And so yeah, just really have a really talented team.
My first hire was a guy that had a really extensive background in film production and
so he had done sound design for feature films, even with a couple of films with a nationwide
theatrical release.
And so just a really talented engineer and he's able to step in and kind of take what
I had built with my background and kind of even take it to the next level of to be able
to add in sound design and music and sound effects to really kind of a new experience
for the podcasting space, at least from what I've heard.
There's stuff out there with sound design and stuff like that, but I'll say most podcasts
have some sort of intro, outro, and then a middle spot like you're listening to right
now if you're listening to this podcast where it's two people talking or one person talking.
And so yeah, really have to give a lot of credit to my team and then kind of just everybody
that's continued to be a part of that.
With that, we've been able to just continue to kind of raise the bar on the level of quality
and kind of hone in our skill set, hone in kind of exactly what we do with each of those.
So yeah.
How big is your team?
Currently close to about 20.
Yeah, on the team about 20.
Wow.
And are they all work from everywhere?
Like everyone have their own home office, things like that.
Are they all with you there?
Yeah.
So the majority of the team is in-house here in Louisville, Kentucky.
We do have a couple part-time and one full-time person that's remote from Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
But yeah, most everybody's here.
We're actually moving and I appreciate your flexibility with this interview.
We're actually moving next week into a new space.
We currently have an office space that we share with another company, but we're actually
moving into our own building next week.
So yeah, it's been exciting.
It's kind of cool to just build a culture here kind of beyond just obviously a lot of
great companies out there have a remote culture and a remote teams around the world and that
works great for them.
But yeah, it's been kind of cool to do like we have a physical office, physical location
with space that we've really been blessed with.
How did you originally get the word out after the happy rant marketed the business and then
how are you doing it now?
I mean, how are people finding out?
Is it just strictly word of mouth from other podcasters?
Yeah, great question.
So primarily word of mouth I'll say has been how we have grown, but we have done some Google
ads for a season, a little bit of SEO work as kind of as I've transitioned from actually
being an engineer more to like a CEO role and sales and marketing is primarily what
I do now.
Yeah, I'll say word of mouth.
So I started working with Payne Lindsay, he's a popular podcaster, has a podcast called
Up and Vanished and several other podcasts.
I started working with him, man, almost two and a half years ago, I guess, really before
his podcast kind of blew up.
And so we had a just a shout out on his podcast at the end of it just said, you know, this
podcast edited mixed by Resonate Recordings, check them out at resonarecordings.com.
And that really kind of helped us grow to a whole nother degree that I didn't really
see coming or expect.
The thing that's really helped us grow the most is just providing people with valuable
content on a consistent basis.
As I said, of, you know, kind of our whole mission is really making podcasting as easy
as possible for our clients.
And so that's not just talking about editing or just talking about equipment all the time.
It's also talking about, you know, what do you need to launch your podcast?
What are the kind of content strategies that you need to put in place?
What are good interview questions?
My production manager, John Street, he's also a really talented writer.
And so he's a really creative guy as well.
And so he's been doing a lot of content creation that we've been putting out.
And we've really found that a lot of people, you know, find value in that.
And then whenever they, you know, have a question or they need help or they get into podcasting,
they realize that the post-production is taking them way longer than they want it to take.
They realize, oh, we're going to, you know, I'm going to reach out to Resonate because
they provide these services on a professional level.
And so, yeah, that's one of the most valuable things I think I've learned as a business
owner is, you know, sometimes you really have to delegate to elevate yourself to be able
to do what you're really great at.
A lot of times I think we get stuck doing what we're good at or okay at.
And then that robs us from our time to being able to do what we're like actually really
great at.
And I think for a lot of podcasters, whenever they get to that point, they realize they're
really great at talking about their content.
They're really great at whatever kind of, whether they're a fitness expert or whether
they're an expert in social media marketing or whatever they may be professionals in.
They're not podcast editors for most of them.
You know, if you are great at podcast editing, that's great.
Like we still want to help you.
However, we can help you, whether it's just you finding value in our blog post or whatever
it is.
But, you know, for most people, they realize they're not great at podcast editing or podcast
mixing.
They would be served much better by hiring us to help them and make it sound really professional
so they can focus on what they're great at, which is usually the content.
So what would you say your turnaround time is?
Yes, our turnaround time is 72 hours.
That's kind of the standard turnaround that we offer.
We do offer like a rush fee for some clients that they do take advantage of that if they
need it sooner.
We have a couple clients that we do kind of get our premium treatment, I guess.
One being the Associated Press that we work with where we do like, you know, less than
a 24 hour turnaround for them because it's a sports podcast and so they are kind of breaking
news type podcast.
Do you think that these podcasts, most of the podcasts, if not all of them that you
work with are making money or are they hobbies?
Yeah, it really varies.
I'll say probably most of our clients are hobbyists, which, you know, I think for some
people are like, wow, why would you spend money, you know, if you're not making money
on your podcast?
But the reality is, you know, people spend a lot of money on their hobbies, you know,
whether it's golfing or hunting or whatever, whatever that whatever your hobbies may be.
We have a lot of clients that are making money on it or are monetizing in some way, shape
or form.
But I'll say most people, I think probably similar to like if you were you were a business
or an entrepreneur or whatever that may be.
I'll say most people, I think, view the podcast more as a marketing tool for their for their
business or for themselves if they have kind of their own brand out there.
And so I think most people that don't make money on it, they still see the value that
a podcast spring because whether they're, you know, a business and it's a kind of a
branded podcast that they're doing or it's just a they're an expert in fitness and they're
a social media, you know, kind of influencer out there.
They see value because people are still coming to them as the expert in the space and for
their podcast.
And that's kind of how they view their podcast or how they utilize their podcast to kind
of market themselves and market their brand.
What do you think of the podcasting industry today?
Yeah, it's really exciting.
It's it's kind of been the wild, wild west.
I feel like, you know, over the last couple of years of just kind of everybody kind of
trying to realize like what's what's going to happen, how's it going to settle out.
And I think with that, you know, it's really exciting.
I think, you know, I saw a post, I think it was in like pod news or one of those podcast
newsletters that I get.
And I think somebody said, you know, 2019 is going to be the year that podcasting kind
of goes mainstream.
And I thought I thought that was really interesting because I think you are seeing that you're
seeing more and more people kind of get on board with podcasts and with with just more
exposure through, you know, podcasts being turned into TV shows like Homecoming or even
like the Up and Vanished show on Oxygen.
Podcasting kind of is becoming more and more mainstream.
And I think people are more and more people are becoming aware of it as a growing medium
that it is.
So, yeah, I'm really excited for it.
I think there's there's continues to just be a lot of opportunities for people to get
out there.
And I think, you know, in some ways, it's still really early in where we're at with
the podcast industry.
So it'll be an interesting next next couple of years to kind of see what happens and how
things kind of shake out and settle down.
And finally, what advice do you have for podcasters and how important is it for them to have a
good sound when they put something out?
Yeah, so as far as advice for podcasters, you know, one of the things we found most valuable
is consistency.
Listeners want to know kind of when to come back for the next episode.
And so I think a lot of people come in with really high expectations.
They think they're going to get, you know, one hundred thousand downloads on their first
episode.
And you may, but that's only if you kind of you have a current audience that's going to
come over and listen.
So I think just kind of having realistic expectations and being in it for the long game, we've we've
seen a lot of clients that have come in it and they've started really slow, but they
just through consistency, through cross promotion, kind of marketing their podcast well and kind
of devising a great launch strategy for their podcast, have been able to just continue to
gain more and more listeners throughout their podcast as they're as they're consistent in
releasing good quality content and providing value to their listeners.
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm an audio engineer and kind of even as I mentioned, kind of an
audio nerd of not wanting to record this on Skype.
So, you know, I think audio is really important and audio quality is really important.
And you know, I will say that no matter how good your content is, like if your audio quality
is bad, you're going to lose listeners.
And so, you know, you may have the best content literally in the world, but if it's distorting,
if it's if the audio quality is distracting to the content, you're going to lose listeners
and people aren't going to listen.
There have been multiple shows that I've listened to where the content was great.
And even the person that I was listening to, you know, I really respect them in the space
and knew that they were an expert of whatever they were speaking about.
But the quality was bad.
And I was just like, I can't listen to this.
I got to turn it off.
You may not lose all your listeners in the first episode, but if you have consistent
bad quality audio, you're going to lose your you're going to lose listeners down the road.
So I'm not saying you have to, you know, every podcaster out there has to have their their
podcast professionally mixed and mastered by Resonate Recordings so we can continue
to grow.
But I am saying, you know, there are simple things you can do to improve your quality
and making sure that that your quality is good.
And there's a lot of great tools and resources out there.
We have a lot of blog posts and resources on our page at Resonate Recordings dot com
forward slash resources.
Yeah, just our resources tab.
So yeah, I do think audio quality is important.
And as the industry continues to grow, I think people are going to kind of like TV or radio.
You know, the standards are going to continue to rise and people are going to kind of demand
that that level of consistency, just like, you know, all songs that are played on the
radio or any albums that you buy have been professionally mixed and mastered to a certain
kind of standard.
I think that standard is there's going to be a standard for podcasting and down the
road, you know.
So I would I would just say go ahead and kind of have that standard for yourself and have
high quality audio that will serve your high quality content.
Jacob, great stuff.
Appreciate your time.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
Appreciate you.
Thanks again to Jacob for being part of this episode of the podcast business journal spotlight.
Check them out at Resonate Recordings dot com and remember to follow the podcast business
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