Earlier this year, I set out to answer a question.
Could I reasonably record a podcast from my cell
phone? Now, as somebody who is obsessed with
gear, I thought that this would be hard. Right?
I have lots of headphones because I really care
about sound quality. I've invested in a bunch
of gear to sound as good as possible even when
kids are running around upstairs. But I know
that I've over invested in this setup. So it
got me thinking. What if I just bought a decent
microphone, the one I'm talking into now, the
DJI mic. and recorded from my phone. Would a
voice memos podcast work? But then I thought,
what if I just did the whole thing from my phone?
How easy is it to save files and then upload
them to my audio host? How easy is it to write
a description and maybe create show notes? So
in August, at Podcast Movement, I decided to
launch Joe's Audio Notes, which you can subscribe
at at Casabona .org slash notes. I'm going to
talk more about the strategy or the experiment
of audience growth with that show in a different
episode and blog post. But today I just want
to talk about The act of recording and uploading
and how maybe you could do it, too. So what I
do is I use the voice the whisper memos app on
iPhone I like using that app because It all in
one app. It's really easy to record. I basically
push a button and Launch a shortcut that then
automatically starts recording. So I just hit
one button and start talking then it transcribes
the audio and it gives me three easy actions.
Copy the transcript, share the audio, share the
transcript. So what I can do from there is save
the audio to files and then take the transcript
and throw it into chat GPT and ask it to come
up with just like a one to two sentence summary.
That's good enough for this show right so I should
tell you right. This is a voice memos show and
so There's not a lot of production value Right
if you want that there are apps like ferrite
that make it easier to edit audio but For this
kind of show where I just want to just kind of
like raw thoughts This is a great workflow save
the audio to files send it to ChatGPT, and then
upload it via Transistor. So I use an app called
TeachyTabs. This is a really niche app, but the
cool thing about it is that it means, like it's,
you can basically pin seven websites, easy access,
and it's always gonna maintain state. So you
should theoretically never get logged out, which
is nice because that, again, that just makes
the process a little bit easier, so. I upload
the audio, I upload the description, I upload
the transcript, and I publish. And that's it.
That's really easy. So again, the components
for this are the DJI microphone that plugs into
my iPhone and the Whisper Memos app. Now I'm
recording a video for this as well. I have like
a new... mobile rig setup that I'm testing out.
I don't know if I'm going to release the video
or not. But as far as answering the question,
can you record a podcast from your phone? The
answer is yes. The scope or the goal should change.
And the reason I'm leaning into this strategy
is for a couple of reasons, right? I think that
people like behind the scenes content. So this
is not something I'm just releasing on my main
feed for the Streamline Solopreneur. It's behind
an email signup form, right? So people have to
give their email to get it. But it's free. It's
a free private podcast. I wanted this to be low
effort. Like the main goal is that I won't do
this if I have another podcast to edit. So I
want it to be low effort. I want to see if I
could grow my mailing list. Something that drove
this point home for me was when I was at Cabo
Press, Luria Petrucci was talking about the thought
leader content versus the real kind of influencer
style content. And that's that is what kind of
crystallized this was two months after I launched
the show but this gave me the confidence to keep
going because when there's video content there
is there's two types of content like Luria says
there's the thought leader content which is what
all of this gear that I use for my videos is
for right my teleprompter and my $1 ,600 camera
and lens or $1 ,000 camera and lens and the Shure
SM7B with the Rodecaster Pro and the in -ear
monitors and the very framed picture that I use
when I create these videos and the controlled
lighting. That's the thought leader video stuff,
right? The high quality stuff that is expected
of high quality content. But then there's also
this influencer content. The content that in
the short form video world is just people recording
raw video from their phone and uploading it.
The stuff that tells you they're real people.
And I think the same thing can happen for podcasts,
which is why I'm doing this voice memos style
show. And I'm not the only one. Jay Klaus started
doing this too, and he got the idea from another
person, right? I got the idea from a casual conversation
I was having with a friend, and I thought, we're
sending voice notes to each other. Voice notes
feels like a really interesting way to make content.
So... For podcast advent today, I've written
a lot of long articles and today I just wanted
to give you some insight into how I'm producing
Joe's audio notes. And it really is just these
three components, right? The whisper memos app,
the DJI microphone, and then the ability to upload
it from my phone to transistor. If you want a
show like that, you can definitely do it from
your phone. And I'll say that, you know, I know
like Stephen Robles edits his podcast on his
iPad. I know that Jason Snell has done podcasting
from his iPad for his shows at the incomparable.
I don't do a lot of editing for my show. I'm
not quite ready yet to do something like that,
but If you're looking for this short form audio
content, voice memo style content, I think this
is a really good use case for it. So I hope you
enjoyed this episode. I'll probably release this
on Joe's Audio Notes as well as the Podcast Workflows.
And if you have any questions, you can always
head over to PodcastWorkflows .com and comment
on this article. But until next time, thanks
so much for listening.