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 journal on Facebook and Twitter and sign up for our free headlines at podcast business journal dot com. The podcast business journal spotlight can be heard on our website, on Spreaker dot com, on the Apple podcast app and on iHeart radio. If you believe you host the podcast, we should spotlight or if you have a product podcasters need to know about, reach out to us anytime.
Send an email to Ed Ryan, the editor at gmail dot com. That's Ed Ryan, the editor at gmail dot com. We'll be back soon with another episode of the podcast business journal spotlight.