How To Find Success in Podcasting, According to Tim Albright

For admitted “old radio guy” Tim Albright, founder of the popular AVNation network, making the leap into podcasting wasn’t much of a stretch. “Radio is what podcasting is a derivative of,” he said. “People can argue with me about that all day long, but they’re wrong.”

AVNation represents an ideal intersection of Albright’s career to date. After working in radio and television for several years in the St. Louis market, including a stop at KMOX with the legendary Jack Buck, Albright moved into the audio-video industry, working as a technology manager for a college and designing AV systems for churches and Fortune 500 companies.

In 2005, Albright incorporated the new podcast medium into his curriculum as an instructor of audio/radio production at an Illinois community college. Although there were a few podcasts in the AV space, Albright felt they were more “white paper-ish” in nature, talking about a specific installation project or a specific technology.

In July 2011, Albright recorded his first episode of “AVWeek,” which still releases new episodes every Friday. It discusses the larger AV industry trends and happenings of any given week. The podcast was a side project for Albright, until he came to a realization in late 2015. “It kind of blossomed… It came to the point where we had so much going on and so much movement, it was one of these times where it was either do something or stop doing it altogether,” he said.

Albright made the leap, though it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. “Being an entrepreneur was not what I signed on for,” he said. “I am an old radio guy… The last five years have been an education in running a business and all the ups-and-downs that come with that.”

Nevertheless, AVNation now has more than a dozen podcasts under its umbrella and Albright has branched out into helping others start and produce their own podcasts. In addition, his company recently moved into a new facility with professional studios outfitted with Auralex acoustical treatments, including ProPanel ProKit-1 and ProPanel ProKit-2. “You can legitimately hear and feel the difference,” Albright said. “It’s just remarkable. It’s one of those things where you don’t realize what sound absorption can do until you have it in one room and you don’t have it in another. That has been the biggest kick I get, is showing folks exactly what these things can do.”

For those looking to get into the podcast space, Albright offers some advice. First, ask yourself why you want to start a podcast. “If you don’t have a ‘why,’ you’ll one or two, maybe three episodes, and then it’ll be done,” he said. “Another way to say that is, ‘What does success look like?’ What do you hope to get out of it?”

Albright suggests having at least six episodes “in the can” or at the very least outlined. “It’s the whole idea of quick wins, right?” he said. “You start with that, and then you’ve got a good opportunity for success.”

In promoting podcasts, Albright recommends utilizing social media. “It’s the bane of our existence, but also a very good tool when used wisely,” he said. He also advises inviting people on your show with a larger circle of influence than you possess.

More than anything, Albright believes you should be yourself. “People in general can smell fakeness a mile away,” he said. “Be genuine to who you are.”

Podcasts, like radio before it, represent a real opportunity because of the personal connection it creates with listeners. “You get into people’s head and into their hearts like nothing else,” Albright said.

So, what’s next for the “old radio guy” turned podcaster? “Take over the world,” Albright says with a laugh.

Tim Albright’s Recommended Podcast Equipment

Acoustical treatments

Auralex ProPanel Pro-Kit 1	Auralex ProPanel Pro-Kit 2

Microphone

Shure SM7B	Electro-Voice RE20

Free Editing Software

Camtasia

XLR-to-USB Adapter

Shure X2U

Check out the entire transcript below:

Nick McLain: To start with, can you tell me a little bit about what you did prior to the AVNation podcast, your background and how you got to this point?

Tim Albright: That's a long story (laughs). I fell into the AV industry out of broadcasting. I worked in radio and television in the St. Louis market for a number of years. And it's an unforgiving business and life happens and so I found myself needing to kind of get out of and get into something a little more stable.

I found myself in the AV industry and I was a technology manager for a college. And in that position, I had to learn a systems design, I had to learn programming. I had to learn what it meant to install a system and maintain it because most colleges don't have a whole lot of money and we were a community college, so we even had less. We had to make do with what we had. I took advantage of the education, both from manufacturers and from AVIXA and CEDIA. That kept going and each year we would do more and more rooms and we'd have more responsibilities and that kind of blossomed in about 2010-2011.

I had gotten into podcasts in general, just listening to them. I taught audio production and radio production and I made a part of my curriculum around 2005-2006, both from the coding side as well as the content creation side. I was looking for something that was similar to a program called “This Week in Tech,” by Leo Laporte, for the AV industry, right? Bottom line is I was looking for a synopsis of the news of what happened that week and why it mattered, how it impacts the industry, and it didn't exist.

There were a number of podcasts out there: AVIXA, InfoComm at the time, had one, Sound of Communications had one, but they were more what I would call kind of “white paper-ish.” It was longform, it was talking about a specific install or a specific technology, nothing that dealt with the “who’s and what’s and why’s and the mergers and acquisitions and “this company did this and that the other.”

So I created it. That was nine years ago now. We recorded our first episode on a Friday afternoon in late July 2011, and we’ve recorded one ever since, every Friday. That kind of blossomed, it was a side project for the first half of the 2010s. It came to the point where we had so much going on and so much movement, that it was one of these times of either do something or stop doing all together, right? It was a junction point.

I made the leap in late 2015.I was running an independent programming house, we were Creston and AMX programmers, and I was the operations person, manager… I was the boss. We got sold to an integration firm here in St. Louis. It seemed like a nice time to “exit stage left” and do this.

Being an entrepreneur was not what I signed on for/ I am an old radio guy. That's what I knew. So the last five years have been an education in running a business and all the ups and downs that come with that.

NM: Speaking of ups and downs, with everything going on in the last two or three months, has it been much to deal with in terms of your own life and your business life? Or is it business as usual?

TA: Business as usual? No, none of us have, right? I travel, I'm going to say 40 to 50 percent. I think that's high, but my wife would tell you it's like 90 percent. But you know, it's good to have two teenagers.

The last trip I took, the last business trip I took was mid-March, right. At that point, I already had on the books a number of three or four other trips, which successfully got canceled one right after the other. it was actually that hell week where the Friday prior, SXSW had gotten canceled. And then as the week goes on, NAV gets canceled and this gets canceled and this gets canceled. You're just watching your friends in the events world just sit there shell-shocked, right?

Just like any business, we all do this, we budget based on projections. And sometimes those projections are slightly rosy, but most the time we're all pretty practical, right? I've got these in the bank, right? I've got this event in the bank and suddenly you don’t, and you have to make your mortgage and your kids still want to be fed for some inexplicable reason and all these things.

It's just life, and I envy sometimes my cohorts that I left at the college who got sent home at the end of March and still got paid. There is some comfort there. I'm getting texts of “You should watch this series” or “You should binge that series” and I'm like, ‘That's cute. You know maybe when I retire, I'll binge those, but right now, dude, I got a mortgage to pay.

The opposite side of that is I will retire with more money than they do. And I have the flexibility and the freedom most years than they do. And now even some of them are being furloughed, which is even worse, right? Not laid off, which is you know, and there's I know that people split hairs on that. There is there's a vast difference to me between being furloughed and laid-off. Furloughed means you ain’t working for a week and you’re not getting paid. Laid-off means you ain't working and you don't know when you're coming back.

We went through this before. I worked for the college during the last downturn. The guy that ran our college, the president of the time, Dale Chapman, had enough financial knowledge where we never felt that. I’m in Illinois, my cohorts at the University of Illinois got furloughed for two or three weeks at a time. ISU (Illinois State University) got furloughed for two or three weeks at a time. SIU (Southern Illinois University), SIU-C (Carbondale), and it was the small community colleges. We were lean enough that and we had enough bank that we still had a job and we still got we still got a paycheck.

But yeah, I mean, it's different. We're pivoting, we're doing things like today, I'm in the office from now (roughly 10 a.m.) until 10:30 tonight because I'm helping a client of mine produce a virtual event for one of her clients. She's an event producer by trade. That's what she does. So now she's helping her clients do these virtual events. And so we did one in North America. We're doing one later this week in Europe. This one today is Asia-Pacific. We're getting on our computers at seven o'clock tonight to produce an event for them in the morning, right? So it's that time shift.

And it's stuff that I never really I never would have imagined myself doing. Now we have the skill set, though. And I think that I'm blessed in that. You know, I've spent over 20 years of my life producing content and honing my craft and learning from other people and finding out what works and what doesn't work and being able to turn things around relatively quickly.

We have an episode happened with this exact event, the CEO, you know, high-profile person. When they recorded their session, there was a click (sound). In my head, in my somewhat-educated guess, there was a connection problem somewhere. That's all I could think. And so, the question was, can I fix it? The running joke in any sort of production you do, whether it's video, audio, film, is that we can fix it in post, right? You can’t always fix it - that's the reason it's a horrible running joke is that, no, we can't always fix it in post.

I took the audio; I took 30 seconds to work on it. I'm not going to spend hours upon hours. But I know certain things because I've done this a long time. Not saying that to brag. Why do I pay a graphic designer $1,000 for something that takes them 10 minutes? Because they've got 20 years of experience and the outcome is what I'm paying for, not their time, right?

After about an hour working on this thing, it was not perfect. It was not pristine. But it was probably 75 percent better than what it started. So, you send it to the client and go, ‘Here you go, now we have an option here. This is going to take me about four or five hours, right? And this is my rate, and this is how much that cost.’ Or we can get back on the CEO’s schedule and probably [re-record] over the weekend or what have you and we can take an hour of his time. It's up to you right at that point.

And they chose the former; we fixed it, it took us about four to five hours and we're able to adjust and edit. But it's skills like that, you know, that I learned again 20-25 years ago. My first editing was on three-quarter-inch deck. There were two three-quarter-inch decks and a switcher between them. And a Toaster 2000, just for the record. This is the early 1990s. Then our first NLE (non-linear editor) was Premiere 1.0 with a nine-gigabyte hard drive and a 50-gig storage drive, just to throw that in there, too.

And then we jumped from there. You know, my first audio editing system was something called SAW, if you remember that: Sound Audio Workshop, I think is the acronym (Ed. note: Software Audio Workshop). And then we jumped from that to SAW Plus, and then you moved into Cool Edit, which is what I use now, only it's called [Adobe] Audition, right?

Big fan of Pro Tools. The reason I jumped from Pro Tools to Audition at the time was because Pro Tools didn't have faster-than-real-time processing. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say now because they do, but they didn't 10 years ago. And what that means is that if you have an hour-long piece of audio, to convert it from the Pro Tools file to an MP3 or to a WAV or anything else, it takes an hour, right? When you are cranking out three, four or five podcasts a week, you ain't got that time. You don't have an hour to process that. So we've flipped from that back to Audition. Now, since then, Pro Tools has got it, but we're kind of, you know [happy] on this stuff [Audition]. Now, I would love to at least have one Pro Tools machine. And maybe one day, we will.

NM: Can you talk about what your recent studio project has entailed?

TA: Yep. We moved into this new space two months ago. I have a piece of bad luck where I sign big contracts in my life and then the world ends [laughs]. I signed both a marketing contract and a new lease. And then legitimately, you know, we all got sent home. So we moved into this in the midst of all that, right? I mean, the contract’s a contract, regardless of what happens. I had told my old landlord I was moving, and so she started doing her thing. I tell these folks that were moving in and so they start doing their thing. So we had to do that.

We had been in this space for about two years and before that, we've been in the other space about three or four years. We had what I'm going to call basic foam sound stuff, right? It wasn't bad. It just wasn't great. And that was just for what we would call the TV studio because maybe we produce both a video and an audio one. So we move into this space. We did a couple different reasons: we're getting into content creation, podcast creation, for other people, so I need to be able to treat my four production rooms as well as the TV studio.

We walk into these in these rooms and the great offices, they call them Junior Executive offices, but they're pretty cool. You know, nine by seven, nine by 10. Enough for a good desk, good equipment. It gives the producers a place to call their own, close the door, all that jazz. But they're parallel walls, right? And if you go in there to record voice, it’s just not so hot. So I started looking around going, “Okay, what is it that I need to do in here? “

Immediately I go to the treatment. I called my buddy Dave [Pedigo, Auralex director of residential technology] and I'm like, “Alright, Dave, here's what I got, right? This is what I want to do.” Now, I'm not smart enough to say, this is what I need to do. I just know I'm smart enough to contact the smart people. He hooked me up with your engineers, we take pictures, we take measurements, and then he goes, “Here's what we're doing.”

You guys sent really great instructions. The hardest part of the whole thing was figuring out the corners. And it's not that the corners were difficult; it was understanding the instructions of it saying ‘OK, it’s got to be so far out from the corner and this, that and the other” but we got the first one, it was pretty much just kind of copy-and-paste from there.

What's fun is taking people through our new facility and letting them kind of walk up and down and then we take them from the hall into a producer's room, then letting them sit back-and -forth and step back-and-forth, because you can legitimately hear and feel that difference. It's just remarkable. It’s one of these things where you don't realize what soundproofing can do, and sound absorption can do, until you have it in one room and you don't [have it] in another. That has been kind of the biggest kick that I get is showing folks you know exactly what these things can do.

NM: You’ve sort of addressed this, but for those who are thinking about getting into podcasting or thinking of starting, do you have any sort of general advice or suggestions that you would have?

TA: Anytime anybody asked me about podcasting, I tell them two things. First of all, why do you want to do it? That is my old adage of “Start with Why,” I love that book. I swear by that book. Because if you don't have a “why,” you'll do one or two, maybe three [episodes], and then it'll be done. Okay. If you don't have a good “why,” don't start it. I mean, seriously, man, that's just… I'm not trying to burst anybody's dreams, but you know, if you don't have a good reason for doing anything, why are you doing it? Another way to say that is, “What does success look like?” What do you hope to get out of it? When we talk to our clients, that is one of the more pointed questions. We call them qualifying questions but it's a pointed question. What do you want to get out of this, right? If a claim and name recognition and being seen as a subject matter expert is it, that's a fine answer. If you think you're going to get rich and make $200 million off of it, that's also a fine answer. But the question is, why are we doing this?

The second piece of advice is start with six episodes. That’s our arbitrary number. Because for us, the vast majority from a number standpoint, the vast majority of our programs are monthly. When we start looking at a new show, we have to have six in, at least on paper. Guests, outlines, the whole bit. That gives us a runway; it means that we know we're going to make at least six, we get that process moving, then it's a whole lot easier to plan that seventh one and get that eighth one and suddenly you've got momentum. It's the whole idea of quick wins, right? You start with that, and then you've got a good opportunity for success. So those are my first two: why are you doing it, and before you ever press record, have yourself six [episodes] at least on paper.

NM: How do you try to promote the AVNation podcast, and more generally, how would you recommend that other podcasters try to promote theirs?

TA: There's two aspects; first is social. Social media is the bane of our existence, but also a very good tool when used wisely. I will say that I know enough to be dangerous, and I have people that know it better than me, so I hire them. But that is how we started right and that’s how I got my first guest. I forced a buddy of mine here locally to join me. But the other ones were all on social. So that's how we started.

The other one is inviting people with more of a circle of influence than you have. If you do it purposefully. You're not “using” them because you’re giving them a platform as well. But you're expanding your own circle of influence by being exposed to their circle. I’ve invited people with other podcasts, I think it's a great idea. I have been under the impression and of the opinion for more than 20 years, and this is goes back to my radio days, is not everybody's going to like you. I don't care if you're Howard Stern, not everybody's going to like you. But the information needs to get out there and the education needs to get out there. So if you don't like me, that's fine. I'm going to introduce you to people you might like.

I have a buddy of mine – are you in Indiana? – a buddy of mine is right near you. His name is Jeremy Glowacki. Jeremy used to work for Residential Systems; now he works for Residential Tech. Three or four years ago now, we started our residential-focused program and it took me about a month or two to convince Glowacki to get on that show. Once he did, he was fantastic. It was great, right? In the last two months, Jeremy has started his own podcast, for Res Tech, which is a fantastic thing. Because Jeremy and the host for ours, his name is Matt Scott. Jeremy is not Matt. Jeremy's a journalist. Now he's covered the residential industry for over 20 years. But he's a journalist. Matt as an integrator has different experiences, right? Different mannerisms, the two of them from a personality standpoint are night-and-day. Matt is rambunctious and outgoing and an extrovert and Jeremy's a little bit like me, he's introverted. And if you know him, you know him. If you don't, you don't – that type of thing. But people are not going to always connect with Matt, and they're not always going to connect with Jeremy. But getting that information and getting the education out there is more important than who you listen to. You listen to us? Great. If you don't, I want to introduce you to other people.

NM: On that note, does it help in some cases where you have co-hosts to foster chemistry in the podcast recording environment?

TA: Yep, you’ll have a morning zoo-type thing, an ensemble. I've been a part of those and those are fun. And that helps with fostering the connections. I guess if I could put one more piece of advice out there for folks is to be real. People in general can smell fakeness a mile away. I’m not saying you have to open up your entire life as a book. But you have to be genuine to who you are. There's an aspect of myself and my personality that shines through when I open the mic.

I call myself an introvert because I am. People that listen to me on our podcast, and hear me say stuff like that, or in interacting with me, are sometimes surprised because of what I do. I'm still a very private person, right? I would still rather read a book on my couch then then go to a club… probably because I'm old, too [laughs]. Even in my 20s, I'd rather play a video game then go out to a club. But I still love interacting with people, I still get a kick out of meeting new people and connecting them with people that I know. It's one of the greatest fringe benefits of what I do, I get to meet somebody and go, “You need to meet this person because the two of you would be magic together.”

But being genuine is the most important thing because, again, at the end of the day, people can kind of smell through that. And, you know, trying to connect with somebody who's not genuine is not always fun.

NM: We’ve talked some about the acoustical treatments, but are there any other kind of equipment or software platforms you’d recommend at an introductory level and then maybe as they ramp up?

TA: Camtasia is a free editing software. Start there. You don't have to go out and spend 100 bucks or 200 bucks on a microphone. My favorite thing to tell people is to get a XLR-to-USB adapter. My favorite is a Shure X2U, but you can get whichever one you want. The reason for that is then you can choose whatever professional microphone you want. Now yeah, Yetis are great, Blues are great microphones, straight to USB, it's fantastic. And it's a great option.

But personally, the old AV person in me would rather just be able to switch out my microphones. And I have, we have standardized, but the three microphones that we've used in the nine years we've been doing this. We started with EV20s [Electro-Voice RE20]. I used EV320s for a while, but my voice is deep enough that the 320s sound weird. They got a nice low boost and if your voice doesn't have it, fantastic, right? It would be a good option for you. My voice is low enough that it sounds weird. And then we started a partnership with Shure probably about two or three years ago now. And they introduced us to their SM7Bs. And I have not gone back. In fact, part of this evolution, what we're doing, producing podcasts for other people, is our clients get a welcome kit. In that welcome kit is a desktop mic stand, an SM7B, an X2U, and a mic cable. That way we know at least one person in that organization has a good quality microphone that they can produce these podcasts with.

NM: Do you have any other podcasts that you enjoy and what do you enjoy about them?

TA: I love NPR. I love NPR’s podcasts. I'm a big fan of those. I listen to their daily show, a 10-minute show because that gives me kind of a quick hit of the news of the world, news of the week. The New York Times also has one called The Daily, that one is typically about 20 minutes. So right there, there's half an hour of my time. My commute is 10 minutes, so it's you know, listening to it throughout the day or when I'm walking.

I like some of the long form. 99% Invisible is one; it's weird. It's an architect show. It's produced by an old NPR host, but dude, it’s seriously one of the best produced podcasts that I've ever listened to. There are some others out there. I love Aisha Tyler and her podcast. She's fantastic. Just as a human being, just to listen to her. And if you're a fan of “Archer,” that is [the character] Lana. But yeah, she does a really good podcast as well.

NM: In terms of the AVNation podcast, has there been any particular guests or episodes that you remember or look back fondly on?

TA: There has been a number of them. And I will point to the most recent one, actually. And I don't know when you're writing this up or anything like that. We have covered race and racism before, individually with a story or two. But this last Friday, we stopped everything. We invited the entire panel, and with the exception of the CEO of AVIXA, everyone was a person of color, and talked about race openly and honestly. I was real and open and honest and raw, and they were, too.

Honestly, I could stop right now. I could retire right now and say, that's it. I have done my Opus. I don't know that I could do a better episode and it wasn't because I did anything special or fantastic, except for sit there and listen. The guests were fantastic people, fantastic human beings that were just honest about their experience, both in society but also within the industry.

NM: In terms of the AVNation podcast family, where do you see it going in the near future? What is your vision for it?

TA: We're going to take over the world [laughs]. We're going to build the biggest AV media empire and we're going to buy all the other magazines and make them all podcasts because podcasts are the thing.

NM: Anything else relating to podcasting that I neglected to bring up, but you wanted to mention?

TA: It's interesting right now, dude. You got Joe Rogan, right? The $100 Million Man. And you've got some interesting things happening, where you're going to have, just like with anything else, you're going to have consolidation. And that's what that deal was about. It really was good for Joe, right? Holy cow, dude, I’d be good, too.

But it's kind of a feather in the cap or a mark of legitimacy for an industry that has struggled for the last 10-15 years to say, “Yes, we are a viable medium. And yes, you should spend your advertising dollars here.” Because you know, there's value here - our listeners are committed. We have on average between 18 and 25 sponsors, main sponsors; we call them underwriters. But these are the folks who support us on an annual basis. Yes, there are other people who give us money to do other things, but these are kind of our core. I could call up pretty much any one of those, even the ones that are no longer our sponsors, and they would probably without exception say they got value out of this, we got this and this and this as a return on investment.

You get into people's heads and you get into people's hearts like nothing else. Cuz you’re in their ears, right? Yes, we do video and that's important and it's going to become more and more important. But there is something personal about radio. That’s what podcasting is a derivative of. People can argue with me about that all day long but they're wrong. It might be because of my background. But radio is inherently personal. That’s why people like Stern are so popular and so successful. That's why - you guys you're out of Indiana - so Bob and Tom. Out of St. Louis, it was Steve and DC. That the last show I worked on; it was also syndicated as well.

Then you've got the local folks. Right here in St. Louis, you've got people like Guy Phillips, who's been on the air for 100 years. You've got Charlie Brennan. My first job in radio was at KMOX and I had the privilege to work with Jack Buck. These are people who you spend your entire life listening to, and you feel like you know them. And because of that, because you have that personal connection with these people, because you're inviting them into your car, to your headphones, to your home, there's a personal connection there. And then when they say, “Hey, if you like what I'm doing, you should go buy Shure, you should go buy Crestron, you should go buy AtlasIED.” There's a greater connection there and there's a greater possibility there. They're going to do what the host has asked me to do. Because here's the thing: you're not paying for that content. You're not paying for that connection; the connection, the payment, is listening to the commercials.

With Leo Laporte, you know, Gazelle was a sponsor of his for a while and because of that, I was introduced to Gazelle, which is a way to sell back your electronics. That's not commercial for them because they don't pay me any money. But it’s a pretty decent system, and I was introduced to that because of the podcasts. And it's a way for advertisers to get in that’s not a 30-second used-car salesman ad. It's legitimately somebody that the listener has a personal connection with and lets the advertiser get in there on a personal level.