 What up? What up? What up? I'm brand man, Sean. No, Corey is not here, but this is episode number 29 of No Labels Necessary. Let me tell you why Corey is not here. And I'm going to get into what's going to be a very short but important podcast. It's all related. One, the way I said that might make people think that you like this song wrong with me and Jacory, not at all. What's happened is for those of you who hadn't noticed and hadn't watched episode number 28 is episode number 28 came out really bad in terms of the audio. And I appreciate everybody who pointed out that the audio wasn't good because honestly, I didn't know until it got out, which I'll get to later on. But our video editor didn't let us know that it didn't sound like good quality. I would not have wanted it to be out at the quality that it was. Now I know many of y'all who have been following us from the beginning know that audio has been a big thing, especially at the beginning, but we got it right for a while, y'all. We got it right for a while. And then it got messed up. But I want to tell you guys that there's going to be a few things in this episode that I think will be helpful for you. It's going to be very short. It's going to be a very short episode. But it's our experience. I want to give you guys insight into our experience and what's been going on in the back end. And I think it could be valuable to you. So that episode came out and it wasn't great audio, right? Did not like the fact that it wasn't great audio. Didn't know that it wasn't great audio until you guys let us know in the comments. Now, I know y'all have been listening where it's like, yo, well, how come you didn't put out anyway? You guys have always been putting it out anyway. But the difference is now we know better, right? Before at the beginning, we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't necessarily know how to get a certain type of audio. We actually found our bag for about five episodes. It was beautiful audio. As far as how we wanted to look, it was perfect in terms of, you know, the camera on Jacory, the camera on me. But then we went to Tulum and we lost the camera in that trip in terms of it being broken. Didn't find out to the day we were recording the podcast. And that last episode that you guys heard, our preamp broke. And that's why it came out bad audio. Our preamp broke. We spent probably about five hours that day trying to figure out what happened, right? And eventually, we realized it was the preamp. And then we tried to work around it and the work around sounded good for the first test. But something happened, apparently, where we thought we were good. So we didn't check when the episode was finished. And obviously, the episode number 28 came out how it came, right? So with that being said, again, the difference is we know better now. I'm all for testing, just getting out there, you know, not overthinking, which is exactly what we did for y'all who saw the process. But when you know better, things are a little bit different. So let me make sure I'm very clear on what we got from this and what happened from behind behind the scenes and why it's still important to go through the process we've gotten to, even though we're not putting out episodes that sound like that anymore. All right. So look, once again, you know what bad quality is, or you know how to get a specific thing that you're looking for, you've gone through that process, then making that sacrifice is a completely different thing before we were learning. And there are five things that we learned and that put us in the position that we are now with the podcast, that we wouldn't be if we waited till we figured everything out perfectly, especially with everything else we have going on. Number one is we found our voice, right? Me and Jacory already had a natural chemistry from the beginning. Obviously, we've already been working together for years and we, a lot of this is conversation we already have anyway, but we didn't necessarily know exactly the voice that we wanted to project to the community at large in this particular format. The podcast, right? A lot of our videos that y'all saw of us on the channel, right, will be me recording a video, then Jacory recording a video, you know, in different silos. This is the first time we got on camera and projected what we do and how we talk on camera. And we wanted to see how that worked with the crowd and just our own comfortability within the format, time, et cetera. If we were just now starting because we spent two, three months overthinking things and trying to test and figure out our voice, which can't happen behind the scenes, then we wouldn't have had that yet, right? So finding your voice is something that's a huge benefit of getting out there, right? You get out there and you find your voice in real time in a real environment. Now, the second thing that we learn is we learn what we need to communicate that voice, right? So that's a whole other thing. You know your vibe, right? You know your style, but you don't know what settings are going to help that style. How many cameras do you need? What doll should you be using? What effects, right? As an artist, you might be thinking of things like that, right? Do I like to collaborate? There's all these different things that might amplify the specific voice and style that you want to project. And we figured that out, right? Through finding our voice and then understanding what parts we loved about this process helped us understand, well, how many cameras are we going to need? What is our next setup going to look like, which we're looking to change soon, right? All of these things we learned because we found our voice, which we got from going through this process. So we found our voice. And the second thing is we learned to communicate that voice and the equipment and formatting that's needed to actually amplify that, right? The third thing that we got was we learned what works and what doesn't, which is probably the most important part from a strict technical aspect, right? Obviously, y'all saw us go through plenty of issues with audio in the first few episodes. I remember somebody made like a comment that sounded like we were in a desert storm or something like that. That was hilarious. And we figured it out, right? I actually have this mixer that's pretty expensive and cool. I bought it like three years ago. I learned more about this mixer in the last two months than I did in the full three years. Like I really know these settings in and out. And I kind of been avoiding it and procrastinating because I didn't really need all of those settings. I didn't need all that stuff. I was just doing my one shot videos, had my simple system. And now I started to have to use all of these things that it was able to do. And it was a huge learning curve, right? So we learned what we needed technically, like what technically is going to help the sound like what a preamp is. I didn't necessarily know what a preamp was, right? The mixing settings, how the things can work separately, separately inside of OBS, which is one thing we're using the mixer itself. The preamp has its own settings. And then the cameras themselves, how are we moving with those and how the different cameras are going to affect things differently? And we learned about this specific room, which again is a real time environment because I couldn't know this equipment and stuff, but maybe I didn't know how everything was going to act within this room. All right. So we really learned things technically and what works and what doesn't. But after that, we also learned what works and what doesn't from an audience standpoint, right? Now, from an audience standpoint, we can put things out. We can really think it's a dope topic, but maybe the audience doesn't want to hear that, right? Or they're not giving us enough views in a part of this format, right? Especially being on YouTube, views is something that we do want, putting out a podcast in general streams is something that we do want, right? You need those listens, you need those plays to make it worth doing to a certain extent. You might not be building something out to be the most viral thing in the world where it has to get level, Mr. Beast level numbers, Joe Rogan, Breakfast Club, all these other podcasts or channels out there. It might not be something that's built for that, right? But you still want to do the best it can do within the audience that it's for. So we learn, right? What works and what the audience wants to hear. However, because we found our voice, we also, in learning what works for the audience and what doesn't, we still know what's worth doing anyway, right? We were able to learn that. What's worth doing anyway, even though it's not going to get the most views from the audience on this particular type of video, but we feel like it's so important to talk about this and we know that some people are going to see it, we can make the impact that we need to. It's worth still putting this video out, right? It's worth still clipping it out. Maybe it's not worth putting it in a short, but we put it in the full podcast. We were able to also learn that, right? Because it's worth doing anyway, but maybe it's not worth doing in certain formats or putting the effort for certain edits around that topic because that's a learning curve in itself, right? We get the technical, but how do we want to bust things down into different types of clips? And when those clips started, right? We started doing shorts, there were other lessons that were still in process of learning in terms of formatting and how we want to put things together. We would have none of this if we had just waited, right? That's the important thing to get from this, right? We would have none of this if we just waited. We came so far, the lessons that we've learned, and the last lesson with all that in mind is we've learned how to re-communicate standards. Now, earlier, I said that we dropped the podcast, 20 episode number 28, had no idea until it was out that the quality was bad, right? But based on the prior standards, I said that the editor put that out without letting us know how bad it is. But based on the prior communicated standards, that was just fine, because we had had those episodes that were bad quality that we still put out in terms of audio in perfect rather than bad, right? Because it was still good stuff. We still had the sauce, right? It just couldn't be heard and consumed as easily, right? So since our editor knew that it was okay to put those out, yes, we were working to have better audio. And when we got a great audio vibe, cool, but then when things messed up, that was also cool, because we had never communicated or re-communicated standards that, all right, now we're at this point. We're not going back, which is why we didn't drop the episode that we recorded for today, all right? Which is why, of course it's not here, because this has to be like a last minute recording. So we can record that one at a different time, but we did want to commit to the Tuesday and Thursday as we have been. That's been one of the most important things to drive all of these lessons. And I hope you guys do something similar for yourself. Us keeping ourselves to Tuesday and Thursday has forced us to drop some of those episodes that we didn't love in terms of quality or how fast we were able to get through it and then see that even in some of those moments that we didn't love, the audience found something that they really liked. And it was like, ooh, man, we can really pull from that. Man, we felt like that went too long or that was too short, but maybe the audience felt differently and now we learn something else that we can put into the mix of how we communicate our voice, right? So there's all types of lessons from just getting into it. People say, hey, just do it, right? Just commit. Don't overthink. But I don't really hear people talk about the lessons that come from it enough. So just to do a quick review again, look, we found our voice, which is one of the most important things you can do as a creator of any type, right? We also learned what we need, right? The tools to communicate that voice from a technical standpoint and a room standpoint. And then we also learned what works and what doesn't technically, right? How to actually operate a lot of these things or improve or decrease quality when necessary. And then we also learned what works and what doesn't work from an audience standpoint, right? We're creating this, but we do want it to be well received. With that in mind, we also learned what's worth doing anyway, because although we want it to be well received, we also have a mission. We also have a point of view. And our point of view can't be wholly dictated based on how people will respond to it. Otherwise, we won't have that authenticity. And last but not least, we learned how to re-communicate standards because every level comes with a new set of standards. And you don't understand what those standards should be on certain levels until you get there sometimes. So we had to go through what we learned the first time around or these first couple of months to now understand where we want to go. And with that clarity, those standards change. All right. So I appreciate you guys. As always, we appreciate you guys. I know Jacory's not in this episode, but he would definitely say, you know, I fuck with y'all in some form or fashion that Jacory would say, you know what I mean? And we really respect you guys time, which is why we really want to make sure now that we have the knowledge and we know better, we do better when it comes to how we put these episodes together. Appreciate y'all for rocking with us next episode. We're going to have it right as right as possible. I'm not saying we learned everything. And I'm not saying it's going to be immediately to where we want it, but just know that we're going to keep getting better. This is episode number 29 of No Labels Necessary. I'm shy and I'm cold. We out. Peace.