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Welcome everybody back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in podcast history.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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We are here every week for your listening enjoyment twice a week.
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through the whatever it is now.
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I m kind of tired of saying the words.
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Kind of done.
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All done.
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All done.
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All done.
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Finito.
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OK, let s talk about something else.
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Hope you were good.
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We, as you know, have launched a new program called the ASP Insider.
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If you go to the website, advancedsellingpodcast.com, Top Banner Insider.
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This is a chance, which a lot of you have been asking for for several years, how can I hire you to become my coach?
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The numbers never worked before.
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We ve figured out how to make the numbers work and the experience.
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And we are really thrilled to have many of you become actual.
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clients of ours, coaching clients.
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We re really, really excited about that.
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So come check it out.
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VanceLagPodcast.com, Insider, is the place to be.
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Love to have you invited.
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You know, everybody s been doing Zoom calls, MS Teams, whatever the platform is.
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We ve all been relegated to that.
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And I don t know if you ve noticed.
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that over the past 45 days that we ve been doing this, if you get a group of 15 people on, that a high percentage of those people are hard to hear.
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The hard to understand, hard to hear.
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And so we wanted to devote, we don t know if this is going to be a short episode or an epic two hour episode.
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Probably be shorter.
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But about the right audio gear.
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Because as I have said, and I don t want to be a broken record here, and over the years I ve been the audio Nazi.
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But the idea is that you have something to say.
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You need to be heard.
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And you need to be heard in a way that doesn t cause the other people or the other person, if it s a one-to-one sales prospect call, to have to strain and put out calories to hear you.
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So Brian, you had an example of one of your clients who bought the gear, bought a really nice mic, and just how it changed the entire- The whole thing.
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The whole experience.
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Yes.
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And so as we go into kind of reopening and relaunching, and we also know that you re going to be online a lot.
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You re going to be doing Zoom calls or whatever the platform is.
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And you re going to need the right audio gear.
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So we re going to talk a little bit today maybe about what is that gear.
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It shouldn t be expensive.
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It should not break the bank.
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Brian and I are using the Shure SM7B.
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Is that what it is, Travis?
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Big dogs.
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SM7B.
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Big dogs.
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Great microphones.
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You don t need this.
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Don t need them.
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We do.
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You don t.
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We do, yeah.
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Because our voices are really squeaky.
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We re like little mice running around.
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We need anything we can to make our voices sound better.
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You wouldn t believe what we sound like without these things.
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So have you arrived at the same conclusion?
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I mean, do you hear the same thing?
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Yeah.
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And I would not have been as committed to that as I am now that I ve heard the differences, both in myself and from some clients that I ve been on the phone with.
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And I even wanted to start with, so those of you who are listening, you re going to be doing remote selling.
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You just are.
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Whether it s via the phone or the computer, Zoom, whatever, you re going to be doing that.
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A lot of you do it already.
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And because of that, there s a new competitive landscape now.
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So now everyone s doing Zoom, where before maybe you did Zoom and that was fancy and it made you different.
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Well, now everyone s doing Zoom.
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So now you have to be a better Zoom person or a better teamer at Microsoft Teams.
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And so one of the easiest, best ways to do that, in my opinion, is to get your audio square.
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And my one client, his name is Brian, and we re in this peer group together.
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And everybody, of course, everyone, it s a very fraternal type peer group, so everyone s
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joking with him, and like, oh, look at the, but I m telling you, it s a night and day experience.
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Night and day, it s not even close.
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People are listening, and they re doing what he asked them to, because they can hear him.
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Completely.
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So I thought about that, first of all, as a why.
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So you think, if you re listening to this now, why would I even do it?
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Let me just use my AirPods.
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Those are great.
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Well, everybody uses their AirPods, and then you sound like everybody else.
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And if you re one of those people that doesn t use headphones, shame on you.
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That s a thing.
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So to me, there s a very strong why to pay attention to audio more so than there was two months ago.
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And I think AirPods do.
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In fact, you ve used AirPods sometimes.
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And they re OK.
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But if you re out in the wind, if you ve got noise around you, or if all 15 people have AirPods and you re getting the buzzes and the interference and all the other stuff from the call, it becomes really hard to hear.
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So one-to-one, it may be fine.
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One-to-a-group, earbuds don t work as well.
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Nope, nope.
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And so there may be times.
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So you might be traveling around or driving, and that s OK.
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But we just want to make you aware of little audio tricks and tricks of the trade, if it will.
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All right.
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So do we want to start with a piece of gear that we have?
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Let s go there.
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Yeah, go ahead.
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I m going to come backwards, too, after that.
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Go ahead.
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Piece of gear.
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So a $400 Shure Mic X. No, don t do that.
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You don t need to do that, do you?
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No, but here s one thing you might think about.
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If you re doing Zoom calls, and you re doing them on either a laptop, a PC, or a Mac, just get a inexpensive microphone.
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USB is fine.
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It doesn t need to be mixed and EQ d, equalized, and all that stuff.
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It could just be a very simple USB mic.
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Plug it in and stick it in front of you.
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That s it.
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Doesn t have to be a headset, doesn t have to be a $500 gaming headset.
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It could be just a simple mic.
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The mic I love is the, I think it s, what s it called?
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Audio.
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Yeah, the is the audio technica.
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I think it s a to SR a to SB or something like that $60 on Amazon.
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It s got an on off switch.
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You can either do an XLR, which is the big mic cable, or you can just do a USB goes right into your computer or laptop or Mac, and it and it just get a stand.
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And that way,
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The sound on that is going to 10x from just the onboard mic on your computer.
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So you ll immediately receive, get a 10x, and then we ll talk about maybe some other things, too.
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You ve got that mic.
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Do that for sure.
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I have that mic.
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I ve used it.
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I ve used it on podcast recordings.
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You really can t tell much difference between these mics that we re using that are $400 plus and that mic, which is $60.
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Another thing to look for when you re doing audio stuff are the words plug and play.
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plug-and-play.
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There are certain high professional type mics that need drivers and things on certain computers.
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You do not need drivers for plug-and-play.
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You literally plug them in.
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Now, you might have to go find a setting on your computer.
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Sometimes you ll have to do that that says, which do you want to use, the internal microphone or do you want to use this one?
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It ll find it and it ll say the audio technique, whatever the model is.
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You just pick that on your settings, like what
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Audio output do you want?
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Or audio input, rather.
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And it s night and day.
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We ll put these in the show notes, too.
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Yeah, for sure.
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And Bill, you said something that I want to make sure everybody heard.
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Get a microphone stand, also.
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Do not hand-hold this thing.
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It s a handheld mic.
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And I ve done that, too.
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It s OK.
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You ve got to make sure you have it set.
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That s for the video part of it, so it doesn t look like you re bouncing around, hold the microphone like a stand-up comic.
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So get one for that.
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Go ahead.
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Now, so my next one was we can either go to the upgrade there.
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If you re going to upgrade your mic, there s some really good USB mics.
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In fact, I think Rode, R-O-D-E, we used to use Rode mics here until they stopped advertising with us, didn t we?
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They have some good USB mics, too.
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So if you want to up the quality, you might have to spend $100 on it.
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For the extra $40, it might be worth it.
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So go to Amazon, look at the reviews, find out which Rode mic.
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I would suggest Rode for USBs.
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That s going to be your best bet.
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R-O-D-E for Rode on that.
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Rode also has some really cool Bluetooth mics that are for your pocket clip-on things right now that are really high quality that a lot of Instagram influencer type people are starting to use.
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The Rode for the phone.
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So they ll connect to your computer or your phone, either one of those.
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But those are just like clip-on mic.
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Quality is really good.
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Now I m going to, can I give a little advice going backwards?
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So pretend those of you who just listened to that think we re full of baloney.
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That s how we say it if we want to keep our
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Explicit thing down.
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Full of bologna, full of hogwash.
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I ve got my AirPods.
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I ve got my earbuds, whatever you want to call them, old school.
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Here are some things to know there.
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Bill mentioned it once.
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And I got called on this, and rightfully so.
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I was on a walk with a client.
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And I was walking through the woods, kind of, talking to them.
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And she s like, the bird noises were really annoying.
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It s unbelievable.
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Unbelievable.
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Annoying.
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And so you have to be aware of your surroundings.
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When you re walking around on a Zoom call on the phone, and you re out and about or on your AirPods, remember, your surround noise matters.
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Make sure you re aware of your surround noise.
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The second thing is, and I ve also used old school earbuds that have a wire, the microphone is on about where your collar is.
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This sounds crazy, but you have got to be aware that when you move around, that microphone, I can t even make the noise, because these microphones are too good, but it does that scraping noise.
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It s the most annoying sound known to man.
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And you don t know you re doing it.
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Everybody else knows it, but they don t know who it is.
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Who s doing that, not me?
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So you either get a little bit
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paper clip and you just clip where the microphone is in place so it doesn t move or hold it out so it s not moving around.
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But I m telling you, you have to be aware of that.
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That sounds crazy, but it s very distracting on the other side.
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If your hanging microphone is bouncing up against a zipper especially and you see it.
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I had a guy, a client of mine doing that the other day.
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I m like, oh my God, I never realized how annoying that was.
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And I bet I ve done that.
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So my other suggestion would be if you re focusing on your iPhone or Android and you want a clip lavalier clip mic We re recommending to clients.
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They get the power D wise.
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It s a $25 mic from on Amazon and Don t know where it s made.
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I have a sneaking suspicion.
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I know where it s made but I
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It s $25 and it comes with a six foot extension.
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So if you re filming, and I know a lot of you are going to be doing YouTube filming and all sorts of different filming, you put your phone on a tripod and then you can use the mic that goes right into the phone.
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It clips.
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It s pretty good quality.
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It s not as good quality.
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Rode makes one too.
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And it s about $70, so if you want better quality, I d get that one.
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But just to start, if you re going to be doing LinkedIn videos, you need audio.
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You cannot do the video on the onboard mic on the iPhone.
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It s just, it s okay if you re right up to it, but if you re four feet away, it doesn t work so well.
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So I would get the PowerDWISE, Power D-E-W-I-S-E, it s on Amazon, 24 bucks, comes with a, now I think you gotta make sure if you have a iPhone, you get a certain kind.
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And then if you have just a regular Android or something else or an old flip phone like you do, Brian, you get just make sure the connections work.
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That s good.
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And we ll put all this in the show notes so you can go right to it.
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And we re not affiliated with any of these, but we just found these to be really good products.
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Yeah, and this is just advice that you re not going to get from other people.
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Just knowing that I found in sales coaching, you think this is crazy.
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Why are you guys talking about this?
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Your experience that your customer has and that you have is going to matter now.
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And it s all going to be remote.
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Not all of it, but a good portion of it is.
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And you ve got to realize that matters.
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How you do anything is how you do everything.
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That s a cliche saying, but that s a thing.
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Good quality sound is going to create a better experience than tingy sound or your freaking zipper up and down a hanging mic.
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I was interviewed about two weeks ago by a guy who has a podcast and He asked me in the Skype like the setup.
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What kind of mic do you have?
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Yeah, and I told him and when we got on the call He s a pro.
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So he s got it.
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I think he s got this fact.
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He does have the same mic that we re using.
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Yeah, and
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But I said, what percent of people say they have a good mic and then you get them on?
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He says, well, it used to be I would go with the flow.
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But he says, today, I just tell them, after the first question I can hear, we got to reschedule.
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You got to buy a mic.
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And if you can t buy a mic, you re not going to get on my show.
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And I think you re going to hear more and more people who are interviewing people for a living say, and we ve had experiences that with people who have not had the best mics.
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And it takes away.
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And we can t be in the mode of having anything take away from our communication or our message, because the next person that comes along is going to have the right setup.
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They re going to be easy to understand, easy to hear.
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They re going to get the deal.
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And you re going to laugh and say, well, it s got nothing to do with microphones.
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I don t know.
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And what s great right now is everything s even.
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Everyone s starting the race from the same starting line.
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It s true that.
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So anybody that wants an edge, go do what we re talking about in this one.
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That will give you an edge.
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I promise you it will.
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All right, so go out and get your whole studio set up.
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It s less than five grand.
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It is.
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You should be able to get all this for less than a hundred bucks.
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So anyway, hope you enjoyed that and we ll be doing some more work on gear and maybe cameras next time.
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We ll do some things because we do think it s important and especially as everything gets more virtual, you got to be ready for it.
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See you next time.
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Bye.