Speaker 1 00:00:05 All right. Welcome back to another episode of the audience podcast. I'm your host Craig Hewitt. And in this episode, we're starting a bit of a new series where we are highlighting some of our customers who have just started podcasts. And in this episode, we are talking with Rob and Jill from fearless camping.com and the fearless camping podcast. So, uh, Robert and Jill, how's it going? Great. Thanks for having us here. Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. So we were just chatting a bit before we got started. Uh, you all are actually camping right now. Is that, is that right? So that your show is all about camping and you're, you're kind of living the story as we speak. Is that right?
Speaker 0 00:00:43 Yes. Yep. We're in the mountains of pine Valley, Utah right now.
Speaker 1 00:00:47 Cool, cool. You know, this is, this is not what I anticipated talking about, but I think this brings up a good point that a lot of people get really hung up on, you know, I have to have a, you know, kick ass podcast studio and a really expensive mic and all this kind of stuff to, to create a podcast, certainly to sound good. Um, but, but that certainly is not the case. I do. Do you all record a lot of your content kind of on the go like this? Or is this the first time for you essentially everything that we've done has been pretty much on the go. We don't have any sort of dedicated sound space we've recorded in our bedroom, in hotel rooms, in the car, in the car where we can yeah. Wherever we can get space, mostly quiet and away from the kids after they've gone to bed or we'll put a movie on for them to watch.
Speaker 1 00:01:36 Um, but no, I mean, we've, we have a very basic setup and don't have any dedicated space for it because we cause we're moving around. Yeah. We tend to be on the go as, as you say so. No, I think it's, um, I certainly would be nice. I'm sure our sound would be better if we had a dedicated space for it, but I don't think it's necessary. Yeah, we have, we have a lot of people, especially those gearheads who say like, Oh, I have to have this gear and that preamp and this $400 mic and padded walls and all this stuff to start a podcast at all. And let me think, what y'all are saying is, is you don't need any of that. You just need, you know, an iPhone and do a little earbuds that, that plug in there, which is what you all are talking on right now is just a regular earbuds that come with your phone.
Speaker 1 00:02:18 And we're talking on squad cast, and you're just using your cell connection out in the middle of beautiful a Utah to talk with me today. So I think it's great that, you know, we can kind of show firsthand that it doesn't have to be complicated and y'all sound great. So it's really cool kind of lesson in that I think for everybody. Yeah. Um, uh, along those lines have y'all run into anything in kind of podcasting on the go that you've learned that you might want to pass on to other people that might be in similar situations like mistakes you've made or things you would do differently. Next time we've had a pretty good experience so far we haven't run into any major issues we have. I would say the biggest is there's been at least one episode we've completely rerecorded because the first time we sat down to record it, we had no outline planned.
Speaker 1 00:03:09 We kind of had in our heads what we wanted to say, but we hadn't written anything down. And when it came to recording the episode, it came out very jumbled and disorganized and just wasn't what we wanted. And so we sort of said, okay, let's, we've got maybe 20 or 30 minutes in. And we both said like, okay, this isn't going where we want it to, it's not making it just not crisp and making sense, like we want it to. And so we stopped put it on pause. It was kind of late in the evening. So we, we decided to come back the next morning and rerecord after we'd sat down together. And it only took five minutes maybe to write out an outline, but it made a huge difference than when we rerecorded that episode a second time. I think it was much better our, our content and the message we were trying to make was far clearer because we cause we'd gone in with a plan. Cool. And so now, like in subsequent episodes, after that, do you make a bit of an outline for every episode? Or is that just kind of a one off thing?
Speaker 2 00:04:08 Yes. Yeah. We always make an outline.
Speaker 1 00:04:10 Yeah. We just need, it's not a, not an elaborate thing by any means. It takes five minutes at the most, but it definitely helps kind of keep us on point helps us, especially because there's two of us know where we're going and sort of what points each of us wants to make on the subject. Cool. I love it. I love it. I'd love to hear kind of the origin story of, of kind of why you started the podcast and what you're trying to achieve. Maybe like what success would look like for y'all. I think it was probably what your dad told us. After, after we went backpacking with him,
Speaker 2 00:04:43 We took my dad on an Epic adventure in the Hilo wilderness backpacking with all of our kids. And at the end of it, he was just like, wow, you guys, that was, that was really different. Like I haven't, you know, when we're out there, there's not a lot of people with kids. It's usually, you know, young couples or just big groups of teenagers. And he was like, what you're doing with taking all your kids out is pretty, pretty neat. And a lot of people might like to do it, but they just don't know how. So I guess we thought maybe we could share a little bit of what we know and some of our mistakes, which are many on a podcast.
Speaker 1 00:05:19 Yeah. And I've been, I've been a consumer of podcasts for a long time. I think since maybe 2011 or 12, I've been, if not a daily podcast listener, a very near daily listener on a whole bunch of subjects. And so I think for me, podcasting was a natural way to say, okay, we have this idea of being able to take your kids camping to a more extensive degree than just kind of setting up a tent in the backyard or going to front country campgrounds, but really like backpacking and, um, getting out further than you think you can. And so podcasting was a, a that kind of the first thing I thought of when it was like, okay, well we have something we want to say, how should we, how should we say it? Cool. And is this the first podcast for both of you? Yeah, he had definitely. We didn't until two months ago. I didn't know anything about podcast creation at all. Um, like I said, I'd been a consumer of podcasts, but had no idea even what it took to, um, start a podcast. So it was all just kind of a crash course. It's been a lot of learning, learning how to do it. And what's been the biggest surprise so far. Like the biggest thing you didn't expect.
Speaker 1 00:06:38 It was really easy, actually.
Speaker 2 00:06:40 It was easier. I editing. I'm so happy we can edit.
Speaker 1 00:06:45 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like my kids interrupting every episode. Yeah, yeah. Of the two of us. Jill's a little bit more reticent sometimes and has a little more shyness with the microphone. But part of what's helped is me saying, or kind of demonstrating that it doesn't matter. We can say we can mess up. We can say something silly and just snip, snip and no one ever hears it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a, it's funny. I D I guess we didn't do it before we started recording this episode because you all are podcasters, but it's something I often say before we start recording, when I interview other people is this will definitely be edited later. If you mess up, don't worry. We will go back and clean everything up and make you sound great. So, you know, fire away as much as you want and we can clean it up later.
Speaker 1 00:07:31 And it gives you whether it's your cohost or if you're interviewing folks, it gives them a lot of peace of mind that like, okay, I don't need to be perfect. It's not live on air, it's recorded. It will be edited. And you will sound great in the end. Yeah. One thing that we talk about a lot about is like community and using your podcast as a kind of a way to spread your message kind of within a group. Um, it is kind of camping and being in the wilderness and kind of exploring your boundaries, a place that you all kind of participate in and other like areas of your life, or is the podcast kind of a standalone thing there. So I've been pretty involved in boy Scouts for most of my life, as well as working with, um, our church, youth groups in camping. And so that's been a, kind of a big offline community that I've been involved in for, since I was 12 years old and a boy scout. Um, so that's been a big part of where I've kind of gained my experience and have worked with people for a long time.
Speaker 2 00:08:30 Yeah. Rob has all the experience here.
Speaker 1 00:08:33 Okay. Do you see, do you see the podcast kind of bringing you into new areas and kind of your offline life?
Speaker 2 00:08:41 Yeah. I mean, I think we, one of the main reasons we're doing it is to try and find, I guess, other people like us who like to do these fun things and make adventure happen, you know, with their families, that that's the goal. Cool. Cool. And how
Speaker 1 00:08:56 Is it going? I know you all are kind of early on, but how is that going so far with like connecting with listeners and stuff?
Speaker 2 00:09:01 Well, it's mostly been friends and family so far.
Speaker 1 00:09:04 Yeah. We're still in the very early phase where we have, we really don't have a whole lot of listeners other than people who know us personally. So yeah, the feedback we're getting is very positive, but of course that has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Speaker 2 00:09:15 We have managed to get some of our friends signed up to come camping with us though. So,
Speaker 1 00:09:19 Hey, there you go. Let's see, it's achieving your goals then. That's awesome. That's awesome. As far as kind of getting back to content creation. So like understand that, you know, the, the podcast is about kind of your adventures with camping and things like that. Do, do you all kind of plan your activities around things you want to touch on in the podcast, or is it kind of the other way around that you plan your camping and your activities, and then talk about what you did in retrospect, I would say it was the second week where we plan the camping first and then the podcast comes second. And in particular, we're on a big trip right now because I just got out of the army about two weeks ago now. And I have about two months of paid vacation that I wasn't able to use while I was serving on active duty.
Speaker 1 00:10:05 And so we're doing a big trip kind of up the Rocky mountains, uh, from the grand Canyon, all the way to glacier national park and then over to Washington state and, uh, Olympic national park and Mount Rainier and some other places in Washington state. So we have sort of a unique opportunity for us to have a couple months of paid vacation from the army as I'm transitioning out of military service. And so that trip, we actually have been planning that trip for about nine months or so. Um, and like we said, we only podcasting only came on the radar about two months ago. And so certainly the, the camping dog is wagging the podcasting tail. I think, how is it, you know, obviously kind of camping, I assume you'll have like a decent amount of stuff with you. Like you're in a car and you stop at campgrounds some and have like connection to civilization.
Speaker 1 00:10:56 How is that aspect of it for, you know, kind of people on the go and then not as connected lives as, as some other people live, how is that part of things working with kind of creating the content and getting it out there and stuff like are y'all managed not okay. The recording of the podcast can be anywhere because we're just doing it. You know, we don't need an online connection for the recording. And then the way we've planned the trip we're doing about seven days camping, and then about three days in an Airbnb, in a city, like in between Yellowstone and glacier rowing to billings for three days, mostly again, I mean, that was before we even were thinking about podcasting that's so we can shower and do laundry. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:11:37 The laundry really builds up with five kids rolling in the dirt all day.
Speaker 1 00:11:41 I cannot imagine. Yeah. So, and then that's our way to kind of avoid camping burnout and make the trip, you know, along, you know, a couple months, a long trip, more sustainable and a little bit more fun. We're not just camping and just in the tent and sleeping on the ground for two months straight, but that has that kind of what we planned around the logistics of just laundry and food and whatnot is helping with podcasting as well, because it means that we have a good internet connection. And every, every, every seven to 10 days we have an internet connection. And so the episode that we've maybe recorded three or four days ago, and we can sit down and upload it. Gotcha. Gotcha. You mentioned in the message you sent to us originally that you make enough mistakes to have a good blooper reel are y'all actually doing, uh, like a B roll set to, to share as part of the podcast, or is that just a joke? Oh, no. We just have a, maybe a 32nd little run of bloopers at the end of the main content. That's cool. That's cool. Where did you get that idea?
Speaker 2 00:12:43 Um, we just had a lot of mistakes.
Speaker 1 00:12:46 Yeah. We call it, you know, it's funny because I put the first couple episodes out with the blooper reel on it and Jill and I both just thought it was funny. And then I was like, I sat back and was like, wait a minute. I don't think, I don't think any of the podcasts. I listened to have blooper reels like we did before, but we like doing it. I mean, I guess everyone needs their own style. And we just, we had said a bunch of things that I thought were funny that I was cutting out as I was editing. And so I preserved a few of them and stuck them in the back as a blooper reel,
Speaker 2 00:13:16 Then people know we're not perfect.
Speaker 1 00:13:18 No, I love it. Yeah. And I think that, I think that's something to kind of lean into, right. Is like we're all hobbyists podcasters and head to a certain degree. Right. I mean, I think there's very few people that are professional podcasters, like Joe Rogan or something or NPR. And so it's a to bring a little bit of that humanity to your show is really helpful. I think that we talk to people about, especially about like interviewing is like really get personal and really get, allow people to get emotional, I guess, in your shows. And I think it brings out the, the stuff that people listen to podcasts about. Cause it is like the audio medium that, that brings out that personal connection with people. So that's cool that y'all are doing that. I like it. Um, so I know that you're just at the beginning of your, of your journey, but like, what is, what does success look like for you? Like, you know, 12 months down the road, w w what do you think success would look like for the show?
Speaker 2 00:14:12 Well, we'd like to have some people listen to it, I guess. I don't know. What do you think?
Speaker 1 00:14:17 Um, one of my first goals, I would love to start getting enough audience feedback to have maybe a monthly Q and a episode. Oh, yeah. Question we've gotten again, most of our audience is just friends and family. And so I get, I've gotten feedback through, you know, just direct text messaging, but several of our friends that we've picked up over the years and especially friends that we don't see everyday now, um, have contacted me with questions about, you know, what type of gear should I get, or some of the logistics and different things, which is exactly the type of feedback I'd like to have from a broader audience. And so I think for me, a first kind of the first milestone that I like to hit, isn't necessarily a number of subscribers as much as it is. I think it would be a lot of fun to have enough feedback and participation that we could start doing Q and a episodes, because I know on the other podcast I listened to those often are very valuable because it's a way for the host to share information directly answering what the audience is wondering about and cares about.
Speaker 1 00:15:18 And so I think that that's kind of the first milestone I have in my head, whether that means we have 500 active listeners or a thousand, or, you know, some much larger number, like 50,000. That's kind of the first thing I'm hoping to achieve over, over our first, you know, several months to a year. Hmm. Hmm. And you mentioned, uh, like text people or text messaging, you and maybe emailing from the site or things like that. Is there anything that y'all are doing kind of in the show or other ways that you communicate with your audience to encourage or facilitate that feedback? Um, right now it's this directing people to email
[email protected]. Yeah. I think that that's, we've talked about it on this show before. It's, it's, it's kind of one of the hard things for podcasting in general, I think is, you know, we talk, people listen, and then there's not a kind of built in natural way to, within the podcasting kind of sphere for people to then participate back with the show.
Speaker 1 00:16:15 Um, so yeah, if y'all, if y'all figure that out, let me know. I'd love to, I'd love to hear how you, your cracked out. Yeah. There's not YouTube comments at the end of the podcast. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. No, but that's cool to hear that, you know, the number of listeners is not the metric of success. I think so many people get hung up on listenership and analytics and things like that, where you have for a lot of people, that's not the most important thing. I don't know that it's the most important thing for our show either. You know, the number of people we can help maybe is the most important thing for us, it sounds like same kind of thing for y'all is like number of people you can help and kind of facilitate their journey. Um, along the way, sounds, sounds more important than just listeners. That's cool for folks who are just getting started, what kind of nugget of advice would you want to leave them with? Like something that y'all have learned that if you had it to do over again, you wouldn't make this mistake.
Speaker 2 00:17:08 Oh, for me, I've just been, I don't know. Sometimes I feel really awkward talking. I don't, you can't see who you're talking to and Rob's always just told me to just, just go, you know, pretend you're talking to someone, you really like a family, a friend. Yeah. And so I would say just, just go and don't be afraid because you probably have something good to say that can help other people.
Speaker 1 00:17:32 Yeah. I agree. I think that that just kind of getting out of your own skin and getting out of your own head is the hardest part. Especially when you first record your voice for the first time you hear it and you say, Oh my God, is that what I sound like? This is, this is terrible. Cool. Uh, is there anything else that you all would like to kind of share with listeners or any advice or feedback, or kind of words of encouragement you, you guys would like to share? I think just that it's definitely possible. And as I mentioned earlier, two months ago, I hadn't really even seriously thought about doing a podcast and had no idea how to go about starting it and spending several hours, you know, between reading blogs, YouTube videos, and searching online. It really is something that's very, very doable and yeah, it's attainable and not, it more requires just the commitment to sit down and say, okay, we're actually going to do this.
Speaker 1 00:18:27 And so I'm going to teach myself, we're going to learn how to do it and we're going to make it happen. And once I got over that mental hurdle actually implementing, it was not as difficult a challenge as I had, I guess, kind of just assumed it would be. I love it. I love it. I think that's a cool place to wrap up. Um, Robert and Jill from fearless camping. Thanks so much for, uh, for coming on our first creator spotlight, uh, for folks who want to appear in future episodes, uh, we'll leave a link in the show notes for Castillo's customers to be on a creator spotlight episode in the future. But, uh, Robert and Jill, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having us. Yeah. We really, really enjoyed it.
