Castos Creator: Tim McKenna of the Signal337 podcast

Castos Creator: Tim McKenna of the Signal337 podcast
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Castos Creator: Tim McKenna of the Signal337 podcast

May 13 2021 | 00:32:45

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Episode 0 May 13, 2021 00:32:45

Hosted By

Stuart Barefoot

Show Notes

The Castos Creator's series is happy to share today's story of Tim McKenna, podcast host of the Signal337 (three-thirty-seven) Podcast, a show for the innately curious and creative.

Since September of 2019, Tim has been sharing his thoughts on design, business, and leadership with his audience. Though, we'll learn today that he tried to start the show with some co-hosts, things didn't pan out the way he had hoped.

Like many of us, Tim didn't set out to do a solo podcast reserved for only his opinions -- he wanted to share the spotlight with his friends! Podcasting is great, who wouldn't want to spend hours recording every week talking about the intersection of design & business?!

Tim couldn't sell the idea to a his would-be co-hosts. Look, I know first hand that finding a great co-host for a podcast isn't easy. It's like that old poker saying, "If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you."

That's sorta like being a podcaster. If you can't convince other people to get on board with you, chances are, you're the only one crazy enough to do a podcast.

We're excited Tim chose Castos to publish his podcast and in today's episode, we're going to explore his path as a creator and what's kept him going since episode one.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 00:00:03 Castle's creator series is happy to share today's story. Tim McKenna podcast hosts for the signal three 37 podcast, a show for the neatly curious and creative since September of 2019, Tim has been sharing his thoughts on design business and leadership with his audience though, we'll learn today that he tried to start the show with some co-hosts things. Didn't pan out the way he had hoped like many of us, Tim didn't set out to do a solo podcast, reserved for his opinions in his opinions. Only he wanted to share the spotlight with his friends. Podcasting is great. Who wouldn't want to spend hours recording every week, talking about the intersection of design in business. As we'll learn today, Tim couldn't sell the idea to his would be co-hosts. And look, I know firsthand that finding a great coast for a podcast. Isn't easy. It's like that old poker saying if you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you that's sorta like being a podcaster. If you can't convince other people to get on board with you, chances are you're the only one crazy enough to do a podcast. We're excited to have Tim choose cast those to publish his podcast. And in today's episode, we're going to explore his path as a creator, and what's kept him going since day one. If you want to take part in the Castillo's creator series, shoot me an email, Matt at <inaudible> dot com and don't forget to join our Academy academy.casto.com that's Academy dot Castro's dot com. Okay, let's get into the episode with Tim. Speaker 1 00:01:30 I've been thinking about doing a podcast for a number of years. And one of my favorite podcasts when I was coming up in the industry was on the grid. And this was part of the five by five network years ago. And the folks who used to do that show, there were three designers, there were three individual contributors, and they were just talking about their day to day of what it's like to work at their respective companies. And I was not really into podcasts all that much because I always kind of equated them to like a whole bunch of like talk radio at the time. And I really didn't have much insight. This was around 2012 and I started listening to this and I was like, Oh wow, this is actually cool. And interesting. And hearing those perspectives from those three different designers talking about their work, either in the product space or the, the service space. Speaker 1 00:02:17 And then one was a creative director in the marketing world. I thought like, Hey, I could talk about this stuff. I know this information. I can share my thoughts and experiences. So for a number of years, I thought, all right, I'm going to do this. And I'm going to get some friends together. I'm going to recreate the magic of what I thought on the grid was like and getting other friends and other colleagues to really commit was, was difficult. So I thought, well, you know, I could probably just start off by myself and then start kind of roping people in where their time commitments could allow them to. And so far I have mostly just been myself and it's been great. Yeah. I've been continuing to just share my experiences and knowledge and insights about the relationship that designers have with the business, with product managers and where they want to grow their careers. And I just have a lot to say from my little small, like corner of rural America, that's the other kind of angle from everything is I don't live in a large city. I don't live in San Francisco or Austin or all these other places I refer to as design meccas. I live in a small town Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and it's not known for design. It's really not known for the type of work that I do. So much of the show is about me talking about my observations, my experiences from this particular little corner of America Speaker 0 00:03:41 Unpack that attempt to whatever it was for you. It was trying to find a cohost, trying to find multiple co-hosts. I want to unpack that because that's something that I've struggled with. And maybe there are people who are listening to this right now saying, yeah, I'm trying to get somebody to co-host the show with me to get other people involved. What was that like? Were you asking other people who were not in the space of, of maybe even doing social media? Was it really such a hard lift for them? They're like, Ooh, podcast. I don't know if I want to commit to that. What were your, what was that exact spirit experience like for you? Speaker 1 00:04:14 So my, my two friends that are colleagues of mine, we had both worked together for a number of years at different organizations. And I'm really lucky to count them as two of my best friends. They were very different from me. They actually listened to a lot of podcasts and like understood more of like how to, you know, maybe how to like set your show up and things. And I thought, great, do you want to be a part of this? And we had a lot of the similar mindset and we both, all three of us live in the same area. So we have that same, like, Hey, we're from a rural area. We can share our understandings of the industry from this perspective. But we're all at different stages of life. I have two kids now, but when I first started thinking about this, I was not even married. Speaker 1 00:04:59 I had no kids and I had a lot more free time. And respectively, everybody has thought up more free time, but it was the amount of like, well, this is kind of work-related and we'd rather just play music or do these other things. We'll tell you what you're not doing. Right. But we'll, we'll hold back from actually doing the time commitment. And I think very early on, we, we did get together as a group and tried out like the cadence of like how we could start talking to each other. And it felt kind of like forced and awkward in a way. So I think we just ended up kind of like floating apart from that, but there are two of my first subscribers, so at least they're still part of everything, but yeah, it was difficult to get everyone's same idea about how to set up the show, get the cadence, right. Speaker 1 00:05:48 How we would like play off of each other. And I equated a lot to like being in a band, you have to have a rhythm and cadence with multiple hosts. And maybe just because I was always a drummer and I never got the spotlight, I'm like, you know what, I'll just go forward with this and see if anyone wants to come along. And so far as a solo host, it's been pretty cool that I get to I'm my own worst enemy and my I'm my own worst or my best cheerleader. I can come up with my content, but I want to get more co-hosts and guests on the show in the future. So that's not just one person's perspective. Speaker 0 00:06:24 Talk about time perspective and how it's improved for you. Hopefully it has improved for you since day one. Can you recall what it was like from a time commitment and an organizational perspective, starting your first handful of podcast episodes to where you are, where you are today and compare and contrast that Speaker 1 00:06:42 I have definitely grown in my knowledge for audio editing. Like, again, I'm a designer, so like I didn't have much audio training whatsoever. I mean, thankfully YouTube and friends told me about number of tools and there was a learning curve with some of these tools. Like I do use a product right now, the script that makes it so incredibly easy for me because I'm at that point where it's like, I can be dangerous with the equalizer and the compressor and certain other tools. But if you give me a much more full fledged audio engineering tool, it becomes very difficult for me to do that. So very early on, I was using full fledged audio engineering tools and it became very difficult to go through the yet the episode find every time I coughed or lip smacked or made all these different sounds, I didn't know how to find all of that. Speaker 1 00:07:33 So initially episodes would take for a 40 minute episode. Cause my longer, my earlier episodes were longer. A 40 minute episode would take six hours to edit because I was being real meticulous. And I didn't know the tools I was having to look things up. Now, when I have a 20, 30 minute episode, I'm going through it, maybe another hour tops on top of there. And I'm still being very meticulous and being very nitpicky about how I want things to sound. And this script helps me a lot in that regard. So it's gotten me down pretty good, but also having better organization. I have all my topics on my, my basic script of my caves, of how I want to tell my story, which is usually opening up with a narrative being self-deprecating about something I'm going through that day. And then it segues into the topic. And then I lead off with some resources, like, don't take it just from me, learn from these other people. So having a kind of a pseudo script, an idea of like how I want to go through everything, having the audio engineering at the end, and then being able to create everything and post it makes it real easy. So I would sound it like 80% inefficiency. Speaker 0 00:08:42 I don't think I could ever edit audio again, without words in front of me. Like the script does because I just, I am so lost when I, I used to just edit in audition all the time I off with audacity, which I feel like a lot of folks start off with. Then I was like, Hey, I've been taking this thing a little bit more serious podcasting that is, and then I invested in, you know, audition. And then I get, you get real technical, but that is like flying a plane. And then Adobe is just constantly updating and there's new tools, new ways, new workflows, the app crashes. I was just like, why am I paying for this? And then the script came along and I was like, wow, I will forego all of those ridiculous, I mean, very powerful audio tools. It's just overkill for the general podcast or in de script while there are some things I miss from the audition days, like the way it does noise, canceling and gating and stuff like that, the script keeps investing in that product and then it's getting better and better every single day. Initially it was, Speaker 1 00:09:40 It was, I had an idea hit me and I'm like, Ooh, I want to talk about this. And then I would create an episode and it'd be fresh in my mind and awesome. It would be very much on the fly, but now I've taken a much more like regimented content calendar approach. So I do now create episodes and they are published weekly. I usually get them out on a Sunday and then I start promoting them on Monday. So I do have a weekly cadence now, and now I have ideas on the, Ooh, I like this. I want to research it a little bit more. So I've got my to-do list of back episode ideas. And especially as I start getting into areas and topics where I'm pretty dangerous and I know how to talk about it. I want to make sure that I convey it to the audience really well. Speaker 1 00:10:25 So I go through and do a lot of research Creek comic, my pseudo script, Joe Scott, from answers with Joe. He has a great YouTube channel and he actually went through his process of how he creates YouTube videos. And I was like, Oh, I'm going to kind of borrow some of the same idea. So I, I now come up with a list and I have an episode coming up on freelancing that I was like, Ooh, I want to do this. I'm like, I'm going to put it in the content schedule and have it come out in a couple of weeks. So now whenever I have an idea, I just put it on the list and I look at my list and I go, all right, which one do I really feel like strongly about this week? And then scheduling is becomes easier then, because then I'm figuring out like, which ones do I want to tackle from a research perspective. Speaker 0 00:11:06 So you are getting a little bit more regimented about it and you are starting to build out that content calendar. Do you find that difficult Speaker 2 00:11:13 At first? Just because like there's, Speaker 0 00:11:16 There's the time consumption of creating the podcast, promoting the podcast. And now you're asking yourself, you're saying self, you have to set up a plan for this stuff. You have to sit down and scope some ideas out, maybe bullet point the episodes and do research. What was that like to, to wrestle with committing that time to an already time consuming process? Speaker 2 00:11:38 Well, Speaker 1 00:11:39 Early on when I had just the ideas of like, Oh, well, I'm going to talk about this. I would get very like full bore, like whole hog into it. So I would spend hours downstairs here at my office and I have the luxury of having separate home office so I can do all this away from the family and everything. But that was part of the problem was I was away from the family away from all my kids. So instead of being like, Oh, when the idea strikes and just going full bore into it, I found that actually creating the content calendar created some sort of routine for me. And as much as I think routine can be somewhat constraining, it also gives some parameters to work within. So I work on California time. My company's out of California. So I have more free time quote unquote in the mornings on the East coast. Speaker 1 00:12:30 And I find that I'm allowed, I'm allowing myself to have the ability to do a little research, uh, try out some segments where they show. And I feel like my productivity has gotten a lot better and I don't have to sacrifice as much time because I'm downstairs, quote, unquote, working before California hits and then I can still be at upstairs with my family. So I find that the regimenting of everything, the content calendar has given me a lot more freedom. And that's been my experience for others. It's been the need to be a little bit more freeform in that regard. The hardest thing that comes to me is picking what topic to talk about that is going to be timely or like strike the right chord with the audience. So the episode on freelancing, I actually found out a number of other folks that I follow also did an episode freelancing. And I was like, let me space this out. So not everyone in the design community is getting the same topic from different people. So I think that was the hardest part was figuring out which topics I want to talk about at what time, a, when to release Speaker 0 00:13:32 The podcast for innately curious and creative thoughts on design business and leadership. Has that been the tagline since the start has that shifted around us since the beginning? Speaker 1 00:13:42 Nope. It's been the tagline since the start. I always have found that I have a curiosity around business in general, but I'm a designer, but I also have a project management certification and I'm also really heavily into accessibility. So in a lot of respects, I'm a child who doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up. And that innate curiosity has actually served me well in my career. And what's great is when I talk with other professionals, regardless of what their discipline is, when they have a curiosity around other areas, I find that it helps them become more competent, more knowledgeable and create more connections in their own work. So my idea was, well, I'm a designer by trade. Let me talk about the things that I know from a business perspective, things that designers may not always know and understand because they're super worried about creating the right experience or pushing pixels on a screen. Speaker 1 00:14:38 And I try to break the idea of like, well, your role is much more than what you think it is. If you understand business, you understand project management, you understand these other areas and see how you can be more effective. And that's crossed over to like, well, Hey business folks. Here's how you work with designers. Here's how you can work with these other disciplines. So it's always been my innate curiosity. That's helped me. I can share what I know and have experienced. And then I asked the audience, share your experiences, share what your, your observations have been. And when I share it out on Twitter and I share it out on LinkedIn, I usually get a pretty good response of people messaging me back and telling me like, yeah, I'm right on the nose with certain topics. Or here's what my experience has been. That it's completely different. And I love that conversation. I get from the audience in that regard. So the whole innately, curious mindset has been there from the beginning. Speaker 0 00:15:32 Do you think that is going to keep you static is not the right word, but I know you originally, the intent was maybe I can get some co-hosts and, and maybe do interviews type things or stuff like that. Do you think that now that you're so deep into this, that the solo podcast is of the artwork that you should be creating and you shouldn't change it because of what you're hearing and getting reactions from the audience. Do you feel like this is the thing you should stick with? Speaker 1 00:16:00 I think that for, I would say 80% of what I'm doing, being a solo host is working though. I'll be honest with you. I get tired of hearing my own voice and I'd love it. I'd love to talk to somebody else besides, besides my microphone and all my Batman figurines I have around my office. I did do one interview previously with a good friend of mine, Courtland Ellis. I worked with years ago at a startup. It was great is that he and I also went to school together. So I've known him for 15 years at this point. So it was like a, in a way it was a great way for us to catch up and like say Hauser the last 10 years or so been and everything. And I did that as an episode and I was my first foray into video. I just put it, I just recorded the whole thing and put it out on YouTube as well. Speaker 1 00:16:45 And I got really great response from that. The thing about it though, is that I live in a really rural area. I mean, right next to me is farms and I have the army war college street over from me. So it's not like a large city. And I think that the folks that I want to bring onto the show, I want to bring them from like, quote unquote underrepresented design areas. Like I want to talk to folks who live in very similar type of situations, whether it's in the middle of nowhere, Montana in the swamps of Florida, or if you're in the middle of the desert in Utah, if you're not in one of those crazy design, meccas, or large urban areas, and you're doing this type of work, either as a designer or a PM or a developer, I'd love to have a varix perspectives and understand how their careers have gone. So I think that extra 20% as I'm starting to figure out how I'm going to invite different people onto the show is that's probably going to be how I'm going to mix it up a little bit. But for the most part, a single show, single operators, probably going to be it. Speaker 0 00:17:44 What's the angle that you intentionally take to differentiate your show, either the premise, or do you have a certain stick that you do in the episodes that you say, this is what makes it mine, that we, we think of pod creating a pie, or at least I do anyway. Think of it as artwork. I'm sure you do as well, being a designer with your background. What's the thing that you think either from, Hey, this, this marketing business angle where like, no, this is uniquely mine because, or from the creative and artistic side, this is uniquely mine. Speaker 1 00:18:16 I try to come into all my topics unbiased. I try to talk about when it comes to the difference between art design and creativity. That was an early episode where I talked about like how artists objective and design is supposed to be objective. And I try to come at it and talk about a certain topic object objectively unbiased. But I do come in with my own opinion. Recently, I talked about if you want to continue in your career field, whether it is as a business analyst, whether you're a quality analyst or a designer or developer, you need to continue your education. And I sometimes have a strong opinion about certain things. So recently Google has put out a UX certification program and I was like, yeah, no, that's not going to cut it. That's not going to help you, especially if you are already in the field or if you're coming up in the field and never known what UX is, you're like, Oh, this thing from Google, like I want to do this. Speaker 1 00:19:19 I have strong opinions that I think makes it mine. And those opinions around what I think is quality. And what I think is total crap is, is unique and has, has garnered some interesting feedback. I talked about not going back to higher ed, your traditional higher education. If you've been in the field for a while as a UX designer, what value does going back to a traditional college environment have for you? And I had an opinion that it probably provides little to no value to your career. And this is coming from someone who actually teaches at a college as an adjunct. And here I am saying, don't go back to school. I had a, I had a friend of mine who teaches a master's program in a larger city who was like, Hey, man, I don't know if I quite agree with you on that. I'm like teach their own. I mean, that's been my experience. I'd love to hear your thoughts about it. And I asked him like, Hey, do you want to go and talk about it? Like have a little debate. And he's, he's got actually going to be a future episode where we talk about the merits of design education in the higher education realm. And what's good. What's bad. And what our differences are. Speaker 0 00:20:28 One of the episodes I recently listened to, I think it was the title is growing your career through education. And that was something where you broke down. I mean, he was one, I liked it because I'm not a designer, but I like your approach to how you disseminate everything. And it's just, you just, here are the results I received. And you weren't just forcing me to think this one particular way. You're just giving me the results of your experience and do what do, what you will with it as the listener. And I thought it was great. I thought it was a great sort of, like you said, it's unbiased approach. Here's how I've done it. Here's the results. And then you move on. But when I'm looking across all of the certain titles, right? So, I mean, if we go from, we go over the previous episode, but from that was role-playing games and design plan, better meetings. Speaker 0 00:21:12 You need user research, moving into management. Like these are all things that it's not just one topic. And you can tell that it's all of these experiences compiling together here. And I th I mean, it makes for a great podcast, but also this is what a great designer does is you just have all of these inputs, right? And you see things that you see many different angles, many different ways. And that's what allows you to grow and learn design. It's not like you're just a sketch artist. I'm just done. Like, this is all I do. I touched nothing else. I learned nothing else, no real question there, but sort of just a general statement assessment of, of where you are with your body of work. Speaker 1 00:21:50 I also usually end a lot of my episodes. I'm like, this has been my experience. Your mileage may vary. I'd love to hear what your experiences and I don't shy away from anyone. Who's got a very different, like experience observation. I don't shy away. If someone tells me I'm wrong. And the thing is, I kind of relish in that in a way, because if I am, if I am wrong, if I am dead wrong about a certain subject, cool, I'll do a part two and be like, here's the things that Tim learned. These are the things that I feel like as a, as a professional, you should always have a growth mindset. And I love to hear feedback from folks. And I, I usually give a super disclaimer at the end, but I'm like, look, your experiences may differ. Here's mine, but at least you have some sort of context and framework for you to be able to judge some situations off of your own and all those different topics that I have that I talk about. Speaker 1 00:22:42 The show is all gained all aimed around. Like, how do you con how can you make better use of your time? How can you have the foundation to grow in your career, regardless of whatever discipline it is. And one of the things I wholly agree upon and this mindset around design is I don't care if you're not a designer, you don't have to have the title. If you are whatever role you're the janitor. And you have a concept of like how to make something better, you're part of the design process. You're helping to create a better solution. You're a designer. And I know that some designers hate that hate, that kind of thing, but frankly, I just don't care. And I want more people to think, not just in their job titles or like, this is my little discipline. If you're helping to illuminate and think about things differently, if you're innately curious, this is how you can create value. Speaker 0 00:23:32 Let's talk about the business side of the podcast. Before we hit record. You said that you're really trying to help people navigate the waters of design. And hopefully the result for that is some brand recognition for myself in the larger podcasting, we see sponsorships, advertisements, merchandise, membership courses, digital downloads, some of Castle's largest competitors, be it Apple and Spotify have, are coming out with their, their subscription services for podcasting fairly soon. Where do you see yourself going in terms of if at all, monetizing and quote unquote, turning this into a real business, if that's something you even want to pursue, Speaker 1 00:24:09 That's a really good question because I have really struggled with this kind of internally for myself is where do I want this to go? Because as a UN, I'm not sponsored. I have, I have no patrons. I have no passive income from this is truly a passion project hobby of mine that I tend to take very seriously. And it is one of the few quote unquote hobbies that I do that it doesn't require me to go out and buy a whole bunch of new stuff like compared to home brewing, which I did for a long time. It was a very expensive hobby where you can screw things up here. I just got, I got my Casto subscription and I've got my D script subscription, and I can talk to my heart's content about different things. And I've been thinking like, how do I want to grow a catalog? Speaker 1 00:24:56 How do I want this group? Do I want this to grow? Because I have the freedom being a, being unsponsored to not have a filter on certain things. And there's always an episode where I'm dropping an F bomb here or there nothing grotesque or ridiculous or obscene, but especially when I have a certain opinion, I'm like, yep, Nope. That's. And I'm thinking, you know what? I could get away with that as a solo guy with no sort of sponsorship. And I might have to clean it up just a little bit. If I, if I want to do sponsors, maybe sponsors, maybe certain sponsors won't care. Who knows? I don't know. But that was something that I'm thinking about is finding kind of like like-minded sponsors. I think it was a penny arcade is a great example that website's been around for years now. And they've very, they're very selective about like their sponsors or their advertisers. Speaker 1 00:25:45 And I think that when to kind of go around that approach is like, Hey, I really like what you do. One, two, here's what I'm doing with my podcasts. Let's take a look about how we can have you be a sponsor for the show and how I can reach out. And I want to be very selective about that, but I think that I want to still keep it very small close knit because I do spend a sizable amount of time editing and coming up with stuff and I still have a day job and I still teach, and I have all these other things that I'm doing on top of two kids under three. So it's a give and take of the calendar and stuff. But I think that if I continue growing with this, I'll start finding individuals, that companies, individuals that are of the same ilk, same mindset. And won't be, I won't be too turned off by the occasional F-bomb Speaker 0 00:26:33 My own perspective from my own podcasts that I do. Uh, personally, I am not like at any point, I feel like since I've been doing for so long, I could just walk away from it. Like I could walk away from it and then reset and relaunch something else. It's, it's, it's the, the putting it together apart. It's, it's creative. It's a creation part that I really like the most. And this is where I really became comfortable with calling myself an artist with the podcasts that I do, because I started to really think of like, Oh, this is why like big music artists, or I guess any music artists, one that either go crazy because they've been, they've been build onto this right. Built into the system right. Of, of the, the record industry and monetization. And they get rich and famous. And it's just like, man, I was just creating music. Speaker 0 00:27:23 How the hell did I end up here? But also from the, the creator's perspective of I, all I do is produce content. And when it's just you doing it and hearing it, and you're the biggest critic, you could just burn it all down and just be like, you know what? Didn't like it, I spent hours creating this, or days, months, years, I'm just going to walk away from it and do something else. And then your fans are like, I can't believe you never released. Or when's the next album wins the next podcast episode again, like this is where I've like really found the crossroads of, of feeling comfortable calling myself an artist through the laughable medium of business and in technology podcasts. So anyway, I say all that to say like, are you really married to this particular topic? Or could you see yourself going in a completely different, different direction in the future? Speaker 1 00:28:11 I was very lucky, very early on because I was a professional musician for a number of years before I became a designer. So I, those, those music analogies, you make those hit home really, really close. And the thing is I was very lucky early on to find design as a career path. I actually had a professor in college who had this, he kind of shared the same mindset and we just, we would nerd out and talk about companies who used inch marks instead of quote marks. And there are advertising. We're like, we're that level nerd dumb about design, like, Oh, they shouldn't have done that. So I love design whether it is on the product side, the user experience side service, or even years past when I worked in creative agencies, I just loved design. And this is something that is just part of my DNA. Speaker 1 00:28:57 So I feel like regardless of where I work at in the future, cause I've definitely moved around a lot in my career. And I've always been in design regardless of where I work at this show in a way is part of me in the regards that I'm sharing what I know, because not only do I get to share and talk about the thing that I absolutely love, which is design, I'm also doing it in a way that's another love of mine. It's like teaching and helping others even just demystify certain things. So I think for myself, this show is going to continue on for a very long time short of having another kid, which two's a lot. So Speaker 0 00:29:34 I'm at three. So good luck. My friend, I Speaker 1 00:29:36 Have no idea how you do it. It's just I've. I think that the show and the concept of the show, the title of the show, like everything to me, like it took a long time to get here. And now that I'm here, I'm feeling very comfortable. And as I continue to grow and become more knowledgeable and more efficient and proficient as a podcaster, I think that this is going to go on forever. I mean, I remember when on the grid finally ended, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is terrible. And I don't want to have someone else feel that same way from my show. I think if anything, I might delve into other areas. Like I absolutely love role-playing games. I was episode, I talked about how that helped me as a designer. I could see myself creating another show purely about role-playing games. So if anything, I think signal three 37 is going to stay for a very long time, other ideas and other concepts. Now that I'm more proficient, they might crop up. And who knows? No, one's interested in the role playing stuff out, just burn it all down. But I think the signal three 37 is now been intertwined with my DNA. Speaker 0 00:30:40 As we cut to the outro here is the L in three 37. Is that to the gaming Leete tag that I see there? Or is that, was that just happenstance? Speaker 1 00:30:50 The happenstance, the signal three 37, someone asked me like, Hey, isn't this a 37 signals podcast. Did you just like rip off of that? And I'm like, no, actually it's a reference back to music. One of my favorite bands AFI had this mystery going on for a number of years, the three, three, six mystery. So I just took the number, added one to it and added signal, like for signal versus noise, kind of a thing. And I was just like, well, this sounds interesting and different. It's not tied to my name. And it sounds cool. So, yeah. Speaker 0 00:31:18 Yeah. As a designer, you're probably just sick of like people going, I don't like that color blue. Do you mind just changing that? My neighbor's kids, nephews, sons said that you should change this blue Speaker 1 00:31:30 Several things for, for everyone. Who's going to listen to this. This is an easy way to piss off designers, tell them to make it pop, tell them that your 12 year old son or a 12 year old nephew could do a better job than their pirated version of Photoshop and anything with colors. Like it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Speaker 0 00:31:47 That's right. Tim McKenna, everybody from the signal three, three, three 37 podcasts, the podcast for innately curious and creative thoughts on design business and leadership, Tim worlds. Can folks find you to say Speaker 1 00:31:59 Thanks. Cool. So you can follow me on Twitter. I'm at as rail group at a Z R a E L group, but also the show has a Twitter handle. It's at signal three, three seven, all the numbers. And then if you're very curious and would like to know a little bit more about some of the stuff I do and where the topics even come from, you can find me on LinkedIn, the sane, amazingly bald visage that you see on my Twitter. You can see me there. And that's actually where I get a lot of folks that talk us. So, so find me on LinkedIn. Find me on Twitter. Speaker 0 00:32:32 Everybody else has casos.com and go to casos.com/audience to subscribe and follow the podcast. Join our Academy Academy dot <inaudible> dot com. Thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

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