Based on a True Story with Dan LeFebvre

Transcript

Conny Graf
Welcome, Dan, I’m so honored to have you on the show. How are you today?

Dan LeFebvre
I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.

Conny Graf
Yeah, so before we dive into our topic, please tell us a little bit about who is Dan like if he’s not a podcast guest

Dan LeFebvre
what not not a guest I am a podcaster My show is called based on a true story and on it basically each episode I compare different movie with the real history. So like how much of Titanic actually happened? The movie Titanic, right? How much of Downton Abbey is based on real history, things like that.

Conny Graf
Yeah, yeah, we come back to the Downton Abbey one. But I assume it might be a stretch, but I assume there’s other things in your life is then just podcasting. So how did it all start? And why podcasting? Like you must have a life outside of podcasting?

Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, of course. Um, so I used to run. I worked for a company for a long time that and I ran the content marketing team. And so when I was tasked with that, that was the first thing I did there. But I was tasked with basically starting up a blog because they wanted to start a content marketing arm and so I started running that team. About a year after starting that position, one of the guys on my team was like, Hey, you know, it’d be really fun to do a podcast, but I don’t listen to podcasts, and I’ve never done podcasts before. So can you help me with that? I mean, I’ve listened to podcasts, but I’ve never actually done one before. So we got Permission to you know get a budget and for equipment and stuff like that and started a a podcast that was branded for The company that I worked for, and then we did that for probably about a year or so, and then the company ended up closing down our entire branch, which that included, you know, getting laid off and all that fun stuff and Once I got back on my feet, find another job and I still had that itch to do podcasting because I fallen in love with it over that time. So I started thinking of ways that I could do another show and How I could do something that I could do on my own, rather than trying to schedule interviews and things like that the last show that I did was an interview show and came up with the idea for based on a true story.

Conny Graf
Yeah, that would have been my next question. How the heck did you come up with this idea because I love it. It’s an awesome idea. I think you even won an award for it, it’s a cool idea, so how and when did you have the idea?

Dan LeFebvre
So as I said I was looking for a way that I could do a show that was on my on my Basically I do have to do a solo show because The previous podcast that I did, I was We interviewed The artists behind movies and games Stuff like that. So it was Very, it was every episode was a different guest and so I was very familiar with the logistics of scheduling interviews and I also knew that doing a podcast In addition to a full time job, was not going to lend myself to being able to do interviews because I would only be able to say, Hey, can you do an interview but I’m only available you know, starting it. 7pm and most people don’t want to start doing interviews then So I was kind of mulling it around in my head for a little bit and there was a specific conversation that I had with my wife we that came to mind that ended up being The reason for the show and we had gone to see the musical lame is she’s a big fan of musicals and we went to go see that On the way home the entire way home I was just looking up the things that are In the French Revolution, and how much of of the things that we had just seen. The musical actually happen of course you know lateness is a novel but Still based on the French Revolution, it has appointed So So I was reminded of that conversation. I was like, hey, what if, you know what if I did this sort of comparison of history and, and movies because I was, you know big fan of movies like I said that The previous podcast was interviewing some of the artists behind movies, and always been a big fan of history. And so that started the process of, you know, how do I, where do I go from here? And, you know, how does, how do I structure the show and all that kind of stuff. But that was the initial spark for that idea is all based on lame is.

Conny Graf
Okay, wow, that’s really cool. Because so I always had a little bit of a Nic for history. So when I was in high school, in high school, yes, we discussed the polyone. And so I read all the books that are based, like on his life with josefin, and his wife and all that stuff. So I’m not that I’m going as deep as you are. But I was always a little bit intrigued. So like, I thought it was really neat concept. And so that what we wanted to discuss today is how do you even produce a podcast? Or how do you produce a podcast episode? How are you going to be Oregon? How do you organize it? How do you even do it? Most people and that’s why I asked you how you got the idea because most people say oh, I want to have a podcast but I have no idea. So we got over that hurdle we have now. Now Now there is the hard part and you when when we met you sped you in It takes you about 25 hours to create one episode and you release one every week. And I checked on your Apple podcast and you have 167 that means you’re doing it for a while.

Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of that’s changed. Um Over the course of the show, and I’m happy to break that down a little bit more. But when I started the show, and I knew I wanted to deal with the idea, I knew I wanted it to be a solo, something I could do on my own. But I also knew that starting the podcast, there would be two key things that I wanted to make sure when I want to make sure the viable idea. So I sat down spent a couple hours just looking at movies that were based on a true story. You know how many of these are out there? I knew a few of them off. top my head, but I’ve never actually done research to see, is this a viable thing? Like are there basically are there enough movies to cover this in perpetuity, you know, or is this going to be a way to do it for a year and then I’m done type thing. Obviously there’s there’s tons of movies as I found out

Conny Graf
yeah and top of it, they’re very successful No, just thinking about Downton Abbey right now, you know, like so this perfect topic for your podcast

Dan LeFebvre
Yes. And that just you know, that just kind of submitted that idea is okay, this is an idea I can go with. And then you know, the next thing I knew that there were there would be things on top of the podcast itself that I would need to do initially. You know, creating a website, setting up social, you know, all this kind of stuff that is going to take extra time on top of just creating the podcast itself. So initially, when I started the show, I started As a bi weekly you know every other week is how I wanted to release it until I kind of got into the groove figured out how I wanted to structure the episodes all that stuff so that that way I still had the extra extra time you’ll be putting in air quotes. But you know that extra time to put towards things outside the actual podcast itself that I needed to create still As after can’t remember the exact amount of time it was. It was maybe Five or six months or so that I did that every other week. And then I started to figure out that I for about a period of five years or so I timed everything. religiously like you know, 24 seven our time everything. So I got a really good idea of exactly how much time things actually take How much time I could actually a lot to this. And I figured out that I could start doing it weekly. So I did do it weekly for a couple years. I actually stopped that Last year, so technically I put out an update To my my show …and sorry you hear the dog barking in the background, possibly…

Conny Graf
Mind snores underneath the desk, no problem

Dan LeFebvre
mine usually does too, but you know apparently something is going on outside But yeah, so I changed that. So I technically, my release structure is just whenever I can get an episode done, I change that because of another job situation change. And most of these are starting to kind of figure out most of the changes that I’ve done in the show have been a direct result of, Okay, I have this other thing going on, you know, my job situation has changed. And so that’s, you know, I need to figure that out. What now can I add a lot to to the podcast, so I do release, it usually ends up being kind of every other week now that I release a public episode and then I try to do in between that doing minisodes for Patreon.

Conny Graf
Okay, yeah, because I should think of when you say 25 hours on average, that’s a part time job on top of what you’re doing, as a real job not to say that this is not a real job, but like But the real job and then we all kind of need to sleep and we have probably family so it makes sense. So what I’m wondering is, so little bit the nitty gritty stuff. So how do you decide what movie to discuss? Then what are the like, Are you having an outline and then you’re going just deeper and deeper and Have lots of questions. And the question is, do you work at which goes together with this? Do you work at several episodes at the same time? Or are you just digging into one at a time? That’s kind of like how how’d you do this?

Dan LeFebvre
Okay, so that first part You know, how do I come up with the movie to cover? I sit down once a quarter and I figure out the next quarter worth of episodes and one of the primary things that I There’s too I guess there’s two key things that I look at. One is listen to requests. You know how many movies are being requested and try to weigh that in. But then I also try to weigh in The genre of the movie very heavily. So that way I try to keep my show from becoming just You know World War Two movie podcast you There’s so many of those, that kind of thing. So I tried to Give some diversity to the genre and as well and then I Figure out you know, okay, this is the next Few that I want To do based on on those things that Now few movies that I want to do. And then if it is something I’m going to do an interview for, that also weighs heavily into it. Because you know, of course, sometimes you can’t get the guests that you that you want and or sometimes that takes longer. And so I’ll have a few backups here and there that, you know, sometimes it can take months in order to, you know, Downton Abbey in order to get lady Carnarvon on the show. It took a while just to schedule that, and, you know, kind of back and forth and find the time that would work. And so that during that time, of course, you know, I still have episodes being released, but those are ones that I planned out earlier. And then I kind of have a backup. And then once I have that schedule, once I have nailed down, okay, we’re going to do this interview, then I can actually add that one back into the pool of, Okay, this is something that I can say, Okay, this is actually going to be an episode instead of, you know, sometimes the guests like, I actually don’t have time for that, or I can’t do that or something like that.

Conny Graf
Or put it on the back burner ?

Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And so I don’t actually schedule out an episode until I have done the interview until the interview is actually done, because then I have the actual audio recorded. And I know that okay, this is this is actually going to be an episode that I can release as soon as I get it done through the editing process.

Conny Graf
Yeah, that makes sense. And so when we talked about preacher, you said you have to do a lot of research as well. So do you do the research when you? Well obviously have to do some research before you have your guest on otherwise you look like a fool possibly. So you do have to do some but how do you decide how much research you or how much time you’re going to put in without really knowing whether it’s becoming an episode or not? Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre
yeah. So there’s that It really depends. So there are, as I’ve kind of alluded to, there are two types of episodes that I’ll do one is a solo episode where I’m doing everything and in that the research is super, super heavy. And that’s The the key part that of the episode and then there’s where I’m if I’m doing an interview and if I am doing an interview, I don’t have to do as much of the actual historical research. I focus more on Just movie. And the common the common theme through those is really just sitting down and watching the movie. It’ll probably take me five or six hours to watch a two hour movie because I’ll sit there and I’ll pause it. I’ll let you know rewind You know, I’ve got closed captions turned on make sure that I get you know them not missing anything. I’ll pause if I need to and be like oh What’s the name of that street like that that says that they’re living on or things like that and just take as many notes as I can You know, pages and pages of notes, and then and ask the questions as I’m watching movie. And then after the movie is done, that’s what I start to assemble into. Okay, these are the questions I want to ask the key, the key plot points from the movies and then the questions that I had as I was watching Watching it as I was going through, and you know if there’s any others that I kind of think of after I’ve watched the movie overall but that’s the basic process. For coming up with those questions and If it’s a solo episode, it’s Okay, I got to start doing the research too. Find the answers to those questions. If it’s new Have you? I asked the guest. Those questions.

Conny Graf
Yeah. Which is kind of nice because Yeah, because that’s, for example, one thing that when I started my podcast the mine is only since February so it’s not that long, but I thought oh, solo episodes are gonna be easier because I don’t have to worry about guests. So I did solo episodes in the beginning. And by now I don’t know which one is easier because when you do solo, then you have to do all the work yourself and you have to play kind of like the part when you’re recording without an audience, at least when you have a guest and then the energy you can feed off each other’s energy, let’s say like that. Do you have a preference whether you do solo or with guests?

Dan LeFebvre
Um, you know, I thought the same Actually, I thought the opposite. I thought, Okay, once I start doing interviews, this is gonna be a lot easier because I can just ask them the questions. But then, you know, on the editing side, it ends up taking longer and as I mentioned earlier, I do Everything and I found that it still averages out about the same amount of time to do a solo episode versus an interview. It’s just the time flops from. In a solo episode. It’s all heavily towards the research side on my side. Whereas on an interview, it’s ends up kind of flipping over to the editing side. Editing for a solo episode for me is pretty, pretty easy because I script everything out. And so, by the time it gets to editing, I’ve kind of pre edited a lot of stuff that as I’m writing As well, I think, although as far as preference i think i think i would have to go towards the interview style if for no other I mean if we take all of the production side of it and the process and all of that out of it It is just so much fun to talk to somebody that has a similar interest in that and is so knowledgeable. Like, you know, just as we’re recording this just last week I actually interviewed a guy who was the historical consultant for the movie, The Alamo. And so I got, you know, we got to talk about not only the movie itself, but you know, what was it like on set and some of the, you know, production process and some of that stuff. And so it’s just, it’s just a lot of fun. And those are the kinds of things that I can’t necessarily do, you know, researching things on my own. Just can’t ask those sort of off the top of your head questions that you have in the middle of a conversation.

Conny Graf
Yeah, yeah, I have to admit to that I actually like now the interview part better. Because you meet like you just said, you, you have a nice conversation with like minded people, you pick your guests to a degree, you know that you actually have something in common, and there can be so in so much coming out of it, rather than when you’re sitting alone. But on the other hand, I feel like when I’m doing a solo episode, well, with your format, maybe not so much, but with mine, I can teach more or give more tips. And when you do an in an interview, it’s more, I feel inspirational. That’s a little bit my take and then also feel like the work that you have to do afterwards like you mentioned to if the editing is more when you have an interview also, with the show notes and with the transcript I wanted to ask you I do whether you have a good process figured out for you because I hear too like when people talk with me about how do you do your podcast and how do you do the transcript and how you do the all that that comes after or that the whole Rick partnered on the website. This is quite a bit of work and yeah, so do you. Did you figure out some I don’t want to call it shortcuts because that’s not what we want to do. But you’ve figured out some smart ways to do it.

Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, well, I mean, I guess we’ll decide if it’s smart or not, but if the way that I do so for a solo episode, the the transcript is easy because like I said, I script everything and so I already have the scripts because that’s that’s the transcript. That’s essentially what I’m you know, recording from there might be little asks,

Conny Graf
Do you read off your script? Or do you just use the script as a guidelines?

Dan LeFebvre
No, I I script it all out. So I write it the way that I that I that I speak so it is very written in that way but there’s no way that I can remember the details of history that I’m as I’m going through research because I do the research over the course of a couple weeks or so. And so you know, make sure to get all that down yeah, I scripted a lot.

Conny Graf
So then no history professor then ?

Dan LeFebvre
I’m not I will admit that I am a fan of history but not not a history professor now. for foreign an interview though, obviously, you don’t have that And I’ve used a couple different tools before I started, I use descript for a while in order to transcript and just recently I’ve shifted over to otter.ai. In order to do transcripts those. The catch to those is that they’re not going to be 100% accurate. Of course you’re going to get any automated transcript is going to have some issues. I try to go through after After I have the episode completely edited out, you know, send that for transcription. And then I’ll try to make some changes and things like that, that I notice, you know, off the top, you know, names and things like that as I can. But I also do have a disclaimer on my site that says, you know, this is an automatically generated transcript, you know, it’s, it’s going to have some errors that it’s going to going to be that way. Mostly, quite honestly, I am really heard from a lot of people that actually use that actually reading it. Most of the time, it’s pretty much s for SEO, I do get a lot of traffic on the websites, from search terms and things like that, that come up. And so that’s super, super helpful for that. And so the hundred percent accuracy now, it’s not going to really be there for interviews. But I’m also not going to spend another 40 hours fixing the transcript, you know, written transcripts of an interview.

Conny Graf
Yeah, yeah, I’m using other and, and so I just notice how you can really spend a lot of time on trying to clean this up. And I have a friend who listens to my podcast and she made a comment. She says, Oh, your transcript sounded a little funny. And I’m like yeah well a this automate automation and so from from an automatic thing and then be I also want to be careful to not change too much because when we’re Talking we’re talking different than if we would write something so there’s a lots of lots of repeats. Lots of ends and A’s when you’re Canadian and all kinds of stuff and I don’t want to take this all out because it takes completely Somebody wants to go read it. It takes out the person off the gas and I actually track it when I say doubt my newsletter about the new episode I track it if somebody wants to go read it or whether somebody wants to go listen to it, and I do have a few who want to read, so I’m trying to make sure that they get the personality of my guests the local bit too.

Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, that’s an interesting thought about tracking it differently to see who’s who’s reading or who’s listening. I haven’t really tried that before.

Conny Graf
Yeah, well, it was just an idea I had. I have sometimes some crazy ideas. I don’t really know yet. how valuable that it is. But what I’m basically doing is I’m creating two different Bitly links, one that I tagged as reading and the other one I tagged as, as podcasts. And then depending on where they click on I stay you can listen here or read here and then depending on where where they click, I know whether they’re more interested in reading or more interested in listening. So

Dan LeFebvre
yeah, no, that’s a good idea. And I mean, that’s what marketing is. Let’s try this and see how this works. Okay, nope, didn’t work, or Yes, it did. Yeah.

Conny Graf
Yeah, but I definitely noticed that Transcript stuff takes a long time. It was a smart way to show so

Dan LeFebvre
I can’t say so the, the company that I used to work for that did the first podcast for we did transcriptions but we I want to I want to say was off top of my I think it was like rev Off the top of my, I think I was like Rev. I think it was rev three was the company that did it. But the way that we handled transcriptions there for we did online tutorials and videos and stuff, which had a lot of very heavy industry, you know, you think movies and games and 3d art and stuff like that. So it has a lot of very industry based terms that typically automatic transmission services and butchering and men making a mess of all of our transcripts, we ended up running through an actual human. And basically, I mean, we had a service that would that we hired to do that, but it was, it was not cheap. And so you kind of have those options, right? I mean, you can you can, there are services out there that will have a person that will actually look at it and make sure that you know, the terms are correct, and everything is correct. But it’s not going to be cheap. So

Conny Graf
when I find a sponsor I will do that.

Dan LeFebvre
Exactly, exactly. And as a podcaster. That’s one of those things that you have to think of, you know, here’s what is what is the purpose for this for this transcript, right is, Are there people who are actually reading it, and I need to start, you know, tracking things a little bit more that way, like, like you’re doing to know if people actually reading it. But for for my purpose, like, the biggest thing that I’ve seen coming out of the transcripts are for search results for terms. And in that case, you know, it can be 80 90%, get most of it there, and Google is going to get most of it. And that’s going to be the way it goes. And

Conny Graf
well, I’m definitely not going overboard. Because that was one thing that from my end, so I help my clients. declutter, you know, and like how to tackle bigger projects also, like bigger in the workplace or in the home bigger decluttering projects. And I always know that you have to start small. So for me, when I started my podcast, I gave myself permission, a to not do it on YouTube as well. So with radio, so I was giving myself permission, okay, it’s only going to be audio. And like I said, I thought solo episodes were easier. My assumption might have been wrong, but that’s how I started and then give myself permission. It doesn’t have to be an hour long. It can be shorter. And and all kinds of stuff. Do you have any other tips that you would think like, if somebody wanted to start a podcast would you would say how to not overwhelm because it’s overwhelming. A project, especially in the beginning, once you get into the groove, it’s okay. But in the beginning, it’s overwhelming.

Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, exactly. And what you’re what you’re talking about, there is pretty much exactly what I did, when I started my show is, I knew that there were going to be some of those things that I would have to tackle and things that could be overwhelming. And so that was why I started my shows like, okay, I’ll try to do this every other week, instead of every week, like the goal initially was, I’m going to do you know, do a weekly show, because I’ve seen all these weekly shows and other podcasts out there, I’m going to do the same thing. I’m going to follow that. But I was like, you know, I’m going to take a step back, because there are going to be other things I’m going to have to figure out. And I think, you know, if you’re starting a show, that’s one of those things that exactly what you said, Give yourself permission to to tackle some of those things, there’s going to be unknowns, that’s just the way it’s going to be there are going to be things that are unknown, that you’re you’re not going to know how to tackle it, even that it is going to be an issue that, you know, solo episodes might be more difficult than interviews, right? That might not even wouldn’t initially be on your radar. So you have to kind of give yourself that permission to, to take the time to figure that out. And if you’re taking the time to figure that out there, then that’s going to take time from other things. And I think one thing that I see a lot of, especially the beginning podcasters, they really try to push for whatever to I’m going to record and then I’m going to I’m going to publish it and it’s going to be out like you know, right away. And I’m going to get it that means that and because I’m doing it every week, okay, well, I’m gonna have to record on Wednesday, and I’m going to have to publish it on on Thursday. And then, you know, next Wednesday, I’m going to have to have another one out. And in that way. I can’t work that way that that would that would completely stress me out if you know, I was I was doing it that way. And so that was one of the things that I did initially was how can I figure out this this pipeline where, like, right now I’m, you know, as I’m recording, I just finished up the last episodes of this year that you know, so I’m working months ahead of time. And so that was part of the thing, part of the thing that I did initially that I wanted line. And I think that’s one of those things, when you start to that’s when you start to stress out and you start to burn out and then you start to as you know, in the industry, they call it pod fading, where you just you know, don’t have that passion for it anymore, because it’s not fun when you’re always up against a deadline. And I think giving yourself that permission is very important when you’re first starting out to realize there’s going to be those challenges and also realize that it’s okay to change. I’ve changed my release schedule multiple times throughout the show and quite honestly, the only difference that I’ve seen as far as audience reaction stuff has been well, okay, you know, there’s other podcasts out there, they’re just not like mine is the only show that they’re listening to. And you know, everybody has always been completely understanding of Okay, this is changing. Look, still look forward to the new episode, but you know, it’ll be a couple weeks from now instead of a week from now, that kind of thing.

Conny Graf
I totally agree because they always say you have to be consistent so wait you have to make sure you think can be consistent otherwise you lose listenership but I mean, if you do it only for the growing listenership, then you maybe have to question anyway. So you’re making a podcast and and I guess you can’t just Oh, now I do it weekly then next month I do it monthly and then No, I do it daily now. I mean, that would freak some listenership out. But if you’re just changing it here and there, I don’t think it’s such a big deal.

Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I think some people I think a lot of times you hear that term, that term consistency as being very important. And I do think that it is important, but I don’t necessarily equate consistency with I’m releasing every day or I’m releasing every I used to release every Monday at 6am. But that was when I released you know, that was consistent for years. I would release Monday at 6am Never did I have somebody messaged me at 630 in the morning on Monday and say Hey, where’s the episode? right everybody listens on demand. It’s it downloads automatically. I hear from somebody be like, Hey, I just listened to this episode it was it was great. Okay that episode came out two years ago. You know it you know it’s an on demand No, it’s an on demand platform people listen when they want to. And especially for a show like mine where because I do try to change up the genres. If I do a world war two movie, if you’re not into World War two movies, you’re probably not going to listen to it. Because it’s just not your not your thing. And that’s perfectly fine. Maybe the next one, you know, we’ll do a biopic, and that’ll be on somebody that you enjoy. And so that’ll be one that you listen to. So I think, you know, consistency is important. But I think, you know, releasing consistency doesn’t consistently doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as always releasing the exact same time the exact same day, because it’s not, podcasts are not live. You know, if you’re doing a live show, of course, then that consistency isn’t important, that’s different. But for something that’s on demand, important, that’s different. But for something that’s on demand, people can listen to it when they want to. I’ve had some listeners who, you know, it took me three weeks to get through this one episode. Because that, you know, they listen to it on their commute, and they pause it and they stop it and Okay, well, that’s fine. We’ve had a couple episodes come out since since that one, right. So you have a few more. And, of course, as I mentioned before, you know, the other podcasts, you know, I don’t know anybody that listens to just one single podcast?

Conny Graf
Oh, I wish sometimes.

Dan LeFebvre
I get you there. Yeah. But you know, and that’s, that’s, that’s the way it is. And so it’s one of those things, if it does start to become when you’re starting out, if it starts to get stressful in that way. You know, it’s okay to you can still be consistent and still be creating constantly and, you know, just pushing out new content. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be the exact same day at the exact same time. The medium allows a lot of leniency in that way.

Conny Graf
Yeah, I agree. We often put the, the stress on us with with our own things. Yeah. What I want to dig into a little bit too is the tools you’re using, are you using some kind of a project management tool like Asana or Evernote or something to keep track of what all you need to do like, because there’s a lot of steps involved, that we can try to keep that in our head, but it’s probably not the smartest?

Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, no, I, I would not be able to keep that in my head. So again, if that has changed over the course of the show, and that’s another kind of, I guess, maybe reoccurring theme is you know, it’s okay to change things as you’re going. Initially, it was just a an Excel spreadsheet that I just dumped all the the movies that I thought might want to do. So one thing, one key thing that I do outside of the podcast is I create online tutorials. And one of the pieces of software that I create those for is JIRA. I’ve done those for for years and years and years and done them for you know, but I ran into an issue where I can’t, I couldn’t create a tutorial around JIRA and the project management in JIRA, using my company’s product, actually installation of JIRA because while there’s a lot of private stuff that the company didn’t want to get published, and so I started to integrate the podcast into that so i right now I organize everything for the podcast in JIRA and I’m perfectly fine with you know, showing that interface and showing all of that and I can still teach that tool and then just have the podcast be the project that we’re you know, working through. Mm hmm

Conny Graf
yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense because a while I use right now Evernote, but I feel like like you said that can change over time and I’m thinking of wanting to change it probably to something that is a little bit more probably project oriented so that I kind of like because I usually have more than one on the goal so because I have an idea Oh, this podcast episode I want to do I want to say dad or want to for sure, ask that and so I want to have it’s like books I’m reading always about five books at the same time. airing about five podcasts at the same time. So we need to help our brain to be organized because otherwise we forget.

Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, Evernote is great for that I’ve used Evernote I so for that kind of purpose as a as a digital brain, I use OneNote as similar concept as Evernote. So I actually I still use that for research. You know, if I’m researching an episode, you know clipping

Conny Graf
Ah come on.

Dan LeFebvre
Actually, I still use that for research. You know, if I’m researching an episode and you know, clipping things from the web and stuff like that, I’ll use use OneNote. For that, for the actual project management side of it, though, JIRA is if you’re not familiar with that, it’s, it’s made by the same company that makes Trello. So it’s basically like, the bigger corporate version of Trello is you can think of it right. So it’s agile base, it’s a board that you can move things to so.

Dan LeFebvre
So that’s what I use for the actual project management side of the podcast, that and then I keep that kind of separate from any of the research articles and you know, ideas and all that kind of stuff, you know, that that’s, that’s you keep that in, and that’s

Conny Graf
what I’m thinking of doing. Just having research and everything in Evernote and then having the project part either in Asana or Trello. Although I kind of like Asana better, even though almost the same but

Dan LeFebvre
and that’s the thing is that, you know, it’s perfectly fine to like one over the other, you try it and you might find out, you know, a year from now be like, Hey, I’m gonna make a shift again, because this other tool has another thing and there’s there’s nothing wrong with that.

Conny Graf
Yeah. No, we have to be a little bit mindful of the time, but I wanted to so many questions. I have another question. So if you have, like I listened to because I’m a big fan of Downton Abbey. Sir, I listen to Downton Abbey episode all excited, actually watched the documentary with Lady Connaughton as well, a few months back, and I was just wondering, how do you get these guests on? Like, how do you contact them? Do you have like a tip for somebody who wanted to also have, it’s not necessarily me, but just in general, if somebody wants to have a little bit of a famous person on as a guest, or like, like Lady canal, and I wouldn’t even know where to start. So well, with

Dan LeFebvre
Lady Carnarvon is actually pretty easy, she has a great website that has contact information on it. So that’s what I did, I just, I just reached out. And the key to success for that is being open to their schedule. So you know, like I said, it took a couple months of back and forth between Not, not her, you know, she has, you know, people that will schedule things out. And so scheduling all that out. And it, you know, is really being flexible, and that’s one of those things that adjusting my schedule, adjusting my my process to be flexible enough for that, to be able to say to guess, I’d love to have you on my show. But, you know, whenever whenever is convenient for you is pretty much you know, I’m open to whenever we’re going to be talking about you know.in that case, I kind of covered the movie most because that had just come out. But you know, with Downton Abbey, it’s like, okay, you know, two years from now, that episode is still going to be relevant, because they’re still Downton Abbey fans. And so realistically, if, you know, if it took me a year to get her on the show, it’s you know, emails back and forth here and there. But it’s, it’s not late breaking news type information. So it’s still evergreen information, it’s still good information. So I think when if, you know, if you’re, if you’re trying to find those, those larger guests, finding the contact information, of course, can be difficult, sometimes a lot of times, you know, they have websites, it’s you know, you search for it, by the time, you know, you can go through like a PR company or an agent or something like that, and go that route. But for me, the biggest success for that has been having a flexible schedule, to be able to, to do the interview on their time. So I can do it whenever

Conny Graf
I go back to 8am in the morning, and look awake, and

Dan LeFebvre
I have done that. So I’ve done that I’ve done interviews with people on the other side of the world, and, you know, it’s, I’m gonna wake up, set my alarm, I’m gonna make sure I wake up early. And then of course, you know, the key on the organizational side is the night beforehand, I make sure that I have everything ready to go. And you know, everything works, you know, run through test of everything everything’s going and then that way I can just wake up and, and do the interview. I think that’s the been the most challenging part of that is all of those other things outside of that a lot of times you don’t really think about you think I’m just going to get this person on the show, but all the things that allow that schedule to be to be flexible enough to be able to do those interviews, of course and then you end up with some great content.

Conny Graf
Yeah, yeah, it’s awesome. So um, obviously I will put your podcast in the show notes. I will put any link that I could find from you and apart in the show notes anything else like where would you want the my listeners to find you like obviously you want them to listen to the podcast. You’re on a you have a favorite social media platform that they should follow you to?