EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Bonus Episode S01 – E13
[00:00:00]
Brad Nelson: Welcome to this episode of the Agile for Agile Agilists. I am one of your co-hosts, Brad Nelson,
Drew Podwal: and I am the other co-host, Drew Podwal.
Brad Nelson: and we decided we’ve made it through an entire season. Uh, have you popped the champagne yet? Drew.
Drew Podwal: I have it chilling right now. I figured I wouldn’t wanna preemptively pop the top of the champagne.
Brad Nelson: Fair enough, fair enough. so we’ve made it all the way through and we decided to create this bonus episode. One of the things that we’ve talked about since the beginning is we want to be as transparent as possible to our process. And part of that is we’re having a retrospective, because believe it or not, we’re Agile.
Agilists.
Drew Podwal: We talk the talk, we walk the walk geeks to the end,
Brad Nelson: Exactly, exactly. So, uh, hopefully this is interesting for you. If you just wanna kind of hear about our [00:01:00] journey, or if you’re thinking about starting your own podcast, or, , you just like retrospectives.
Drew Podwal: or things that you can look forward to in the next podcast, which we’re not gonna start off with. We’re gonna leave that to the very end to keep you guys hanging.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Anticipation.
Drew Podwal: Shun
Brad Nelson: so we have an idea boards, we’re not affiliated by the, with them. We’re not sponsored by them. It’s the tool that we used for this. We
set it
Drew Podwal: shout out. Let’s give him a shout out real quick anyway, right? Because I don’t know if anybody’s ever used idea boards with a Z before. It’s a not the greatest beautiful looking ui, but as a coach, it’s been a great tool for me if I ever needed, to just spin up a retro board.
It’s free. It allows you to create as many columns as you want. You throw up cards with your teams. , you could. And all of that. So, shout out to idea boards with a z.com.
Brad Nelson: Thank you. Thank you.
Drew Podwal: this at all?
Brad Nelson: But thank you for a free tool. so w we set up this board, [00:02:00] Drew set up this board about a week ago, and we’ve kind of thrown ideas on here throughout the week. Right before this episode, we did a, a quick vote among us of the things that we wanted to talk about in preparation.
So there’s not gonna be downtime of silence where you’re just listening to us and imagining us voting and thinking on things. , try to streamline it, and yeah, so what we decide to start with is we wanna start by sharing, , our gratitude call outs, or as we’re calling them, our gratitude bombs. and so Drew, why don’t you kick us off with some gratitude,
Drew Podwal: Uh, well, I’m gonna start off with one from you to me. No, I’m just joking. Um, gonna start off with the first one, right? So Brad, for totally picking up the slack for me over the holidays and editing the remainder of our backlog. You know, one of the things for me that’s been part of this journey, Brad, as we’ve talked about, is that , it’s hard to listen to myself when we’re editing, [00:03:00] right?
, I’m sure it’s hard for the listeners to listen to me as they’re listening. , but it’s especially hard, you know, to listen to yourself um, you know, I’d edited the first, I think four episodes and then got to the one where Brad was interviewing me and it just kind of hit me viscerally to listen to myself.
And I got stuck and, Brad noticed that I got stuck and he said, you know what? Why don’t I edit these? And so, Brad, thank you so much for, for recognizing that and, and picking up there cuz that. It was really helpful in us keeping momentum going and hitting our launch date, so thank you.
Brad Nelson: You’re very welcome, Drew. And it, it felt good because I know you had done, you’ve done most of the editing at this point, so I can give back a little bit, put in a little effort, do a little work, you know, not just ride on your coattails,
Drew Podwal: But I’m also the reason why we need most of the editing.
Brad Nelson: Well, so on that note, and, and that goes to one of my gratitudes for you, Drew, is that, I’m sure people have noticed that you definitely talked [00:04:00] a bit more at the beginning and, and I think I’m talking a little bit more now, but it, it’s definitely not something that comes naturally to me. I’m an introvert.
I’m a very quiet person. And so not only has Drew given me the space and the opportunity to kind of open up and warm up as our relationship buds, um, but he was able to fill that space for, for the listeners as well. And so I’m, I’m very, gratitude, very gracious
Drew Podwal: I appreciate that. I am still feel like I speak too much, but I’m working on it All right, my turn. Um, this is one that’s not on there, but I meant to put it on there. you know, if you listen to the first episode, you’ll hear that, it was five minutes before we actually hit record on the first episode where Brad and I kind of came to center on the fact that we were now podcasting partners, right?
Like, you know, Brad, we, we. Back in, I think we’re saying September or October, something like
Brad Nelson: sounds right.
Drew Podwal: And, um, you know, we talked about this idea and, you know, you [00:05:00] felt like I wanted this to be my podcast and that you were just gonna kind of help me with it. And you know, in the back of my head, I really needed, you to be my co-host.
And we were both kind of being precious about that. And so literally minutes before we hit record on the first episode, we realized that we both wanted it to be co-hosts and have like co-responsibility, co-ownership of this. And so that’s how that happened. And I’m so grateful because I wanted to do this for so long and I couldn’t ask for a better partner in cast if that’s a thing.
I’m sure somebody has said that. So thank you.
Brad Nelson: Yes. Yes. Thank you for, for sharing with me and for calling that out in the moment. I, I guess that’s another one of my cards here. It wasn’t the one I was gonna do next, but, uh, it, it flows well. Is. One of the things that I do really appreciate about you as well, you know, as much as you’ve created the space and, nurturing environment as a coach, and we would expect, you’ve also been very candid and direct at times, [00:06:00] whereas I have a little bit of the Midwestern politeness where I don’t always immediately speak up.
and where this really kind of comes through is like when we have potential guests, and there’s things that we expect, and I have a card for this later, we’re perfectionists and Drew’s just like, no. Like, I’m not, like, I’m sorry, this isn’t gonna work out at this time. Here’s some advice.
You know, let’s just pause and come back.
Drew Podwal: I appreciate that. Thank you. You know, and along those lines, we balance each other well, We really do balance each other well.
Brad Nelson: Mm.
Drew Podwal: we, we trade off, our skillsets and our strengths and weaknesses. And so I alluded to this in my first card, but thank you for keeping me centered when I become scattered and overwhelmed, I think I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast, but I have major adhd and sometimes, , I have a hard time breaking down the big rocks into the little rocks and focusing on, on, you know, the outcomes as opposed to the individual tasks. And I [00:07:00] get stuck on those things at times. So, it’s really been wonderful having you help me through those moments.
And, you know, one of those areas is you’ve been so great with. The design of things, right? you pick up like I’m, I could use Photoshop and, illustrator. I actually prefer Illustrator to Photoshop, but, , I can’t afford the license for both right now. It’s stupid expensive, but we, you know, we, we trade off and we help each other in that regard, and so I appreciate that.
Brad Nelson: Yeah, definitely, definitely. And, and that does bring me to my, to my next card, which is really, starting a podcast. It, at first it seems like, oh my gosh, this is just so huge. How would you ever do that? And then there’s a moment where you’re just like, oh, this is, like, all you’re doing is just recording yourself and publishing it.
Like how hard could it really be? And so you have those kind of like two bipolar thoughts fighting in your head. and I definitely have much better perspective now cause I’ve done it and there’s a lot of research and there’s a lot of experimentation. There’s [00:08:00] a lot of failing and. Drew, you’ve done most of that.
You’ve done the initial research. You set up the tool, you still handle the recording, you
Drew Podwal: I’ve done most of the failing.
Brad Nelson: You’ve done most of the failing Drew. Yes. Thank you for failing so much. well, I guess you’re the one learning and, and doing this, so, yeah, I guess that’s accurate. You have done the failing for me in, in, in that, in all of our tools that we use today, you identified, you did the research on, you started the motion, and we wouldn’t be here today if you weren’t proactive with that stuff.
Drew Podwal: Thank you. Yeah. And I gotta say, you know, a shout out. So there’s a future guest who we haven’t recorded with yet. , Sina Jazayieri. he’s gonna record with us in the next couple of weeks, , as well as Heather Tesco, who has, uh, the London cast. So Cena podcast is the drunk web.com. it’s a fantastic podcast.
I got some information from him and, and from Heather for, you know, what tools to use and tips and tricks for getting started, and, it definitely definitely helped us to [00:09:00] just get outta the gate by having that as well. So,
and that I think brings us to the last shout out, right? Is
Brad Nelson: Yeah, yeah. We’re, we’re done Complimenting ourselves.
Drew Podwal: Tell me more about how much you love me, Brad Um, so big shout out to our first guests, right? , and especially our first, first guest, for taking a chance on us. We, you know, we didn’t have anything really recorded yet to say, to even suggest that this was gonna be like, decent.
Um, but, uh, you know, Maria was our first guest.
, I think episode number three is the one we talked with her. thank you so much for, for being a guest and ripping off the bandaid with us. And then Sean and Ken and, uh, Amanda and Mark, who we’ve recorded with but haven’t released yet and should be released, uh, in the next, few, uh, episodes that we launch.
thank you guys
Brad Nelson: Yes. Thank you [00:10:00] so much and, , and a special call out from Maria. You know, a, as our first guest, uh, not being able to preview what we were even going for. She provided very valuable feedback after the episode. As a guest that
Drew Podwal: And still
Brad Nelson: paid off, has paid off, we, every guest that we have on, we get a little bit better at it.
we have in one of our, our to-do. Is to create, uh, a list of advice for guests. Uh, and that all stems from Maria’s feedback. So thank you very much.
Drew Podwal: Yeah. All right, so let’s move up to the top of the board for what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what we want to do differently.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Some of these we’ve kind of touched on, so we can probably just, uh, hit ’em real quick. And, the, the very first thing that, that I think of when I think of like what went well is we’ve learned so much.
Drew Podwal: I didn’t learn anything.
Brad Nelson: oh, well, I mean, Drew had it all figured out, but I learned so much, and I mean, I even went down a deep [00:11:00] dive on, on equipment, right?
Like, what equipment should I have? And, you know, I, I started out with just what I had in my home, which happened to be a little bit better than most people because I, I used to do a lot of competitive gaming. And so I had some stuff already that, that was better than the average. And I’m a computer builder and stuff too.
but I mean, since then I’ve, I did, I released a whole review on Reddit on my headset.
Drew Podwal: Oh, it’s fantastic. We gotta make sure we post that in the description for, uh, this episode. Re
remind me to do.
Brad Nelson: Uh, I have a new mic. I have a new arm, I have a new mount, like I have audio-wise. Everything is new at this point.
Drew Podwal: Well, that leads me to the first what didn’t go so well, card which is, well, Brad, you know, was upgrading his equipment. Right? I still have the same microphone. I happen to have a pretty decent microphone. I just happen to have it turned [00:12:00] 180 degrees in the wrong direction for the first two or three episodes that we recorded.
And so the quality of the recordings on those for at least my audio wasn’t so great. So, uh, what didn’t go so well was Drew had good equipment, he just didn’t know how to use it.
Brad Nelson: we all start somewhere. We’re all, we’re all learning as we go. you know, I, I’ve even installed new software, right? Um, the, the Reaper filter for, for those of you that are interested, illuminates a lot of the background noise, which makes editing much easier for us.
Drew Podwal: I haven’t tried that out. Do I need to try that out, you think? Or am I okay?
Brad Nelson: I, I think you’re generally okay, but hey, if you like to play around with, with new toys,
Drew Podwal: The only thing in my office that really makes noise is I have a sonology network attached storage on my desk and I could hear it clicking right now. All the, I’ve got four hard drives in it, but I don’t think my gain is set, high enough for it to pick that up far away. And then every now and then the heater, [00:13:00] we have forced air comes on.
I don’t think it picks it up, but, something I should check out anyway.
Brad Nelson: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. so a another huge to me, what went well is we made it, we’re here, we’re live,
Drew Podwal: Yeah, not just live, but we’re on, how many platforms are we on now?
Brad Nelson: uh, I, so some of them are kind of joint, like Anchor and Spotify, but if you count all of the separate, uh, names, we’re on eight.
Drew Podwal: That’s amazing. Yeah. And I think that, you know, brings us to what went well from, I think we’ve got it on here somewhere from a tooling perspective. But, anchor fm, which was, you know, Cena said, go to anchor fm. You’ll never go back. right? And so Anchor FM is Spotify’s, podcast distribution platform.
You can, record your episodes. I think even in it, you could record in it, which we’re not doing. We’re using, uh, Riverside FM for that. [00:14:00] And again, none of these, none of these tools were getting, you know, rat sent from any of ’em. We just. like them. , but, uh, yeah, anchor, you could record in it, you could distribute from it to like all the major platforms.
So, you know, we’re on Apple, podcasts and we’re on Google and all because we’re using it on Anchor, so,
Brad Nelson: Anchor FM is free. Uh, and so that was one of the benefits as we were looking at different, tools as well. like Pod Bean I think was one them I looked at.
There’s limited storage and there’s, there’s limited, capabilities until you pay. And so the fact that Anchor FM is free, although it’s not maybe the most robust in some areas, the, the metrics are a little confusing and, and maybe not as much as we’d like, but there are some, which is great. and then we can’t upload, uh, what is, what is it called when it’s the, the script of everything we say,
Drew Podwal: The transcript.
Brad Nelson: the transcript.
I was right there. Yeah. We can’t upload the transcript, but overall the, the [00:15:00] publishing through the r s s feed has been, uh, incredibly well, uh, streamed
Drew Podwal: Yeah. And it gives. Pretty decent metrics. Like we can’t figure out that graph yet from a standpoint of like seeing, uh, where the drop-off rate is in each episode. Like, I’ve looked at qmu flow diagrams and and scatter plots, uh, from Jira and they make sense to me and this one just doesn’t
Brad Nelson: Yeah, maybe it’s us. It’s a,
you know, a person behind keyboard chrome.
Drew Podwal: I love that acronym. Ebac.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. What is it? Between chair and keyboard?
Drew Podwal: e error exists between sharing keyboard. Yeah. alright, let’s see, what else? Um, balancing this on top of everything else, I would say that this is in the middle of what went well and what didn’t go so well. I think that there were times and more so for you because, you’re, you’re working full-time and, and I’m, you know, scattered right now with smaller clients.
But, Balancing, like [00:16:00] everything on top of everything else. It has gone well when it goes well, and I, I don’t think it’s been terrible. Do you feel like it’s.
Brad Nelson: no, it’s definitely not been terrible, but there’s definitely been, times where it felt a little crunched. Like there, there was times where we were doing multiple, uh, working sessions and recording sessions in a week.
Drew Podwal: Yeah. Well, and and that’s true. Yeah, for sure. Uh, especially like the, the holidays, that was kind of rough, I know, for you. but I think that, you know, what did go so well, right? And or maybe it’s under Drew differently, I don’t remember. But we decided that we’re only gonna record on Thursday nights now.
And uh, and that’s been kind of super easy. And, and now I think we’re booked out until almost the end of, , or the first week of March. Although I’m pretty confident I’ve got somebody scheduled to record with us next Thursday, and I don’t remember who it is. So that’s, that’s on me to figure that out.
Brad Nelson:
I mean, kind of on that note, like what went well is that we have people listening. You know, we are not, [00:17:00] you know, competing for first slot at all, but, you know, we have people coming back, we have people listening, and we have a steady stream of people interested in joining us, which is amazing.
Drew Podwal: Yeah, that’s been kind of cool, right? Is I’m talking to a lot of people and networking a lot right now, and because I’m not tied to a full-time job, I’m spending a lot of time in Agile communities of practice, like the Agile Mastery one that I’m always bringing up. And,
it’s been real one, it’s been amazing to meet with those people in those communities.
But then it’s been even better to say like, Hey, I like what you’re talking about. would you be interested in talking on a podcast with Brad and I, and having a discussion around this topic and, Nobody said no to me so far, which is kind of wild.,
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. Actually you, you’d think even someone would just be like, oh, I’m not comfortable
Drew Podwal: yeah. People seem pretty comfortable, although I haven’t reached out to like somebody like Jeff Sutherland or anything [00:18:00] like that to say, Hey, Jeff, you wanna join our podcast? So, that’s actually, we sh we should talk about that, right? Is like, at what point are we gonna be ready to reach out to people who we would aspirationally like to come onto the podcast and school us a bit, you know?
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I know it’s something we talked about. I don’t know, a month or two ago where it’s one of those things where those sorts of people look at it as kind of a business transaction for them and their brand, which makes sense. Uh, and so being able to say, we have X amount of listeners, our episodes get X amount of plays.
Those are the sorts of things that somebody from a business perspective is gonna want to know. And so that’s been one of our delays, I would say so far. would definitely love to have some big names on here, but I also kind of love that we’re able to give this platform to some of the unsung heroes that we know personally.
Drew Podwal: Well, and so that ties to the card that I want to bring up. The first one that I put [00:19:00] on here for what went well, you know, the thing that I think, and I’ve said this before, the thing that stands out to me about our podcast versus the other ones, and I was explaining this to Sarah last night, like, a lot of the other podcasts are really.
they’re not super conversational, right? They’re very on point to a specific polished, degree. it’s their market. It is their definite marketing tool. This isn’t really a marketing tool, for us, this is an opportunity for us to have great conversations with people, open and honest conversations.
And so I think the thing that sets this apart for us and other podcasts is that we’re not afraid to learn as we go in the conversations that we’re having with our guests and with one another. and it, it makes it, at least for me, I feel like we’re approachable in that regard. Uh, we’re not just using this as a marketing tool to sign up, like a lot.
Professional services organizations [00:20:00] out there have podcasts that they own. and they use that as a way to get clients and attract clients. Like, that’s not us. We’re, we’re trying to have great conversations that are insightful so that we could learn ourselves, and, and better the community in that regard.
Brad Nelson: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, we are experts. We are Agile coaches for hire. we try not to, to turn this into a sales pitch, and we’re okay not being the expert always.
Drew Podwal: Yeah. Although I would like to just take a quick second to say, I have a timeshare in, uh, Mexico City that if anybody’s out No, I’m just joking. . I wish, wish I had a timeshare in Mexico City, or maybe not Mexico City, but
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Uh, I got the scrum master sent fragrance. If you, uh,
Drew Podwal: It smells like yellow Post-it notes
Brad Nelson: It does, yeah. Yeah. Mike Kohn every year puts out for April Fools some sort of funny site or gag. And you can get ’em all, you can reach all them now in from his mountain, what is it? [00:21:00] Mountain
Goat. Mountain Mountain Goat.
Yeah. I don’t know. I’m floundering here. But you, you can find him on his website, but he every year releases some of the funniest stuff ever. And one of them was a fragrance for Scrum Masters and it’s hilarious.
Drew Podwal: That’s
Brad Nelson: you Mike, for making us laugh.
so yeah, so that’s been really cool. And the other thing that, I don’t know if we’ve ever called out, but we don’t have a. Like all of this, we’re, we’re talking off the top of our head, which sometimes results in us fumbling our words or using a word that we might not normally use, or multiple times in this episode even, I couldn’t come up with the word.
and our guests too, right? Our, our guests are agreeing to come onto to this show with very little context of, of what we’re going to talk about, and they’re just experts in their field, and they’re just here to talk in the share. And I, I think there’s a realness to that, and I think there’s something to [00:22:00] respect in that.
Drew Podwal: Well, let’s talk about that actually a little bit further, because, you know, behind the scenes, like the way this has worked is we have a Slack channel. there’s not a lot of people in it right now. It’s just people who we’ve talked to about becoming guests or, have been guests. But, if we meet somebody who we want to be on the podcast, we invite them to the channel and then, you know, Flesh out the idea a little bit, but we’re not, we’re just kind of like saying, all right, here’s a topic that we want to talk about.
Let’s come up with a couple of bullet points from a standpoint of what angle we want to approach this conversation from. But, uh, that’s worked pretty well, right? we had Sean who came into the community that way and we fleshed out the idea. And, uh, Amanda as well, that worked really well. And,
Brad Nelson: and I think that adds to, I like, I call it the rawness. I don’t know if that’s the right term for it. Realism, that we offer, that I appreciate. And, and even in, our own perfectionism. Gets in the way. You know, we challenge ourselves to be Agile Agilists. We [00:23:00] definitely have tendencies to hold onto it until it’s perfect.
So we’ve polished every corner. Um, but challenging ourselves to, to put it out there and to learn and grow and just do it, I think is a win for us. And something I appreciate even as recently as saying like, Hey, let’s not worry about an intro. Right. Let’s just get it out there. And I personally, I still feel really great about that.
I, I feel like an intro adds little to no value.
Drew Podwal: Well, okay. Let’s talk about that one too, right? Um, I got, Just one feedback from somebody saying you guys did introduce yourself by your full names and, uh, I don’t know where I sit on the fence of whether we should have an intro or not, you know? and I don’t think we’ll know until other people tell us, but
Brad Nelson: right?
Drew Podwal: I’m okay with where we are right now with no intro.
I think that going into it is great, but like, if you guys want us to have intros, then you gotta tell us.
Brad Nelson: Yeah, let us know. We’ll start a [00:24:00] GoFundMe for Han Zimmer and it’ll be great.
Drew Podwal: So, along those lines, , is the editing that we do and, and I I’m gonna say that I think that one for this episode, we should just, trim, the head and the tail and release this one as is.
Um, I feel like it’s raw anyway. It’s a raw subject matter, but like, um, I just did it. The, um, I, I have a tendency to say, um, and ah, a lot and, uh, I did it again. Uh, it drives me nuts, , it drives me nuts when I’m listening to it and I, I try to edit those out. Um, because it, it just doesn’t sound sometimes it’s okay.
But, uh, we have different things that we prefer about the way that we speak and, uh, I think I have way. Way more filler word usage than than Brad does. I end every [00:25:00] sentence with, right, with a question mark at the end. Um, and I use, um, and a lot and a lot of it comes from my adhd, right? Like I am medicated for adhd.
I was first diagnosed in third grade, but it was About six years ago, seven years ago was when I really like finally as an adult stuck to an A D H D medication that worked well for me, I realized that life slowed down and it changed the way that I actually speak and communicate, which is really wonderful because it allows me to think and speak at the same time without all the clutter in my head.
Um, but. . What I found is now that when I am speaking, when I wanna slow things down, I use, um, as the thing that holds the sentence together while I’m thinking about what I wanna say next, and it doesn’t come across in the way that I want. So editing is just a big pain in the butt, and everyone will tell you the number one reason why podcast fail is [00:26:00] because they don’t like editing.
So,
Brad Nelson: yeah, what I did there.
Drew Podwal: that wasn’t nice.
Brad Nelson: I definitely do it too. And that’s something, uh, as we mentioned earlier, both of us have edited. Hopefully it sounds relatively similar from episode to episode. Uh, one of the things that, we talk about, or at least I encourage Drew , to embrace is a more authentic sound, but when we edit, we do, we do edit.
We do edit, uh, awkward spaces. That’s something I do a lot. Uh, I, I have called myself William Shatner on more than one occasion because I just have this, this awkward cadence at times. I’m an internal thinker, part of being an introvert, and so I think before I respond and I don’t typically think out loud, that’s a, a trained thing that I, I have to force myself to do. And I do use filler words too. And, and so a lot of our editing is just cutting out [00:27:00] space. We’re not cutting out the message. We’re not like rerecording things. It’s nothing extreme. It’s really cutting out the space and then if we feel like one of us are getting hung up on a word, um, right. Yeah. Some days you just have words that you get hung up on.
We do try to limit those just to make it a little bit less, intrusive for people trying to listen to the episode.
Drew Podwal: I feel like it’s. Analogous, like we we’re not quite Botox, right? um, maybe a little bit of clear sell and, uh, ,
Brad Nelson: Yeah. I’m gonna, I’m gonna start writing a filter on my voice, so I sound like Morgan Freeman.
Drew Podwal: In a time where agilists were able to walk into a company and just start coaching
Brad Nelson: That’s pretty great. I’m expecting that from now on.
Drew Podwal: All right, what else do we have here? let’s see.
Brad Nelson: So on the, on the editing note, uh, I, the word that I used was Herculean, right? It’s a Herculean [00:28:00] effort to edit. And this
Drew Podwal: I thought I wrote that. You wrote that.
Brad Nelson: I wrote
Drew Podwal: Oh, I thought I wrote that one.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Wavelengths, uh, or maybe we both were at one. I don’t know. Um, and like we, we’ve never edited audio before this, to my knowledge.
And like Drew has plays instruments, and I’ve done some video editing, so we weren’t a hundred percent clueless. What is that something we really had experience in? And for a standard episode, I mean it’s at least four hours, would you say
Drew Podwal: Yeah. It is four hours at least. definitely. And that last, um, made it four hours in five minutes. So, well, let’s talk about that for a second, right? So there’s a tool out there called Script, and there’s other tools out there as well. Um, and it uses AI to detect filler words. So it looks for ums and ahs and, uh, so, and well and [00:29:00] other things.
And like I can hit a button and it could magically erase all of them, but it doesn’t do it really well. sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. So what I do is I generate the list of the filler words and just skip to each one and listen and see what I can do to nudge it around a bit. And, uh, I try not to remove all of them.
I try to leave some of them in there. But Brad, to what you were talking about before, right? Like you, you do have a cadence where there’s space. in between your words. Right. Uh, there was a Right. That was an example of me saying, right. Um, I do too. It’s just I fill mine with an um or a right. You know?
So I feel like we’re on the same sort of wavelength actually for how we think while we speak. It’s just that I feel it audibly. And you don’t
Brad Nelson: Yeah. I, [00:30:00] I do a lot of public speaking. And so that’s something that I would say I’ve worked on.
Drew Podwal: Yeah.
Brad Nelson: And I’m still not perfect or great by any means, but it is something I’ve consciously worked
Drew Podwal: Yeah.
Brad Nelson: I, I have some amazing colleagues at my company that helped me get started with presenting, gave me advice on titles and abstracts and feedback on how I presented.
I remember the one that sticks out the most is I do use right a lot when I’m not getting feedback. When I’m presenting in person and I’m just getting that deer in the headlight kind of, kind of stares from the audience. I start saying, right, because I’m, I’m looking for validation. I’m looking to see if the people are following me.
If they’re thinking I’m full of it, like I don’t know what’s going on at that point. It’s kinda like a freak out moment w when you’re in front of them and I subconsciously start reaching for [00:31:00] that validation. I start saying, right.
Drew Podwal: Well, it’s kind of like when you start an email by saying, I wanted to touch base so that I could, right.
Brad Nelson: Mm-hmm.
Drew Podwal: you know, back in the day when, when you wrote emails like that and somebody pointed it out to you and you said, all right, I’m gonna try just starting out my email by saying, here’s what I need, or here’s the
Brad Nelson: Yeah.
Drew Podwal: All right, so let’s look at some of the do differently things. So one of the things that I think that we should do differently is like we bring up things from time to time. We reference things, we reference other podcasts, we reference tools, and we haven’t done a great job of capturing those so that this way when we release it, we could add in the description a list of some of the things that we’ve referenced.
And so I’ve gone back with a couple of the episodes where I remember that. But like for instance, in this episode, in the description, we should have ideas boards on, on I idea [00:32:00] boards, um, onesie in the description as a reference, right? We should have Dess in Riverside. And even though they’re not paying us and nobody’s paying us, but you know, it, it should be there.
Um, so. I think that’s something I want to figure out a way, some sort of system to when we’re recording to, um, like, actually, you know, what we could do is in Riverside there’s this button you can, I don’t know if it shows up on your side, the mark clip button,
Brad Nelson: Yeah.
Drew Podwal: so we could click mark clip and now we’ve we don’t have to capture that.
We’ve, said something important that we want to grab for later, but at least we’ve got it referenced. So
Brad Nelson: That’s a good idea. I, I haven’t thought about that at all, so that’s a completely fresh idea for me. I like it.
Drew Podwal: fresh ideas with a z
Brad Nelson: Yes. Everything’s with a Z now. so I, I guess I’ll throw one out there for me then. as you mentioned, uh, the graphics, the design, I’ve definitely contributed to [00:33:00] a lot of it as far as, you know, I designed our logo based off of, you know, something that Drew started, and then he based the website off of that logo and the colors I used.
And so I, I think we’ve done a great job of collaborating, like the fact that we landed on this name, which Drew already owns. and like I feel like creatively we really resonate well, which I absolutely love. and I feel like a lot of partnerships really struggle with, like, I feel very blessed
Drew Podwal: Yeah. I, I do as well, right? like I, I said I’ve wanted to have this podcast for a while. I realized at the beginning of Covid, I was talking to lots of great people, I should just be recording these conversations, this podcast. And, but I just didn’t have the, maybe some of it was confidence or some of it was wanting somebody who I could trust, like I do you to shoulder the weight and bounce ideas off of and, carry this thing forward.
But I wanna just go back for a second because you said that you created the logo based off of, of. Logo that I gave you, and I want to just call out [00:34:00] for a second that the logo that I gave you was literally like an MS paint. Um, right. It was a bright red, I don’t know what the hex code for bright red is, but it was whatever the default red is, it’s that red.
And it was an Agile loop with a lime green hamster wheel in the center of it with a hamster. And it said in bright green text on the top and the bottom, something along the lines of Stop being an Agile hamster. . So , that’s not, uh, I’m glad you feel like that was like a spark that helped you to like create an ember that then turned into the wonderful flame that is your design.
But , I don’t know how you can make a hop skip and a jump like that.
Brad Nelson: well, well, if you work in design, a lot of times you do start out with really rough drawings, like, uh, you’ll hand draw something. I am not, like, I do not [00:35:00] consider myself a drawer by any means. I’ve gotten in recent years a lot better at painting, um, you know, significantly better. I’ve surprised myself even.
Uh, but the things that I like draw by hand on paper. When am I deviating? I hope no one sees they’re terrible. Uh, so.
Drew Podwal: I’m good with collage, and, and I think I’m actually really good when it comes to that kind of stuff. but, uh, and I enjoy it. I really enjoy, I get lost for hours when I’m like making collages and whatever, digitally. Uh, I love doing that kind of stuff, but I think that, um, I’m definitely gonna add that original logo somewhere on the website. Everybody could see it at some point. I had this idea, like, I think it was a year ago, maybe more, where I, I wanted to start creating content and, and so I had this like Agile hamster kind of thing. Like, you know, get off the wheel.
Brad Nelson: Yeah, I, I still wanna do something more at the hamster. Like at some point I’ll do a loop and do like a shadow of the hamster in the wheel or something like coming off [00:36:00] the loop or something. Cool. I, I still love the hamster part, uh, but I also love neon, so
Drew Podwal: Yeah.
Brad Nelson: on the do, do differently I guess, or, or more work we have, you know, one of the things is that I really sloppily made that logo and, and it’s worked for an mvp, but, , Drew has seen the mess that I don’t normally share. My, Photoshop file is like a bomb went off, it’s a disaster. And I didn’t technically make it big enough for what we need, so I’m gonna have to actually go back and completely remake it.
Drew Podwal: Well, I think what we’re gonna do instead of that Brad, is we’ll set up a Patreon and people can fund , uh, somebody on Fiver to remake our logo for us. Because getting back to the, uh, where was the card? Balancing this on top of everything else like that, that’s not something that, unless you [00:37:00] want to do it, you know?
Um, but
Brad Nelson: Yeah, I mean when the time’s right, the it, I mean this whole podcast kind of scratches that creative itch and, and we, you know, psychology is a part of what we do, and having creative outlets is crucial to your mental health, regardless of what it is
Drew Podwal: yeah, a hundred percent. yeah, I, you know, for me, and, and now we’re going down a rabbit hole a little bit, so I’ll keep it quick, but like I, before I joined the Navy in 1996, I was supposed to go to art school for photography, and, uh, and I chickened out. I don’t know if I told you this or not,
Brad Nelson: You haven’t told me, but I’ve seen your Instagram. You are a fantastic
Drew Podwal: thank you, thank you. but when I joined the Navy, everything was gray, right? Like, I love that quote from, uh, apocalypse Now when the, the, the, the cook from Louisiana’s in the kitchen and he’s like, they had all these amazing cuts of meat and we just boil them, you know, there’s like no creativity in the Navy [00:38:00] whatsoever.
Right? but then I became this troubleshoot and I realized like, you know, troubleshooting is very creative. Um, so. yeah, like find your creative outlet, right? Like coaching an Agile team is creative. There’s a lot of creativity in that. Like, how are you gonna keep people on the bath? You know, keep them learning, keep them growing.
There’s, um, but, uh, but if you need something creative, collaging is great. Podcasting is great.
Brad Nelson: Mm-hmm. definitely.
Drew Podwal: so what else do we have?
Do we wanna look at what listeners should look forward to now?
Brad Nelson: yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing. it’s probably a good time to, to transition. So, as I mentioned season two, as, as Drew mentioned, we have, people scheduled out for weeks and we’re gonna figure out how to work around some of my presentation schedule, but we’re not stopping. We’ve agreed we’re gonna roll right into season two, and we’ve now established [00:39:00] this Thursday recording, we’re gonna have a cadence, we’re gonna be releasing every Tuesday, um, on Anchor fm, and then I’ll publish out.
So every Tuesday you can expect a new episode, uh, at least, uh, for 12 episodes after the next, what, two or three that we’re releasing now for season one.
Drew Podwal: Yeah, we’re just gonna keep it rolling. So we’ve got on deck, right? Just to give you a sneak preview who we’re gonna be speaking with, , we’re gonna be speaking with a guy named Diego Von Soften, who I met, , about two years ago. He had a product called Team Worky that was a really cool, , AI based retro board that did natural language.
Processing for tonality of what people added to the retro and, and, and forms. And sadly, like it was a great tool, but they just couldn’t get funding for it. And, I, I knew I wanted Diego to talk about that, about fast cycles of failure, but I [00:40:00] was kind of afraid to say, Hey Diego, why don’t you join the podcast and talk about your, your product that failed, um, from the standpoint of fast cycles of failure.
And so I, I kind of didn’t say that to him and he brought it up on his own. so I’m really looking forward to that one. and then, uh, Sena, Sena Jazzier, he’s an amazing developer who, was one of the lead developers on one of my first, uh, scrum teams that, that really. Agile and Scrum, and we’re working in an organization where it was working well.
And you know, a lot of people talk about well, I’m a scrum master, but I’ve never been a developer before. So we’re gonna talk with him about , well, all right. Like, what does he look for in a scrum master? What are the traits and attributes that he as a superstar engineer looks for in a scrum master so that you can seamlessly be part of that team and accepted.
and then Joe, Joe Parker, right? Joe Parker is like, , [00:41:00] I know you guys are all talking to recruiters. Uh, how many times have you spoken to a recruiter that actually understood Agile and Scrum and actually understood that Agile is a set of principles and values and not a methodology or a framework? Right. And I feel like I’m missing somebody who we’ve just,
Brad Nelson: Yeah, I, I can’t remember either. We, we, one of our, our things that we’re working on is, is a calendar system for tracking all of this a little bit better. Um, but I mean, even just, you know, the, the names you’ve listed so far, super exciting stuff coming up. Super excited to have these gas, uh, in, in one of our, do differently type things is we’re trying to have more and more guests on, you know, it was a little difficult starting.
Due to SEO reasons, we had to release eight upfront. I don’t know if that’s helped our SEO or not, but, it did make it a little bit harder to have guests on and it made it a little bit harder to, to advocate for each [00:42:00] episode. but Drew and I also know that you’re gonna get sick of just hearing what we have to say constantly and listening to our voices as well as, we’re gonna run outta stuff.
So we’re, we’re definitely gonna prioritize guests as much as we can to bring in different, unique perspectives and fun topics.
Drew Podwal: and you know, that said like if you have a topic that you want to school us on, or if you have a correction that you want to come onto the episode and school us on a bit, or, um, or if you wanna flesh out something further that we’ve touched on or something totally unique that you wanna talk about somewhere, we’re your platform, as long as you don’t turn it into like a proud boy moment, you know? But.
Brad Nelson: word. and if you’re not comfortable with a full episode, we now have this voicemail feedback, plug in on our website that Drew set up. we definitely love, , to hear people tell us how much they love us. Uh, but if you want to just give us a quick clip of, you know, Hey, you [00:43:00] guys are idiots and you said this thing wrong,
Drew Podwal: We’re gonna play
Brad Nelson: pronouncing Shuja Ri wrong, or whatever.
Drew Podwal: we’re gonna play it and, and we’re not gonna edit it, right? We’re gonna play it exactly as you say it. So record it two or three times if you want. And tell us which one is the best one, and we’ll go with that one. But, uh, we promise we’ll play anything you put there. as long as it’s not like, uh, never gonna give you up, right?
We won’t, we will not play. Um,
Brad Nelson: won’t, we won’t Rick
Drew Podwal: we will Rick roll. I was trying to remember
Brad Nelson: and, uh, and, and we’re not gonna share anything that might get us, you know, canceled.
Drew Podwal: Yeah, that’s true too. and then, uh, you know, we’re thinking, we haven’t really talked about logistically what this would be like, but we wanna do a livestream, right? The cool thing about Riverside is like, I could literally right now click a button, just, it would post a link to this on LinkedIn and anybody who clicks that link on LinkedIn could join this as a live stream.
And, and it allows us to have an audience where we could even select [00:44:00] people from the audience to join us as guests. Um, kind of like, uh, I dunno if you ever used, have you ever used Clubhouse?
Brad Nelson: I know the name. I haven’t
Drew Podwal: Clubhouse is a lot of fun. It was, um, early in the pandemic, they created this, this application, uh, where you could start a clubhouse streaming room, um, and have a conversation and people could join it as part of the audience and they could raise their hands and you could call people up and join the discussion.
And, uh, haven’t used it in a while, but it was a really cool platform and I think it probably still is, but. So, but
Brad Nelson: Yeah, that’d be a lot of fun for
Drew Podwal: we wanna do a live stream. I think that would be great.
Brad Nelson: there’s a lot of things I think that we have ideas percolating or we touched on briefly, and it all comes down to you. The listeners, if you listen, if you like what we have to say, um, the more listeners we have, the easier it’s going to be to pull some of these things off.[00:45:00]
Drew Podwal: Do you want to tell ’em about the surprise now or do you want me to tell ’em about the surprise?
Brad Nelson: The surprise.
Drew Podwal: That was the surprise. There is no surprise Sorry. That’s the other thing I gotta figure out. Am I just too much of a joker on this? Is it like I, I don’t know. It’s just my natural state of being. I remember when I first was like a project manager, I would just bring up jokes in meetings and I learned this filter of of uh, pause.
Is this gonna add value to this meeting or is it not gonna add value to this meeting? And that’s worked well and I think I might need to bring that filter into the podcast.
Brad Nelson: Uh, my opinion is there’s definitely value in showing our uniqueness and in our personalities as well. hopefully our listeners feel the same. and yeah, and things that I guess we didn’t talk about really cuz they’re, they’re far out there. But, \ , monetizing the podcast, that’s something that we’ve [00:46:00] briefly discussed,
in our ability to be Agile or our, our approach towards being Agile.
We haven’t talked all of these ideas through and out and so far we’ve definitely agreed on most things, which has been pretty great. I, I would say some people might struggle without setting some of those terms early on. Um, but monetization, you know, that’s something that would definitely help with editing to pay for our own editor.
Um, any of the additional things that are outside of our skillsets, you know, we’ve been, it’s, it’s just been Drew and I like we have flexed to create everything that exists today. and, and you know, who knows, maybe someday we’ll have merch. Maybe, we can do a live event, live. You know, all of this just kind of depends on, on how this
Drew Podwal: We definitely should make Agile hamster key chains Well, you know, to me the monetization part of it is, um, like right now. [00:47:00] It’s having great conversations with great people, right? it’s, getting feedback, which we haven’t really gotten a whole lot of, but getting some of it. if we can make a buck off this, then that would be great.
But I, I’m, you know, I’m still really happy to have a platform that is like our sandbox for, you know, learning. you already do a lot of speaking engagements. like monetization for me would be getting somebody to who listened to the podcast to say like, Hey, why don’t you come into the company and talk about this?
but, uh, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how much money people make off podcasts.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. And I definitely think like, we’re not trying to get rich off this. There are costs, it’s not free. And not even talking about our time, like we pay for equipment or Drew so far pays for equipment or software licenses. so yeah, we’re not gonna bombard you ever with a [00:48:00] bunch of ads or annoying breaks or anything like that.
Drew Podwal: No. Well, I don’t know. Maybe, but I think we’ll never ask you directly for money. Um,
Brad Nelson: be, it’ll be like in Ricky Bobby, where we’re the fig Newton across the windshield. And we’ll just, it’s inconvenient, but I sure do love fig Newton’s.
Drew Podwal: Well, I think that was good, a good wrap up for the season. I think that, we had a great time since we’ve started this and been super enjoyable. and I’m glad that we decided to put together a board to capture these thoughts. It was, you know, we could have just had this as a free form discussion, but, but I think having the cards was helpful.
And, uh, yeah, so we’re just super glad that people are enjoying this and that we have this opportunity. So
Brad Nelson: Definitely, definitely. Thank you Drew for inviting me into this journey and being an amazing partner and collaborator.
Drew Podwal: thank you, Brad, for reaching out to me [00:49:00] after that, interview, or pseudo interview and, uh, allowing me to share on, on your journey as well, because it’s, it came, it came from both sides, right? I think maybe it was just that I had the idea about the podcast, but we were both thinking about it from a standpoint of like creating content.
Brad Nelson: definitely. Yeah. And once again, thank you to all of our guests. We really, really appreciate you coming on the show with us, giving us a chance, sharing your perspectives. it’s just been fantastic.
Drew Podwal: Yeah. Thank you. that’s
Brad Nelson: And, uh, thank you to our listeners,
Drew Podwal: you. Oh, thank you to listeners. Yeah. Wow. Reach out across and slap me. I didn’t, I didn’t see that cue. Thank you to our listeners. I’m gonna edit that middle part out. No, I’m not.
Brad Nelson: And yeah, that’s, uh, that’s a wrap.
Drew Podwal: That is a wrap.