Howard Olsen, a Vancouver-based corporate trainer as well as pastor who leads an online church, employs a TASCAM Mixcast 4 podcast station with its integrated recorder and USB audio interface at the heart of his approach to both roles.
Olsen described his programs: “On the business side, I run a five-week sales and communications program on a quarterly intake called The Five Decisions and Your Sales Blueprint. This is targeted to sales driven entrepreneurial leaders and corporate sales and marketing teams. Here, I teach participants how to engage with their clients in an ‘others focused’ perspective from the place of servant leadership and how to communicate from the customer’s point of view.
“The second and primary program is a daily podcast called Decree For Canada/Decree For America. It’s a live daily interactive church service on Zoom, which is simultaneously streamed into Facebook and YouTube. Participants from around the world join daily to learn how to harness biblical truths and bring love, righteousness, and true justice into our challenging times.”
He notes that he uses the Mixcast 4 for live interactive audience training sessions and discussion, which he describes as “like a podcast but with attendee participation. Over the few months that I’ve had it, the Mixcast has made all aspects of audio production so easy for me. I get quite animated at times, so the compressor and noise gate help me level out the audio. Equally important, getting my PC audio from video, music, and sound effects is simple, as I can stream the content right in without looking for plug-ins and external software.”
“The ability to adjust the USB audio has been a real boon,” he adds. “Sometimes participants just have poor audio quality. With the Mixcast 4, I can easily adjust their levels on the fly with the faders. I never thought I’d use sound effects, but I have found that simple sounds such as chirping crickets can make participants laugh and cause them to participate when they need a little encouragement to break out of their comfort zone.”
Access Olsen’s podcasts here.
