Episode 43: New Year New Tools

Kickstarting 2026: New Year, New Tools

In the first episode of 2026, Rich and Justin discuss their achievements in 2025, including reaching over 2,150 downloads in 50 countries. They introduce the concept of an 'accountabilibuddy' to help each other stay on track with their respective projects: Rich's single and Justin's Logic Pro course. They also highlight the project management tool Wrike for organizing tasks, and Boombox, a collaboration tool for musicians to provide specific feedback on audio tracks. The episode focuses on embracing new tools and strategies to achieve creative goals in the new year.

00:00 Welcome to Face Your Ears 2026!
00:37 2025 Recap: Highlights and Achievements
01:24 Global Reach: Our International Audience
02:23 Top Episodes and Listener Favorites
03:54 New Year, New Tools: Kickstarting 2026
05:33 Accountability Buddies: Staying on Track
10:42 Wrike: Organizing Projects Efficiently
16:15 Boombox: Enhancing Musical Collaboration
21:53 Wrapping Up: Tools for Success in 2026

Links from the episode: 

Wrike: www.wrike.com

Boombox: www.boombox.io 

For Production Services, Coaching and Lessons, visit:

www.rjbmusicproduction.com

For help prepping your songs/voice for the studio:

www.bozicvoicestudio.com

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Transcript

Rich 0:06

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Face Your Ears podcast. It's actually the first episode of 2026. I'm joined here with producer from the Mitten State, Justin Hollah. How you doing, sir?

Justin 0:23

It is. I? Yes, I'm doing well. Hi Rich. How are you? Wow. Exciting our very first episode. Thank you. Thank you. Very exciting. Our first episode. 2026. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you and all of our listeners.

Rich 0:37

You give us a little recap of how 2025 went

Justin 0:40

I can, it was a good year for Face your ears. A few things I wanted to call out. First off, in 2025, we had over 2,150 downloads, which is pretty cool to think about. We're not.

Rich 0:56

podcast.

Justin 0:56

We're not a big podcast. We're not up there with the greats. We're not fresh air.

Rich 1:01

a Joe Rogan podcast in the making. That's what the way I like to think of it.

Justin 1:07

Yeah. We're gonna be a juggernaut on Spotify with a controversial deal in our future.

Rich 1:13

They get that

Justin 1:14

yeah.

Rich 1:14

download your consciousness into a robot thing and you give us just enough time, we will build those numbers up.

Justin 1:21

That's what we're building towards. What else? So something else that we wanted to celebrate is that face your ears is now being downloaded in over 50 countries across the world. So we are an international podcast is really exciting.

Rich 1:39

We have no borders, my friend. We have no borders.

Justin 1:42

No, we don't. Let's see places like uh, it's interesting, like Sweden, Germany,

Rich 1:48

Can you tell us what city

Justin 1:50

ah, yes. We are well represented in the fine city of Somerset, New Jersey. So, uh,

Rich 1:57

My Jersey Brethren. Have shown up

Justin 2:03

Over 292 downloads there. It looks like. Pretty cool. Pretty cool.

Rich 2:07

lot of DIY home studio action happening in New Jersey. I bet.

Justin 2:11

It's also interesting that Auckland Australia is in our top five. It's like number three. Anyway, shout out to our friends down.

Rich 2:21

great.

Justin 2:22

We appreciate you listening. And then as I was looking through various stats and so forth, I found that our number one listen to episode is actually from way back, February 21st, 2023. Hard to believe. That was almost three years ago. How is that possible? But it is. That's how math works. Anyway,

Rich 2:44

I felt like we've just begun.

Justin 2:46

I know it feels like this podcast.

Rich 2:48

new

Justin 2:48

Is like brand new and we've done like five episodes, but we've been doing this for three years, so it's pretty nuts. 260 downloads episode nine, from Seed to Song where we talk about how you can take your fledgling song idea, nurture it, pack it into the ground with fertilizer. And good ideas and nurture it to a full song. So from Seed to Song, episode 9, 260 downloads, it was pretty cool.

Rich 3:18

for checking it out. People,

Justin 3:21

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. of course. Of course. The robots are coming. We must discuss, As you mentioned from the top. It's a new year, and so here at the Face Your Ears podcast, we like to start off our year. With the little episode we call New Year new Tools. So we like to discuss how we can kick off this new year using new tools and processes and so forth to help us venture forth into the goals that we have and want to accomplish in the new year. yes, I think the term originated on South Park. I want to say don't hold me to that, but I think so. Yeah. I. Oh no. It's been around a while. I do think it's South Park. I'll have to look that up. Anyway, let's talk about it. So Rich and I are both working on really important projects right now, and I am working on a Logic Pro course that I've talked about previously on the this podcast. And some of you may be wondering like, Hey, Justin, where's that course you mentioned? Like a year ago. But so I've been working on that. Rich has been working on releasing music so specifically a single that he's worked on for some time. And so we came together not too long ago what was it, maybe a couple months ago, and said, you know what? Gosh darn it, we wanna do this thing. And why don't we just hold each other accountable? And hence the term accountability buddy was thrown out there. And so essentially what we've been doing is we've been meeting weekly to check in with each other and challenge each other, push each other, establish goals and to-dos and tasks for each other. To make sure that we are progressing along through our respective projects. So Rich is single and my Logic Pro course. And so it's been great to just get somebody else's point of view for one thing, but also just to have that fire lit under you of oh, the day is coming where I'm gonna have to check in. I better get X, Y, and Z done. And like for me, my course required a lot of. Recording a video. And I buckled down'cause I knew, I was like, okay, rich is gonna lay down the hammer if I don't, if I don't shoot this video. And I think I went a little bit too far.'cause now there's like this mountain of video that read. It's just like, oh man, I have to watch this. But it's been great because, it's done like I've shot all the video for this project, which yeah, thank you. It was a lot of work, but it helped keep me focused and diligent about doing that work. And I just really appreciated that. And I think just having a partner in your creative process to hold you accountable makes a big difference, especially when the project might seem a little daunting or challenging. Can't we all? Can't we all? I thought we all like to revel in our lazy bastard ness. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say if you're looking for an accountability buddy. Look for somebody that you feel comfortable with, that you're willing to be vulnerable with, because you're putting things out there in a less than refined state. And it's the idea, right? Is that you wanna put this out there to another person to say, Hey. I know this isn't completely done and it needs some work. Can you help me identify what needs to be done with this? And so that can be a little scary to put, something, especially something creative out there. And so I would say just look for somebody that you can be vulnerable with and comfortable with. Also do it regularly. So I think a thing that has worked well for us in this process is meeting weekly.

Rich 8:55

I,

Justin 8:56

And I've caught some times where it's oh, let's skip this week. And it's no, let's not, let's just meet. I think it's important not to skip because it, it keeps the momentum going even if it's the meeting to come in and say, Hey. No new developments still working on X, Y, Z.

Rich 9:15

It could be a short meeting.

Justin 9:16

Exactly. I think generally we met for 30 minutes. Like our meetings seems to be like generally 30 to 45 minutes. But if it was just like a check-in meeting, I mean it's 10 minutes. It's not gonna hurt. If anything, it's just gonna keep that momentum going and it's again, hence the name. It's gonna hold you accountable. Okay, You're still working on those things, like it's going well, or what's going on with them, that sort of thing.

Rich 9:40

yeah. It, it's nice to. Be able to just throw ideas out there, have someone react, or to be like, yes, you're on the right track. I agree, or You might wanna rethink this thing, or maybe you didn't look at this angle. So definitely, yeah,

Justin 9:57

Yeah,

Rich 9:57

who you trust and who you

Justin 9:59

yeah,

Rich 10:00

provide you with honest uh, feedback. And definitely don't skip too often.'cause I also think that you skip once and then you're like we skipped last time, right? We can skip again. It's not a big deal. Let's just skip again. know, And then you get into

Justin 10:14

yeah,

Rich 10:14

Yeah.

Justin 10:15

feels.

Rich 10:15

Yeah.

Justin 10:16

It feels good, right? Just to sit back and do nothing.

Rich 10:20

with a partner. You you were procrastinating

Justin 10:23

You don't wanna do that.

Rich 10:24

have someone else to procrastinate with, but. All joking

Justin 10:27

Yes.

Rich 10:28

keep that weekly meeting. But that's, that's, uh, yeah,

Justin 10:31

yes.

Rich 10:31

I'm, thank you for being my accountability buddy, Justin.

Justin 10:34

Likewise, thank you for being my accountability buddy. segueing into our next tool that we wanted to talk about in this episode. The way we kept each other accountable, but also kept things organized in our own projects was using a work management tool called Wrike, and it is a tool of,

Rich 10:56

just

Justin 10:57

oh.

Rich 10:58

with a

Justin 10:58

Yes, Yes. So this is a tool that is used in project management. So it's a, like I said, a work management tool.

Rich 11:07

great

Justin 11:07

But what's really great about it is it allows us to organize all the different little tasks that we need to do. So you can have a project and that project has tasks, and those tasks have subtasks and all of these different elements can have. Descriptions so you can write out exactly what this task is supposed to be and like links to, something that someone needs to look at, like within that task.

Rich 11:35

assign

Justin 11:36

you can assign tasks to each other which is really nice. Again, like holding each other accountable. You can set due dates for things. So you can hold yourself accountable if you assigned yourself a task. Many a morning after I woken up, especially lately, I've got something in the fire right now that I'm working on, where it's I'll open my email and I'll see this email from Wrike Hey, you've got this task due. It's overdue. So it reminds you. Of when something is due or overdue. And we can communicate with each other through Wrike as well, which is awesome. So I can go to a specific task. So let's say I'm working on a specific course and Rich can, provide feedback to me asynchronously. That's the thing I like about it, is that I don't have to wait until, our weekly meeting or anything like that, or go into email. Or text threads where it all gets jumbled and lost eventually. But it, it all stays nicely organized within Wrike because it's within that specific task, about course number four and how I need to edit the audio at, one minute and three seconds or something like that, right? It just helps it stay really organized and on track. So Wrike has been our tool of choice for managing our respective projects.

Rich 12:59

what I like about it is basically have your global project. You could break it up into smaller chunks so that you could see the whole picture clearer of what the final goal is. A lot of times what I found myself doing before was I would use Notepad and I would just write down a bunch of stuff in a notepad, and then I would just look at this. Huge document and be like, okay, now I gotta. this and I gotta get this done. Where a tool like Wrike allows you to put it all in writing and make it action based. And having the deadlines and assigning specific tasks helps keep it all in order and everyone knows what they have to do. And you, what I like is you could also, there's a feature in it where you could just click on my to do and it just shows you the list of all the stuff that. You're assigned and so you could start knocking things off the list

Justin 13:55

Yes.

Rich 13:55

it going. Big picture. And as he, as Justin was saying, like when you write messages to each other what's cool is it all stays there. So like you could be like, Hey, I mentioned, last time we met, or last time we did this project, there was something we talked about in one of the threads. If you need that again, you could go back to it and the dialogue is all still there. And that's nice'cause sometimes when you're texting back and forth with people, plus you got your notepads, you got stuff written down or stuff gets lost context. Gets lost sometimes. So this really helps.

Justin 14:26

Yeah.

Rich 14:26

keep it together. It's new to me, man.

Justin 14:28

Yeah.

Rich 14:28

brought this to the table. And I love it. Like I use it for other things as well. All kinds of projects. Everything from household stuff to music projects.

Justin 14:37

Yeah, and we even use it for this podcast, so you know it's a great way to stay organized and to keep the work structured. You talked about just using a notepad, and that's fine for like a stream of consciousness dump, but for a long term. Relatively complex project with a lot of moving parts, it becomes more of a hindrance over time because then you have to keep going back to it and re-synthesize it and scratching things out and so yeah, this keeps things nice and clean and structured and it works like. Most modern tools. I'll also say this in that it allows you to at mention, so if you use something like Slack or Instagram, you can at mention somebody and it immediately notifies them directly. So that's a nice little feature too. When I leave a comment, I'll at mention Rich and he'll get the message right away. In his email and he'll be able to jump in and check it out. So great tool for communicating, keeping things on track, setting due dates and getting stuff done. So that's a tool endorsed by Face Your Ears Podcast for getting work done in 2026.

Rich 15:45

we will put a link and what's cool about it also, last thought is you could download the app onto your desktop or your mobile devices, or

Justin 15:54

Sure can.

Rich 15:55

version.

Justin 15:56

Sure can. Yeah. It's very accessible across many different platforms. So That's Rike.

Rich 16:04

there was a tool that I was curious about that you might have mentioned it in the past, but there's something you use when you work with a client,

Justin 16:12

Yeah.

Rich 16:12

recording a project. Can you get into that?

Justin 16:15

Yes, there is a really cool tool called Boombox that I use with clients and collaborators, and boombox is specifically meant for musical collaboration. Basic premise is that it allows you to upload an audio file, IEA song to this website, to the boombox website, and you can invite one or more collaborators to it so that they can go and listen to it. So far, so good, right? You want to be able to remotely collaborate with people in this way. Where it gets interesting, however, is that the various collaborators can. Leave timestamped comments throughout the audio file. This is invaluable in that it allows people to be very specific about what they like and don't like at specific points in the song,

Rich 17:11

So how does that happen? So like is there actually like a little text box that

Justin 17:16

yeah so the way it looks just to describe it a bit is, you're looking at it on a web browser. Or an app. They have an app to, and you see this wave form and you know, if you hear something at 23 seconds, you wanna comment on, you just tap or click at that point. And a text box appears and you can just type in your comment like, Hey, I think the drums should be quieter here. Or, Hey, I really like this guitar riff. Can you bring it out more? Or whatever it might be. And so e eventually what it looks like is. A waveform with like little icons across it, representing all the different comments. And so you can easily go through and read those. And what's interesting too is you can also record. A comment. So if you want to, sing or play something where you're like, Hey, I think a riff like this might sound good and you could play it in there at that point to show the other person or other people what that sounds like. So it's really great for asynchronous feedback. In other words, if you've got. A bunch of people across different time zones or geographical locations or whatever, they can go in, listen to the song on their own time, leave their comments and feedback on their own schedule, and everybody can see it seamlessly. So that's kind of the, the the big premise of boombox. I also love that it allows you to upload versions so you can have your first version. Everybody comments on it. And then you can respond to those comments. Of course, I should also mention that so I can respond to those and be like, okay, yep, great idea. I'll do that. Do that. Okay. And then I can upload version two. And it's a brand new version.

Rich 19:01

Mm-hmm.

Justin 19:02

so all those comments though are gonna stay with version one. So now when I look at version two, it's a blank slate. All the changes have been made, I can put in a note just to generally say Hey, I addressed everybody's comments including X, Y, Z, so that everybody knows what to expect, and then they can leave fresh comments for version two, and the process can repeat. Ad nauseum. So it's just a really cool, simple way to gather feedback. It really beats using email. I dunno if you've ever tried to get feedback on a song through email with multiple people, it's an absolute unmitigated nightmare because you end up,

Rich 19:44

yeah,

Justin 19:45

yeah, any sort of text or email like, Ugh, it's awful. So boombox, I love it. It like I downplayed the version thing, but it's, that's probably what makes it the most valuable tool for me, is the fact that you can keep track of versions. If somebody wants to reference version three, you can easily go back to version three.'cause it, it keeps track of all of that for you

Rich 20:07

all there.

Justin 20:08

They're all there.

Rich 20:09

could, oh, that's cool.

Justin 20:10

Yeah. And so it's nice in that it also has like organizational tools. So I'm working on a project right now that's multiple songs. I have a project of like folder for all of these songs to kinda keep it separate from other things. So it allows you to create a project and you can have a folder and then folders within folders so you can keep stuff super organized and yeah, it's just great. You can invite people to it to collaborate and it's free. So that's the other thing is that boombox, and its basic incarnation is free. But you can, pay a little extra if you want additional features and functionality and stuff like that. And I'm not really even covering all the features of boombox. There's other like social networking, like collaboration. Opportunity type features that are there as well.

Rich 21:02

nice.

Justin 21:02

But just allowing you to like, find other musicians and collaborate with them.'cause that's the whole idea of boombox is just encouraging collaboration with other musicians. But but yeah, I love it. I use it with clients. It's great. Clients seems to love it because they can listen to it on their own terms. They don't have to worry about sifting through their inbox, and it makes it easy for me to see and, hear their feedback and respond to it quickly and easily. And, I can respond to those comments in line with the song and with the comment they made. So it's super clean, super organized. boombox.io. We will leave a link to it in the show notes. Definitely check it out. If you're somebody that works remotely with other musicians in any capacity, it's absolutely incredible. Couldn't recommend it enough.

Rich 21:52

Yes. Just to recap, today, brought up tools for the new year. All of them have free versions. Especially accountability, buddy. It could be completely free actually.

Justin 22:06

hopefully it's free.

Rich 22:07

Yeah, hopefully.

Justin 22:08

I suppose you could pay somebody, but.

Rich 22:10

So, Yeah. Accountability buddy. Find someone you trust and bounce ideas off of them and hold each other accountable. You could work together to finish your projects up. And then we talked about Wrike. management organization and getting projects over the finish line in an organized fashion and decluttering, and then boombox, a way to Asynchronously, comment on the audio directly. Thanks for talking about that Justin,

Justin 22:41

Yeah, absolutely.

Rich 22:42

up and I look forward to a new year of face your ears here. Thank you

Justin 22:48

Yeah.

Rich 22:49

for tuning in and listening.

Justin 22:50

Yeah, I'll see you next week for our accountability buddy Meeting Rich, if I don't talk to you sooner. But thank you everyone for listening to our first episode of 2026. We will catch you in the next one. Bye. for now.

Rich 23:04

Bye.