Hot Mic: Building a Studio for a Spicy Conversation
The podcast studio we made for Enfuce has all the features you’d expect, and a few you wouldn’t.
It’s got microphones, three of them suspended just below the ceiling to be adjusted as needed, yet conveniently out of the way for hand talkers. It’s got a Zoom recorder capturing the audio locally and an iRig connecting everything to Riverside, our recording platform of choice. But there are also real pine benches, an oak leaf whisk on the wall and a metal brazier full of volcanic rocks capable of withstanding incredibly high temperatures, even though they’re rarely called upon to do so. These out-of-the-ordinary elements aren’t lost on the studio’s occupants, who, despite knowing full well what to expect, always seem to take a moment to remark, as one guest did, “It IS hot. I promise you, it’s a real sauna.”
Five months ago, in June of 2023, the Finnish fintech firm Enfuce launched a company-wide rebrand. They wanted their organization to look different because, to be perfectly frank, they are different. Their founders are unapologetically opinionated and have a, let’s call it “colorful” way of expressing it, but perhaps most transgressive of all they’re both women. Their company hails from Finland, which isn’t normally a place that comes to mind when one thinks of either finance or tech. And they wanted to do something different in a field that, they’ll be the first to admit, can be stodgy, jargony, monotone and chronically lacking in fun. They wanted to show that they were a company, as Nicole Heringer, VP of Brand and Communications put it, “with happiness built in.”
Right off the bat they knew exactly what kind of podcast they didn’t want to make.
“We knew we didn't want to do a traditional podcast or at least a traditional podcast in the sense of the kind of ones that we've taken part of as guests, which is you do a Zoom call and it's nice, but it's not special. It's not memorable, it's not an experience,” said Nicole. “And this is how we got to talking about ‘how do we make our podcast an experience?’ And this became, well, what if we do it in a sauna?”
Now at Podfly the only thing we love more than a challenge is the opportunity to do something really unique and just plain, well, weird. So when the team from Enfuce approached us, secretly hoping that their pet project wouldn’t get tossed out for being too complicated or too strange, producer Alex Benedon, writer Isabelle Lee and Podfly’s technical director Josh Suhy all essentially said “hell yeah.”
The actual physical sauna was built by a company in Finland. While we’re always up for the unusual sauna construction is a little outside our wheelhouse, although given the fact that these Finns also took this idea and ran with it they’re clearly our people. The actual construction of the booth was true to its Scandinavian roots, including real wood benches and a functional heating system. For our part we were determined to get the sound exactly right, which wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, especially considering we would be engineering the recording of these sessions from halfway around the world.
“Engineering was a trip,” said Josh, who also served as the lead engineer on this project. Adding a layer of complexity, Enfuce wanted the conversations in the sauna to not only be recorded locally for later listening around the world but also heard in real-time by audience members at the conferences their very unique studio would be travelling to. In other words, this particular sauna had to record audio remotely from the other side of the world, broadcast it locally for curious onlookers, and then be broken down and reassembled in an entirely different country to do it all over again.
“It was the first time I've ever done anything like that, so I was super nervous,” Josh added, describing a setup that would probably be a first for many podcasters, no matter how long they’ve been in the business.
The solution wound up being a combination of local recording to an SD card and an audio channel running to Riverside, although that wasn’t the solution we just happened on by luck. “I was hoping I could record locally and connect as an audio interface at the same time,” Josh said, recalling one of his earlier stabs at the puzzle. “But it was one or the other, so, to pivot, the iRig idea came to mind and worked fairly well.”
Corey Coates, our CEO at Podfly, even recalls being brought in to bat ideas around as we tried to crack this problem. “Josh was texting me for days, anxious, worried, but never giving up on solving it,” he recalled. It wasn’t easy by any means, but we recognized a kindred spirit in our client, looking to loudly and boldly do something different because they just couldn’t fathom being ordinary. So we contemplated and experimented, gradually stripping away the ideas that didn’t work until we found one that did.
When the studio was unveiled at a conference in Amsterdam, both Nicole and Josh remember being unsure how this unusual idea would be received.
The eventual technical solution we landed on involved mics running into a tech booth where a Zoom H6 recorder would capture sound locally, and an iRig single-channel interface would connect to our recording platform. That way, Josh could hear everything that was happening in real-time and direct the Enfuce team in making any adjustments. The real mystery, though, was what the guests would think of a studio that wasn’t just aping Scandinavian culture but was, in fact, a fully functioning Sauna.
According to Nicole, the idea ultimately wasn’t for everybody, as no ideas really are.
The people who got it, loved it.
“I think they love the uniqueness of it,” She said. “There's a specialness to it. We cherry-pick guests to make sure that they'll fit the format of the show. I think maybe not everybody would feel comfortable talking about something so directly, but the guests that we have brought on love it. They're excited by it. We had one guest who was going to record and then couldn't do it, but then when they saw the studio at the event in Amsterdam, they were like, ‘Oh my God, I didn't realize this was it.’ So we did it on the spot. We had already had the script created because magically, when he saw the magical sauna studio, he was ready to go.”
“It's a combination of the content. It's a combination of the right guests,” she added. “It's creating a setting that is experiential, and this is also part of our brand. We create experiences. Since that first event in Amsterdam our events team [has] been building experiences across Europe that we're becoming known for, and it's kind of changing the game in terms of FinTech marketing, and the podcast is part of that.”
Josh, for his part, remembers being very, very relieved. “It was that sigh of relief once it was running and sounded good and things were fine,” he recalled. “That house of cards where you slowly back away once it's set up and hold your breath and smile.”
Denise Johansson, Co-founder, co-CEO at Enfuce & Podcast Host for ’In The Hot Seat’
IN THE END, THE SAUNA IS MORE THAN JUST A NOVELTY.
The setting allows the show’s host and Enfuce co-founder, Denise Johansson, to be her natural, uncensored Nordic self and discuss issues with the frankness that is one of her company’s core values. “Denise [is] unapologetic and bold,” said the podcast’s writer, Izzy, with a chuckle. “She swears a lot and says what she’s thinking at all times.” But the sauna is also a tacit permission slip for the guests to let their hair and their guards down, to be real in a way they might not be in front of a computer screen. Nicole is adamant that they never want to do a podcast over Zoom because, as wonderful as some of those conversations may be, they weren’t the experience she was looking to create. They wouldn’t, in other words, live up to the podcast’s very fitting name, In the Hot Seat.
In just the few months since its debut, the podcasting sauna has already made quite an impression. “It's just kind of wild when you launch a brand, not even six months ago, and you have event organizers calling you up being like, please, please, please, what do we have to do to get you to come here?” mused Nicole. That’s how the sauna studio booked its next scheduled stop at a conference in London, with more to follow in the coming year. Nicole also described travelling these days with a dedicated podcasting suitcase full of equipment she can now set up and break down like an old pro, with the good folks at Podfly on call and standing by, just in case.
As for the sauna, it’s currently slumbering at a warehouse in Switzerland, and it is awaiting its next highly anticipated experience. In the Hot Seat is live and out in the world as well, launching its fourth episode earlier this month. As for us, we honestly couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out. Any chance we get to make a podcast so perfectly suited to a client’s needs is one we’ll happily take, no matter how many hoops we need to jump through or puzzles we need to solve. It’s rarely easy or simple, but the reward is always worth it, and at the end of the day, it’s just one more bit of proof that good things happen when you sweat the small stuff.
In the Hot Seat is candid, irreverent and tackles top-of-mind topics from across tech, startups, and the payments landscape. Always straight-talking and always open-minded, this is a podcast that is conversational and uncensored, bold and unexpected, relevant and thought provoking.
