Mike Wiston CEO of MowPod: Building Communities, Podcast Growth, Leadership and Crushing It As a Dad

[00:00:00] As a founder and across the companies I've run, success or fail doesn't matter. And just everything I've done up until this point, I'm 43. Everything in the last, let's say 20 years that I've done and the natural progression, I attribute it completely to conversation.

[00:00:27] What up, potty people and welcome back to the podcast. As always, I'm Eric, your host and you're listening to Clipped. Clipped brings you the tips, resources and people to help you become a better content creator. And today I'm speaking with Mike Wiston, the founder of MowPod.

[00:00:42] For those of you that don't know, MowPod is a podcast growth company. They offer several different services, a higher ticket offer for larger companies looking to grow their podcasts with a more hands-on approach.

[00:00:56] And then they offer a self-serve option where you can boost your podcast alone as an indie podcaster where you can pay a certain amount of money and they will then promote your podcast for you.

[00:01:10] It shows you how many downloads you're going to get based off of what you pay. But in any case, dude, Mike's journey is rad. This guy has been an entrepreneur since he was like 19. He has created several companies and exited them as well.

[00:01:24] But we talk about his journey into founding MowPod, how it works on the back end, how the AI works, how they market and promote your show. We talk about the state of the podcast industry, what we hate about marketing and cold pitches, partying.

[00:01:43] MowPod has been known to throw killer parties at podcast events. And we also talk about just being a dad and the struggle that comes with the balancing family life with entrepreneurship while trying to crush it.

[00:01:55] So I think you're going to like this one. Super easy to talk to, laid back. Mike's a great guy, had a lot of fun. And before we get into it, just want to let you know that we are sponsored by Riverside. Riverside.fm is the URL.

[00:02:07] Head over there, record your podcast, audio and video online. And your promo code clipped if you're a first-time Riverside user and you can get 20% off. Oh, and I forgot to mention this is actually going to be broken up into a two-part episode.

[00:02:21] Had a great conversation, but it went a little long. And so I thought it would be cool to split it up. So you are listening to part one now and next week we'll be part two with Mike from MowPod. Let's give it a go. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:47] Thanks for having me. Super stoked to be here. Hell yeah man. Me too. Stoked to chat with you. We chatted a little offline and I've seen you guys at conferences, seen booths and stuff. And actually did use the service a couple months ago, which we'll get into.

[00:03:02] But I wanted to ask you a question I ask everyone. And if you didn't know guys, the reason I'm asking this is because Mike is in Japan right now living there, which is mind-blowing, which is awesome. But where are you originally from? From Connecticut.

[00:03:16] If I'm meeting you for the first time, I'm most likely telling you in New York because nobody knows or cares where Connecticut is. But yeah, originally from Connecticut. I was in Stanford, Connecticut for like 15 years. I've been to Connecticut. I've been to that famous pizza place. Happies?

[00:03:35] Yes, Happies. I was in Boston and then drove through on my way to New York. Okay, Connecticut. So very cool. I like to just, that kind of just sets the tone for like who you are, some of your background and stuff. Were you always like interested in entrepreneurship?

[00:03:52] Because it seems like looking at your resume, it's like leadership role, CEO, like VP, all these like leadership positions. Like did you kind of see that in yourself as a kid or did that come later? Like how did that even start?

[00:04:06] I was a total fuck-up as a kid. I don't know if I can say that, but yeah, a total mess up as a kid. And I had no idea what I wanted to do or be until I was like 19 and then I still didn't know. Still young.

[00:04:19] Still super young. Yeah, still had no idea though. You know, I put myself through college and I didn't finish. I got to the last year and I dropped out. My family had a, like my father had a marble and granite shop that had been passed down through generations

[00:04:34] and I was the third generation. So I ended up working there as a part-time thing and ended up taking it over when he died. Two years later, I ended up selling it and we were able to, I was able to use that to fund everything moving forward.

[00:04:52] I guess that was kind of a huge advantage I had, I guess. But yeah, that was the only brick and mortar I ever had. I took on a whole bunch of consulting roles to learn how to do things. I failed a whole lot.

[00:05:05] I remember the first marketing company I made back then was called like M&D Marketing Solutions. It was with a buddy Derek and we had no idea what we were doing. I read like Ogilvy on advertising and a bunch of like other books about advertising

[00:05:17] and at that time, you know, I was a young guy and I just thought this looks glamorous. I could totally do this. You know, like I could make up campaigns and come up with really cool ideas

[00:05:27] and bounce a basketball off the wall or a baseball off the wall. I got this and I went to my first networking event back then as the CEO of M&D Marketing Solutions and I got drilled by like every other marketing professional in that room

[00:05:42] and I realized I had no idea what I was doing. So I ended up taking on a couple jobs, learning how to do things outside of retail and manufacturing and brick and mortar and applying all of that to the following companies. I've had three exits now so far.

[00:06:00] I'd love to have a fourth one day. Three exits? Wow man, that's impressive. Well, the first one was kind of a give me 40 years in making. A unique situation. No, definitely.

[00:06:11] But I mean, it sounds like all that was kind of like setting you up for where you are now and just it's probably so much experience because it's like different types of industries and different like just different learning to take on those different skill sets

[00:06:26] and like leadership positions. That's impressive man. The key to success with that stuff and I learned this in the stone shop when I started doing that, especially in leadership is to understand every aspect of the company as detailed and as fluently as possible.

[00:06:46] So in the stone shop, great example, I knew how to do every aspect of that business. Like I could come in on a weekend and I can get the, you know, I can go outside with the crane and grab a slab if I needed to on my own

[00:06:58] and get the forklift and bring it inside and put it down on the CNC machine and program the CNC machine to cut it out the countertop and bring it over to the polisher and take care of that

[00:07:07] and make the og edge and polish the og edge or whatever. And I was able to do all every step of the way so I can understand that here's what needs to happen for the people who are doing this day to day.

[00:07:21] Like, yeah, here's what they're capable of doing. I'm not asking too much because I know I've done it myself or you know, here's the problems they're facing. I know because I've done it myself. I think it's really, really important. Just understand your business.

[00:07:32] Don't just, you know, think about like the, think about the money or think about the exit or whatever, you know, trying to understand like the actual business itself. And when you're working with clients and customers, you can give them realistic expectations and, you know,

[00:07:46] you can talk to it, you know, in an intelligent way. I was just listening to a show, the father son company that manufactures like shoes and belts and clothing and the son is now in charge of the belts. And he was like, you know,

[00:08:00] every aspect of like the belt making and designing and so same thing, you know, it sounds like, you know, that's a good way to go about it. So when did you like, did you start getting into podcasting? Was it, were you like, I call it like the boom,

[00:08:16] which was maybe like through COVID and maybe a little before or like, when was your journey into that? Circa what year? So when we started MoMedia, it was about five and a half years ago. We weren't in podcasting at all.

[00:08:28] We caught our teeth in the space in newsletter subscriber acquisition at the time. We were the largest driver of engaged subscribers just about every major newsletter in the U.S., everything from Morning Brew, The Hustle, Inside Hook, Newsy, the list goes on.

[00:08:40] We were either at the largest part or significant part of their paid acquisition strategy for a good amount of time. About a year and a half later, so that would be about four years ago, Morning Brew with Business Casual and The Hustle with My First Million.

[00:08:56] They were like, look if you could do for us what you're doing in newsletters and apply it to podcasting, we would love to buy it from you. And admittedly the very first podcast I ever listened to in my life, the very first podcast I ever listened to

[00:09:09] ever was about a month before we launched Mopod. And so we actually built our own podcast to learn what the pain of, like I mentioned before, understanding the product and understanding the process. We started our own podcast to go through what are the pains in building a podcast?

[00:09:28] How challenging is it to organically build an audience? How challenging is it to work with a hosting platform and select a hosting platform? What are the things you need to be thinking about as a podcast? What are the metrics that are important?

[00:09:40] And not just to me but to the people I talk to when I'm talking about the podcast. All these things are really, really important. So we built our first podcast product, the original one I won't get into too much because it didn't work well.

[00:09:54] And then the refined version of that was Mopod Boost and that still exists today on the Enterprise and now on the self-serve side. And then we have another product on the Apple follower side and we're about to launch another amazing product

[00:10:11] that I will get murdered if I talk about. Right place, right time. Also, I think all probably your past experiences from all those jobs and then with the newsletter stuff were kind of like preparing you. The universe was like, you can do this.

[00:10:28] You have a track record of X, Y and Z. Let's go into this new thing. It's probably going to be tough but like you had the chops to like do it. And so what is Mopod exactly? Give us like the elevator pitch or more in detail.

[00:10:43] Just tell us a little bit about the company. What you guys do, who's it for? That type of thing. Sure, we're advertising technology for podcast audience growth and we're the largest podcast audience growth company in the US. You heard it here first guys, the largest. Audiences.

[00:10:59] You heard all over the place. We're not shy about that. So I mean we work with everyone from independent podcasters on the self-serve front to the largest agencies and networks and largest independent podcasts. In the US, in the UK, we've been expanding out.

[00:11:20] We're trying to start exploring APAC a little bit. We're actually sponsoring a podcast day Asia and Radio Days Asia in September. I'm pretty excited about that. It went last year was awesome. But yeah, as a company our goal is to expand everything that we build

[00:11:37] and everything we do is around understanding podcast audiences, understanding what's important to the podcasters, to the teams behind those podcasts, to the advertisers who are sponsoring those podcasts and just the space in general. Just understanding it and then building products that check those boxes and solve the problems

[00:11:59] that people are having. One of the problems obviously is listener growth, follower growth, long tail retention and long tail listenership data. Understanding not just that we got downloads but where they come from. How many of them are coming from males versus females versus other demographics

[00:12:24] like age, HHI, which interest targeting segments or browsing audience segments are they coming from and which ones aren't working as well. We just try to provide as much data as possible so that people can make informed decisions and moving forward. Are you a software guy?

[00:12:46] Because I've noticed a lot of your experience, including Mopod, a lot of it's like, I don't know if it's considered a SaaS company or what but when you're talking about data and analytics and I've used the platform and a lot of automated stuff,

[00:13:01] are you a software guy or do you hire that out? Do you have good developers and stuff on your team? I used to be a software guy before it was cool. Back in the Apple IIe and IBM 386 and 486,

[00:13:17] back in those days I used to think I was a cool hacker and used to know how to do cool stuff with BBSs and all that jazz. I never had formal training or education on programming all the stuff I taught myself like C++ back then

[00:13:34] and basic and GWBasic and QBasic and all that kind of stuff. I never learned all the new stuff. I understand it, I certainly understand logic. I'm a very logical person so I understand the logic of programming but I can't write any languages now. Code and stuff?

[00:13:51] Yeah, I can't code anything right. So we have a great development team that takes care of all that. My partner Joe, he's on the marketing and operation side and he directly interfaces with them and kind of does the napkin sketches

[00:14:07] of here's what needs to happen and then they make it. Oh, love that. Yeah, because I was thinking about it, I was like damn, to build something out like what you've done with Mopod just seems like there's a lot of stuff working on the back end.

[00:14:21] What's your use of AI within all that? Is that even a thing with Mopod? Could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, just like everybody. So the Mopod Boost Enterprise which is our self-service only a recent product in last year and change.

[00:14:37] That's what I used to do. Yep, exactly. The Enterprise version, the barrier to entry is 3,000 bucks and that is very prohibitive for the independent podcaster. Most independent ND podcasters aren't dropping $3,000 on a marketing campaign. But that whole system that we built out 66 different SSPs, supply side partners

[00:15:01] that we're partnered with giving us access to most of the real-time bidding on the web for native display ads, 1200 by 627 800 by 600, 600 by 600 image accompanied by a title, a description sponsored by Mopod leading back to the landing pages. Where was I going with this? Like I said, my ADD.

[00:15:23] Just like the self-serve boost and kind of how that works behind the scenes. Yeah, they are. Because you plug in, I believe it was your RSS feed and then you pay a certain price what you're willing to pay and then that gets...

[00:15:38] Explain a little bit how that works on the back end and the front end because then it gets blasted out and where did those like viewer... where do those audience members come from? Absolutely. So just going back to the enterprise because that's the starting point.

[00:15:50] So all of the process there had been manual. We had media buyers who were putting together the interest anywhere between three and ten different programmatic strategies, everything from interest targeting to browsing audiences to contextual, retargeting and lookalike audiences, lookalikes are people who look like

[00:16:06] the audiences that we've driven to other shows and hit an IAB download alongside other programmatic strategies and ultimately this was a very manual process and it continues to be a very manual process on the enterprise side. Even things like the reporting and pulling what that looks like

[00:16:26] for each of these is a very custom or the creative production on enterprise. We have a creative director and a team that will put together the ads and the landing pages and all that kind of stuff. So when we built self-serve, the idea...

[00:16:41] We built it when AI started becoming a big thing and obviously APIs into open AI and to other AI platforms all opened up and it became really easy to start integrating that into your workflow. So we took the manual process out of it and put AI behind it.

[00:16:59] So the audiences that we're building is based on AI. So when we're putting together a programmatic audience for Mopad, Booze, Self-Serve, we're looking at your show description, your episode descriptions from your RSS feed and we're building out for the browsing audience segment. For instance, here are the audiences

[00:17:23] that make the most sense based on all this information and the categories that you happen to be in and in some cases we'll actually look at look-alikes for your show and look at all their episode information. It completely depends on how much data

[00:17:35] we have and if we don't have enough, we'll expand it out. But yeah, that's... we are basically automating with AI on the Self-Serve platform the manual processes that previously we had to do for Mopad Boost. And it's been working fantastic. It's generating great audiences.

[00:17:55] We have human eyes look at every campaign before it goes live. So before something actually goes up, it just goes into a queue and we'll take a look at it and ultimately if everything looks good or if we need to add anything, we'll add it

[00:18:07] and it goes live. So that's why it takes about four hours after you actually launch for something to actually go live. Yeah, and four hours that's still quick. I mean I remember when I did it and I was like just impressed

[00:18:21] at how quick it was and I think it was like even the next day I bought a small campaign just to test it or maybe two, three days later and it had completed and I was like, oh this is great. This is quick.

[00:18:31] It did what it said it was going to do and I was happy with the results. What do you think of people that can't afford enterprise maybe they're doing some self-serve stuff boosting when they can, maybe they have a monthly budget or it's just kind of like

[00:18:47] when they can. Like what are some non-paid strategies that you've seen work well for growing a show because I think that people don't realize how challenging it is now to grow a podcast. I used to produce a show been around since God, I think they said 2006

[00:19:07] and they were like back then it's called the art of charm and it's okay to say it I don't know why I'm being all weird about saying it it's called the art of charm and yeah and it's been going I think 2006, 2007 something like that

[00:19:21] but anyway they said back then you could release an episode and it would just be like growth up into the right thousands of downloads after thousands of downloads and it would just take off a little more saturated and a little bit more challenging so have you seen anything

[00:19:35] in addition to a paid strategy help grow shows? Well I want to be super clear you should not take on a paid strategy in any way shape or form until you have an organic growth engine down pat it makes and this is true for podcasting

[00:19:51] or newsletters or anything else that you happen to be doing if you don't have an organic strategy that is actually working by throwing money at it it won't fix the underlying problem that people aren't sticking around people it's not growing because they're not referring

[00:20:05] it to their friends whatever so build an organic growth strategy first and we can talk about what some of those things are but build that organic growth engine first and then once you have that established you have baselines to to compare everything to now let's start exploring

[00:20:23] some paid channels whether it's in podcasting host red ads or DAI don't do DAI for podcast growth it's terrible it's good for gathering data but it's terrible for actually getting listenership host reds are great if you pick the right shows but they can be really

[00:20:37] expensive on the right shows as well and obviously moped is a decent source for long tail growth moped boost self serve it's a 3-5% incremental lift on average so just take that when you kind of put that in perspective if you're getting just call it 100 downloads

[00:20:57] from a moped boost campaign even 100 that's 3-5 people that are listening to new episodes when you release new episodes and that makes sense you have a whole bunch of people coming in sampling the episode seeing what's this thing about they were on the web

[00:21:13] they were targeted for this they saw the ad they clicked it and they went in and ultimately ended up listening and a couple of them will stick around and listen to new episodes and that's pretty reliable it boils down to the content though release schedule

[00:21:27] the quality of the content if the releases are not in the same day every week or it's inconsistent that actually works against you length of the episodes super long episodes Joe Rogan's the exception obviously but super long episodes tend not to do really

[00:21:47] really well in terms of retention they're great for building really really loyal audiences but it takes a really long time to build those up but on the organic side going back to your question it depends on the kind of show that you're running

[00:22:03] branded is very different from like a true crime show or like my show is Friday Night Karaoke it's a show about music and about karaoke and we play up music on the actual podcast and for us our organic growth engine all came from Facebook

[00:22:21] we built a Facebook group called Friday Night Karaoke during the pandemic the idea was negativity free ad-free gimmick free just karaoke and we brought all these people that love karaoke into this thing where they're posting hundreds of songs to themselves singing every single day

[00:22:35] with weekly themes and all that and the podcast the idea behind it was we have all this engagement in this group all these people that are they love what it is we're not monetizing it just leading to us making a whole bunch of money and it's a very

[00:22:51] pure feeling in this group and we take 10 other songs every week and we play them on the podcast drink a bottle of bourbon and talk about how awesome they are and that's it and then we don't run any ads on the podcast or anything it's like literally just

[00:23:05] about a love of music and that for us worked really really well as a baseline and obviously like asking for referrals from your audience don't be afraid to ask if you don't ask it won't happen so do that if you're doing anything on social and you're

[00:23:21] pushing out and you're making pushes anywhere ask them not to listen to your podcast ask them to follow your podcast then they get notifications it's way smarter than asking them to listen they'll do what you tell them to do or at least a percentage of them will

[00:23:37] and if you tell them what you really want is for them to follow you the percentage of them will follow you dude I'm hearing two things and that one is don't sleep on Facebook groups because it's depending on your age and stuff I don't know

[00:23:51] like I feel like Facebook kind of like died out but it's having this resurgence and I think the power of the Facebook group is huge because it just builds that community and it's funny I'd listen to a podcast called niche pursuits the host Jared he's been talking about

[00:24:07] his Facebook group like the last couple months he's been mentioning how it's growing and yeah it's just been a great engine to drive people to where he wants them to go and it builds that community you can ask questions you can get involved

[00:24:21] and I think just the other power of those groups is huge and it's funny like I'm 39 and I check my Facebook here and there I'm not really active on it but I feel like it is having a resurgence and then speaking of paid strategy if

[00:24:37] you want you could even like run Facebook ads to drive people to the group or whatever you want to do but like the idea you said like start with that organic growth get that baseline get some data kind of know what your goals are

[00:24:51] know who's listening why they're listening then you can jump into that paid strategy and the other thing is good for you starting a podcast that's not related to your business this podcast is about podcasting I speak to people service providers just people that are in the podcast

[00:25:09] industry and it's great I love it but since that's also my business it's just like so over it's just so much podcasting and content creation talk I like the idea Friday night have a drink just unwind and talk about something that's fun you know and

[00:25:25] I do try to tell people on this group yeah to like start the podcast that's like kind of a lead magnet for the business but and I still you know I still think that's a good strategy but man it can be overwhelming so to hear somebody

[00:25:37] that's doing something a little bit different is cool well I mean when when everything is a lead magnet you know like at which I feels nowadays everything's a freaking lead magnet it's so exhausting I hate even talking hearing about it oh it's a

[00:25:51] lead magnet and so much content and you got to do the video you got to do the podcast the email newsletter the YouTube and it's all got to like funnel back to like your product or your service and it's just and that's

[00:26:03] kind of the world we're in but it's exhausting dude it is exhausting as a consumer it's exhausting too it's exhausting that everything you do is leading to alright well you know it's like you know every girl you meet wants to you know go back to their club

[00:26:19] and spend money at their club you know I just wanted to take you out to dinner yeah yeah it's a weird world man like we're in with with all that stuff and yeah like you said you see in all the politics quote-unquote like gurus or experts

[00:26:33] on all the channels talking about like their business or talking about something related to business it's almost like they're like less like humanized or something because they're just always talking about that it's refreshing to see like a little bit change of pace

[00:26:47] and speaking of social like do you guys do a lot of like marketing for the business on social because I see you guys around but it doesn't seem like that's like your main like you don't have a huge presence on all the channels so to be very frank

[00:27:03] I to you know the point we just made about how everything feels like a lead magnet yeah I didn't want our business to ever be like that I wanted it to grow based on the merits of the product and we did exactly that we built a sales team

[00:27:19] great I think the best sales team in the space when we build a product we test the hell out of it with you know actual active clients and we get the feedback like to understand like is this

[00:27:33] what you need to see like how else do we need to do this what does this mean what do you do with it after the fact when you're done spending with us like what does that mean for the business and we like to understand all that stuff

[00:27:43] because the way we grow is on referrals it's on like live presence it's on obviously repeat business is massive we have a 70 plus percent retention rate since the beginning on clients so we haven't really felt the need to go and just blanket the market with

[00:28:05] hey get you know podcast growth our sales people are not allowed to go spam lists of people or anything along those lines oh I get so much spam it's like yeah you're not going to see any of that from us ever I appreciate that because

[00:28:21] the amount of like spam a little bit to my email mostly on LinkedIn about like people blasting there's some revolutionary AI product that's going to change the way I do everything and take all these tasks off my plate it's like dude I get it I get the hustle

[00:28:37] but it's like dude first of all at this point it's sounding like all these AIs are doing the same thing and they're just yeah the cold the cold like blast is beginning to be a bit much like hey Mike it looks like you made some stuff

[00:28:53] in stone I love stone come on dude yeah it's always like your brand looks like it I've been following you I love your content they probably haven't been and you look like you'd be a good fit for X Y and Z it's like

[00:29:07] and then they get right into the pitch the pitch is like instant dude that's got to be like going by the wayside eventually like because I don't think I haven't talked to one person who likes it and I don't know like what their

[00:29:19] closing rate is on that kind of can't be good but it doesn't have to be great so it just has to if it costs them you know X to send out a bajillion of these things and they are converting at Y and they're you know obviously

[00:29:33] bringing in that revenue as long as Y is bigger than X they're good they're gonna keep doing that forever as long as it's made it's like cold calling and building call centers for cold calling I mean nobody likes getting a freaking cold call

[00:29:47] from anybody ever like nobody wants to get pitched on the phone I literally and this is the world we're in I'm sure you're the same I don't pick up my phone unless it's a name that I recognize I never pick up my phone I have so this

[00:30:01] I got like usually when I get a call from a number that I don't recognize it you know I'll send it to voicemail and then because it's an automated thing I have like a voicemail notification like immediately after like you know it's like you have a new voicemail

[00:30:13] right and if it's like maybe a real one which nobody leaves voicemails anymore but if it's maybe a real one it's like a minute later then you get the voicemail notification so I got one this morning and I checked I have like 500 I didn't realize I have like

[00:30:27] 560 unheard voicemails in my inbox damn but my point my point being this is where we're going with this right it happens in the call centers and it happens with cold calling it's gonna happen here too eventually I think I hope

[00:30:43] at least hopefully we have better filtering for this stuff you know Gmail is getting good with that on the email front but hopefully we get better filtering I get still bombarded with text messages that I don't want and you know the regulations don't seem

[00:30:55] to matter it's out of control I used to get like sometimes I don't do this anymore unless I really like in board but sometimes I'll pick them up and then like mess with the person on the other end and like give them a whole yeah

[00:31:09] like get into it make them think that they're gonna like scam me or whatever it is and then drag it out but that's kind of fun there's some stuff on YouTube I watched with I've seen those they were the scam the scammer or they don't scam

[00:31:21] the same but they like they like hacks the scammers while they're talking and like you know hey Lewis no not me how's your wife I love that stuff it's just to fond to kill time but did you mention live events was that like like the conferences yeah so

[00:31:39] live events my partner Joe and I are like live events are in our blood like we love it you know we've done it a ton in the past with other companies and he had the one the largest event companies for venture capital and like angel investment companies

[00:31:57] it was called funding post and he did that for like 20 something years as one of the things he did he had like you know rent out hangers in California and have Tim Draper come out and all these like VC guys and angel

[00:32:09] investors and founders and all that kind of stuff and you know similarly I used to throw like raves when I was younger I used to you know I used to throw punk rock concerts and hard rock concerts and stuff like that and I just

[00:32:25] I'm a big event guy as well in the job space when I was working in the job space and I had all county jobs I was I was running job fairs and all that so yeah events is like we love like the live interaction

[00:32:39] we like you know real people looking at somebody in the eye talking to them about you know seeing exactly what they want you know what they need what they're interested in and getting a sense for who the people are themselves

[00:32:51] and we love live events so we're at everything we sponsor almost everything and we don't we try not to make it tacky like we don't ever want to be the you know we never get on stage and talk about our product ever we never we're not pitching

[00:33:07] all the time our sponsorships and our involvement in these events is basically throw the big party we love throwing the big party so after day one usually we're throwing like a big karaoke party I think pod fest the very first event we ever did in podcasting

[00:33:25] back when we started was pod fest I think in Tampa and it was like right after the COVID was kind of coming down a little bit and we had a boat on Tampa Bay that we rented out and we got a karaoke machine on the boat

[00:33:45] we had like flare bartender on the boat and a whole bunch of food all laid out and all the people on there and it just kind of went out for two and a half hours with people singing and it was like drinking

[00:33:55] and it was the greatest time we had a perfect timing we had nothing to do with it we had fireworks going off on like this point when we were going by I guess some people were out there just doing fireworks but it looked like we did it so

[00:34:07] it was great dude that's badass yeah the yacht party that's like everybody's like dream like you gotta be on like a yacht having cocktails that's the life right there it wasn't quite a yacht it was a big boat it was a yacht

[00:34:25] the reason I asked about the events is cause I was like yeah well I've seen you guys at podcast movement I don't think I've talked to anybody at one of the booths but I'm always I like those events cause I have friends that I meet and hang out

[00:34:39] and that's a good always a good time but I'm always kind of like iffy it's like do I want to go I never know what I hope to achieve by going other than talking to people I find like 70% of the speeches are just like kind of mediocre

[00:34:57] and you know so I don't know but I guess if there's parties like that I'm in I have opinion on this as a founder and across the companies I've run success or fail doesn't matter and just everything I've done up until this point I'm 43

[00:35:15] everything in the last let's say 20 years that I've done and the natural progression I attribute it completely to conversation absolutely so I find that having conversations and not having expectations when you go into them I think that's a big snafu when you are a

[00:35:35] new networker or a new founder and you constantly think that you need to always be pushing your product even if it's the wrong people or whatever you just need to always be pushing your product and it's not about that it's just about conversation and understanding

[00:35:49] where other people are at understanding their problems understanding what they've seen what they get excited about and relaying it back to here's what I'm doing and connecting those dots so I guess the moral of the story is go find as many dots as you possibly can

[00:36:07] and then the game you should be playing is how do I connect them don't go and try to get people to connect your dots don't be like hey you need to connect through this just try to understand what dots do you have great I'm going to connect these

[00:36:23] I'm going to connect you to you I think you guys are a great fit and that stuff goes such a long way and also those conversations inspire you you don't know what your product is going to be tomorrow

[00:36:35] you don't know what your company is going to be tomorrow maybe you sell your company maybe you close your company whatever it happens to be but that next thing you do I guarantee you is going to be based on what you've had up to that point

[00:36:49] so have lots of fricking conversations get perspective be a human fricking being dude you're 100% right and I think that I've only started to realize that like the last couple years I feel like I built I feel like I put off like relationships

[00:37:05] and community building and all that for so long I don't know why I don't know if I'm just lack of confidence or maybe I'm more introverted but you're totally right I mean it is meeting people it's just kind of like the spice of life

[00:37:17] and you never know where it's going to go friendship, a business relationship and like you said being a connector I think people really appreciate that when you are able to oh I know a guy who does this and you might fit well with her

[00:37:29] but I did put that off for a while but you're right conferences are a great way to do that without and like you said you don't want to lead with like what what can I get out of this and a call back to

[00:37:43] that podcast I said I worked on that started in like 2006-2007 The Art of Charm a big thing what they do on the show is teach people how to network without coming off salesy and how to like build relationships with people at conferences at bars

[00:38:01] and yeah I think I gotta start fucking having more conversations dude Do it Do it, talk and it's funny because I do a lot of solo episodes for this show I do have guests but just like as a few weeks ago I'm like dude

[00:38:17] I'm fucking sick of hearing myself talk peep the audience is probably sick of it I gotta start getting more guests on and meeting people and just having fun with it that was like oh I gotta reach out to Mike, I've got another guy next week

[00:38:31] but you're right it's all conversations you never know what's gonna happen they say it's success is who you know success right partly