00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 463. Today's show is brought to you by NetSuite,
00:00:15 ◼ ► Squarespace and ZocDoc. I am Relay FM co-founder Mike Hurley and I am joined by Relay FM co-founder
00:00:21 ◼ ► Stephen Hackett. Hello Michael. Hello, it's a special day today. It is. This week marks Relay
00:00:29 ◼ ► FM's ninth birthday. It's actually on the 18th, so it's on Friday, but we are going to do our,
00:00:40 ◼ ► mostly annual Relay Q&A. This has taken different forms over the years, but we are here on a
00:00:59 ◼ ► Speaking about what you just mentioned, so Kate said, please link to all of the other Q&A's to
00:01:04 ◼ ► make them easier to find. Thank you. So in the show notes, there will be a link to all of the
00:01:08 ◼ ► Q&A's that we have done. So this goes back to like the first one was we did a Q&A for the launch week
00:01:13 ◼ ► and then we did one on our first year, second year, third year. So like the second year was
00:01:25 ◼ ► we did a YouTube video because we were in person. Then 2018 and 2019 were from Connected.
00:01:31 ◼ ► And then 2020, we did the Q&A and announcement of the podcastathon on our Departures feed.
00:01:40 ◼ ► And then there was also another one in 2021 in the Departures feed, which is a feed that we use for
00:01:50 ◼ ► some like ancillary live shows, podcastathon audio for Sicko's goes up there if you want to listen to
00:01:56 ◼ ► the podcastathon. I don't know who's doing that. There was no public Q&A in 2022 though. Oh,
00:02:04 ◼ ► what do we have to hide? Well, we recorded an episode of Backstage on the day. Backstage is
00:02:10 ◼ ► a show that we do every month where we answer questions from the Relay FM community, which is,
00:02:17 ◼ ► if you become a member, you can go to, if you subscribe to Connected Pro, get connected pro.co,
00:02:22 ◼ ► you get access to Backstage. The eighth year, which was last year, I remember it was basically,
00:02:28 ◼ ► we both kind of forgot, like after a certain point, you don't really, eight years of a company
00:02:34 ◼ ► existing. You kind of start to not really think about it in the same way. But now on the ninth
00:02:39 ◼ ► year, we're looking forward to the 10th year. So it's in our minds again. So that's why we're doing
00:02:43 ◼ ► it today. I'm glad you did all the work to find those. I opened the document this morning and I
00:02:50 ◼ ► was going to do, I was going to sit down like, "Okay, let me find all these." And it was already
00:02:53 ◼ ► done. So thank you. Well, I was able to use my past self in a way because I've done this before,
00:03:01 ◼ ► like linked to the previous ones from a previous one. So that helped me a lot. But then I had to
00:03:07 ◼ ► do some like archeology to try and work out what happened in 2022. And so I ended up working that
00:03:14 ◼ ► one out. That's hilarious. So yeah, we're going to do a bunch of Q and A today. And I think we
00:03:21 ◼ ► start with this question from Aaron. What do you think? Yeah. Aaron asks, "Will there be a 10th
00:03:25 ◼ ► anniversary gathering or event like you did for the fifth anniversary?" Steven, what did we do on
00:03:30 ◼ ► our fifth anniversary? Our fifth anniversary, we held a live show in San Francisco and a bunch of
00:03:36 ◼ ► relay hosts showed up and we played a big game of Family Feud. And that is exactly what we're going
00:03:44 ◼ ► to do next summer. But instead of San Francisco, we're going to do it in London. God save the king,
00:03:53 ◼ ► baby. We're doing it. Oh, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. Me too. It's coming in July, right? July
00:04:01 ◼ ► 2024. We will be hosting our first live show outside of the United States of America. And it's
00:04:10 ◼ ► going to be in my hometown. Yes. In a theater that you picked. Yes. Which I was so glad it worked out
00:04:17 ◼ ► that we got to use your first choice. Yep. So here's how this is going to work. We're announcing
00:04:23 ◼ ► it today because this question was asked. Aaron forced our hand. If you are a Relay FM member,
00:04:31 ◼ ► you're going to get a link in Discord and in your email on Friday, August 18th. That is our
00:04:38 ◼ ► actual anniversary. That is a link to buy tickets. Again, this is in July 2024 in London. The link
00:04:46 ◼ ► will have all the details, but members will get that on Friday. If you're not a Relay FM member,
00:04:54 ◼ ► you're going to have to wait to the next week. So starting on probably Monday, I think probably
00:04:59 ◼ ► on upgrade will be the first time you talk about it. Then those will go out to the public. But you
00:05:04 ◼ ► want to be a member and get in early. Yep. And that's the first time. We're not going to talk
00:05:09 ◼ ► about now where it is. It's in a theater in London. It's an amazing theater. We'll have more
00:05:14 ◼ ► to say about that. But Steven's coming over to London. A selection of Relay FM hosts will be
00:05:19 ◼ ► coming. There's logistics to happen, but there's going to be a bunch of hosts there. And we plan to
00:05:24 ◼ ► play another game in front of a live audience. I guess we'll talk about this a little bit more,
00:05:30 ◼ ► but just as a while we're trying to pitch you on the idea of why you should come, it's going to be
00:05:35 ◼ ► our biggest live show ever. If you sell out. Yeah, please. It's the biggest we've ever played in.
00:05:39 ◼ ► And we're kind of approaching this show a little bit differently to we have other shows.
00:05:45 ◼ ► There won't be video. The reason there won't be video is because the cost of doing video was
00:05:51 ◼ ► astronomically high with this venue. So we're not going to be doing video because we just can't make
00:05:56 ◼ ► it work. Yeah, we will be recording audio, but this show is going to be made primarily for the
00:06:04 ◼ ► people in the room, which is not necessarily a mindset that we've had before, where we've also
00:06:10 ◼ ► put a ton of effort into making sure we have good clean audio. The venue will be recording audio,
00:06:16 ◼ ► but we will be using the equipment the venue provides us. So it's going to be a slightly
00:06:20 ◼ ► different. We don't know how it's going to come out, but like there will suddenly be no live
00:06:24 ◼ ► stream. Like if you want the best experience for this event, you want to be there, right?
00:06:36 ◼ ► So thank you. Thank you for the first question. We're off to a real bang. What can we announce
00:06:42 ◼ ► next? Nothing yet. Nothing yet. It is hilarious like this, this time of years when we're getting
00:06:49 ◼ ► ready for podcastathon stuff. We've got some questions about that later on, but like my brain
00:06:54 ◼ ► is just occupied by this live show right now. And it's because it's this ticket sales for that come
00:07:00 ◼ ► first. Once we get over that, then I can start like properly thinking about the fact that we
00:07:05 ◼ ► have a whole fundraiser to run through an entire month. Yeah. In fact, when we were working with
00:07:08 ◼ ► the venue on when tickets were going to go up, I was like, Hey, they have to be up this date
00:07:13 ◼ ► because then we have a bunch of other stuff that we have to do, uh, basically immediately after.
00:07:19 ◼ ► And then, so you'll be hearing about it for like, we're going to talk about it a bunch for a week,
00:07:23 ◼ ► and then probably won't talk about it all for September. And if, if tickets are still available,
00:07:27 ◼ ► they probably will be, we'll be talking about it then for like seven months or something until all
00:07:32 ◼ ► the tickets are sold. London baby! Come on, Steven. I'm so excited. And I'm so thankful.
00:07:40 ◼ ► So excited that we're able to do this and that you, uh, as the executive of live events agreed
00:07:46 ◼ ► that London was a good venue for the 10th anniversary. You know, it's been a while since
00:07:50 ◼ ► we've done live events and actually my title has changed a little bit. Okay. It's executive
00:07:56 ◼ ► senior vice president and COO of live events. Okay. I got a bump. Wait, why can't, why, why are
00:08:05 ◼ ► you just the chief? Who's the CEO of live events then? Uh, well, that's, um, that's a good point.
00:08:28 ◼ ► you just got the wrong way around because it makes it sound like you're second in command to yourself.
00:08:39 ◼ ► you gotta have a second. And we saw in succession what happens when there's arguments about this.
00:08:45 ◼ ► And when people are in charge of live events, that's why we're not going into the cruise line
00:08:50 ◼ ► business. That's for sure. So as CEO, I have some news for you. Oh no. The SS relay is pulling into
00:08:57 ◼ ► port right now. The whole thing is slate colored. Okay. Oh, that would be pretty sick though, right?
00:09:17 ◼ ► Morgan asks, where does that switch on thing come from? And why is Kathy the only person to ever
00:09:24 ◼ ► use it? I will now ask Zach's question because they go together. Zach asks, do you regret my
00:09:29 ◼ ► question about switch on on the connected Q and A four years ago? Yeah. Can you explain what switch
00:09:34 ◼ ► on is then talk about why Kathy's the only person to use it? So switch on is the rarely used tagline.
00:09:43 ◼ ► If you go to the relay website, it's in the footer and it was in some artwork a long time ago,
00:09:48 ◼ ► but we really don't use it. It's just kind of been hanging out down there in the footer for,
00:09:52 ◼ ► we originally thought we were going to use it. Yeah. Right. And then we just sort of just didn't
00:09:57 ◼ ► didn't work out. So this came up on a Q and A and Kathy is wonderful. And I love working with Kathy,
00:10:06 ◼ ► but Kathy has a tendency to troll me when she gets the opportunity, troll us when she gets
00:10:11 ◼ ► the opportunity. So she has leaned in to switch on and uses it basically all the time. Yep. And
00:10:18 ◼ ► as Kathy's co-hosts have picked it up too. So on conduit, Jay says it, Alex says it a bunch
00:10:25 ◼ ► on roboism. Kathy says it during every spotlight episode where she interviews. This is another
00:10:33 ◼ ► member of the book. She interviews a different relay FM host. She just did a great one with
00:10:37 ◼ ► Jon Sirq's, I'm like halfway through it. It's very good. But every time Kathy says relay FM,
00:10:41 ◼ ► she says switch on. And to me, it's like nails on a chalkboard to hear it now, because I know
00:10:47 ◼ ► that it's only to troll me and you. Yeah. Right. And it won't, and she won't stop. And now I've
00:10:53 ◼ ► said that I feel like it's only going to get worse. And I feel like there's probably nothing
00:10:58 ◼ ► we can do about it. So Zach, yes, I do regret that you asked that question because Kathy has
00:11:17 ◼ ► which we're going to talk about in the coming weeks. So. Oh, Kathy is incredible. Yeah. I'm
00:11:22 ◼ ► just saying incredibly skilled, but one of Kathy's skills is trolling us. It's a skill that she has.
00:11:29 ◼ ► She's very good at it. Like she is all of the other things that she does for relay FM, which is a
00:11:49 ◼ ► Turquoise hexagon son says, imagine some company came along and said, you can't use switch on
00:12:00 ◼ ► What new slogan would you choose for relay FM? I don't know. The only thing I thought of,
00:12:08 ◼ ► it's not a good slogan, but I put it on some coffee mugs we sent to Host and Friends a couple
00:12:19 ◼ ► You know, I thought that was kind of funny, a little tongue and cheek with like some other
00:12:23 ◼ ► slogans in the world. But, uh, I really, to answer truthfully, honestly, don't know what we would do.
00:12:29 ◼ ► I don't think we would have one. Probably not. I just don't really think, like, you know, we had,
00:12:34 ◼ ► uh, creative, curious, obsessive for a while, but we've moved away from that where like,
00:12:39 ◼ ► that was like the, the, you know, kind of like the way we described the, uh, the types of shows
00:12:46 ◼ ► that we have. But you rewrote that recently to say relay FM brings together some of the most
00:12:50 ◼ ► influential and unique voices on the internet to create powerful content each and every week.
00:12:58 ◼ ► It's on the about page. Oh, is it? Yeah. It's going to go on the homepage at some point.
00:13:05 ◼ ► Yes. We maybe that should be it really FM powerful. Like that's just the tagline powerful.
00:13:11 ◼ ► We are a powerful company. Can you imagine putting that on a, on a, a pitch for podcast advertising?
00:13:22 ◼ ► I'd wear that's pretty good. Pretty good. Fire up Photoshop. It's time to make a t-shirt.
00:13:34 ◼ ► Okay. So that's, that's, that's that's all the tagline stuff. Let me ask you this question from
00:13:41 ◼ ► Aaron, I guess maybe the same Aaron who leaked our 10th anniversary show. It's hard to say.
00:13:46 ◼ ► There was no leak just to, just to confirm this, by the way, before Aaron asks the question,
00:13:51 ◼ ► you also in discord asked if there were going to be any live shows like you were teeing someone up.
00:14:02 ◼ ► how has the last four years and a bit compared to the first four years and a bit of the company
00:14:13 ◼ ► Yeah. All right. So for me, like I think maybe the easiest way to think about this for myself is like
00:14:20 ◼ ► the last four years has been less work for me in the sense of running the company. Right. Like,
00:14:31 ◼ ► I feel like the fact that we have brought people in, in this latter half has helped a lot. So like
00:14:39 ◼ ► my actual like day to day relay FM running is less where like I'm actually able to focus more on
00:14:47 ◼ ► content now than I have been in the past. Um, that is like an ongoing thing for me where like
00:14:53 ◼ ► I think my best contribution to this company is the content. And like, I just want to keep
00:15:00 ◼ ► doing more of that. Right. And less like a minister via or whatever. Um, or like, you know,
00:15:06 ◼ ► for the majority of one is I think even think it is the majority, but for the first four years I was
00:15:16 ◼ ► very stressful. Um, I'm now not responsible for that anymore. So like my biggest company,
00:15:28 ◼ ► I am happier with the last four years than the first four years in a sense of like what I want
00:15:34 ◼ ► to be doing for relay FM, you know, like all I, the whole point that is this whole thing exists
00:15:40 ◼ ► is because me and Steven wanted to make podcasts and own everything and like make podcasts the way
00:15:46 ◼ ► we wanted to make them and everything be the way that we wanted it to be. But to do that,
00:15:51 ◼ ► you have to do a bunch of stuff like running a business and I, and I'm, I am happier when I do
00:16:02 ◼ ► for me in the first place. Yeah. And just to clarify about what you mean by some of that stuff,
00:16:13 ◼ ► And then they got involved in the sales process and now they're our VP of sales and handle
00:16:21 ◼ ► basically all of it. Oh, well actually, uh, chief advertising officer, chief advertise. Oh, I'm
00:16:26 ◼ ► sorry. See sweet. I got distracted by my own titles earlier and yeah, I don't even know what they mean
00:16:34 ◼ ► anymore. Carrie is the vice president of sales and send chief advertising officer of that division
00:16:43 ◼ ► and, uh, the chief data entry specialist for advertising inventory system. Correct. I think
00:16:50 ◼ ► for me, if you split relay up, I don't think halves quite makes sense. I think of relay as the
00:16:58 ◼ ► time where I was still working for a year and the middle bit, and then sort of the current phase
00:17:09 ◼ ► But I think the, I think the, this current era has been more work for me because I run the membership
00:17:17 ◼ ► program. Uh, we flipped and I, you know, Kathy coming on board, she helps with a lot of
00:17:24 ◼ ► administrative stuff, but she's also the community manager. So Kathy is sort of the, the final word
00:17:29 ◼ ► in the discord, not, not me and Mike. Right. She's helping us work with our hosts on their plans for
00:17:36 ◼ ► membership shows. Like she, she's really been very influential in that program. But I think if I look
00:17:44 ◼ ► back at my time, there's a lot more of it spent on the admin end of things. And there used to be,
00:17:50 ◼ ► and that's fine. Like totally fine. Membership has been a big success and it not only got us through
00:17:56 ◼ ► the pandemic, but it's getting us through a season now where podcast advertising isn't super stellar.
00:18:01 ◼ ► And so it's doing what it was supposed to do. But with that obviously comes more hands-on time,
00:18:06 ◼ ► which I'm, I'm glad to do because I love our membership program and I love our members.
00:18:09 ◼ ► I assume membership will go for you the way advertising went for me and that like over time,
00:18:15 ◼ ► once it's even more stable than it is, uh, now that Kathy or someone else or whoever could take
00:18:23 ◼ ► more of that role away from you, but a company of our size, I think it's very important that one of
00:18:31 ◼ ► us is establishing the way that a thing will run. Yeah. And then we then know how it works.
00:18:40 ◼ ► Uh, and even if, so then if somebody takes it over from us, well, you know how it works.
00:18:44 ◼ ► And so then it can move forward and like, I really want you to do less of the admin work.
00:18:51 ◼ ► This is a conversation me and you had on our last, um, in-person time around podcasts on time.
00:18:57 ◼ ► We always take time to look at the company then. And it was something that I really wanted for you
00:19:01 ◼ ► then. And I still really want for you. And, uh, I hope that we can get there, uh, eventually,
00:19:13 ◼ ► we're just the kind of people that it's hard to let go of things. Yeah. Um, but I just kind of,
00:19:20 ◼ ► for me, it was, it was easy to let go of the advertising when I, when I was able to see just
00:19:26 ◼ ► how better at it, Carrie was than me, like, cause this isn't just admin, right? This is like,
00:19:33 ◼ ► right. Making a deal, right. Which is like a different set of skills. She's just a better deal
00:19:37 ◼ ► maker than I am. So it was very easy to let go when it was like, Oh, this could be better for
00:19:43 ◼ ► the company if I just, if I stopped doing it. And so that's kind of where that's ended up.
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00:21:34 ◼ ► Mattias asks, when you founded relay, did you have a minimum realistic or best case goal for
00:21:40 ◼ ► the company and where do you see it now? I think we were just going to be really content with
00:21:46 ◼ ► quitting our jobs and both doing it full time. Right. That was like the best case scenario is
00:21:52 ◼ ► that we could, there are some questions in here. This is one of them that makes me feel like I was
00:21:57 ◼ ► just a sweet baby boy when we started this company. Oh yeah. Because I don't really feel like we had a
00:22:06 ◼ ► plan. Yeah. You were 26 at the time. I was 28. God. Yeah. That's rough. Yeah. Now I'm looking at 40,
00:22:16 ◼ ► two and a half years away. The passing of time comes for us all. This is by far the longest job
00:22:24 ◼ ► we've ever had. Double any other job I've ever had. It's the longest position I've had. Like,
00:22:30 ◼ ► you know, I worked at the bank for about the same amount of time as this. So like, I was close to
00:22:37 ◼ ► 10 years, I think. And so I will be passing it soon. So I need to actually work out the dates on
00:22:43 ◼ ► that specifically. But this is, you know, I moved around every couple of years to like different
00:22:47 ◼ ► roles. So this is the longest job I've had by a country mile, but like a factor of four. Did you
00:22:54 ◼ ► bail on any cool 10 year, like, Hey, you get a plaque? You know, some companies do that. Maybe
00:23:01 ◼ ► we should do it for ourselves next year. Yes. It was, it was going to be a pin, which is like the
00:23:06 ◼ ► most stupid thing. Yeah. I do think that there was some kind of like, uh, like stock compensation
00:23:12 ◼ ► thing that I would have got or something stupid like that. It would have been worth probably
00:23:24 ◼ ► we were already doing, but just on our own. Right. Which was like make podcasts in our spare time
00:23:30 ◼ ► as our like creative hobby and maybe make a little bit of money. And the hope was that that little
00:23:38 ◼ ► bit of money might grow into a little bit more money. And if we owned and controlled the business,
00:23:43 ◼ ► it would be enough money that we might be able to quit our jobs. I quit my job in a month,
00:23:48 ◼ ► two months. Yep. Because it just started really well. And it seemed like we had like a three month
00:23:55 ◼ ► runway from our original sponsors because people were excited, which is awesome. And we'd built
00:24:01 ◼ ► up enough goodwill with a selection of companies that we had enough runway that like, I could see
00:24:07 ◼ ► that I would be able to do it for three months. And so I was like, well, I'm never going to have
00:24:12 ◼ ► a better time than this. And if I just put myself into this a hundred percent, maybe we can like
00:24:17 ◼ ► make it work. And I didn't have really any financial burden at that point. I was living
00:24:26 ◼ ► with my mum. She supported it. And so I just went for it and it worked out. But like the goal,
00:24:34 ◼ ► like the best case scenario was just that like maybe one day we'll be professional full-time
00:24:40 ◼ ► podcasters. Like that was all it was. There was nothing more than that. I put a couple of things
00:24:45 ◼ ► in the show notes, analog episode nine. We talked to Casey about this and then my blog post in 2015
00:24:51 ◼ ► announcing that I was quitting my job. So the very quick story people may be aware of this is like,
00:25:01 ◼ ► Fishekai asks, when are you most proud of your co-founder? I don't. That's sweet. Well,
00:25:07 ◼ ► this is like when "we" was the question, right? And I don't have like, I couldn't, I was trying
00:25:11 ◼ ► to think of like a specific thing, but there is just like a time when like when Stephen Hackett
00:25:26 ◼ ► like the way Stephen Hackett does when he stands in front of an audience. It is, I'm truly jealous of
00:25:32 ◼ ► it because I think you are so good at it and you're so effortless. And so I think that that
00:25:38 ◼ ► when I see you like commanding an audience, it's, it is awesome. You're very good at it.
00:25:51 ◼ ► Yeah, I understand. I, yeah, no, I get it. The thing about you, I respect so much about you.
00:25:58 ◼ ► I think when I'm most proud of you is when you were in your mode of like idea generation
00:26:06 ◼ ► and imagination out of the two of us, I think you are much better at that at seeing things that
00:26:12 ◼ ► aren't done that could be done. You know, you do it at Relay, you do it across your other projects.
00:26:21 ◼ ► I think it's one, one of many ways that we're a good fit together is that often you were out ahead
00:26:26 ◼ ► of me a little bit sometimes on like new ideas. And then like we talk about them and I can help
00:26:33 ◼ ► you implement them in a bunch of different ways. And I think we've done that over and over.
00:26:40 ◼ ► Yeah. I very much appreciate that. That is very kind of you to say, thank you. And I do agree.
00:26:49 ◼ ► but I have no idea how to do it. Like that, that is my thing. It's like, oh, I have this idea,
00:26:53 ◼ ► but I don't know what to do with this. And you are very good at like working out what to do with it.
00:27:01 ◼ ► This is anytime that we talk about our custom content management system, this comes up.
00:27:21 ◼ ► Yeah. So Neon is the name of our CMS. We bought the core of it from somebody else and have been
00:27:28 ◼ ► developing it for over nine years now. I think the thing that has, is surprised me the most about it
00:27:36 ◼ ► is the way different people expect things to work. So we have probably 20 people who can log into it
00:27:46 ◼ ► and publish shows and, you know, do things and they all want or have slightly different ideas
00:27:52 ◼ ► about how things should be. And that's just been a little bit surprising. It's like, I kind of see
00:27:58 ◼ ► it like, oh, well, it should work this way, obviously. And someone's like, why would it work
00:28:00 ◼ ► that way? Why not do it the other way around? You have to work through all that. It's been
00:28:03 ◼ ► challenging. The question I think about sometimes or I get sometimes is if you were starting today,
00:28:08 ◼ ► would you build your own CMS? I honestly don't know. When we started, and I've said this before,
00:28:13 ◼ ► when we started, there really wasn't anything out there platform wise that gave us what we needed,
00:28:19 ◼ ► where we had one website with multiple podcasts, all with their own feeds. And yeah, like in 2014,
00:28:26 ◼ ► I could have hacked together like some WordPress thing or used something like Squarespace, but
00:28:30 ◼ ► none of them gave us really what we needed because none of those things, as good as they may be,
00:28:36 ◼ ► none of them gave us like, this is built for podcasting. And ultimately, the way I kind of
00:28:44 ◼ ► think about it now is we have neon as sort of an extension of the thing you said at the beginning,
00:28:54 ◼ ► Like, what better way to do that with software than building yourself? And so it has been painful.
00:28:59 ◼ ► It has been incredibly expensive over the years. But it has been also, I think, a real asset that
00:29:05 ◼ ► lets us do what we want to do in the way that we do it. For instance, I'll shut up after this.
00:29:10 ◼ ► We take great pride in really thorough show notes, almost to a show on the network, right?
00:29:20 ◼ ► Where if you look at the links, the things we talk about, not only is anything major we're
00:29:26 ◼ ► talked about in there, they're also in order that we spoke about them in. And they're also
00:29:42 ◼ ► podcast producers using other platforms or working elsewhere, it's either that they don't think about
00:29:48 ◼ ► it or their audience doesn't seem to care about it. Maybe our audience does. But a lot of it is
00:29:53 ◼ ► also we don't have a good technical way of doing that. It's like, bro, it's just links, like just
00:29:57 ◼ ► throw them in the, you know, throw them right there in the feed. So that's something that we knew from
00:30:02 ◼ ► day one we wanted to do. So we built features around that to make it really easy to manage
00:30:07 ◼ ► those links and to add them. I think that's a small example of what we get out of having our own.
00:30:12 ◼ ► Yeah, I will say as the person who does not manage neither the finances or the technology stack of
00:30:18 ◼ ► the company, right, you do both of those things. The question of would if we were starting over,
00:30:24 ◼ ► would we want to do it again? I would say yeah. I think that's where we would end up. I think we
00:30:29 ◼ ► would be frustrated with something off the shelf. It's so valuable that it works the way we want
00:30:43 ◼ ► there were so many ways to distribute that content. But what I didn't want to be like entering things
00:30:50 ◼ ► in multiple into multiple places or whatever. And so it's all built into like a another part of our
00:30:56 ◼ ► CMS. And when you're done build, when we're done building shows, there's one button that you press,
00:31:02 ◼ ► and it duplicates it to a secondary feed, all of the information except the audio link,
00:31:08 ◼ ► which we just put the membership audio link in and publish it. And it's like a secret feed
00:31:13 ◼ ► that feeds into member for and then goes out to members for the distributed feeds. Like there are
00:31:18 ◼ ► so many ways that that could have been done. And if we didn't have our own system, we would have been
00:31:26 ◼ ► and would still to this day be copying and pasting a bunch of stuff from box to box to box to box,
00:31:32 ◼ ► if you wanted to keep it secret like private. But we're able to do that. And again, like,
00:31:38 ◼ ► because we own our own thing. Yeah, this CMS publishes to a website. There are no web pages
00:31:43 ◼ ► for the private shows because we are able to adjust it that way. We're like, you know what I
00:31:48 ◼ ► mean? Like, I just don't think that there would have been a tool that would have allowed us to do
00:31:52 ◼ ► what we do the way that we do it unless we already owned it. And so we own it. And it's also a
00:31:57 ◼ ► fantastic asset that our company has. And if you, I mean, just think about our peers, right? Think of
00:32:02 ◼ ► ATP, you think of the incomparable, you think of twit, like all using custom publishing platforms
00:32:09 ◼ ► for the same reasons, basically. Because it's like a similar idea of wanting it to be a certain way
00:32:17 ◼ ► and then being able to manage and maintain that. I mean, it is an old school, you know,
00:32:21 ◼ ► what you've just listed as well is a bunch of old school tech podcasts. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:32:32 ◼ ► Jason Snow has entered the Discord saying movable type and, oh boy, the incomparable CMS is powerful,
00:32:58 ◼ ► It's telling that he moved six colors off of it, we'll say that. All right, let me ask you this
00:33:04 ◼ ► question from David. You've said several times sensibly that you don't want to expand the network
00:33:09 ◼ ► with more shows. No more horizontal growth could imply more vertical growth. What would that
00:33:15 ◼ ► involve? Well, but I am taller than you. So the way that I see this question is that horizontal
00:33:22 ◼ ► growth is like what we have done through the company's history. And like we always spoke
00:33:26 ◼ ► about this, like in the early days of Relay FM, if we added a new show, we would grow the company's
00:33:32 ◼ ► revenue. Like it would just happen and you could watch it happen that like, you know, every month
00:33:36 ◼ ► that we added a new show, the company's revenue would increase. Over time, that impact lessened.
00:33:42 ◼ ► And that is due to, I think, just like an overall abundance in the podcasting ecosystem
00:33:47 ◼ ► that like launching a new show in our world today doesn't have as much impact as it used to.
00:34:00 ◼ ► is more than we have to give right now to actually break through. And breaking through today is
00:34:08 ◼ ► harder, it's different. And we're in a world where me and Steven didn't break through. So
00:34:12 ◼ ► all the ways in which we broke through in 2014 do not apply today. Part of that, I just want to say,
00:34:19 ◼ ► we're to blame for. Right? Like part of the reason that our Corner of the Internet podcast is pretty
00:34:24 ◼ ► saturated because we have a bunch of awesome shows. Right? And that makes it harder for us
00:34:28 ◼ ► to break through with something new. And I think, unfortunately, it also makes newer projects hard
00:34:32 ◼ ► to break through. So like we're talking about this, but we're not like we are part of the
00:34:37 ◼ ► situation. I think I just want to throw that out there. Yeah, I mean, but there are different
00:34:47 ◼ ► you know, and that seems to be where a lot of the action is. And, you know, like on Upgrade,
00:34:52 ◼ ► me and Jason, like a couple of old men kind of like doddering our way through what it might be
00:34:56 ◼ ► to have a TikTok. But like, people do it better than us. And that seems to be the way that people
00:35:03 ◼ ► make things work for themselves now. But it's also a thing where I think for me and you for our
00:35:09 ◼ ► shows, we are mostly content with what we have audience wise. But that probably leads into
00:35:15 ◼ ► vertical growth would be could come in the form of two things. It could even be in large,
00:35:20 ◼ ► larger audiences or larger revenue, larger audiences. I don't know. It's hard. Who wouldn't,
00:35:27 ◼ ► you know, like who wouldn't want a bigger audience for their project? Like, it is a very,
00:35:31 ◼ ► very complicated thing. And we're dabbling in new stuff. But realistically, we don't know what to do.
00:35:39 ◼ ► About how to grow it. So I'm not really sure. I don't have an answer for that. We do have and
00:35:44 ◼ ► have always had space in our advertising inventory for vertical growth there. And so like that is
00:35:50 ◼ ► just a case of like continuing to improve ad selling capabilities. And like that's the thing,
00:35:57 ◼ ► like we have space. So in theory, we can continue to grow company revenue. But I don't really think
00:36:03 ◼ ► that that's what David would care about. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think our listeners
00:36:08 ◼ ► particularly care about company revenue. What I'll say though, is company revenue means that more of
00:36:12 ◼ ► your favorite shows have more ads on them, which is good for those shows existing and for those
00:36:16 ◼ ► creators. Again, another thing that could grow company revenue and has done, thankfully, is the
00:36:22 ◼ ► membership business. And, you know, and like that is a thing where like with membership, we are in
00:36:28 ◼ ► that stage right now that we were what I was just referencing back in the day of we'd add a new show
00:36:35 ◼ ► to the network and revenue would increase. Well, now if we add a show, like a membership portion
00:36:41 ◼ ► to a show, it increases the membership revenue, it increases the revenue that hosts make, and it also
00:36:47 ◼ ► increases the amount of members that we have. So like, we're still in that part of the business,
00:36:51 ◼ ► which is awesome for that. And we're still learning new things and trying new stuff out
00:36:55 ◼ ► with membership, which is great. And it's still growing, which is awesome. Jason asks, not that
00:37:00 ◼ ► one, but a different Jason asks, I think, what is something each of you has learned about the other
00:37:05 ◼ ► since launching relay that has strengthened your working relationship? I think we've gotten pretty
00:37:10 ◼ ► good at knowing, okay, the other one of us doesn't really care about this and ready to be involved,
00:37:16 ◼ ► and we can just do it. I feel like in the early years, we double checked with each other on
00:37:21 ◼ ► basically everything. And I'm glad we did, right? I think it, it had an awful lot of arguments,
00:37:26 ◼ ► maybe we would have had in those early days. But I think now we know each other definitely well
00:37:30 ◼ ► enough where we kind of understand where, where people land. Like, for instance, I think we were
00:37:35 ◼ ► talking maybe before we hit record, maybe it was on the live stream, though, I think maybe it was
00:37:40 ◼ ► in the pro show where I spent my morning, I don't know when it was, we were talking and some people
00:37:45 ◼ ► could hear us. No, I just liked that there were like three different places in which this thing
00:37:49 ◼ ► could have been and no one will ever know. It's impossible to know. I actually think it was,
00:37:53 ◼ ► it was when we were live before we pressed record. Okay. In that timeframe, it's very confusing,
00:38:03 ◼ ► you didn't know what those conversations were, asked you a couple questions, I got your affirmative
00:38:08 ◼ ► and then we can move forward. Right. So I think that sort of thing has been good. I don't know,
00:38:12 ◼ ► that's probably not as specific as this answer that Jason wanted, but it's kind of what I think
00:38:16 ◼ ► about it. Yeah, I agree with this. But I would say a similar thing. It's not necessarily again,
00:38:22 ◼ ► we're not not I don't really know if I'm answering the question as such. But as we have changed as
00:38:27 ◼ ► people, that has also been very helpful. Like, I think earlier in our career, like I was better at
00:38:35 ◼ ► dealing with what everybody needed, like what our hosts needed, and was able to like help people out
00:38:41 ◼ ► a lot more. And then as time went on, you became better at that. And like, I think it was just like
00:38:46 ◼ ► a patience and bandwidth kind of thing. As our lives changed, you became better at handling that
00:38:53 ◼ ► than me because there was a time where I just couldn't handle it. Yeah. And now I think we've
00:38:57 ◼ ► kind of this like another thing that we've traded off over time of like the responsibilities. And I
00:39:02 ◼ ► think that we dance that dance very well of matching what the other one needs and providing
00:39:10 ◼ ► it, which is why we could, why we've run a business for nine years and have maybe had two arguments
00:39:15 ◼ ► in that entire time. I also think that like a real example of that is we share an email inbox.
00:39:23 ◼ ► And we never talk about who's going to answer the emails. Yeah. We just know. Just know. Membership
00:39:29 ◼ ► support comes to me. Add stuff goes to you. Usually invoicing stuff goes to you. Add stuff
00:39:36 ◼ ► comes to me and then I give it to Kerry. But we have, we, I don't want to subject Kerry to
00:39:42 ◼ ► that email address. So I think it's easier that I just, I can field that for her for now. This
00:39:50 ◼ ► is an interesting question from Marlies. Has the company felt any negative consequence in terms of
00:39:55 ◼ ► audience and reach by no longer having a presence on Twitter for itself and most of its shows?
00:40:00 ◼ ► No idea. I don't think it's been any problem. Like I don't know. I don't know. Well, I see it.
00:40:07 ◼ ► I look, I look at the mentions every once in a while. There's nothing there. The thing is like
00:40:11 ◼ ► our audience on the whole, like, you know, you may be out there, you may still love Twitter.
00:40:16 ◼ ► That's awesome. On the whole in mass, our audience isn't on Twitter anymore. So it's fine.
00:40:21 ◼ ► We're on Mastodon. The company has a threads account. I still can't automate things to threads,
00:40:27 ◼ ► but as soon as I can, we'll get the sort of post bot going there. But, uh, it seems to have been
00:40:33 ◼ ► fine. Yeah. I mean, I have a much smaller following than I did now. So I don't know if maybe a lot of
00:40:39 ◼ ► my followers on Twitter weren't real or, you know, I don't really understand what's happened. I think
00:40:44 ◼ ► I joined Mastodon too late and I think that was a thing, but realistically I know where my audience
00:40:49 ◼ ► is. Like, you know, I don't, I don't need, uh, I don't need like social media to tell people about
00:40:57 ◼ ► a thing that I'm doing. I have podcasts, which have larger audiences than I've ever had on any
00:41:02 ◼ ► social media, all the social media I have combined. So like, I just don't, you know, I know, I know
00:41:08 ◼ ► where to talk to people about what I'm doing and it's like here right now. That has been a, a, uh,
00:41:16 ◼ ► a very good thing to realize in my life. I would say that like, you know, I can look at our download
00:41:22 ◼ ► figures across the network and see that there may have been a slight decline, but there are like
00:41:27 ◼ ► a thousand things that can affect that sometimes. And most of the time it's just algorithms of how
00:41:32 ◼ ► download numbers are calculated. And so like, it is impossible to see because there is no pattern,
00:41:39 ◼ ► you know, like if I look at this time now to like seven months ago, some shows are up, some shows
00:41:45 ◼ ► are down, but if I would have looked three years ago, it would have been a similar thing. So like,
00:41:49 ◼ ► there are winds of change, you know what I mean? And I don't, I don't really feel like I understand
00:41:55 ◼ ► that Twitter is responsible for any of these changes. It's hard to know. What I know is that
00:42:02 ◼ ► like, it's not like everybody stopped listening to our shows because we didn't tweet about them
00:42:05 ◼ ► anymore. You know, I'll say, uh, blogging is more popular than it was when, when Twitter was around.
00:42:12 ◼ ► So five 12 is doing like record page views with no Twitter presence. That doesn't make any sense
00:42:18 ◼ ► to me. I think people were like, Oh yeah. Or assess. Like I think people kind of got used to
00:42:23 ◼ ► doing that again, but that's really strange. And then they see everything you post as opposed to
00:42:28 ◼ ► just whatever the Twitter app shows. Or, you know, maybe I've hit my stride 15 years into blocking.
00:42:33 ◼ ► Could be that. You know, like maybe now now's the time blogging is like a zombie. It's come back to
00:42:41 ◼ ► life. It's true. It's the third or fourth era. I think of blogging that I've, I've been a part of.
00:42:46 ◼ ► And I'd say nobody asked the question about this, but now I'm just going to pipe in and just be like,
00:42:55 ◼ ► of podcasting like six times. You know what I mean? And you know, it's like a similar thing
00:43:00 ◼ ► right now. I feel like I'm hearing from a lot of our really wonderful friends who I love very much,
00:43:07 ◼ ► Everybody it's going to be okay. Yeah. Take it from me. We're just going through a period.
00:43:13 ◼ ► That's all it is. Like, don't worry about it. Rose it from the dead. We do it all the time.
00:43:19 ◼ ► I mean, it's just, we're just in a, in a different phase right now. Uh, things are changing all the
00:43:25 ◼ ► time and we're just going to move forward of it. You remember like the last time everyone thought
00:43:29 ◼ ► podcasting was dead was because Spotify existed. Well, like yesterday, Spotify took the exclusive
00:43:36 ◼ ► reigns of a bunch of their shows to start publishing them everywhere. So like, you know
00:43:40 ◼ ► what I mean? The Spotify's attempt at killing podcasting did not work because they had to give
00:43:46 ◼ ► up. They spent so much money on new shows. Now they need to make money from them. So they're
00:43:50 ◼ ► now putting them on Apple podcasts and stuff like that. So we've seen it a bunch of times.
00:43:55 ◼ ► Don't worry about it. This episode of connected is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one
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00:45:06 ◼ ► all these tools are in one place. They all look great. They all work really well. And at the end
00:45:11 ◼ ► of the day, I can have a really awesome looking website for a project I'm involved with that is
00:45:16 ◼ ► really affordable to build and to keep up for years to come. So check out squarespace.com/connected
00:45:23 ◼ ► for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the code connected to get 10% off your first
00:45:30 ◼ ► purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com/connected and the code connected
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00:45:41 ◼ ► your favorite podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the show and Relay FM.
00:45:52 ◼ ► Squarespace has been with us since the very beginning, nonstop for nine years. Thank you,
00:45:58 ◼ ► Squarespace. Thank you, Squarespace. Doolerick asks, what was your budget going in and how did
00:46:05 ◼ ► you manage it? I guess that means like when we were starting the company. I assume so, man.
00:46:13 ◼ ► Mike and I went to our banks and we said, I want all the money I have, please. And they put it in
00:46:21 ◼ ► a little paper baggie and we built a website and we hired a designer and we did a bunch of stuff.
00:46:27 ◼ ► I don't remember how much that money was now, but I do know that we paid it back to ourselves within
00:46:32 ◼ ► the first quarter of being in business. So I know how much it was for me. I don't remember if I
00:46:39 ◼ ► don't remember how this worked out. Like I genuinely don't remember how much money we all
00:46:43 ◼ ► put in. I think it was just a case of we put in whatever we could and we just worked out that we'd
00:46:47 ◼ ► pay each other back. And but mine was seven thousand pounds. That was how much I put in at
00:46:58 ◼ ► And I put it all in and we got it all back very quick. It was fantastic. But yeah, I remember
00:47:03 ◼ ► that. That was it. There was no budget. It was like, how much money can we put in? Great. This
00:47:08 ◼ ► is how much money we have. That's the end of it. There was not like, and we're going to spend this
00:47:12 ◼ ► much because also there was no expense. We had barely any expenses. Like our expenses were so
00:47:19 ◼ ► small for a really long time. So like we didn't need to budget like that. I would say even to this
00:47:25 ◼ ► day while we are expenses have gotten much more because we have people for a company of our size
00:47:31 ◼ ► and scale and age, our expenses are still small. Yeah. Agreed. Like realistically, most
00:47:36 ◼ ► most of the money that we pay out is like what would essentially be commission, right? Yeah.
00:47:43 ◼ ► More than anything else. That's like to hosts and for the advertising sales and stuff like that,
00:47:47 ◼ ► rather than like fixed monthly expenses for a long time. This probably isn't the case now,
00:47:53 ◼ ► but for a long time, our biggest expense was Slack. Yeah. It's not anymore. Is that still the case?
00:47:58 ◼ ► Okay. Web hosting has taken it over. What? How? By quite a bit. Boo. Our website does a lot of stuff.
00:48:04 ◼ ► Web hosting. You suck. Don't we just run it all off of Mac mini again? No, no. The website never
00:48:18 ◼ ► it was a similar amount. It may have been, yeah, it'd be five or six grand, but yeah, basically,
00:48:24 ◼ ► well basically all the money out in my savings account and my wife was seven, eight, no,
00:48:31 ◼ ► she was eight months pregnant with our youngest son when we launched the company. So that was a
00:48:36 ◼ ► fun time. And that was like, I think it was a consideration where it was just like, I'm just
00:48:40 ◼ ► going to put in everything I have, but you shouldn't. Right. It was just like, you know,
00:48:43 ◼ ► like because it was, I had nothing. My funny thing, I remember like talking about money.
00:48:49 ◼ ► Do you remember like, it was like two weeks before we were going to launch the company and I spilled
00:48:56 ◼ ► Coke on my laptop. I do remember that. Destroyed my MacBook Pro or MacBook Air or something. And
00:49:04 ◼ ► so I like, this was, I think during the time period or like, yeah, I think it was during the
00:49:10 ◼ ► time period of where we left five by five and we're getting ready. And so I ended up being able to
00:49:17 ◼ ► claim on our home insurance. Oh yeah. To get a new laptop. And I was super sad because I had a bunch
00:49:27 ◼ ► of great stickers on my laptop and they wanted the laptop. Yeah. Oh yeah. Which didn't make any sense
00:49:33 ◼ ► to me, but they wouldn't give me the money to get a new laptop unless I gave them the old laptop. So
00:49:39 ◼ ► I gave them the old laptop. They gave me the money. I bought a new MacBook and was ready to go.
00:49:53 ◼ ► Yeah. There was... No, you know what I was doing? I was recording. I was, I was a guest on a podcast,
00:49:59 ◼ ► which is hilarious. So like there, there was an episode of a podcast somewhere where I was only
00:50:04 ◼ ► on half of it because I destroyed my computer. That's good. That's, that's incredible. Hey,
00:50:26 ◼ ► I think we touched on this earlier. I think we've, we've been so fortunate to be so far
00:50:33 ◼ ► past anything we could imagine in the beginning. Yeah. Imagining the size that we're on now,
00:50:38 ◼ ► the number and sort of the amazing people we get to work with, the membership community.
00:50:47 ◼ ► we were young and very focused on what was right in front of us. And so, yeah, I think it's been
00:50:52 ◼ ► an absolute amazing, incredible ride that, you know, we're, we're thrilled where it's ended up.
00:50:58 ◼ ► Yeah. Our biggest achievement is the host page. The selection of people that we get to work with
00:51:03 ◼ ► who are either, you know, either a were like around for doing this stuff for a long time
00:51:08 ◼ ► before us or B have like come onto the scene after us and also are with us. Like that is like,
00:51:16 ◼ ► that's the best thing. And that is something that we would never, I never would have assumed
00:51:22 ◼ ► that we could have secured, right? Like to be able to have the trust from so many people to be
00:51:29 ◼ ► the place that they produce their content. Like I think that's, that's super cool. And I never
00:51:34 ◼ ► could have imagined that that would have occurred. Here's another one from Arliss. You both worked
00:51:41 ◼ ► very hard over the past years. Do you see a time in the near future where you can lay back and sort
00:51:45 ◼ ► of let everything you've put in place run itself for a while? This is interesting because this is
00:51:49 ◼ ► not a conversation we've ever had. Yeah. So it's, I have a very specific, I have a very clear answer
00:51:56 ◼ ► in my mind, but we've never spoken. Mike wants to go to the beach real bad. Before you give your
00:52:02 ◼ ► answer, I will say one reason this is a complicated question is because we are both owners and hosts
00:52:10 ◼ ► on shows. And so while I may take a week off from administrative work and it mostly be okay,
00:52:17 ◼ ► I have some catch up to do, but you know, the world doesn't come to an end. Taking a week off
00:52:22 ◼ ► my podcast means that I've got to sort something out with you in Federico. I've got to talk with
00:52:27 ◼ ► David for MPU. And if we're doing a genius, we've got to move that around. And so it is more than
00:52:33 ◼ ► just the owner part of what we do because we are talent or host or whatever. You know, we also have
00:52:41 ◼ ► weekly obligations, but what, say what you're going to say, cause I'm curious. Well, I, I've
00:52:45 ◼ ► read this question as just the owners part. Okay. That like, we're still, we're just like hosts,
00:52:53 ◼ ► like any other host. Yeah. Like that's how I read this. And like for me is a dream of mine that like
00:52:58 ◼ ► one day, like I kind of alluded to it earlier. Like all I do is just produce podcasts. Like
00:53:04 ◼ ► that's all I do. I create the content and don't have to think about the running of the company.
00:53:11 ◼ ► The problem is, the problem is, and I expect this will probably be very similar to you of like,
00:53:17 ◼ ► oh boy, do I have opinions though? And so that's the thing I'd have to let go, right? Like let's
00:53:23 ◼ ► imagine a scenario where we hand off our reins to two people who are better than us, right? Or like
00:53:31 ◼ ► they're going to come in and they're going to run the whole bag, right? Imagine that scenario.
00:53:53 ◼ ► advisors at that point, right? Like if anybody has any questions for us, they can ask them.
00:53:57 ◼ ► But realistically the company is run by other people. Problem is they're going to make decisions
00:54:06 ◼ ► But I have to keep it to myself because that's, you know what I mean? I can't tell people
00:54:09 ◼ ► what to do. But also we're the owners of the company they're in charge of. Like there's also
00:54:13 ◼ ► like an inherent cycle there that's weird. Well, no, no, no. We've just become like shareholders
00:54:18 ◼ ► essentially at that point. Or like we're all like a board or something, but like the day-to-day
00:54:25 ◼ ► running of the company would be by done by other people. I'm experiencing a mini version of this
00:54:30 ◼ ► right now with the advertising stuff, right? The goal that me and Kerry have right now is that
00:54:43 ◼ ► she's just running it her way. Like she runs advertising her way. Like that's what we're
00:54:48 ◼ ► trying to work together on. I have opinions, but she, I'm not, you know, we're working on trying
00:54:55 ◼ ► to establish the idea that like I can share my opinions, but she doesn't have to do them.
00:55:01 ◼ ► You know, and that's a hard thing because we have a long relationship of like, I was in charge of
00:55:07 ◼ ► this part. And so like, if I had an opinion about something, we can have a conversation about it and
00:55:12 ◼ ► maybe she could, you know, could help change my mind or whatever. But like the buck stopped with
00:55:16 ◼ ► me. So like, you know, we would do it that way. And if it went wrong, well, that was my fault.
00:55:20 ◼ ► You know, like that's just how companies work, but now she is in control of it as the chief
00:55:26 ◼ ► advertising officer. And so like, we're shifting our relationship that way where like, she's just
00:55:30 ◼ ► like, I'm going to do this thing. And I would like to know what you think about it. What do you think?
00:55:34 ◼ ► Or otherwise it's just like, Hey, I'm going to do this thing. And I'm like, okay. You know? So.
00:55:39 ◼ ► Well, she's like a third equal party in our weekly standups and stuff now. Right? Like she changed.
00:55:45 ◼ ► Yeah. Like I've kept her as we've been planning the relay 10 show. She's been riding the
00:55:50 ◼ ► conversations with, Hey, this is the venue we're looking at. This is the budget we're looking at,
00:55:59 ◼ ► integral part of the team. Yeah. It was like, even though realistically, that's not part that
00:56:03 ◼ ► doesn't fall within her remit. She's now like, you know, C suite that we have. And so she has to be
00:56:09 ◼ ► aware of everything that's going on in the company. Right? Like the same as like, you're aware of what
00:56:14 ◼ ► she's doing, but you don't have any particular input on it. It's like a similar thing. Hardly
00:56:19 ◼ ► ever. I can think of like two times like, Hey, wait a second. Yeah. But no, no, but you, but you,
00:56:25 ◼ ► everybody has opinions. Right. And like, it's, we're a small enough company that it's helpful
00:56:30 ◼ ► to share those opinions. So what I'm saying is like, the idea would have to be that like,
00:56:37 ◼ ► And me and you would just be like out there as advisors if necessary, but we're not doing the
00:56:42 ◼ ► day to day. That is like a dream scenario to me, because then all I get to do is make podcasts.
00:56:48 ◼ ► Right. Which is all we ever wanted to do, you know, but do I ever realistically imagine it's
00:56:53 ◼ ► going to happen? I don't know. Probably not. But like, got a dream. You know what I mean?
00:56:58 ◼ ► I don't want to retire. You see like, so, but I can't continue and neither of us can continue
00:57:03 ◼ ► doing the same thing forever. No. So I would like this to continue. And so ultimately people coming
00:57:10 ◼ ► in to help us run it is a, I think a very possible future in like another 10 years from now.
00:57:28 ◼ ► Yeah. But there are also things that I could imagine that you never thought you would stop
00:57:35 ◼ ► and that is like one of these things where like, can you imagine like, you know, back then it's
00:57:39 ◼ ► like, Oh, how could we ever trust someone? Yeah. It's like the most important thing. It's like,
00:57:43 ◼ ► well, I had to pay people last week because Kathy was out and boy, that's a, that's a whole process.
00:57:49 ◼ ► I'd forgotten how it went. It's a long thing. Takes a lot of checks and a lot of balances.
00:57:55 ◼ ► Thankfully. Well, no one gets paid by check, but thankfully we do have a Google doc that has the
00:58:00 ◼ ► process in it that I reviewed carefully. I didn't want to screw it up. Oh, that's good.
00:58:09 ◼ ► I paid Casey $10,000 too many dollars and he just took it. That's $10,000. That's the terrible,
00:58:16 ◼ ► that is a terrible error. Please, uh, become an analog member. I don't know. What do you
00:58:21 ◼ ► think about what I've said? Does it upset you? Are you scared about it? No, no, a little, just,
00:58:27 ◼ ► you know, but I think that with Carrie in particular and with, with, with Kathy as well,
00:58:40 ◼ ► Well, I'm not going, I don't assume that me and you were like the best business people,
00:58:49 ◼ ► but like to do that, we needed a company. So we just made one, but like, that's a question.
00:58:53 ◼ ► Did you have a budget? Well, no, we probably should have though, but we didn't even think
00:58:57 ◼ ► about it. Yeah. We're like, how much does it cost to do this? Like, okay, well, we still have that
00:59:01 ◼ ► money. So we'll spend it, you know? Yeah, exactly what I mean. So that's, that's what I think.
00:59:06 ◼ ► Even now there's parts of the business that are probably too loosey goosey. Oh gosh. Yes.
00:59:11 ◼ ► But they work for us, but they are probably not the best way that things should be done.
00:59:17 ◼ ► And so like, that's what I mean. Like someone could come in and just be like, all right,
00:59:24 ◼ ► and me, like you go over there and talk about pens and we'll just make sure this is all running.
00:59:29 ◼ ► Yeah. That doesn't seem like a wild thing to me, but it's hard to get there. Will we ever get
00:59:33 ◼ ► there? Who could tell? Who could tell? Ryan asks, will there ever be a new episode in the B-Sides
00:59:38 ◼ ► feed? So the B-Sides feed is a, is a feature in our CMS where the idea was, oh, we may pick titles
00:59:46 ◼ ► or something funny happens, a little clip, and we would publish it to the B-Sides, which is like a
00:59:53 ◼ ► separate podcast feed, but they were attached to the parent episode. So it'd be linking forward
00:59:59 ◼ ► and back linking between the episode and the B-side. There's some things in there. Basically,
01:00:04 ◼ ► membership killed this though, because now things like title picking, we do as a membership perk,
01:00:11 ◼ ► like for instance on connected the post show every week is us picking titles and sometimes following
01:00:15 ◼ ► up on something. And so the B-side feature in my mind is kind of slated for retirement.
01:00:21 ◼ ► Some of the stuff needed for that to work plumbing wise, life would be better without in terms of
01:00:28 ◼ ► developing the CMS. And so it may not be long for this world, but I don't think there's ever
01:00:33 ◼ ► going to be a new one. Yeah, it just, uh, it adds complexity, which is not needed because we don't
01:00:39 ◼ ► use that feature anymore. And like, there are a lot of things where like, Hey, if something funny
01:00:44 ◼ ► happened after we record finished recording upgrade, we'd put it in there. Well now that's
01:00:48 ◼ ► like really good for upgrade plus, right? Like as you were saying, so like that didn't really make
01:00:52 ◼ ► any sense. And we also kind of just stopped using it anyway, like before membership, it just stopped
01:00:57 ◼ ► getting used. And so it went away. Yeah. I'm looking, trying to see how many, it's only 43
01:01:03 ◼ ► episodes in there. Uh, one from 2021 and then three from 2020 and the rest are older than that.
01:01:11 ◼ ► So I mean, it's, it's pretty old. It did have a good tagline though. Some things are too good to
01:01:15 ◼ ► throw away. Pretty good. Marlies ask which one of you is the best handyman? You are. It's probably
01:01:21 ◼ ► true. No, it is true. It is true. It is true. We don't need to like to be around the bush on this
01:01:26 ◼ ► one. You're better at handyman stuff than me, but I'm learning. I'm a learning boy, you know,
01:01:30 ◼ ► but you're better than me. You bought a house, things in your house break. And oh boy, do they.
01:01:35 ◼ ► And you know, I'm getting better at it, but you just get on roofs and stuff, you know, also you
01:01:40 ◼ ► come from a handyman family, you know? And so you're kind of, as you say to me sometimes forced
01:01:45 ◼ ► into these things because what are you going to do if your dad said, help you with a plumbing,
01:01:49 ◼ ► you got to help the, you got to help dad, you know? Yeah. Both my parents were contractors.
01:01:53 ◼ ► So I grew up, I grew up in it, you know, pretty comfortable with a lot of it. Not electricity
01:01:57 ◼ ► though. I'm not doing my own electrical work. This episode of Connected is made possible by
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01:03:45 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah, it's bad. It's bad gang, it's bad. We're working on it. But it's good, but it's bad.
01:03:53 ◼ ► You know what I mean? Like it's excellent, but it's like terrifying and there's so much work to do.
01:03:59 ◼ ► And as is usual, we have increased the complexity. Badder, bolder, better, stronger, more powerful.
01:04:07 ◼ ► More powerful. It's going to be awesome. Like it's going to be so good. If we can pull off half of
01:04:12 ◼ ► the things that we want to, this one is going to crush. But that just means it's a lot of work and
01:04:18 ◼ ► it's a lot of effort. I'm very thankful to everyone at St. Jude and Steven for managing the vast
01:04:24 ◼ ► majority of it. Spend a lot of time with that team. A lot of time. But yeah, it's coming.
01:04:33 ◼ ► It's the best thing that we get to do. I mean, like that's the thing. Could you imagine?
01:04:37 ◼ ► And what's our total now? 2.2? Oh, I can tell you, I looked at it today. We have raised for
01:04:43 ◼ ► St. Jude over the last four years, $2,207,557. That is an unimaginable amount of money that
01:04:52 ◼ ► the little podcast network that could has raised. You know what I mean? Like incredible. So good.
01:04:59 ◼ ► So thankful. Amazing thing. Makes all the work worth it. But like at the, in the middle of August,
01:05:06 ◼ ► that work feels horrible. It gets better. Like once September starts, it's fine. I think like,
01:05:12 ◼ ► because then you just in it. But like before anything has even begun, it's like, oh man.
01:05:18 ◼ ► Plus we have, you know, our attention has been a little split with planning the live show.
01:05:25 ◼ ► Yes. But I think that's going to be luckily that after like next week, that we'll be able to just
01:05:32 ◼ ► take a back seat for a while, which will be perfect. Yeah. And I also have my Kickstarter,
01:05:42 ◼ ► where I don't have to touch any of that in September. The calendar is at the printer for
01:05:46 ◼ ► a press test today, right? The stickers are already here, like getting a lot of stuff done in advance.
01:05:52 ◼ ► So it's ready for me in October once the campaign's done. But right now it's pretty hectic.
01:05:57 ◼ ► Fishakai asks, Mike and a few other hosts on the network have work shows and feeling shows. I just
01:06:02 ◼ ► heard John talk about that on Spotlight. Steven, you have plenty of work shows. What would your
01:06:09 ◼ ► feelings show be like? What would it be called? Get connected pro.co. Uh, no. Yeah, I guess,
01:06:16 ◼ ► I guess that's kind of, I have thought about this. I have long wanted to do a show like analog,
01:06:24 ◼ ► like way back in the day, you had a, you had a show with a friend of ours and it's like kind
01:06:28 ◼ ► of feeling show cooking with Brett and Mike. If anyone remembers that, does anybody know this?
01:06:35 ◼ ► I don't know like that. I really, if, if we say cooking with Brett and Mike and you know what that
01:06:42 ◼ ► is like, please let us tell me, please tell me. So I've long, even back then I've wanted to do
01:06:48 ◼ ► a show like that, but I don't know who I would do it with. My concern with that show always is
01:06:55 ◼ ► longevity. I mean, you look at what y'all have done with analog, right? It's one of the original
01:07:00 ◼ ► shows, but you've gone from weekly to monthly over time. Rec diffs is going strong, but Merlin and
01:07:05 ◼ ► John are both, I think way more interesting than me, so they can just go forever. Uh, so I don't
01:07:10 ◼ ► know what it would be like or what it would be called. I would like a place to talk about some
01:07:15 ◼ ► of that stuff and I don't really feel like I have an outlet for that. So who knows? I don't have any
01:07:21 ◼ ► concrete plans, but I always kind of kind of halfway interested in it. It's an interesting
01:07:26 ◼ ► type of show to do. It's difficult to balance sometimes like you're giving a lot of your emotion
01:07:33 ◼ ► to the world, which can be hard. It is, it can be very valuable, but it can also like be tough.
01:07:40 ◼ ► There's a tangential to what you were saying, but I think it's also difficult from like a privacy
01:07:44 ◼ ► perspective. For instance, I don't post pictures of my kids online. Josiah's picture is part of the
01:07:50 ◼ ► St. Jude campaign. That's why we do it, but he is not part of the campaign. I try very hard not to
01:07:57 ◼ ► use the names of my other kids or even his name if I can get away with it. Like, so there's also
01:08:01 ◼ ► some of that of like, there are things that I would talk about with, with like friends, you know,
01:08:06 ◼ ► like you and other people we work with and my friends in Memphis that are specific things that
01:08:11 ◼ ► I would not feel comfortable sharing on a podcast. Like there's also that to navigate, which is really
01:08:15 ◼ ► what gives me pause more than anything else. Ralsey asks, if this were a biography, how would
01:08:19 ◼ ► you break down the timeline? Do we think we're in the middle of an era start or an end? What do you
01:08:25 ◼ ► think about the one I laid out earlier about like, with before we were both full time from that to
01:08:30 ◼ ► 2020 and 2020 to now, do you feel like that is work, works? Do you think there's more like?
01:08:36 ◼ ► I think that you've probably established that like that 2014 to 2020 was probably the start
01:08:44 ◼ ► and that 2020 onwards is probably the middle. I would say we're in the middle. I don't even think
01:08:49 ◼ ► we're in the middle of the middle. You know what I mean? But like, I just feel like life cycle at
01:08:54 ◼ ► the company is the middle, but I also don't really feel like in this scenario, start, middle and end
01:08:59 ◼ ► would be equal amounts of time. No, it's more just like mindset. But like, I feel like we are
01:09:05 ◼ ► just firmly middle. Like in the sense of like what we're doing in the sense that we're not trying to
01:09:11 ◼ ► scale anymore when we're not looking to add content anymore. You know, like all this kind of stuff
01:09:19 ◼ ► is like, you know, we're not really in that phase, but we're not near the end. Like at least for us,
01:09:28 ◼ ► right? Like we're not playing an exit, you know, we're not planning on what happens after us.
01:09:32 ◼ ► Although we do have a document now of what happens in emergencies because we realized after my car
01:09:37 ◼ ► accident that was probably important to have written down. So which is still a thing we need
01:09:42 ◼ ► to review because I feel like we set it up and haven't reviewed it. But like, yes, that scared
01:09:46 ◼ ► me a lot. I just realized that like, I didn't know what was going on with you. And I didn't know how
01:09:51 ◼ ► to do anything. Like I had no idea. Like if something happened to you, I had no idea what to do.
01:10:03 ◼ ► important thing to me is you. We do. But then there are other people that rely on us. And so
01:10:09 ◼ ► like what I was focused on at that time was like, there needs to be a document that tells us what to
01:10:16 ◼ ► do so that we don't have to think. Because in those moments, the last thing you want to do,
01:10:22 ◼ ► yeah, exactly. The last thing you want to do is sit down and be like, oh, what does Mike do on a
01:10:26 ◼ ► weekly basis? Like, no, like I want to be there for my friend and his family. Something terrible.
01:10:30 ◼ ► What is the bank account number? Like, you know, like these kinds of things where like,
01:10:34 ◼ ► I mean, we've, I feel like I have, I'm sure you have been involved in this kind of thing in
01:10:40 ◼ ► families. Oh yeah. And how difficult it is. And like, I feel like we have way more complicated
01:10:46 ◼ ► stuff than I do in my family. Right? Like something happened to me or something happened to you. I
01:10:53 ◼ ► feel like it would be more complicated than if something like just from a logistical standpoint,
01:10:57 ◼ ► than if something happened in my immediate family. Like all of the things that would have to be taken
01:11:03 ◼ ► care of and the fact that we span the globe. Yeah. Yeah. Which comes with some like really
01:11:09 ◼ ► hairy financial complications. Yep. So strange. Like having someone here in the US who has access
01:11:16 ◼ ► to our bank account, that's not me. Right. We had to go through that years ago because I can't.
01:11:20 ◼ ► Something does happen to me and you gotta, you know, you need the money's here, right? It's in
01:11:25 ◼ ► America. The bank won't ever let me log into the online bank. No, it locks us out every time. You
01:11:34 ◼ ► have you ever talked to your partner in your podcast voice by mistake? There's no difference
01:11:38 ◼ ► anymore. Do you, let me expand the question. Have you ever talked to somebody in your podcast
01:11:44 ◼ ► advertising voice? Cause that is different, I think slightly. Oh, cause that's reading. So this
01:11:49 ◼ ► happened to me, has happened to me many times, like reading a book with my kids and I slip into
01:11:54 ◼ ► my podcast ad voice. Oh, I guess, I mean, I haven't done that, but I guess, you know what?
01:12:02 ◼ ► I've probably done that kind of thing. If I have to, like, when I did a speech recently,
01:12:06 ◼ ► I was the best man and I probably did that in my podcast advertising voice. Um, so yeah, I guess
01:12:12 ◼ ► see, that's the thing is like my reading voice is a more fake voice, I suppose. Right. Cause it's
01:12:17 ◼ ► like that, right? Like it's that right. Like the little rhythm stuff that I do, but like my actual
01:12:26 ◼ ► speaking voice and my podcast voice, they are now effectively the same, which is why I have this
01:12:32 ◼ ► like weird accent. And I say things like mobile, you know, and like, like, I don't just say those
01:12:38 ◼ ► on the shows anymore. Like that's just my language, you know, uh, the only ever, I guess the only
01:12:44 ◼ ► thing for me is like, if I ever actually slip into my non podcast voice, that's the weird thing.
01:12:53 ◼ ► maybe I like slip backwards into my cockney accent a little bit more, you know, a little more British.
01:12:59 ◼ ► Yeah. But outside of that, no, but yeah, the reading one is not one that I've encountered yet,
01:13:14 ◼ ► People now nine years in understand it. When I say I own a podcast company for a living,
01:13:23 ◼ ► I have owned a podcast company for nine years and still don't feel comfortable talking about it.
01:13:27 ◼ ► Yeah. There's that too. I don't know what surprised me. I mean, we had a lot of experience before
01:13:33 ◼ ► relay through 70 decibels and through our time at five by five. So I don't, I don't know. Does
01:13:38 ◼ ► it, I mean, does this something jump out at you? Oh yes. I have something just how many spammy
01:13:44 ◼ ► pitches we get on a daily basis for, for technology in our field. It is truly unbelievable.
01:13:51 ◼ ► Like I never would have imagined there could be so many companies trying to revolutionize
01:13:56 ◼ ► podcasting as there are. I would say it is more than one, but less than five on a daily basis.
01:14:03 ◼ ► Yep. Of companies that are like, Hey, I'm going to make everything better for you. You know what I'm
01:14:09 ◼ ► like, you know, it's just like, Oh my God. Like the best part is, so we have a bunch of email
01:14:14 ◼ ► addresses like hello. Plus connected at relay FM. Hello. Plus MPU really not a femme for
01:14:23 ◼ ► but they're all out there. And the best part is when someone sends one of those emails to a bunch
01:14:28 ◼ ► of those, because they all ended up in our shared inbox, long time followup. You know, I had a couple
01:14:32 ◼ ► of episode arc where I was really mad about the new spark, right. And all the changes that they
01:14:37 ◼ ► made. Some of them are still not great. They've made some stuff better. One of the great features
01:14:41 ◼ ► is they have like the fact that you can block people, you can block sender or block domain.
01:14:50 ◼ ► Can I just name one of these companies? This is one company called picked cherries, which is like
01:14:55 ◼ ► the worst name ever in my mind. And it's meant to be like cherry picked segments, right? That's what
01:15:02 ◼ ► they're going for. Oh yeah. Oh, but picked cherries, all capital letters, social podcast sharing.
01:15:07 ◼ ► Absolutely terrible. And these people like on a, I don't know, six week basis or whatever,
01:15:14 ◼ ► would just send an email to every single show. Like I think what a lot of these companies do is
01:15:20 ◼ ► they scrape the podcast database for the email addresses that are in the RSS feeds, which I
01:15:26 ◼ ► think has now been, I was very happy about this. Apple took this away. It's too late for us,
01:15:31 ◼ ► but good for other people that like, that's not actually a public part anymore. Yeah. It's not
01:15:36 ◼ ► required in the spec anymore. It's not required anymore, which is great. But yeah, we get emails
01:15:40 ◼ ► from this picked cherries company and they will just email like every few weeks or whatever.
01:15:45 ◼ ► They will send a bunch of emails and then they will send the followup email because they're just
01:15:50 ◼ ► not sure if we got it. Cause that's the only reason we wouldn't have responded is that we
01:15:53 ◼ ► didn't get it. Cause obviously this is a great deal for everybody. They have patented technology,
01:15:58 ◼ ► Steven, apparently. And also what I love about this is it is an app. They want you to use that
01:16:05 ◼ ► app. Like everyone's going to use this app when reels and TikTok exists. Yeah. You know,
01:16:13 ◼ ► No, that ain't it. All right. Let me wrap us up with a question from Jason. Not that Jason,
01:16:20 ◼ ► I don't think. What is something either of you do in running the business of relay today that
01:16:25 ◼ ► you wish you had been doing from the outset? I'm going to say something some people aren't
01:16:30 ◼ ► going to like. Time tracking. Oh, why aren't people going to like that? People get mad when
01:16:38 ◼ ► you guys talk about it on cortex. You know, I see. No, no. No one gets mad that we talk about time
01:16:42 ◼ ► tracking. I'll tell you that people love it. People get mad that we don't talk about time tracking
01:16:56 ◼ ► Time tracking is not boring. I didn't time track faithfully for a long time. I've been doing it now
01:17:01 ◼ ► about three years and what it gives me in terms of visibility and how I'm actually spending my time
01:17:15 ◼ ► objective data to make decisions earlier on about things. So that's my answer. That is good.
01:17:21 ◼ ► It's complicated for me for the business part. Like that's where I struggle with it. Like there
01:17:34 ◼ ► So I edit shows too many shows for too long. And now I don't really do so much of that anymore.
01:17:51 ◼ ► And I don't want to reuse like, you know, hiring someone is also not realistic, right? Like,
01:18:00 ◼ ► Some of our really boring internal processes are better using Google Sheets less for things. Like
01:18:07 ◼ ► we use Google Sheets for everything, and that was not the right choice for a long time. Let me still
01:18:13 ◼ ► use Google Sheets for a lot of stuff and it's really good. But we also have some numbers,
01:18:17 ◼ ► sheets floating around. I just mean like a system that does calculation for me rather than be.
01:18:23 ◼ ► Oh yes. We've also, there was a time, built some software with a Google Sheet and a calculator and
01:18:28 ◼ ► work out how much to pay everybody. Yeah. That's handled in software now. Yeah. So like that,
01:18:39 ◼ ► but we just didn't really have any other way of doing it. I think, I think that does it. Thank you
01:18:44 ◼ ► all for an amazing nine years. And remember if you are a member of Connected or any other show here on
01:18:50 ◼ ► Relay FM, keep an eye out for the ticket link on Friday for our 10th anniversary show happening in
01:18:55 ◼ ► London in July of next year. If you're not a member and you're interested in longer ad-free
01:19:01 ◼ ► versions of this show, or maybe your other favorite Relay shows, you can learn a lot more
01:19:06 ◼ ► at relay.fm/membership. There's a bunch of stuff there that tells you all the cool benefits you get.
01:19:11 ◼ ► It's a great program and we thank you all for checking it out. And we'll be talking publicly
01:19:17 ◼ ► on social media and on shows starting on Monday about the ticket link for non-members. I know
01:19:24 ◼ ► what people are going to ask us this question a lot, but we do not have times to tell you because
01:19:29 ◼ ► it's about when the venue will put the ticket link up and then when we'll share it. So like,
01:19:40 ◼ ► Buy early, buy often. That's what I say. Well, you don't need to buy often, but buy early.
01:19:51 ◼ ► Going back and forth to the venue, right? There's always questions and things. And there was a
01:19:55 ◼ ► question about what our babes in arms policy was going to be. And like, I know what that means,
01:20:01 ◼ ► right? It means like if you have a small child, can they sit with you? But that is not a phrase
01:20:04 ◼ ► that we use. I don't know what the American phrase would be, but something about that phrase tickled
01:20:09 ◼ ► me in a way that I did not expect that I still think it's funny. Like babes in arms. That is a
01:20:14 ◼ ► very English to me. Like that is an incredibly English saying, babes in arms. Because also,
01:20:23 ◼ ► what it doesn't mean is like your hot babe. You know what I mean? It actually means baby.
01:21:14 ◼ ► Family Fortunes, which is the name of the show in the UK. Get used to the fact that everything's
01:21:19 ◼ ► going to be UK focused because that's where we're going to be. So it would be Family Fortunes.
01:21:39 ◼ ► you know, simple as possible. I will say there will be a link in the show notes to our fifth
01:21:46 ◼ ► anniversary show. We did have a YouTube video of that because it was not so expensive to work
01:21:52 ◼ ► with video that year. So I will have a link to that if you want to get an idea of what it will be.
01:22:01 ◼ ► If you want to find links to the stuff we spoke about, including our long history of doing this
01:22:06 ◼ ► Q&A in different places, check out the links. They were in your podcast player. They're also
01:22:11 ◼ ► on the web at relay.fm/connected/463. If you want more of us, you can find us online. Federico
01:22:19 ◼ ► should be back next week, but he of course is the editor in chief of maxstories.net and he is on
01:22:24 ◼ ► Mastodon as Vitici at maxstories.net. You can find Mike on a bunch of other great shows here on relay.fm.
01:22:32 ◼ ► He's also the co-founder of Cortex Brand, which I'm sure y'all are busy with the holidays. They're
01:22:36 ◼ ► not that far away, right? Oh, Steven. Is that something else you have on top of Live Show and
01:22:42 ◼ ► Podcast-a-Thon and St. Jude and everything else? I'll tell you about it, Layah. It's just rough
01:22:47 ◼ ► right now. Yeah, I'm not asking for a spill of the beans. I know, I know you're not, but like I should
01:22:52 ◼ ► tell you and it's bad. It's just scary. Scary is what I'm going for. If you want to follow along
01:22:58 ◼ ► with Mike and his adventures, he is on threads as imike and he's on Mastodon as imike@mike.social.
01:23:06 ◼ ► You can find me on MacPowerUsers every Sunday afternoon here on relay.fm. This coming episode,
01:23:12 ◼ ► we have Casey Liss on to talk about Call Sheet. Oh, great. And talk about Plex and his whole media
01:23:18 ◼ ► management system. It's a really good episode. Oh, good. I know what chapter I'll listen to and what
01:23:22 ◼ ► chapter I'll skip, so that's good. You're going to skip Call Sheet? I've heard about it too many
01:23:27 ◼ ► times at this point. You know what I'm saying? Give me some Plex. Plex me up. Plex me up. So
01:23:33 ◼ ► that's coming Sunday. You can find my writing at 512pixels.net. You can follow me on social media
01:23:37 ◼ ► as ismh86 on threads and ismh@eworld.social on the don. I'd like to thank our sponsors this week,
01:23:46 ◼ ► the wonderful folks at NetSuite, Squarespace and ZocDoc. Links to all of them are also in the show