83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business #18: Chris Van Vliet on Wrestling Content Creation

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

In this edition of "Strictly Business," Eric Bischoff has the week off! Instead, Jon Alba is joined by award-winning podcaster and content creator Chris Van Vliet to discuss the business of content creation in pro wrestling, how to monetize video and audio, and tips for those who want to get started! Special thanks to this week's sponsors! Stamps.com- Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/BISCHOFF. Empiraa- Sign up now and receive free onboarding, your first 14 days for free, and 24/7 support. Get ahead of the game and save 20% on your subscription by using the code 'wrestlebiz' at checkout. Launch your business plan faster and with less effort than ever before. Visit www.empiraa.com/eric today and start your journey to success! FOLLOW ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA at https://83weekslinks.com/ Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at SaveWithConrad.com Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9 over on AdFreeShows.com. That's less than 15 cents an episode each month! You can also listen to them directly through Apple Podcasts or your other regular podcast apps! AdFreeShows.com also has thousands of hours worth of bonus content including popular series like Title Chase, Eric Fires Back, Conversations with Conrad, Mike Chioda's Mailbag and many more! Plus, live, interactive virtual chats with your favorite podcasts hosts and wrestling legends. All that and much more! Sign up today at AdFreeShows.com! If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on Strictly Business. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to AdvertiseWithEric.com now and find out more about advertising with Strictly Business. Get all of your Strictly Business merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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No house payments for two months. It's savewithconrad.com. How's it going, everyone? It's time for another edition of Strictly Business right here on the ad-free shows and podcast Heat Networks. I am John Alba. Now, normally every week, this is Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff. But unfortunately this week, Eric is unable to join us. But we wanted to make sure that we got you your favorite conversations about the business of the business. That's what we like to do here on Strictly Business. And I am so grateful to be joined by one of my favorite people in wrestling quite frankly, not just wrestling media. That is Chris Van Vleet. And Chris, you are a freaking superstar. I appreciate you hopping on here. And we're going to have a great conversation about the business of pro wrestling podcasting. How are you, my friend? John, always good to see you. Thank you so much for having me on. And yeah, with Eric off today, you've got a much less talented but slightly better looking co-host today. Oh, okay. That is a hot take right there. That is a

take, because I know that you had Eric come on out to your studios out there in Las Vegas. And there was a lot of talent on screen. There was a lot of hair on screen there. It was good. What was that experience like having him out there in studio? He came back and he was like, dude, this was one of the easiest interviews I've ever done. It was such a great conversation. And look, you know, I'm all about gratitude.

Like I end all my conversations asking my guests, what are three things you're grateful for? So when Eric Bischoff comes out with a book called Grateful, I'm like, no brainer like we got to do this so i've had i think that was my third interview with eric and he's such a pro and i i love the way that he looks at the business and you know this this podcast strictly business makes so much sense for him to be one of the hosts of because he looks at wrestling as a business and his take on things especially with everything that he's experienced in his career is so so interesting So a great conversation with him about wrestling and just a great conversation in general. I have totally changed the way that I look at wrestling just from doing this show.

There are things that Eric and I talk about. And I think if you listen to the show, you know, Eric and I certainly do not agree on everything when it comes to. Really? We don't agree on everything when it comes to how modern wrestling is portrayed. But he has taught me to think about wrestling in a very, different way than I did prior to us doing the show. And I have such a great appreciation for his perspective, especially, and you're a TV guy as well, as TV junkies, there's just this element of curiosity that I feel like people like you and I have about pro wrestling presentation. And

that's what I love that he's able to give every single week here on Strictly Business. I think one of the biggest reminders in talking to Eric and listening to Strictly Business is that pro wrestling is a television program. And I think that a lot of people forget when they're tuning in on Monday or Wednesday or Friday or whatever day you happen to watch your particular show, that you're watching a television show that starts at a certain time that has to go to commercial at an exact second on the broadcast. And I think people forget that, like, while there is some incredible athletics and great

storytelling going on in the ring, there's a whole business behind this that nobody's even thinking about and it's so it's such a nice reminder when you talk to eric of like oh yeah it's a television show the way that shows are structured the little production elements they're all so important to it and i'm grateful every single week that we have you guys here tuning in to strictly business with eric bischoff again if you're not subscribed already head on over to the 83 weeks feed 83 weeks dot com or you can also get it on the 83 weeks youtube channel i do apologize that we're few days late for this. As I said, Eric's had a few scheduling conflicts. And I just wanted to get something out there this week because we got some great partners here on Strictly Business

like our friends over at Impera, who help you get everything together for your business plan. You're going to hear about them in just a few minutes here on Strictly Business. But Chris, I wanted to bring you on in particular because your path has always been so fascinating to me. And if you're an ad-free shows.com subscriber, you've heard Chris talk about his journey a lot, But we're not going to talk about your journey here per se, Chris, because you have figured out a very specific niche in this pro wrestling space that has allowed you to monetize content, create different content that other content creators are not putting out there, and in the process, putting a high quality product out at the same time. And I just would love to know more about how you do what you do. Tell us how the sauce is made over the course of this next hour. And I guess I'll start by asking for those who may not be familiar with what you do, Chris, what is your weekly output like in terms of content creation?

I think that anybody that's watching this or listening to this right now might be familiar with the interviews that I have on my YouTube channel or my podcast, Insight with Chris Van Fleet. And I've been so fortunate throughout my career to talk to some of the biggest faces, the biggest names on the planet. Obviously, we'll talk a lot about wrestling here, but I've also had interviews with people like Tom Cruise and Oprah. and Morgan Freeman, Leonardo DiCaprio. But in the wrestling space,

I've interviewed people like The Rock, 10 times, not that I'm counting. Yeah, whatever, who's counting? I've interviewed Eric Bischoff, Hulk Hogan, Rick Flair, John Sina, recently just had The Undertaker on my show. And I just love to be able to like peel back the layers

and like get to who the root of who that person is. And that's always what I've been fascinated by. I've been fascinated by reverse. engineering someone's success and being able to bring it back to where you might be in your journey. Because it's saying it's so easy to look at someone who's super successful and go, oh, man, I could never do that. I could never do that. But then when you start to peel back the layers and go, oh, wow, they were where I'm at right now 15 years ago or five years ago or, you know, however old they happen to be. So the biggest thing I think in terms of this podcast and

strictly business is about 10 years ago, I was able to start monetizing these interviews, especially with pro wrestlers. And I had two very valuable things that were kind of combining together. One was access. You and I have worked in television our entire careers. I was so fortunate to be able to interview actors and comedians and musicians. And then every once in a while, WWE would come to town and you'd be able to do an interview with whichever superstar was available for media that day. And it was so often just like, hey, the Ms. Dolf Ziegler, Jack Swaguer, or McFolley, whoever it happens to be, hey, great to have you in studio and ticket start at $15. Go out and see Smackdown tonight. Go out and see Raw tonight. I would dig like a little bit deeper

and I would ask them questions that I just always wanted to know the answer to. And they're like, wait, they're like, wait, who is this guy? What's going on here? It's like when you're in a foreign country and you start speaking the language there, they're like, wait a second. What of us? Did he just say bump? What? Right. So I think that like you dig a little bit deeper and, you know, we're talking 2011 and 12 at this point.

Nobody was really doing that. And it was like the combination of access combined with the value of we were going to put this interview on TV and it was going to go on YouTube. And some of those interviews got millions of views. And that combining together was like this perfect storm for me. You said some of the. videos got millions of views there is an element of luck in hitting the algorithm in the right way is there not oh absolutely and i think that i realized early on like titles on youtube and this is still a thing to this day by the way titles on youtube should not be looked at as titles they should be

looked at as headlines and when i was titling interviews like jeff hardy interview March 2011, it wouldn't get very many views. No. But then when I would title it kind of as a promise of like, this is the title of the interview and what you're going to see here.

Here's the promise of what you're going to see during this interview. Boy, those videos just started ticking way up. That's so funny that you just said the promise. Because in TV writing, I was always taught this. I'm sure you were probably taught similar. With your teases, when you're teasing what's coming up, you always want to make a promise

that's what you want to promise the viewers this is what you're going to get on the other side of this break because then you're going to deliver on it so if you promise them something then they know exactly what they're in store for and what I mean by that

it's different than just being like if you're at the top of a newscast and you're saying you know coming up on the news at 11 a man breaks into a house well that's not promising the viewer anything now if you say coming up tonight at 11 a man breaks in the house we'll show you

why this rattled the community well now you're promising the viewer something that you're going to offer them something so that's so interesting to me my favorite news tease is they would tell you basically everything that happens like and then it would the promise the tease would always be and you'll never believe what happened next will i will i never believe it you know never believe it john but that's so interesting because there are going to be people let's i mean let's start on this i guess at the very ground level here i want to have you here because think about how many people are wrestling fans and want to create content where they talk about pro wrestling for a living that's why you and i are here in the first place right like we're having this conversation because

we both at some point in our lives said wow that that would be really cool yeah that's where the baseline starts. So when you have thousands of people, Chris, who are looking to do the same thing that you're doing, how do you go about differentiating yourself from that? I think we got to start way back here. So I think the internet really democratized this for everybody. Because if you go pre-internet, who was making money off of wrestling other than the wrestlers and the promoters? Just the wrestlers and promoters, absolutely. And I think there was a very small amount of people that either had a magazine. Maybe they had a dirt sheet, but you probably weren't making a lot of money off a dirt sheet, you know, 80s or 90s. You might have made some money by taking photos at

events and selling them afterwards. And then there was a real small market at that time for like those shoot interviews like RF video or selling illegal videos like on VHS. Like, oh man, I've got Royal Rumble 1998 and I'll sell it to you on VHS for $15 or something. that was really it and then the internet changed everything and then i would argue when podcasts and youtube really started to become a thing in the late 2000s early 2010s that changed the game for everybody and now you've got people who are making money doing like live watchalongs on twitch with a stream or live watchalongs on youtube and they're just getting like tip money from people or they're getting sponsorship money like the amount of money

that is now being made from people who have never taken a bump before. And that's no disrespect to somebody's never taken a bump. But the amount of people that are able to make money off this is really mind-blowing. And the possibility really is there for anybody who wants to put in the time and wants to bring the value. That's a very fast point that you bring up there, that there's opportunities there for people who want to put the time in and want to provide value. But my counterpoint to that would be there are. people, Chris, who work their asses off and they will just put videos out every single day talking about what happened in the wrestling world this day. They'll put podcasts out talking

about what happened in the wrestling world today. And then they see no tangible results from it. That's a frustrating process for a lot of people, especially if they are trying to actually make some money off this or get their product down in front of people that can consume it. What is your response to something like that? Your goal can't be to make money off the bat. Like I think your goal should be to enjoy the process of creating it. Like enjoy every single step of the process. And then maybe six months, a year, two years, whatever down the road, maybe you could start to make some money off of it. But if you're not enjoying the process and loving this, then you're taking the wrong approach to this. So I would say that you've got to start

with that. Also, what makes you different? If there's so many channels out there and there's so many podcasts out there that are just doing a recap or just giving their hot takes got to love everybody's hot takes on everything here right geez and this will be a completely different subject but small tangent here there is way too much negativity when talking about pro wrestling like maybe serve up a little bit of positivity maybe that could be your you're the difference maker there yeah i want to piggyback on that for a second here because we like talking about current events here too on strictly business for example this yeah and i know this is a conversation i'd never be able to have with Eric because Eric could be like, no, no, no, no.

This whole El Ejo del Vikingo, Kenny Omega thing that has happened on wrestling Twitter this past week. For those of you not aware, Tony Kahn announced this Kenny Omega, Eho del Vikingo match for Dynamite this coming week. It's a dream match for people who love pro wrestling. E.L. Del Vikingo, if you've never seen him, he might be the best luchador of his generation. and so many people, Chris, are losing their freaking minds over the fact that this was dropped as a Twitter announcement

six days ahead of the show rather than shown on TV. And like, I understand the argument of, hey, I want to see a vignette. And they did show one on Rampage. But it's like, what these wrestling companies do has no effect on me as someone who's not an employee of any of these companies, like 99% of fans. And I feel like people waste so much.

much energy getting angry about that that is such a great point like what a waste of your energy and every single day you've got the ability to focus on positive things and negative things i really don't understand why people are like shouting at clouds all the time like it doesn't really matter especially like it's if it's not impacting your bottom line specifically which listen if it's impacting your bottom line then i understand the gripes i understand the reason to complain but And there's some creators out there, and I'm not going to name names, but I'm sure some will pop to mind for anybody listening to this. But there's some creators out there that just thrive on negativity. And I think that for some of them, that's kind of a bit of a gimmick that they're playing.

Because let's be honest, you can't watch an entire episode of Raw, Dynamite, Rampage, Smackdown, Impact, and just see negative things. Then you don't like wrestling at that point. Yeah. And so, and that's the other thing. Like if all you're doing is picking out the worst parts of the show, show every single week. Do you, do you really like wrestling? You're hate watching. Yeah, seriously. We should make that a hashtag. Hashtag hate watching. Send it to us at 83 weeks. But so to get back to your point, you're saying that you can't just get by by just being a podcast that has hot takes and recaps this up.

Because I think there was a time, Chris. As someone who, that's how I kind of broke into wrestling podcasting. I had a podcast that wasn't crazy successful, but it has. a sizable audience because that's what we were pretty much doing. But we started it back in 2014 when we were still kind of ahead of that podcast boom. Now it's just so saturated. You can't really stand out that way. Yeah. And I think one of the biggest ways to stand out is just consistency. And I will shout out my friend Jason Solomon, Salomon, Solomonster. Like he's just been putting the work in every single week, week in, week in, week out, month in, month out, year and year out. And Jason is so insanely talented with what he does. But if he were to start today,

he obviously wouldn't have the success that he's having because it's been taking that time for him to really build this up. So I think it's consistency and it's continuing to deliver. Like we talk about promises with a YouTube title. I think when you're starting a podcast, and we're kind of jumping all over the place here. But with a podcast, the promise needs to be I am going to show up every week on this day or these days. And if you don't, if you say new episodes every Tuesday and Friday and you miss one of them, why should I believe anything you say now? 100%. And you're breaking promises. You're breaking that trust with your audience. Like, it killed me that we weren't able to deliver this week's episode on time because I know how valuable

that connection that we have with our audiences. Obviously, there were some extenuating circumstances that we weren't able to do it. And I think. people who, especially if you're subscribed to ad-free shows.com, you very much know how dedicated Eric Bischoff is and he doesn't take that stuff lightly. But you're 100% right on that, Chris. And you're talking about bouncing around. Guys, if you're not familiar with Chris's podcasting, which if you're not, you should be by now. I'll go subscribe to Insight with Chris Van Bleet. But what makes Chris so great is that this is what all of his show sound like. It's a very conversational delivery and these interviews that he does. And I think that also style,

feel like Chris is something that helps someone stand out as well in creating that connection with an audience. I think that I just didn't want to ask like the typical questions, especially of wrestlers in my interviews. And the people that I really looked up to as broadcasters before I broke into the industry were the people who spoke to the camera and spoke to the viewer like they were talking to a friend. And you know, that that funny news voice that we were doing before when we were talking about news teas. Chris Van Bleed, Strictly Business. Welcome back to another episode of Strictly Business.

John Alba, Chris Van Vleet with you here. Nobody talks like that in real life. So I think for me it was like it was trying to make this sound like an actual conversation instead of just going, this is the question I am going to ask, followed by an answer. This is the next question I'm going to ask. And, you know, the more you do it, the more you do anything, the better you get at it. And I'm now 452 episodes into my podcast, 18 years into my broadcasting career. So it's just a matter of like putting in the time.

And also being able to read the trends because what I was making very small amount of money on in 2011 when my YouTube channel first got monetized, it's very different than what I'm making money from now. Like if you were to interrupt a video in 2012 with an ad read for any sort of product or service, people would click off that immediately. It just wasn't a thing. And now people are kind of, you know, they're used to that being a part of a YouTube video. They're used to that being part of a podcast. And I think it's just reading the trends and going with it and realizing that you're making

content in 2023 for 2023. And I think there's a lot of people that are making content in 20, 23 with something that worked for them in 2019 or 2018 or something like that. The medium has changed, right? Yeah. Like, like, it's not this dramatic change, but it has been a slow change over time where people are understanding that the way we consume whatever content we're consuming, it just has evolved from, I used to think, and I still do believe, by the way, that's

why we have these podcasts in the first place, I do believe there is a lot of value in long-term content, long-form content. But there's also a lot of value, increasing amounts of value, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, because I know you can attest to it, in short-form content with the advent of TikTok and previously before that Vine, which I still miss Vine, for the record. But like, you were just talking to me off air about the YouTube shorts. Where did that shift come from and what do you think the viability is in short firm versus long form podcasting? I will start this with a great example. So if someone says, oh, man, you've got to listen to this podcast and they text you the link to it, there is a very small chance that you're going to listen

to 60 minutes, 90 minutes of that podcast. But if someone says, oh, man, you'll never believe what so-and-so said on this podcast and they send you a clip that's 45 seconds long, you'll probably watch that thing. So I think for me it was, I use my podcast or my main interview as the big kind of chunk, the big piece of content. I then break that up into two to five minute thoughts, which are like widescreen videos on my YouTube, my CVV clips YouTube channel. And then I break that further up into like eight to 10 to 15 shorts, reels, TikToks, whatever you want to call them. And my hope is that those work as breadcrumbs that lead you to the loaf that is the main episode. So the growth for shorts and reels and TikToks has been absurd lately.

I'll totally break the fourth wall here and I'm happy to talk to you about this. My main YouTube channel does like about 2 million views a month, which is, that's pretty solid. Maybe I'm good. Last month, my clips channel, which is the clips and most interesting moments from these interviews, did 62 million views. And I get it. It's so much easier to consume a 20, 30, 30, 40 second clip than a 40, 50, 60 minute interview. So I've just been leaning into what works.

And that may not last forever. I'm going to ride this wave while it's happening right now. But I know that in six months or a year, it's going to be a completely different game. And I will hopefully be able to be ahead of that wave and be able to figure that out as it happens. I was recently a guest on a podcast called Straight Talk Wrestling. Shout out to them. They've got an amazing TikTok account with, I think, half a million TikTok followers. And it was interesting because we did the full interview and then afterwards we specifically shot segments that they were going to use as TikToks. And those videos did hundreds of thousands of views.

And I thought it was so interesting that they were creating content for the platform, which which I still, for whatever reason, think people aren't doing enough of. Just creating platform-specific content? Yeah. So we had the full interview. And then afterwards, they have a great game where it's like, guess the wrestler, 60 seconds go. And then you have to ask yes or no questions.

And you finally get who it is at the end. That works out so well on TikTok because it forces people to watch to the end like, is Chris going to get it or is he not? Like, is he good at this or not? Then we did another one of fill in the blank. and it was like questions like this blank needs to end Roman reigns streak or blank deserves a better push. And I was like, this is so brilliant that you're creating the separate content.

And I think there's not enough people that are doing that. Well, when you say something like that to me, Chris, I hear in the back of my head, when you're going about creating content, you need some sort of a game plan, right? You need some sort of a workflow and a plan. Well, I'm going to ask you about yours in just a second, but first I want to talk about our pals over at Empira here with Strictly Business because Empira is quite frankly the most valuable tool that any business can find to help plan for the future by turning their ideas into actual plans and concepts.

I've been talking about this for a few weeks now here on Strictly Business. this is not just a gimmick that Eric and I have bought into. This is something that we are actually cohesively using together to help make strictly business as good of a product as we can. Because Impera, with two A's, by the way, allows business owners to work on the business, not in the business. And there's such a big difference between working on something

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And that's not a gimmick. I mean this. I've hit these guys up at like three in the morning and they got back to me. It's amazing. Get ahead of the game now. Save 20% on your subscription by using code wrestle biz. That's W-R-E-S-T-L-E-B-I-Z when you check out. You can launch your business plan faster and with less effort than ever before with our pals over at Empira. Visit www. www.impera.com slash Eric. That's E-M-P-I-A-A-A dot com forward slash Eric and start your journey to success because we are big believers here on Strictly Business that everyone needs a plan, and it's okay if you need a little help along the way in getting there. You've heard the headlines. Inflation, rising tariffs, recession fears. With the national debt

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Get ahead of a Poison Emergency. Call the Poison Helpline, 1-800-222-2-2-2. And that's something, too, Chris. Like, it's okay to lean on others, right, when you're talking about content creation and helping build your own platform. I think you have to. I mean, find somebody who's already been there and just ask for directions. So when I started my podcast specifically, my YouTube channel had been around for, I think, seven years at that point in 2019. It was actually a conversation I had with Ryback. I had done an interview with him recently, and his podcast was doing pretty well. And he goes, dude, I think you'd do really well if you had a podcast.

I'm like, I don't know. I think it's going to cannibalize my viewers. And I was making some money on YouTube. And I didn't see at that point in time any potential to make money on my podcast. And he goes, just do it. trust me and I think it'll be like a pretty good thing for you and he was right and he told me like here's the hosting you need here's the type of microphone you need and he kind of walked me through that process so I would say reach out to somebody who's already done it and you can figure

things out from there and I got to correct myself it's straight shoot podcast that I wanted to shout out straight shoot podcast and these guys they're they're just crushing it on TikTok and I would say that to kind of piggyback off of that find the platform that's really working for you. And go all in on that. If you're not great on TikTok, but you're crushing it on, I don't know, YouTube or Twitter, well, I think that the writing's on the wall, you know, go all in there. I think some would argue the writing's on the wall for Twitter as well. It's been really interesting to see what happens. That's been the hardest part for me, honestly, because like the only platform that I really have had any degree of momentum with is

Twitter. And, man, some of the changes that have been happening. lately have been really affecting my engagement levels. It's actually been really fascinating, but also kind of scary to see unfold for me personally. But I want to ask you then off that, platforms change all the time. How have you dealt with trying to pivot with them? The biggest adjustment and pivot and change that I've done recently is going all in on the vertical video on YouTube. I used to be all about like, all right, every video I'm going to post in my YouTube channel is going to be 40 minutes long, 60 minutes long.

We're TV guys. That's how it is. Exactly. And I wanted to tell a full story, right? And now I'm posting, I don't know, 70, 75 vertical videos a month, which is, you know, I didn't know that sounds like a lot. But if we take this back two years ago, I had a friend that was like, try posting one, this is when Instagram Reels were pretty new.

try posting one reel a day, do a 30 day challenge, one reel a day for 30 days. And I found it like immensely hard to do that. And I didn't quite know what my content was supposed to look like on there. This is back when TikTok was all about dancing. And I certainly had no interest in doing that. And this is when like I think stuff just, I don't know, it was different. And I was like, what if I just start taking like my best moments from these interviews and putting them up there? and I've had a lot of success with that, but I think it's also just listening to your audience. And you're going to find out pretty quickly what works and what doesn't work. That's a really good point because I feel like you have to constantly be on the pulse

when you're a content creator of recognizing what works and what doesn't work. How do you deal with the disappointment of putting a lot of work into something and then seeing that it's not necessarily getting the feedback or the viewership that you were hoping that it was going to? And this happens to every content creator. And I think all you can do is learn from that and move on to the next one. And sometimes in the world and the algorithm and the world of YouTube and TikTok, sometimes something picks up after weeks or months and it might surprise you. But I think you just take it and you just kind of move on to the next one. And that's all you really can do. It's not a loss. It's just an opportunity to learn from there and move on. why is it in your opinion that pro wrestling has become such an arena for so many different people trying to get in on the content creation game like there's there's sports right like and there are a million sports podcasts out there how many random podcasts can you find two guys talking fantasy football right there's a million and i feel like pro wrestling's not that far behind from the general sports discourse why is Is that? I mean, the fact that wrestling has its own category in podcasting, I think, says a lot about the fact that, like, there's a lot of content out there. And I think it's because everybody

has an opinion. Right or wrong, everybody has an opinion. And when you're talking about sports and you're talking about baseball, football, hockey, golf, whatever it happens to be, things are objective. You know, you win a game or you lose a game in wrestling. It's all subjective. And I think that because it's subjective, everybody can have an opinion and then you don't know what's going to happen on the next episode of whatever show it is that you like to watch. So now you can speculate. And I think that that's what it is. It's the fact that there can be so many conversations around this. What is, since there are so many conversations about it, you said you dislike all the hate discourse.

Oh, so much. What is your biggest pet peeve when you see other people trying to create content? Is there something that maybe an inexperienced podcaster or video creator does that you just want to be like, hey man, like here's what you got to do. Stop that. And here's how you can make that better. What's one piece of advice you would give on that front? I feel like we could talk for like three hours.

Please, by all means. Because listen, people are going to listen to this, Chris. and they'd be like, wow, you know, I've always kind of want to start a wrestling podcast, so what should I avoid doing? And I hope that in some ways, like me and you talking about this does like light that fire in someone and does like, maybe serves as a little bit of a master class of like, okay, here's what you have to do in order to make this happen. I think I'm going to speak to interviews specifically and then we can talk about content

creation after that. I think with interviews, everybody swings for the fences immediately. People go, I really want to interview wrestlers. And they're talking about, like, I want to interview the Undertaker and the Rock and Triple H and, you know, Sean Michael is like, okay, hold on. Like, bump the brakes here a little bit, okay? And I think the first thing that people need to do is find an independent wrestling show that's near you.

Wherever you live, there's an independent wrestling show within an hour, two or three, you know, drive from where you live. So go to your local independent wrestling show. Speak to the promoter and say, hey, here's who I am, lead with value always, and go here's what I can bring for you, your company and the people who work for you and start to interview literally anybody who will say yes. And I think that not enough people are willing to do that. They're blindly sending emails to like WWE Hall of Famers, which that's great, you know,

dream big, but you got to start somewhere. Dude, I'm so glad you said that because I mean, you follow me, you know this. And I think anyone who follows me knows I'm such a huge indie wrestling proponent. I'm so big on promoting the Indies because the reality is everyone that you see on television today, for the most part, I'd say a good 70% of them started in independent wrestling in some way, right? So you never know if you're going to, you know, mom, pa's restaurant in Brewer, Maine, and there's a show going on in front of 50 people with hashtag Mikey versus, you know, I don't know, insert, you know, name here. You never know who on that show might one day turn into something special.

I'll give you an example of this. The first indie I ever worked was this small promotion called IWE in Brewer, Maine specifically. That's why I use that. And their first woman's champion was a girl who she started working there, maybe 10 matches into her career. That girl ended up being Mercedes-Vernado, Sasha Banks.

Wow. Within, you know, the first six months of her career, she was their women's champion. Now, can you imagine if you took Chris's advice and you paired up with that indie and all of a sudden you're interviewing someone that is going to be a future WrestleMania caliber main eventer? What, what, how much charm is there to that, right? Right. Let me give you an example, the very first independent wrestling show that I went to. I was 16 years old. It was 2000, the year 2000.

And I didn't even know that any wrestling existed. before this was this in Canada it was in Toronto yeah it was in Toronto it was at a bar called Cactus Peets and the ceiling was so low they couldn't jump off the top rope they had to do all their moves off the middle rope and there was a masked female wrestler that was making her debut that day and she wrestled and she was great she wrestled under the name Laughalina a few months later she ended up taking her mask off and started working under the name Gail Kim and it was amazing that I was there for her debut at Cactus Peets in Toronto. So the point of my story here is start with anybody who's going to say yes.

Anybody who's going to say yes. I bet you if you reach out to John Alba and you have a good pitch and you bring lots of value, I bet John Alba would do an interview. And I'll tell you what. And I know you're similar to that too. But I will say I have turned down interview requests for podcasts when they don't come to me with either professionalism. or if they just say yeah i just want to talk about wrestling with you well let's let's let's

show some value here what are we going to talk about like i'm not someone who requires to know every little minuscule thing we're going to talk about not at all i think the beauty of an interview is you kind of go with the flow on it but it for me and i'm curious your thoughts on this i take note of anyone that carries themselves professionally and has some sort of a game plan for why, because you and I are both busy guys, why is it worth my time to make time for you? And I don't mean that in a mean way by any stretch of imagination, but it's an exchange. Yeah, absolutely, 100%. So I'm amazed by the amount of people that will send an email saying, I'd love for you to be a guest on my podcast called the XYZ podcast.

And then they don't even put a link to the podcast. So you're telling me that I've now got to open up the podcast app. remember the name of it, then type it in, then hit play. Are you kidding me? Like, take the extra three seconds to control C, control V, paste the link. And I've gone on so many podcasts that get 10 viewers in a month, okay? Yeah, same here. But I loved the conversation that I had with the host because the host was professional.

They sent me, hey, this is what the concept of my podcast is. And I'll do those any day of the week. Yeah. But it's when you just have the expectation. Yeah, come. You host a podcast with Eric Bischoff and Matt Hardy and Kurt Angle and all that. Just come talk about that on my show. Give me something to buy into here.

You know what I mean? Yeah. So I would say you've got to have professionalism and you've got to lead with value. And I think that the more that you do it, the better you're going to get. And I say this all the time and I will continue to say it, but I've said it so many times. the best thing about podcasting or YouTube or content creation is that anybody can do it. The worst thing is that anybody can do it. And the bar is so low that, you know, you could have a $10,000 camera and a very expensive

mic, not that I have a $10,000 camera, but you could have a, you know, expensive studio or you could have a phone and you hit record and, you know, your podcasting. And I think that's what's a, that's such a beautiful thing about it. And it's also such a frustrating thing about it because then it puts, you on the same, you know, levels. So if you're going to be on that same level, step it up, like make make it worthwhile for whoever it is that might be your guest and whoever it is is going to invest their time into listening to it because there's nothing that's more valuable than time because you're never going to get it back. No, you're never going to get it back.

And I think that everyone kind of remembers those things in the back of their head at the end of the day too especially if you see someone randomly pop up on social media again you're like oh wait that that was the podcast that i did with that person i remember that and uh didn't leave the best taste in my mouth and all that so that's your advice for interviewing specifically yeah what are the bad habits you see in content creation you know the review shows or the any other sorts that you typically see in the wrestling space number one i think the biggest mistake i see is there's no consistency like you do it one week you don't do it next the next week, you do it one month, you don't do it the next month. So I think be consistent with it.

Like if you want to treat this, if you want this to be a job, you have to treat it like a job. You know, if you just showed up every other day to your job at work, well, you probably wouldn't have that job for very long. So I think you've got to be consistent. And look, I get it. Life happens, right? You're super busy with everything else is happening in your life. But if this is an important thing to you, then you've got to make time for it. So I think that that's one of the most important things. Number two is if you are going to do this consistently, buy some sort of a microphone. It could cost you 20 bucks on Amazon, but buy some sort of microphone and figure that out because nobody, perception is reality. And if your podcast looks like garbage and sounds like

garbage or your YouTube channel looks like garbage, sounds like garbage, people are going to think it's garbage. So perception is reality, get just something that's half decent to record with. And I think the other thing is don't lead with negativity. Like don't, like, and I'm not saying like don't try to make things sound like they're better than they are, especially if they're not, but don't lead with negativity because negativity begets negativity. And I just think that that's just a bad slippery slope to be headed down. It's so funny that you make. mention the whole microphone thing because that like that like hits me very hard in my my core I started doing content creation in sports specifically and then I say content creation

because content creation wasn't even really a thing when I started doing this but I was in eighth grade and I was doing live sports talk radio on some platform that no longer exists because I was just so desperate to find anything. I wanted to get the reps. Like you and I have done other interviews where we just talk about how important reps are, right? Reps, as many reps as you can. So even as an eighth grader who was aspiring

to be a sportscaster, I recognize that. And when you're in eighth grade, you don't have any money to your name. Maybe you're doing chores or you get allowance or whatever it is, but you've got nothing to spend money on. Right. So what I did was I jerry-rigged a guitar stand that I had

that I could like raise and lower and I had you remember the video game rock band of course yeah right they had the USB microphone that would come with super crappy you know like not not

great quality but it was something and I would sit down in a chair with my big bulky computer my guitar stand that only got up to like yay high so I'd be like leaning over like this the entire time and my USB microphone from Rockbin

and I would do live sports talk radio online and was it great? No. But it showed that I cared and that I wanted to put out a product that was as close to professional as I could get to professional at the time. And now you could get a USB microphone like a high quality one for like 35 bucks.

Yeah. Anyone could do that. Yeah. Anyone can. I just, I see so much value in that. Yeah. So I think that if this is something that you truly want to do, find somebody in the space who's crushing it. Take a little bit from them. Take a little bit from somebody else who's crushing it. And like put that all together and you'll have a pretty good place to start.

And also like, don't give up. That's the biggest thing is don't give up. Nobody was listening to the Joe Rogan experience on episode seven. In fact, nobody was listening in episode 207. he just kept going because he was enjoying the process of doing it and look at him now almost two thousand episodes in joe rogan's the king of podcasting so i would say once you start just don't stop um and and don't worry because your first episode or your first youtube video your first tic-tok uh tweet instagram real whatever might only get 17 listeners or 17 views just keep going like just keep going and keep building on it and remember that everybody starts It's at zero.

I 100% agree with you. And there's a couple more things I want to pin your brain on. But it's pretty amazing seeing you, Chris, where you know, you had your TV background and then you break into this content creation. That's what you've kind of become known for where the traditional path had always been, ah, you've got to climb the local TV market. So that's how you get to where you want to be. And you kind of created this issue where now you're doing signings at RussellCon.

I'm sure you're mailing out eight by 10. Are you mailing out 8x10s ever? I am mailing out 8 by 10s. You can grab them on my website, Chris VanVleet.com. So I know that if you are mailing out 8 by 10s, Chris Van Vleet, I know you, okay? And I know that you've smartened up

and you're using our friends over at stamps.com because listen, when you're just overwhelmed with all these 8 by 10 requests that they want to see your handsome face for whatever their own personal reasons are, Chris Van Lee. I would say it's just to pay tribute to you. You know that you're going to be shipping all over the country. And it can be tedious to have to run to the post office when you're making like 45 videos a week, if not more than that. You said 70 short form in a month that you were doing. That's just a short form. That's a lot of time. Well, with stamps.com, you don't have to worry about all of that Ballyhoo that comes with to get to the post office at a good time. Instead, you're getting this stuff shipped directly to you

for you to utilize in whatever way you can, or you can print your own postage and shipping labels right from your home or office. It's ready to go in minutes so you can get back to running your business even sooner than you had planned on it. Postage rates, they've increased again. Everything's increasing again. These prices are wild, right? Well, Stamps.com has the best discounts in the industry with rates you literally can't find anywhere else. I'm talking up to 84% off USPS and UPS. Stamps.com has been indispensable for over one million businesses the last 25 years. You can get access to the USPS and UPS shipping services. You need to run your business right from your computer at any time day or night with no lines, no traffic, no waiting.

If you're like Eric Bischoff and you're in Casper, Wyoming, it is really difficult to find ways to get to the post office. Well, Stamps.com has got Eric Bischoff covered. It's got Chris Van Bleet covered and we want to help get you covered as well. Set up your business for success when you get started with Stamps.com today. Sign up with promo code Bischoff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a free digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. You can click the microphone at the top of the page because ultimately we are talking of course, about podcasts and use that promo code Bischoff. They are going to hook you up, and we very much appreciate them here for sponsoring Strictly Business. Hey, guys, Double J. Jeff Jared. Need to call a timeout real quick here. I wanted to tell your listeners what I've been telling my world listeners for a while now.

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20 years ago, Eric took on Stone Cold in the main event on Raw. But the real main event was the confrontation that happened backstage before the show. Now, the next week, I'm sitting in this chair and that same guy. I don't think I had said a word to him that day. I don't think I had seen Rick up until the point he came through that door. And he's, you know, telling me to get up, get out of the chair. he's so pissed off he's bleeding

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Call the Poison Helpline, 1-800-222-2-2-2. All right, Chris, let's continue our conversation. Eric Bischoff told me that same story when we did the interview. Oh, Eric Bischoff told you the story about the backstage confrontations. Yes, it's great. Great story. Go check all that stuff out at ad-freeshows.com, of course, if you haven't already. talking with Chris here about the business of pro wrestling content creation in particular. We've talked a lot about where pro wrestling content creation was.

Where do you think pro wrestling content creation is headed? I think it just continues to grow and continues to get bigger. And wrestling really lends itself to this. I have said this for years and I firmly believe it. Now is the best time ever to be a pro wrestling fan. and subsequently the best time to be a pro wrestler as well. I thought while that video was playing, I thought about something way before I ever worked in television

or ever worked as a broadcaster, I would go to WWE house shows in Toronto and I would sit there with a notepad and I would take notes on the matches and like who wins, who loses. You remember when that was a thing on wrestling websites? You would go and you would read the results of what happened at house shows? people would send in results yes i was one of those people like i didn't want any i wasn't getting any

money from this i wasn't getting any credit maybe my name was in wants to be part of that shared experience yes and i think that that's what's so exciting about all of this and we've talked a lot about the business of this and trying to make money and the monetization of it but there's also something that's just being a part of that world and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to make money from it but the fact that you could be shooting a video at a wrestling convention or you could be helping somebody out at a signing or something like that or you could help produce a podcast. I think the fact that you're in that world is also really exciting and that never existed before. Well, and the biggest thing that exists now that didn't exist back then was access, right?

Access is a huge thing. And I'm not just talking about requesting an independent. interview from AEW or WWE, I'm even talking about like ad free shows, you, and this is not a shill for ad free shows, but like you could have and ask Eric Bischoff anything on any given week where you get to talk to Eric Bischoff. That kind of access just did not exist prior to this evolution of content creation. The only way it really existed before was you went to an autograph signing, you stood in line and then maybe during the 14 seconds while they were signing your 8 by 10 or your belt, you asked them a question and then they gave you a brief response

and then you moved on from there. That was it. Now you've got like you said so much access and the internet has given us, you know, the access of like, you could tweet somebody and there's a pretty good chance they'll see it and there's also a chance they might respond to you. You could slide into someone's DMs. And again, there's a chance they may see it and a chance they may respond. That didn't ever exist before the advent of the internet. Never. And now, that opens doors for people, that opens opportunities for people, or it can work conversely to that where you end up burning some bridges in the process too. So it's always important to be cognizant of how you talk to people and how you go about approaching people for

trying to create these relationships. Yeah, we've talked a lot during this episode about like actually creating the content and being on this side of the microphone or this side of the camera. but if you happen to be a videographer or a photographer, man, again, it goes back to leading with value. Like, just get your foot in the door somewhere. Offer to shoot promo photos at an independent wrestling show or offer to shoot video at a wrestling convention. Offer to do something like that. So you can start to build up your reel, build up your resume, and then more opportunities will come to you easier because they'll go, oh, you worked with so-and-so or you worked at that show. oh wow if they said yes why wouldn't i say yes absolutely it's and it really is like

shooting your shot half the time but you have to do it in a way where you do come across as credible you come across as professional and you also provide it's kind of piggybacking off that point that we talked about earlier you provide the why why am i worth investing time into for you and for me at the same time, I think that's a huge element that a lot of people can't provide when they're coming up with ideas for content creation. And I think that's also the core of your content in general. Why should people take time out of their day to listen to what you're putting out? And I understand that you and I are very fortunate because we have the background of broadcasting that lends a lot of credibility to podcasting to content creation,

to YouTube to making clips for social media, I get that. If we take this back to like 2018, 2019, when my YouTube channel was really growing with wrestling content specifically, I was just saying yes to every opportunity that was presented to me. And a perfect example of that was when Chris Jericho signed with AEW, I was connected with Chris Jericho through a mutual friend. And I happened to, through that mutual friend, reach out to Chris Jericho. And I had done an interview with him, maybe like six.

months before when he was touring with Fossey and I said hey congrats on the AEW thing would you want to do an interview and he said well I'm doing a live podcast in Ocala Florida and I was living in Miami at the time and I looked at a map and I went man that's like four hours away that's horse country baby that's far but it was like he said yes and that was all I needed yeah and I drove up there four hours I think on the way back we were editing the video in the car, me and my buddy Daniel, the laptop died. We ended up stopping at a service station to plug in the laptop. And I think that there's, unfortunately, a lot of people that aren't willing to do that.

They go, oh, well, man, so-and-so said they'd do an interview, but they live in Texas and I live wherever. It's like, okay, like, do you have a car? Could you take a flight there? like I put so many of these expenses on my own credit card or pay for them out of my own pocket just because someone said yes or I would piggyback on like my dad and I go to a different major league baseball stadium every single year and it's this amazing father's son tradition that we've been doing I've gone to 21 stadiums happened to be going to Miname Park to see the Astros

play and I went who lives in Houston oh Sammy Gavar lives in Houston, reached out to him. He happened to say yes. It all worked out. He drove to my airport hotel and we randomly shot this interview. And those are the things I'm talking about that I think a lot of people don't think outside the box enough. Not everyone's going to have the financial means to make something like that happy and not everyone's going to have. But I think it's about thinking outside the box. How can we get creative? How can we make something happen here? And having that flexibility. I think that's just a huge element of all this at the end of the day, is being flexible. And as you said, especially in the beginning, saying yes.

Yeah, and I get it. Not everybody has the ability to hop on an airplane at a moment's notice or drive in their car four plus hours, eight plus hours round trip to do an interview in the backseat of Chris Jericho's car. I get that. But are you going to a local wrestling show at any point in time? Are you going to a WWE or AEW show? Perhaps are you going to WrestleMania? Boy, if you're going to WrestleMania, everybody who has, anybody who's done anything with wrestling

is going to be in Los Angeles this year, Philly next year, like they're going to be in town. Figure out a way to just shoot something there. And on top of that, you go to an indie show and say there's a legend who's appearing on the show. Say Gangrel is at your local indie show.

Yeah. we'll find a way to interview gangrel who by the way i can't put over enough he's amazing i don't know if you ever met gangrel in south florida i assume you did yeah he's the best but guess what gangrel knows a lot of people in wrestling and maybe one day you aspire to interview someone even higher and you say yeah you know i interviewed gangrel well all of a sudden well that person's good friends with gangrel gangrel puts in a good word for you hey i love doing an interview with that guy and now all of a sudden you got those wheels turning you just you never know yeah and i think that Going back to what we talked about earlier about the negativity stuff and how much negativity

exists in wrestling, I would just be worried that if you're dragging on a specific product or just wrestling in general, I would be really worried that if you continue your career of content creation or broadcasting, that that might get back to you in some sort of way. So I would just be aware of that. The internet is forever, everybody. I can attest personally it is certainly very much so even if you're very innocently doing stuff sometimes you have to be cognizant of that to the nth degree I 100% agree with you my friend this has been great is there anything else that you'd like to add to this conversation Chris that people should be aware

of when they try to venture into this field of content creation and pro wrestling this has been great and John thank you so much for letting me come in here and borrow Eric's seat and keep it warm for him and of course be the less talented slightly better looking version of the co-host for you. I think all of this boils down to two words. Not suck it, but it boils down to just start. And if this is something that you've ever wanted to do, if you've ever wanted to film something wrestling related, start a podcast, write a book, start a TikTok account, whatever it happens to be, just start. And I love this Chinese proverb.

I quote this all the time on my podcast. It's the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And the second best time is today. And if this is something that you've wanted to do and it's really speaking to you, just start and figure it out and find people in that space who are doing the thing. And don't be afraid to reach out to people and say, hey, I'm just getting started right now. What did your first episode, video, YouTube video? channel, whatever it happens to be. What did that look like? What can I learn from that? And I think another invaluable resource is something like this, like just listening to someone's podcast and just

like eavesdropping in on these conversations and going, ooh, that's what worked for them. Maybe that'll work for me too. But I think it boils down to you've just got to start. He is Chris Van Vleet. He's the host of Insight with Chris Van Vleet. He's got a million other things going on. Where can people find you, Chris? you can listen to my podcast wherever you're listening to this insight with chris fan fleet on all podcast you know apps wherever you fill your ears with podcasts my youtube channel is my name chris van bleat and cvvclipps and say hi to me on all social media at chris fan bleat and make sure if you see him in los angeles russomania week you say hi and say hello john alba you'll really

appreciate that i promise what an insult how dare you i think it's more insults thing to you that I get called Chris Van Bleed sometimes. That should be the biggest insult to you more than anything else. I'm just saying, man. People say like when I was on TV for like in Cleveland and Miami, I would get a lot of, oh, you're taller on TV. I'm like, I don't, thanks. The other is you're much more attractive in person than on TV.

And I'm like, oh, wait a minute. Like what was that? I'm more in person than on TV. Oh, so I'm ugly on TV. Thank you. Or I get the like, oh, wow, you're way more like muscular in person. I'm like, oh, geez. Got to stop wearing sleeves on my suits, I guess.

Hey, you know what? Build a business plan with Impera. They'll help you get everything together, Chris, and then you won't have to worry about any of that in the weeds. You can help iron as much as you do, and you'll be good to go, man. Hey, Eric and I are so grateful for you hopping on strictly business with us. Eric's going to be back next week, guys. really appreciate everyone tuning if you're not tuning in every single week to strictly business what are you waiting for subscribe now 83 weeks.com or the 83 weeks podcast feed on whatever device you use to get your podcast and of course early access ad free shows dot com that is the best value in all of pro wrestling content creation the conrad cinematic universe as i like to refer to it we got a lot of great stuff going on there he's chris van bleat i'm john alba we'll see you next time right here

strictly business.