Stay Tranquilo - How You Can Monetize Through Social Media & Podcasts with Pro Athlete Community | Stay Tranquilo

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

In this special live session hosted by the Pro Athlete Community (PAC), Stay Tranquilo founder Andre shares the raw, unfiltered journey of growing a media brand from the ground up. From recording episodes on a phone to partnering with Yeti and the PGA Tour, this episode is packed with real talk for creators, athletes, and entrepreneurs alike.Key highlights include:✅ How to turn your purpose into a platform✅ Navigating post-sports identity and entrepreneurship✅ Building community and monetizing early✅ Tools and strategy to create content at scale✅ Why short-form content and visuals are non-negotiable✅ How to approach sponsorships with brands that alignWhether you're an athlete looking for your next chapter or a creator figuring out your niche, this convo is filled with insights on how to stay consistent, stay authentic, and stay tranquilo.Presented by PAC — empowering athletes to build beyond the game. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right, guys. Well, thanks for being here. Thanks, Jay, for putting this together and giving us the time to talk to you guys. I just want to use this time, obviously, answer as many questions, obviously give us a little background about ourselves and kind of what we do in the space. I've been in the media and marketing space for over 10 years now, started a marketing agency back in the day with ex-Facebook employee. and that's really where this kind of concept was born. We've got a media company called Stay Tranquilo, and I'll give you guys a little bit of background about what it is, kind of like the business model behind it, monetization, all that. But in that time when I was working with the agency,

I really kind of started understanding the landscape of just media, marketing, what brands care about, where are they spending their dollars, how can I monetize a digital product, essentially. I had started the podcast already at the time, and it was just really more of like a hobby. Third generation Hispanic. My grandparents were born in Cuba, came to the states looking for a better life, escaping communism in Cuba at the time, and they built their life down here. And my mom grew up in New York, and I came to Miami.

I was born and raised in Miami. So Miami's always been my identity of who I am, how I kind of carry myself, represent myself and everything we do. And now with the brand where, you know, that's our core. Everything we do is like Miami focus with the goal of expanding more national, but representing Hispanics. And I'll get into a little bit of the rationale behind that. But for me, when I was building this, it was really always, like,

how do I attach what I believe is my purpose in life and turn it into something that I can amplify through media, right? And podcasts for me at the time, when I started the podcast, I was a consumer of podcasts. I was listening to podcasts, watching podcasts, just where I learned everything, really. And I call YouTube, like, YouTube University. I didn't go to school for media. I played sports my whole life, too, so sports was really all I really knew. I played baseball.

And at the time, it was really like an identity crisis, I guess, which is really big what Pax mission is, is, you know, what's life after sports? I think a lot of athletes have that question that they ask themselves because you spend so much time devoting to the sport that you don't really know anything outside of sports, right? So for me, that was me. I got out of college and didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was interning in a strength and conditioning program here in Miami, and I didn't enjoy it. And I was like, I like sports, but I don't like this, right? So I was like, what is it that I do like?

So started getting into business, started getting into marketing. That's where the marketing agency world started, grew that up. And then Stay Tranquillo was born in that process. And there's really where I started getting the whole picture, right? It's how do I build a digital product with podcasting, social media, all that? And then how do I build an audience around a product that's going to differentiate itself from the millions of podcasts that are out there now? I think at this point, there's probably close to four million podcasts that exist on what they call the RSS feed. So there's a ton of podcasts.

I mean, you open social media. It feels like there's a podcast clip. of some capacity, right? So for me, it was like, I didn't want to be diluted in that, right? I didn't want to just be another podcast. I didn't just want to be a guy that, hey, like, who the hell is this guy? Like, why am I going to listen to him, right? So I had to be creative and think about how can I create something that I believe in, right,

that is close to my purpose and my identity, but also resonate with listeners and something that they care about. And then that's where the whole concept of focusing on Hispanic market can. came to be. So at the time, when that agency I was working with, all the brands were talking about like, how can I reach the Hispanic market? How can I reach the Hispanic market? How can I reach the Hispanic market? Hispanic market is the largest growing demographic in the United States right now. They have $3.1 trillion of purchasing power. So I saw, obviously, there's an opportunity there to be like this voice in that space. And I tell you all this because when I was building this,

I didn't think about any of those things. It was just like, I'm just going to build a the podcasts and people are going to listen. But reality is that wasn't the case at all. It was just like, shit, maybe four people listen to it. It was probably my mom, my dad, my brothers, you know, but it's cool to see that evolution over time. And it's been one of those things. You tweak it as you go. You're built, you know, you bring people in to help you out and you're just kind of evolving the product over time. And I've been doing it now for five years and it started with my phone camera, a USB mic that I plugged into my, my laptop, and it was just like click record. And there was episodes that I would record with no, like, producer in the back or anything

like that. And I would have a guess there, you know, whoever that might be, and would go after and see the recording and nothing recorded. You know, so, like, those were a lot of, like, the pain points, like, early on in this process where it's like, shit, man, like, you know, you just devoted all this time, all this energy into this and it's like a waste you know so good conversation huh great great and that was the thing i'm like i remember i dabbed up the the guess that i had on like damn that was a good combo and then i hear it after i'm like dude you're not going to believe this we got like three minutes of audio

from this recording so those those are some of the growing pains uh you know that happen and there's a ton more growing pains that come with it but it's that evolution of like building this from from the ground up it started off just me and then you know he kind of came on board and and and he's our lead videographer, editor. He's the one that makes everything happen, essentially. But, you know, I say that because it really does take a team to build this. And what we're in the works of building now is the Latino Barstow, essentially. So if you guys know Barstos, you know, the Latino Barstow, Barstle sports, obviously,

crazy kind of story started off as a Boston brand, was a newspaper, a local newspaper, essentially, and they started evolving that product. became a big product in the digital landscape and did things their way, right? Which I always respect that and you know Portnoy could be very controversial. He's been in a ton of articles about you know who the person he is and all that and so be it. But he's built something and the way that whole world worked where you know he got private equity involved and then you know use that capital to grow it even more and then sold the company to Penn.

and bought it for like $500 million, and then he was able to buy the company back for a penny, you know? So it's like just seeing how that whole world worked and really studying that model over the years is where I would say I built the infrastructure for this. It's like, okay, they've done a great job of building audience, right? I mean, their social media clips are generating millions of views. Their podcasts are generating another millions of views. And they built a true loyal audience. And I think to build any sort of digital infrastructure, got to think about audience at the end of the day because without audience, you're not really building anything. I think if you're going to start a podcast or if you're going to start a

social media channel of some capacity, you've got to think about one, who it is that you are and what's your identity in the brand, but also is like what and myself can I present to the audience for people to consume and want to listen to me versus another podcast, right? And I think really identifying that early on is only going to get you. clearer in your vision as to how you're able to execute it, right? So for us in the beginning, there was no identity, right? But as we built that identity, that's where we really started to see the growth. It was like, all right, who is our audience and how can we tap into this audience? So it's like, hey, if we want to do Hispanic market, what are the things that care about, who are the people

they want to listen to? How do we have to portray the content in a way that's culturally relevant to them? And then from there, just double down on that. And then supplemental to that, it's the consistency, I think what you see with a lot of people in podcast specifically is they'll start a podcast. They'll do three, four episodes, see that they got 30 listeners in the course of two months. And they're like, screw this. Like, I'm not going to do this. But that's for this for the truth. Like, you've got to double down and just continue to go and continue to go, continue to go, continue to go and put episodes out and not really be stuck so much on the numbers, right?

But just say, hey, I believe in this product. I believe on the why of why I'm doing this. and just continue to put the content out. And now at this point, you know, we've evolved, it's from a podcast now to a media network like a barstool, where we have six different podcasts that we produce. We do stuff in the golf space, we do stuff in travel, wellness, sports and entertainment,

and then like food and beverage, hospitality world. So, and the reason behind that is like, okay, let me see what the insights show and what the numbers and the metric shows. Like, what does Hispanic audience care about? where are they spending their money, what are the things that they're consuming, and just building content around the things that, one, attached to our brand and stay tranquil and identify with our brand, but also resonate with the audience that we want to reach. And for us, I was like picking and choosing, okay, hey, sports is a monster, right? Like, we'd be doing ourselves of the service to not do something

in the sports space. Obviously, sports media in general is huge. So if we could tap into that audience, that will be a huge avenue for us, right? Now, what's the next thing? Food and beverage, music, Huge avenue there. Let's create content in that space, right? So we started just picking and choosing what were the pieces of content that people like, building audience from their interest, and then, hey, I like sports, but I also like business, right? So I might listen to the sports show, but guess what? Now I'm going to go and listen to that business conversation that they have on the network. So we've been able to pull audience from different levels of interest,

but now they're consuming a variety of different segments that we essentially produce. So we have a working relationship with the PGA tour. So we go to PGA tour events. We do player interviews. So we're interviewing PGA tour players. We're doing coverage on the tournaments themselves. We're sitting in press conferences. They have probably between Live and PGA tour right now and not including Tour America is cornfairy tour,

which is like the minor leagues essentially for the PGA. They have hundreds of tour players that are Hispanic. So I was like, no one's talking about them. So how can we amplify their voice? and then bring audience based off, hey, I'm Colombian. Oh, this guy's Colombian too. Let me listen to him and see what he has to say. I know him, but no one's really talking about him, right?

So just finding a different angle, right? It's like we're not doing anything different than maybe what's out there, but we're adding our own flavor. We're adding our own kind of takes to it, and that's how we're able to build audience to that. And then it's just things start to grow. We started a podcast with Javon Holland and Cameron Wolf from NFL Network called Breaking House Rules. And that was just another outlet that we were,

able to build audience from and you know something cool that came out of that right Javon was with Miami for the last four four years but now he's with the Giants right and the transition that we were able to see yeah sucks I hate it but it is what it is but something interesting that came out of that right moment he goes to giants all of a sudden huge New York audience influx right so it's the power of also like your your content but it's also the guests that you bring on because we've built I was would say shit from from the audience that we've built probably 60 70% is just from the guests that

we have come on because they share the clip they posted on their socials they might collab with the post right and then all of a sudden they're seeing and they're like oh shoot who are these guys what is this podcast and then they start seeing a couple different clips hey they have this guy on they had this guy on and then from there you're you're getting audience from all these different angles and then from there just starts accumulating over time and that's really been our recipe it's been very organic you know very authentic and I think that's really true to who we are. We don't try to change anything just because somebody else is doing it.

We believe in what we're doing. We're always tweaking it as we go. But at the end of the day, reality is, we want to stay true who do we are. And if you like us, great. If you don't, then you know, you move on to the next. So I think it's really, you know, obviously audience and just really being authentic to who you are. And then always keeping the why behind why you're doing it. Because that's what's going to keep you going when things may not be working out

or things may not pan out the way that you thought that they were going to be or the growth isn't where you thought it would be. It's like, well, at the end of the day, I know why I'm doing this. So I'm just going to continue to do it. And we've seen great results over the last couple of years and the team continues to grow. And it's just a never-ending battle of like, what do we do next? How do we continue to grow these things? What can we do different?

What can we do better? And it's having a lot of those internal conversations. But that's a rundown about the business. That's a rundown on myself. I'll stop and ask if you guys have any questions. But I want to get in also to like the day to day of like, how do you monetize this? And kind of what that structure looks like as well because it is an important piece of it. Because the day of you're not making money from it, then, yeah, I got to figure it out.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'll say this, right? So you have four million podcasts that exist on the feed. out of that 4 million podcasts, there's probably maybe, I don't know what the number is, but maybe 50% that are even active at this point, right? So right there you've just shrunk that in half essentially, right? So your competition just shrunk because that person just decided to create a podcast

but is not doing it anymore. So I would say first order is just not only starting it, but making sure that out of the 4 million, you're not the one that quits early in the game, right? So right there alone, you've cut half of that equation out, right? And then let's say out of the $4 million, $2 million are extremely active or at least posting relatively regularly, now it's really saying, okay, well, what are they doing that's working? What are they doing? That's not working? And what can I do to implement the things that they are working and make sure that I watch the mistakes of other people and make sure that I don't make those same mistakes.

At the end of the day, I would say the biggest thing is like obviously you got to leverage social media, right? like that's the biggest thing just posting regularly on on Instagram, TikTok, et cetera, because that's where all the eyeballs are in terms of consumers. And then really leveraging, you know, your personal network to bring in the right type of guess. And then from there, it's like, I guess my question to you would be like, what's the basis of your podcast? Like, what are the types of conversations that you're having? Interviewing Africans.

Okay. Yeah, I would say one is accessibility, right? I think nowadays you can open up Spotify, YouTube, Apple, right? Google, there's so many products now that have invested time and energy into it. I look at it as like modern day radio, essentially. Before you would tune in to, you know, 5, 60 or whatever and listen to whatever radio show that you wanted to listen to. But now it's like, I know a podcast is coming out this Tuesday of a podcast that I like,

but I might not be able to get to it so I can listen to 15 minutes now in the car. then I can listen to the other 15 minutes when I'm my home working or at the gym, you know, whatever it may be. I think it's just the accessibility that has opened the door for podcast. And, you know, the biggest distributors of the podcast world, right? YouTube, Spotify, those are the top two. They've invested a lot of money into podcasts and creating a platform of accessibility for host, right?

So like people like ourselves that are putting podcasts out there, they're creating it very easy for us to upload podcasts, right? So we use one called Anchor, right? And Anchor allows you to basically upload the file on there as an MP4 file, and then it'll distribute to all platforms. So I get the file, upload it to Anchor, put our captions, you know, title of the episode, whatever keywords we want to put in there. And then from there, boom, automatically distributes everywhere.

So it's also made it very easy for hosts, you know, or creators, to be able to go out there and say, hey, I want to do this, but it's like it's intimidating or I don't know how to do this. Now they've made it really easy for us. Whereas before you got to reach out to a radio network or reach out to a TV network, kind of pitch them a concept and say, hey, I'm dependent on you now to make sure that this even gets aired, right? Or now we don't have to depend on anyone.

We can all do it ourselves, which I think that is where podcasts really started to take off. It's just accessibility for both the consumer side, but also for us as the creators to be able to just put podcasts out every. day if we wanted to, right? And if I want to cut up a clip of a podcast that I recorded two years ago and say, hey, that was a really relevant conversation then, but it's even more relevant now. Let's cut up a 15th snippet clip from that podcast and drop it as another episode for this week or, you know, supplement whatever the episode is that we dropped that week. So I think accessibility has also been a huge thing that has grown and just the investment that these

companies have made into pushing podcasts more. I have two questions just about your process. One is, especially when you first started, how did you get guests to come on and say yes? Right. Was that intimidating for you at all? Was that a part of it? But what is your scheduling process? Do I sit in one time and record for an hour and then now I can bring that up into early?

What does that process look like and what have you found out for you? Yeah. So to answer the second question first, I wouldn't say there's a super streamlined approach for us with that. I mean, it's really been one of those things. Sometimes it's two days before and we'll make it, we'll make it happen. We are very, very nimble in our approach, I would say. Yeah, I mean, for the most proud of consciousness, like, I always have our stuff in the car. So, like, we can somewhere and you can be like, hey, like, we got to go right now.

It's like, let's go. I'll meet you at the studio. And it's like, it's very, very, like, we're very mobile. So like all these lights, this is our setup. So, like, it's always in my car. It's always on me because you never know when someone important is going to be, having for a conversation like you don't want to waste an opportunity so it's like hey let's go so if you have to go to your house or have to go to a restaurant like give me 30 minutes to set up and like

we'll set up a record and we'll be having a podcast done in yeah and yeah and there's times where you schedule a time with the guests and then all of a sudden they can't make it right so those those things do happen a lot and I will say one thing that we didn't do for a while was the virtual podcast like everything was like this you know lights cameras all that just because I think there's just a little bit more of a better feel just doing it in person. But at the end of the day, if like the conversation is really good and you have to shift whatever the approach was originally, go out there and just do it virtually because it might make it happen. And then if you don't do it that way, then it may never happen. Right. So we've been a little bit more flexible in that approach where we'll

do more virtual recordings. And we do have like a pipeline, right? So I say, hey, these are 20 dream guests that we would like to have that we feel we have access to. Let's start the outreach now so maybe we could schedule it a month from now or two months from now and at least just start getting the conversation. I think really what helps with that is just really, really always reaching out to people and saying, hey, we want to do a podcast with you. Are you open to it? And if they say yes, now it's like, all right, one works for you. How can we coordinate that? And then from there, just start building that up from there. It is tough to especially, depending on cadence, right?

Like if you want to do a podcast every week, getting a podcast a guest every single week might be tough. So you could do something where, hey, we're going to sit for two hours and we're going to knock out four episodes, right? I've done that in the past. What I don't love about that is by episode two and you could talk about it after like what you did today, right?

You're gassed after that. And I never want the product of the quality to suffer because I just sat for three hours, talking and now all of a sudden my voice doesn't work as well my my mind is mush um i can only think about you right right you get what i was out of yeah yeah but you're that's hard too right right because you're not going to publish or like you're not going to broadcast them all at the same time so i feel like in my experience it's a little tough to do that with more than like let's say two because like let's say you do four back to back and even if you're going to put out one a week

right by the time you've gotten to the guest Unless you are like really preemptive with like planning and going to be like, okay, I'm getting him the week before Super Bowl. So we're going to be like, the current event time has passed. So like now you're talking about something that happened four weeks ago. So the perspective of your listener has shifted because like it already happened. So if you do, if you cram like too many, I feel like then you lose the momentum of like the environmental time piece of it, which makes it hard. But have you found that with your, to back up to the one where you said about sometimes you'll go virtual? and maybe this is only for like, I don't know, like for me,

right? So I'm not, I wouldn't call myself a podcast listener, but there are podcasts that I listen to. And majority of the time, I never get to watch them. I'm listening to them, like you said, on Spotify. Right. So at that point, this part is less of the important part because, like, they were looking at each other, right?

Even if it was virtual. So, but I'm not seeing what happens. I'm listening to it in the car. So maybe I might catch the clip. of what happened, but for the majority of it. So have you found that that does play a factor too? Or listening-wise, if people are going to listen on the go, then you're not as concerned about the visual people?

Yes. I will say that knowing the fact that someone can listen to the audio version will maybe not make the visual component extremely important if you just really believe in what the dialogue is and what the conversation or topic is about, and you really want to get that out like that week because of relevance, right? So there is that component, but at the end of the day, I think there is an importance to video, right? So if you could prioritize video, great.

If you can, it's not the end of the world. But I do think just if you look at the nature of podcasts now, right, YouTube is a huge place for podcast consumption. So that means people are watching, right? And Spotify, if you look at the way they built their platform essentially for podcasts, You can watch a podcast on Spotify now, and they invested a lot of money, and their algorithm is actually rewarding creators for people that are uploading in video formats, right? So there's, I guess, like, two sides to it, right? It's like, yes, if the conversation is so good, value that more than anything,

because at the end of the day, you can make the set look great and everyone looks good on camera. But at the end of the day, if the conversation is not valuable or entertaining at any capacity, then really the video doesn't mean much of anything, right? So obviously the audio component is priority because of the fact that you can access it from anywhere, but I would say the emphasis around video is just as important because of how much people, yeah. I feel like I'm sorry to because you're saying that,

how many of those podcasts do you? So I'm an added consumer of the New Hyatt's podcast. Never watch the video. How did you get introduced? So I think I need to talk. clip, let's say, so I saw like the 15 second recap and it was you know fun and entertaining.

And I'll still see them sometimes. I follow them on social so it might come through the timeline, but like I spend so much time in a car, let's say, or working where I can listen to it where I have to be doing something else and I can't do that. Now, if something's really funny and I know that someone

made a face or a joke or whatever, I'll go back and look it up. But nine times out of ten, I'm just listening to it. But there's a visual hook that catch you to watch. Correct. That's what I was asking about, once you've reached a certain point,

like, it's almost like once you've got the buy-in and you don't need it anymore, I'm not saying they should not do video anymore, because, like, there's a huge piece to that. But I'm just saying, as a consumer, once I'm already sold, like, now I don't need the video. For sure. I know what they look like, I know what it's happening. Yeah, no, I'll tell you about. I remember when

the cat boyoil thing, it's huge. Right. And it was everywhere. Yeah. It was the only thing that got me to watch it, but ultimately I didn't watch everything, I got to the parts where it was exposed to see it. But ultimately, I had to

go so long, I had to listen to the audio version. Yes. Let me ask you, so in terms of like, you can tell through the internet, right? Like, the engagement throughout the course of the podcast, like, do you find that

you have a large percentage of listeners truly listening all the way through? Are they clicking into certain, you know, parts that, you know, right by. Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, we monitor the analytics religiously. And I think that helps inform a lot of the decisions that we make in terms of, like, what should we be doing next or what should we focus on on a piece of content-wise?

And I think that's for both sides, right? It's the long-form actual podcast themselves, but also, like, the social media clips that we put out there, right? It's like, what performed really well on Instagram that we can then cut up from another podcast that kind of replicates that same format, right, or editing style, whatever that may be. So the analytics are extremely important because you want to see how engaged, obviously, your audience is, but it's also seeing how much are they even paying attention to, right?

Because you're making so much time and investment into building this. And if they're not watching or consuming it, then it might not be worth, you know, might not be worth it. So it's going back to essentially the point of the visuals. So, like, I come from a broadcast world. So like you're talking about when you're in TV, I come from a broadcast world where everything there is pretty much visual.

But I think like when it comes to a podcast, I think like the visual aspect has kind of like a psychological effect because you can kind of match the person that you're talking to. Especially with our people that, and a lot of people we've had, when we get into those conversation that has like some more meaning, like seeing the person talking about it and like describing that life. And I feel like for us like while we do have audio offerings,

I feel like our podcasts almost are meant to be digestive visually because of the way that the conversations are held. because it's not scripted. It's just wherever this conversation goes, it goes. And sometimes it'll take you somewhere. Like, some people just, for some reason, decide to open up to us about all their life. And, like, hearing it and, like, seeing it can be two different animals.

And then obviously when it comes to social media clips, that's usually why people even decide to listen to a podcast. You're talking about Kat Williams. Like, yeah, you can hear him exploding, but seeing him explode on camera, it adds just, like, a different level of, you know, emphasis. Like, for me personally, like, there's times where, like, maybe I can't watch a full podcast,

but I'll listen to where I can. and then I'll go back to watching it. So, like, the audio is almost like a buffer. So when you can't watch it, you listen to the small portion, and then you go back. Sure. So you go, but you listen and then you watch it as well. We talked about listening, right?

We talked about, like, global listening and us. And, like, if you can't see the body language, it's definitely different. And so, like, you said broadcast, I also came from broadcast and doing guests for, like, Charles Berkeley's podcast, right, the team room. Typically, they're very low-key.

Like, they're just sitting there. There's not anything exciting. No one's who's moving and hollering. But like the one time that you're going to get it, every four podcasts or five podcasts, it's like, damn, I'm so glad we had the video. Because you want that element. Like you said, it's almost like psychological. Yeah. How do you monetize it?

Yeah. So I was definitely going to get into that. So a majority of it is through sponsorship and advertising revenue. So how you've seen pretty much any podcast, you know, there might be an in-stream ad that's placed in there. Or there might be product placement in the back in the visual, which kind of going back to the visual, it's an. added value that you could provide for a brand, right? So whether that's merch or that's a water bottle. Right?

You're going to have your smart water sitting there while you're talking drinking. This may be a dumb part. How is that? As far as what sponsorships and advertising within the podcast. So it's at the discretion of how the brand sees themselves working with you. A lot of the times when we're pitching the brands, we're actually kind of coming up with the creative concepts. to them, right?

And I think that's a big value point that we bring to the brands as well, right? It's not it's just like, hey, it's just a podcast. But we're also thinking creatively about how we can immerse your brand or your product into the content, right? So that might be a special segment within the show that, you know, hey, this segment is brought to you by Yeti, right?

And then that segment now is owned by Yeti that we creatively thought about a way that is engaging with the audience, that then now we plug in the brand there. Would you ever, would you ever say no? Let's just say something that you just wouldn't, like you wouldn't, I don't know why to get that. Something controversial, basically. Yeah, yeah, I get what you're going. Yeah, I go.

Yeah. We'll give you two X or what anybody else is giving me. Yeah. I don't do drugs. Let me just answer his question really quick, but I would say you have to be aware of the people you're working with, right? Because it is a representation of you as well, right? So if you're representing something that you don't believe in, then I also don't think you can actually push that product in a meaningful way, right? They might throw a crazy dollar amount at you, and then you're going to be like, you know, it's going to make you think.

But then it's like, who are you to be pushing, you know, Fence and O. Exactly. Right. Or Viagra. And I don't believe in the product or whatever it may be. Then it's going to be hard for me to push it, right? But then again, right? If it's kind of like in that middle ground, I think what's cool about us too is like we have so

many different products offer that. Maybe myself doesn't believe in that. But hey, there's someone that may fit that product more than I do, right? And still not that controversial where they might be a perfect person. to represent that product or that brand. But you do have to sometimes say no because it just doesn't fit your brand identity and who you are and what you believe in.

And I think it'll come off authentically too if you don't believe in something and then you're promoting it because I'm going to be like, as kind of looks like... Are you listening it or is it like a firm or is a network? As far as facilitating the deals.

Right now, it's all internally. So I come from that media ad sales background, so I'm doing a lot of the selling. we actually just, yeah, we just hired someone to now internally lead the ad sales world. I mean, like if somebody else is obviously they're going to take a cut of that, right? Right. But that could be pretty large. Of course, yeah.

Yeah, so when you're doing that internally, like you make some of the more navigating the ad sales sponsorship side. Yeah, so we. I've been the one that's really been kind of the broker of these deals, right? So reaching out via LinkedIn, you know, a lot of networking. events going out there. I would say if you're not on LinkedIn, get on it like yesterday, you know? I started really leveraging LinkedIn about a year ago, posting our clips on there. So I'll get one of our podcast clips, post it on there, put a caption in a little bit of a strategic way, have kind of a different call to action on it than maybe how we posted on Instagram.

But leveraging all this content that we're producing and putting it on onto LinkedIn, right? So that's, That's one facet. And then just showcasing what we're doing, right? Showcasing that we're credible in the marketplace, that we're at this event, that we're at this event. We're connecting with this person. We're connecting with that person. Showcasing that we're industry experts in the Hispanic space because, like, that's our angle. And brands want to see that, oh, man, this guy knows something about media.

So they have to be, like, quote, quote, business cutups, right? Like, you wouldn't put, like, let's say you had somebody in they had, like, making some joke about it. Right, exactly. You just take something. But if somebody said something that was business. business savvy made sense. You take that clip to the post it for LinkedIn? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say it has to be specifically business savvy.

I think it's just like, hey, this is organically who we are, right? And this is some of the conversations that we're having and put that as a clip on there. And then, you know, I think where you can get maybe a little bit more strategic about making it a little bit more businessy is through the caption on on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn, you heard me bring it up from Thursday in that one session. I mean, to use the larger. partner with brands that also reference that. And the reason why I ask that is because, A, not only are

those companies on LinkedIn, right, like the head of marketing for XYZ product that's Latina owned, right? And they would partner with you, that person's on there, so there's a way to connect that way. I'm just thinking like, because he brought it up, right, about the very

specific nature of his podcast. So like, you think of how many people are Africans living here that are doing well, that own products that have money to spend for advertising. Exactly. So, like, those people are on LinkedIn and therefore you can do brand partner deals. Is that a brand partner deal that you focus on is doing some of that marketing with specifically

like Latinx brands for like Latino brands? I think that's definitely an angle to attack it, right? Like for you with the Afro community, right? It's saying, hey, what brands are paying attention to that, right? What brands are saying, hey, you know, we need to spend marketing dollars towards this community. But they're not going to just do it with like a general marketing. campaign. They're going to do it with someone with you because you're speaking to that audience. You're having guests on that resonate with that audience. So they're going to look at you as an

outlet or a vehicle to reach them in a relevant way because the media landscape and advertising landscape for the last 20, 30 years was just like, hey, I'm going to put an ad out there and that's it, right? But now if I want to speak to a specific demographic, I got to speak to them in the right way. I can't just put something out there that's generic. I got to bring in a a personality or a talent that resonates with that audience. I mean, you see, like, for example, what Bad Bunny has done in the last, you know, six months. Every brand is knocking on his door because they know, hey, he's got a massive audience and he

resonates with the Latino space. So I'm going to reach out to him to be the face of this campaign, right? So it's the same thing with any market, I would say. And they don't have to be Latinx or Afro-owned businesses, right? They just have to be brands that want to reach that market, but they want to reach them in a relevant way, so they're going to look for vehicles like yourself to be that, that opportunity to do it. And I think that's where, you know, when you make that connection with like a CMO, right, say, hey, I saw that you guys are really trying to focus on the Afro

community. This is a little bit about us. We're, you know, we're interviewing different industry experts that are Afro and we're having these type of conversations. Here's, you know, example of some of our work. And then from there, you kind of pitch them an idea as to how their brands can be positioned within your content. And a lot of times internally, they're not really having these conversations, but then all of a sudden you present them an idea and they're like, shoot, that's a good idea. We should do something like this. And that's, that's how we've been able to sell it in, right? Because we're not at the Barstall level, right? So a lot of the times barstals are just getting brands knocking on their door, right? So for us, it's how do we get

strategic about thinking of how we can connect with this brand and then find a way to to position them in a meaningful way. And I'll give you an example. Yeti, we just signed Yeti to a sponsorship a couple months ago, and that was like a huge, huge kind of deal. And organic as hell, right? I use a crap out of Yeti products. Like, I'm a huge, like, a Yeti and Tumblr in my hand.

At all times, it's in my car, and it's on the podcast set, and I'm drinking. Put this more on in a phone. I got you. Yeah, I have something like that. So, you know, it all kind of started like that. I went, I put our State Tranquila logo on a Yeti, and I just was drinking my water on a podcast, like, all the time. And then I connected with their head of e-commerce at Yeti,

and he just kind of saw our content on LinkedIn, posting it all the time, and he just became a fan of the content, saw what we were doing in the golf space, saw all this awesome content we were creating, and then out of the blue, like, literally out of nowhere, get a message from him saying, hey, you guys are doing some awesome stuff. I want to connect you with my head of sports marketing because we want to get into the golf space.

And they're a big outdoor brand. They've been camping, fishing, but they're like, we need to become more of like this lifestyle brand. And your focus on Hispanic market, we're not doing a lot in that space. So there's an opportunity there. And connected with their head of sports marketing, kind of gave them a rundown of what we do. And that was it. And that came through just being active on LinkedIn.

doing outreach on LinkedIn as well and just connecting the dots of like, hey, these are the potential brands that may want to partner with us. And again, if you like us, great. If you don't, all good too. But at the end of the day, I saw a connection point there

and I realized, hey, if there's an opportunity, they'll see what we're doing. Yeah. Well, for the example with Yeti, it was, hey, this is what we do, gave him a rundown of a conversation. But the working really just came through. consistently saw what we were doing out there, saw that we were passionate about the product already

as well. He's like, hey, these are not some random guys just hitting us up trying to get, you know, a dollar out of us. Like, they believe in the product as well. And from there, that's where I think organically it just kind of happened. And I think that's what, you know, brands want to see. They want to see or, you know, organic contact, but authentic in your approach as well. And then from there, it's like, all right, how do you tie it all together and say, hey, this is how we envision your product in our content. I have a question for you, sorry, you're negotiating in the event space. Yeah.

We might create tears, right? So do you have that same thing? Yes. This is going to cost you this, and it's just. Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a variety of different ways I think you can position sponsorships and content opportunities with the brands.

One is just kind of like a segment inclusion. So, you know, it's a 40-minute conversation. we'll put a segment in there, custom segment for you, and it'll be branded you. And then from there, we can cut that into a social media clip, and that goes out every so often on social media. You can have a title sponsor of the episode.

You could sell in an episode itself saying, hey, we're getting in this really awesome guest. You guys want to sponsor this specific episode. So there's definitely a bunch of different ways to do it. And then we get also creative knowing, like, hey, podcasts are tough maybe to monetize, but we're super active on social media. media so we can create something custom social content and do more branded content stuff.

Yeah, we have a deck. Yeah, I have my deck. Social is pretty critical. Yeah, social is, I mean, so much everyone needs to get on socials in some capacity, whether it's through a real or it's through some sort of branded content. So any time of brand it comes, whether it's just a podcast and inclusion, or sometimes I hate you want you to come in, help us revitalize our social media with what you guys do in branding content. There's a lot of different values.

I don't know. I keep asking. So how much of it, like, did you have a chicken and egg problem? Long term in the beginning. So, yeah. Right. Yeah. Identify the brand,

residence with PAC. You could say, hey, look, maybe off the job, you could get it funded, though. Exactly. We had a box deal. We killed it. Yeah. Yeah.

The CEO's a really good prime. I'm supposed to tell me stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just... It wasn't the right format and structure for our men, right? Yeah, at the end of the day, it was to give players an opportunity to get distribution, right? And that's it. You know, they have a meaningful distribution.

Absolutely. You're a swisher and Scott Galloway and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Talk a little bit, though, because it's from a beginner's mindset, right? Yeah. What was the tipping point for you to have something sellable? And then where it goes to that? start because again, it's a lot, what was the moment where you're like, okay, now we have something

you can sell? Right. Yeah. It's a good question, right? Because even to this point, I think there's a, you know, a struggle on the fact, like, do we still have something sellable, right? I mean, we want to reach the biggest brands in the world, but we know there's hurdles that come with that, right? And I wouldn't say there was like an exact moment, right? I think as we started to see, obviously, numbers go up and metrics go up and the analytics

showcase, like, hey, we have something tangible. Then it was like, okay, how do we want to go to these brands and kind of speak to them in a way that we can actually try to close deals? But really in the beginning, I was always just thinking like, okay, we're doing something unique and different, right? So that gives us like kind of an angle that's maybe different than another podcast might be reaching out to them about just saying, hey, here's a podcast. Can you sponsor on there? It's like, hey, here's our podcast. And because we're going after the Hispanic market, you're not doing

anything in that space. You've good hook. We have, we have. And that's been our best selling point. You know, it's like. And it's exactly. It's the same, it's the same exact, same exact angle. Yeah, same exact angle. It's like, and that's why I kind of led with like the whole audience thing, right? It's like, figure out who that audience is because the audience is going to be your angle to be able to sell in and monetize this because it's so saturated now that you can't just say you have a podcast and hey these are my numbers it's like hey this is my podcast this is my audience and this is what you can reach because of this right um is it younger is it older is it afro is it Hispanic is it white right whatever that angle may be like use that to your advantage because brands are

trying to find ways to get creative on how to reach specific people it's not just like here you go right unless you're Joe Rogan or your you know uh new heights right that they have these massive audiences now it's like you got to think creatively and strategically okay well what's our angle right and for you it's afro for you know me it's Hispanic but everyone's got to just find that i think that angle and that's going to help you at least have some leverage especially while it's early and you're still building out audience at the end of the day because what's going to happen is like you build it massive audience, then brands are going to see you and you're so relevant on social media.

They have teams looking for these products all the time. But if you're not in that, then it's like, okay, now how do we figure out a way to get into these budgets that they might have for podcasts or budgets for specific demographics? And that's where I think we found their kind of tipping point was just like, I'm just going to let you know who our audience is and what our product is. And if you can buy into something now, maybe you can grow with us, right? And it's funny, I was having a conversation with someone the other day, and I forget what podcast they had brought up.

But they were having a conversation with a small podcast at the time. And it's, I think, like a top 50 podcast. I don't remember the name of it now. But he was talking about them about doing some sort of advertising within their podcast. And he didn't do it at the time because they were too small. And he's like, shit, if I would have just done it with them from the beginning, imagine all the exposure that I would have gone with it. So you could sell in the fact like, hey, we're building something meaningful.

and we're not going anywhere. So if you ride with us early and they can just pay the bills, you know, essentially, maybe help you hire a videographer, help you, bring in a couple extra resources to invest into the business still, then, hey, now you have someone that's believed in you in the beginning, essentially, and just bought into the idea that you pitch them, and now they grow with you. It's like, damn, now they're growing with you.

Your scope with them is probably going to grow, so you're going to maybe get a bigger paycheck with them because their business is growing, your audience is growing, so they can justify spending more. Does it always work that way? Because sometimes, you know, they can be very hot chip challenge.

And it's a little different, but, I mean, it just went everywhere. It always came back. Right. I was just a lot of one chip thing. Yeah. And, oh, man, it almost killed me. Almost died.

And it just, it went dumbed Bible. And we came back to them. They were like, yeah, no, we're good. We said you another one, I'm like, you're nuts. Yeah. So sometimes they won't ride with you because they can't get to say what we needed and came in at a low-entry. So we're good.

So like how you put that in the agreement, right? It wasn't so good. It was so early. They did it as like a joke. Yeah. Like a thing. It was going around. It just was when he did it, it went viral.

So it became like a thing. So it was there was no agreement. It was like, it just happened. If you're funny enough that like that all happen again. Exactly. And I was just like, I'm talking. I'm talking about the business side of the business side of that because when we came back to them and say, hey, we wanted to do something else with them. They were like...

They weren't the right fit then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think someone who's really interested will, and like going back to like the beginner, you asked about like beginner's mindset when you just started. Can you speak to because I've been in talent looking for a long time? Do you agree, do not pay a guest for podcasts? Never a pay a guest in my life. Do not pay a guest for stuff. I'm not kidding.

So you won't name names, but I'm not. I know. Hold on. I'm talking about why. Because if you're doing, first of all, in my opinion, and please speak to this because I'm not an expert, but I, when you book talent for TV and stuff, a lot of times you pay. But when you do podcasts, it's a different environment. And going back to what you said originally, which is like sort of what's your why,

what's your audience? Who are you speaking to? And I don't remember if it was Chip that said this yesterday or somebody else. They were like, if money is your, even though you're trying to monetize something. if money is the go-to, then you're doing it for the wrong reason. So, like somebody yesterday was saying, like, if money is your driver, it was you, right? It wasn't you? Who said that?

Okay, my apologies. But it was, right, it's not sustainable. If money is your end goal, then you're not in it for the right reason. So, and of course, today we talked about money being a tool and money being... Why don't you pay... Okay, because, because you're building something off of... You're building something off of this organic space. Now, it's just like this understood thing where you don't pay podcast guests.

You're getting a lot of accolade off of it. Things may go viral. That guess may have been so great that people are going to reach out to them to say, hey, I want to do this. But like, it is pretty much a thing. Even in the biggest top 50 podcasts right now, you don't pay your podcast guests. When podcasts get big enough and they have staff and you have a talent booker that you pay

to go get your guests to your point, about how you start though in beginner mindset. So my podcast did not go anywhere. And it's taking a break right now while we revamped. But like your personal relationships

and then the people of your personal relationships are who you go to. I had Nate Burr listen on my podcast. Ain't nobody know who I am. People dang sure know who Akbar and they are and they're paying them to do a lot of bigger things.

You don't need to pay. But on podcast, you don't write. No, you should have to every back player. Correct. Like you don't, you don't. And but everyone's like that you don't have to necessarily be the person, but you know the person who knows the person. So it's about why are you on this podcast?

So like you may go to... Okay, what about paying? I'm sorry because I'm going to... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've just offered for a guest that's coming next in a couple weeks to send me off. Or send it. No, to pay for the hotel. They come from the East Coast.

And I say, I'll pay for your hotels. So that's a little different, I think, if you're helping them. But also, like, depending on how big your guest is, how good your relationship is, if this was not being recorded and it didn't leave this room, I would say to you, no, I know, I'm saying, but I'm just, I'm saying to you, I'm saying to you, I'm saying to you in a safe space, okay? You should be starting with your heaviest hitters, your closest relationships, and preferably ones with a little deeper pockets, and they should pay their own way to support you to do that, and the favor will be returned. Period, end of story.

Otherwise, you better find someone to give you a badass new heights. We film it digitally, and I know visual is a thing. But to your point, like, it, no, no. Most of them. I think the hospitality can allow it. Most of the very fancy pack. They're doing it off the strength that are a nice issue. Exactly.

And that's why you really have to leverage. And by the way, also the passion for what it is. Exactly. Which is why is the why, right, which is not the money. And I think that that's just... And he got the founder of Therabody to market. The guy's so fucking awesome. Those don't know if it's okay.

It's working. Yeah. It sounds like there's some similarities. And I think... Very much. Even when you said it about the branding, right? About organic and what... It's very similar to how you do player marketing

when y'all were playing, right? And it's a little different and it shifted. Same thing with NIL, though. Like, if you stick with your core values to go back to a PAC situation, don't rep products you don't support. Now, you might never be used. your favorite product like you want to pick smart water over

Desami like whatever but like if it's a product you don't support don't do it if it's a cause you don't care about don't do it if you open when when I used to teach about branding you look in your house like what are all the things you have in your house start with those brands go to first and it's the same with podcast guests go to the people that you have the deepest relationships with that you can build upon and go to them first and do it then other people will want to get involved especially when it's gonna do like I don't know Jamie from before but like he posted something on social that was like hey I'm looking for this

person you know can you find one for me and like anyway okay I got one other question I think you can go ahead all right did you say so raise that question yeah go obviously I'm not a podcast I watch a lot of podcasts I always wonder like what are like the logistics of running like a single episode and also how much studying slash research do you do before you know, I guess, and I feel you said you're game ready for an episode? Yeah, so as far as logistics, right? I think there's multiple layers here, right? It's one coordinating the guests that you want to have on, right?

I would say that's step one in the process. And that's just the actual episode itself, right? So it's getting the guest, doing research on the guests. I mean, sometimes there's already enough of a connection point. So you already know enough about them to be able to ask the right questions Depends like what your angle is on the show too. So it's like you know you might do a little bit about the guests and tell their story But you know your your segment is about wellness or health right so you're asking them really health oriented questions and fitness oriented questions So it's really like what understanding what the theme is of your show so that you can ask them the right questions based off of

That specific person right and making sure that that that that guest matches that they can answer questions around that specific topic, right? You know, for example, like one of our shows is sports related, but another one is maybe more mental health focus, right? So we're going to get two different, like I could have the same guests on both of those shows, but the type of dialogue we're going to have is going to be very different just because of the basis of what the theme is of that specific show. So I would say you have to know the guest, but come up with like a list of questions beforehand that not necessarily you hit every single one of those, right? But at least you know in your head what are

the talking points and the themes of the conversations that you want to hit. And that way you can also create a flow in your mind, right? Because I would say one of the biggest challenges being a host of a show is like you got to you got to listen. You got to engage in the dialogue. But not only that you got to continue you got to keep the flow of the conversation going so that it's it's flowing, right? And it's moving and it's not stagnant and there's not a lot of like, you know, so. By the way, I got that wrong. So you guys are kept on. Yeah, I'd much better to stay here.

Okay. So you guys are front. Do you believe in the cyclical run-of-show then? Like, or do you use a similar run-of-show model from guest to guest? Or do you feel like it doesn't matter if you have a similar... So, like, you know, like, so you said have the flow, right? Like, and I know, like, to me, that's called run-of-show. So you have, like, your intro, you have, like, your meat, and you have a closing.

But in the meat part, do you believe in having from episode to episode, like, some similar? similarities in like between guest to guest of like what you're talking about um i i or it doesn't matter i think that's like the discretion of the person hosting the show i don't think there's like a one-size fits all i think it goes back to like more of like what the theme of that show is and just making sure that you're true thank you staying true to that part of your show and who your identity is right and i think that goes back to identity right it's like you got to have an identity with this right Because if not, then it's like people are going to tune in and maybe want to listen to the person, but they're not going to really understand what the basis of the show is, right?

So I think when you talk about the meat of it, I think you have to find what that identity is. But a lot of times, too, you don't know where this guest is going to go with the conversation, right? And I'm a huge believer. And this is just, again, personal opinion. You could take it as you to let it go where it flows, right? If there's certain points of conversations you want to hit, make sure you hit them. But you really never know where the dialogue is going to go. go. And if you force it to go in another way, it's going to be like, well, wait a minute,

this guy was just talking about this. And now all of a sudden you're trying to turn the conversation over here. So it's like really let the guests dictate the conversation as far as like what they want to say and how they want to say it. And you're just kind of like the moderator of that conversation. But also keeping in the back of your mind, well, okay, they're making a point around, you know, their mental health, right? And their journey or some of the adversity that they felt in their life. Well, I'm going to ask you the question in a way where you choose to answer it however you want.

I may know it's a sensitive subject, right? We just had Eric Spolstra's ex-wife on the show, Nikki Spolstra, on the podcast. That was a good one. That was cool. No, that was the Stay Tranquilo one. Yeah. Yeah. And so.

She liked her podcast. She was a fan of the podcast and he reached out of her and she got on. Yeah. And the dropping of the timing of that. episode was also crazy because of the whole Hymus thing was going on. Yeah, so whatever. But I use her as an example, right, because she had struggled with alcoholism, right? And, you know, it's been transparent.

It's out there, but I don't know how much she's willing to say or how much she wants to talk about her or how she wants to talk about it. So I positioned the question in a way, it's like, hey, you've dealt with certain challenges in the last few years. you know what's kind of the way that you've approached those hurdles in your life right and crying he was even more big than that he's like how the four the last four six years yeah of your life been yeah yeah yeah she just she just yeah super open about it crying on the podcast like real emotion real tears like i started fucking tearing up on the pod because like it was like it was

deep deep you know like sun had cancer alcoholism divorce like all these different things, right? But I use that as an opportunity for her to say, this is my story, right? And then from there, I'm now able to pick off because I knew how much she was able to say. Now we can get into a little bit more deeper about what she wanted to say about that, right? So that's when I say let the guests really lead the conversation. It's going to allow them to say what they want to say. And then from there, if they don't want to say much, then that's where you have to come in and really be like, all right, this is my turn to take the conversation over and really let people talk.

Like in the demographic of transitioning from that early motherhood stage and they're going into like entrepreneurship, they're doing like a lot of self-development, things like that, breaking a lot of like inner child stuff, kind of multifaceted, but that's very much my demographic. Thank you. And I make a lot of content. So I'm a content creator on Instagram and I feel like that's already my demographic. And so I feel like I understand the podcast portion, but I would like to know if you had any advice, if you had to start all over, right?

And just knowing the pain points that come with that budget and all of that. What would you say for setup? And then how to funnel using Instagram clips and stories to drive that conversion over to YouTube or whatever platform it might be. Yeah, I would say, you know, over the last few years, like the, I wouldn't say regret, but I guess biggest regret I had was when I was at the marketing agency not being more consistent with getting content out there on the podcast. I think that was like a big missed opportunity of like just like a big gap in a way of like losing audience in that approach. You know, so I would say like just the consistency was something that we do very good now, but kind of was like a fluctuation kind of thing. And those things happen just based off of you don't have time and you don't have the resources and you're busy with other things, right?

But I would say don't let that be an excuse, right? Find the way. You know, even if it's repurposing a clip from another episode. because you couldn't get an episode out that week, but at least you're still relevant to get something out that week, and you could still drive people to that clip maybe because they didn't see it the first time, right, or a different iteration of that clip.

Yeah, short form, yeah. And then, you know, as far as the long-form stuff, like, and driving traffic to the podcast, it's a challenge, right? Because just because you drove, you know, X amount of views to a social media clip and, you know, it did really well, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to go and consume the long form, right? And I think that is really the hardest part and why we've made more of an emphasis on just focusing

so much on the short form clips and why video has been so important because it's our marketing tool for everything that we do, right? So even if it's just you on your phone and just announcing that a podcast is coming out this week, do that, right? If it's just extracting a clip really easy. I mean, there's a tool. I forget the name of it, but you can upload a full podcast episode

and it'll split up like 20 clips for you in a really easy and seamless way, and then you can go in there, add to captions and all that. So if you can use those type of tools so that for the sake of time, bandwidth and all that, at least now you have content

that you can use and you can put out two or three pieces of content. And there is where like the residual will be built, right? Because that's what it's been. It hasn't been like a here to here, you know? It's been like a here to here

to hear, to hear, to hear. I always tell them, you know. And then maybe here and then here, right? You have to enjoy the small victories for sure. Yeah. Small victories are huge. It's really been that. I mean, for the most part, we're posting almost every single day from all our different

content offerings. I mean, one thing that he says and it's been a word that we always use is we've been consistent for the last three years with content. We haven't missed a week every single day. We're pretty much posting. But that's for different ones, right? Yeah, well. She was doing one, like, like, so many, right?

So what convenience for episodes? Is it like once a week? And then you chomping up. For the short form or just episodes in general? Like long form. Like the full interview. So like to be transparent just because of the logistics that go into producing an episode, guests, you know, cutting up clips, all that, I think a great starting point is biweekly to a month.

I think that is a great way to start every other week. to once a month, right? And I always use this as an example, too, with podcasts, right? If you can record one podcast a month, right? Let's say that's 12 episodes throughout the whole year. That one podcast, though, can turn into 10, 15 clips that you can use for social that will then drive audience to the long form stuff. And if they see four or five clips over the course of that month, you're still driving the traffic to the long form. And you might have drive maybe a couple hundred views or downloads through that because you push that one specific, whereas you're, you know, you're not the biggest podcast in the world, right? So to get an audience engaged week over week over week with new guests

over new guests with new guests, yeah, you might get someone to consume that new guest and they might be intrigued by that person. So you might get them to listen to that. But realistically, it's hard to get continuous audience week over week. So why not just drive that one podcast for a month long and just use social media as an avenue. And it gives people at different points. Exactly. And maybe they weren't on their phone that Tuesday that you posted that clip, you know? So you get them the next week on another clip that, you know, and maybe that clip performs

better than that one. So. And also with analytics, you kind of know. You stretch the content out. And what days work best for each type of content offering. So, like, there's some days that golf does better. Some days our main podcast does better or sports does better. Like analytics will tell you at what point each kind of demographic is continuing.

Does it cannibalize? So it's a great point, and I was actually about to talk on that, right? So one of our biggest challenges, like at this point, right, is we have six different podcasts that we produce within the network, right? So a different day has a different podcast that goes out, right? So like Tuesdays stay tranquil, Wednesdays usually our golf stuff. Thursdays is sports, like our local sports show and breaking house rules, which is the one with Javan.

and that one is like a fucking you got like three clips that are going out in the same day right so it's like how much of this is like is it getting diluted right and the algorithm is not going to necessary reward you for putting out so much content out in one day right so now you're actually hurting yourself versus helping yourself and we're at the point where it's like okay how do we all maybe scale this back a little bit focus more on like the quality of these one two reels that we put out there and then maybe not do so many of the long form because it's like hey you Yeah, we're getting great engagement on the short form, but it's not translating into the long form. So there's a ton of investment in time that goes into producing one episode.

Let's just focus on the social component. And I think something that's interesting, too, right? I was sitting in a panel about a year ago, and the head of marketing for Walt Disney company said something really interesting. And it honestly shifted the whole way that I thought about not just podcasts, but just like media as a general, right? And she said that social media in itself is a network, right? It's comparable to TV at this point because of how much money is being spent on social media advertising, that how many views are on there, how many eyeballs on their users, all that. It's the equivalent to a TV network at this point. It's a Fox, a CBS, all that.

So if you can just drive a ton of viewership through social content, you have now a product that you can monetize, right? You might only be getting 250, 20 listeners on your podcast, whatever that number may be, but you're driving 20,000 views per real that you post on social media. Someone's going to see a ton of value in that. It's like, all right, you're driving eyeballs. You're driving millions of views, you know, every month just through your social media clips. Are you saying that it doesn't, TikTok versus YouTube? I think it's not that it doesn't matter.

Exactly. I think there's still a ton of value in the fact that if you do a good job of doing social well, you're going to be able to build audience over time, right? Because if I'm driving continuously 20, 30, 40, 50, 100,000 views on social per clip, there's weight to that. And guess what? Now that person saw that clip. They engaged with it.

They liked it. They probably now have more of a likelihood of consuming your next one. And now there's a level of interest there. Then now they're going to go and watch the long form, right? Because not everyone's going to make the commitment to watch a 50 minute hour-long podcast, right? There's a select few and there's an audience there for sure because we see it. But if you could focus on the social component first and really drive down the narrative of building social first and letting audience builds residual over time, but focus more on like, hey, let's just make sure that we're active on social media and putting up clips frequently, 30, 40, second minute long clips. And you're driving viewership there.

You're building something tangible that now you could go to market with and try to monetize. Instead of investing so much time and putting a full podcast out every single week. Yeah. Yeah. I think like 40. I think like 40. Yeah. I would say in the beginning, don't really focus too much on the time, right?

Because I mean, at the end of the day, you know, 30 listeners or your 30 listeners, it is what it is, right? But I think you're going to build the audience over time. And then as you see, you put more content, you're saying, hey, we're driving more traffic to the YouTube. We're driving more traffic to the Spotify's of the world. They're only listening to 18 minutes of the conversation. maybe, hey, maybe we don't need to do an hour-long conversation.

So how can we condense those conversations? So I think that's something you could tweak as you go. It is kind of honestly hard to maybe host a podcast in 20 minutes because I don't know how much really you can get out of that, you know? So I think 40 minutes, like even just me sitting on a podcast and talking, 40 minutes feels right too. It just feels like it's not dragging out. I'm not going to hear from everybody else because I know for me,

like some of the ones that, you know, that I would be interested. I just don't show. And I feel like, oh, okay, I got it. And then I might see a different version of it and I'll watch it in 30 seconds a minute. And it doesn't inspire me to stop everything I'm doing because I got just. Oh, yeah, that's all. Yeah, I saw a little bit of that. Which kind of like emphasizes what I'm saying, like do social, you know, focus on it.

And the beauty of podcasts is you can get so much content out of that, right? Instead of like sitting down and recording yourself talking and trying to create a social content, by you just sitting in a 40-minute podcast that you're able to get there's probably so much good stuff in there right so it's like record that hour-long episode and now all of a sudden you got six clips maybe that you could use for the month and you can cut them up and strategically you know make them in a way that is engaging yeah yeah yeah at first you're like I could do this I'm starting it and and you're like yeah all I have to do is talk but you don't realize that there's editing and there's

Buzz spot. It's so much work. No, for sure. And so I'm also curious about, obviously, now you have an editing team, right? But, like, what is your editing process look like? Because sometimes that's the thing that'll defeat you like it. Because you're like, do I put this whole thing out? Or we recorded an hour, but really 40 minutes is good. So now I've got to cut it down, but now I got to make.

So, like, talk to us a little bit about that. So I'll let him answer, like, the editing of what that looks like now, but to do it like in the most simplistic way possible, you know, without maybe having all the resources or having all the time in the world. I think, you know, reality is you can use an iPhone. And exactly. So even if you don't have a camera, you can record on there. They have mics that connect to your phone.

You can mic yourself up easily with a, you know, with your iPhone. Just a literally clip on mic, record on there, get the video. And all of a sudden you got audio and visual, right? And then from there, you, as far as like distribution, you want to get it on YouTube. You want to get it on Spotify. You want to get in all these platforms. You can do that now easily using an anchor, using a pod tracer, I think, is another one. What's the one that uses?

Bus frow. Yeah. Right. So there's tons of platforms that then you just get that file. You upload it in there. You could schedule them ahead of time. So if you want to put the caption in there, say, I want to drop this on Wednesday at 6 p.m. You put it in there and you put all the, all the, you know, all the description of what the episode has.

And you put that in there. And then boom. all of a sudden you recorded, dropped the episode on there, and distributed it, you know, relatively simply, right? And then there's a website there that cuts up social media reels too. So after it's uploaded onto YouTube, you can actually copy and paste a YouTube link, put it onto that website. I think it costs like $15 a month or something like that. And you put it on there, and it'll cut up like eight different reels with you with captions and everything. And then you can download and use it for social media.

And then their AI algorithm will find, we'll find, yeah, it's a little dicey. You know, you might get like 10 clips and like six of them are not great, but you can refresh it and have them cut up, you know, another round of edits if you wanted to. And then you pick and choose, you look at the caption, see. And then if you want to do some extra editing, you know, like on a cap cut or something like that, you could do that. But you use, you can use those tools. So at least you have content that you can use.

And it's the quickest way possible, right? And then, yeah, and then as far as that, you get those posts, and then you post them on Instagram, TikTok. YouTube shorts is huge right now. We're seeing a lot of traction on YouTube shorts. So if you could post on YouTube shorts as well, I think that's a huge one. What's the price of you okay for a video, right? To edit?

I'll add her nice. He's going to give you Miami prices. Yeah, you're probably been working together. No, for sure. I mean, look. I'll answer the question this way, right? I mean, obviously, video production and editing is, is expensive for the most part, right? Because you're paying for someone's equipment, you know, quality of their work, all that.

So travel, you know, logistics, all that. But, you know, just to turn that camera up, I'll tell you how much I'm, I'm, I'm, for the sake of editing. I mean, there's talented college kids that you can tap into that will do internships for you, you know, especially guys like yourselves. You know, you guys are high-profile people with great reputation. people would die to work with you guys, you know? And then you're selling them on the fact like, hey, I'm building something cool. I'm building something unique.

Like, work with me from the beginning and we can grow this together. I mean, when he first started, I wasn't paying him crap. You know? Like, and he's just believed in it from day one and he's grown with us. And obviously now, you know, we all make a little money off of this. But the goal is like selling the vision of it, right? And I think when you're in the beginning, beginning, you have to do that because you don't have funds to invest into editors,

videographers, whatever it may be, right? So, and you want to keep as much money, obviously, in the business so you can continue to make it grow. So, yeah, I, I answer the question that way because that's exactly how, you know, how, how, how, how, how to do it. And, and exactly, because there are people that are willing to, I don't want to call it free labor, but it's sweat equity is really what it is, right? And, and, and they're buying into the vision, they're buying into, you know, to working with guys like yourselves. And I think that's valuable in itself. And, you know, it might work for three months. And then you got to find the next one, right? Until someone really sees the vision and is willing to put in the time and

the effort and you guys just like working together, then, I mean, the sky's the limit. I would say, honestly, that's the best way to go about it. But, you know, it could be guys charging $1,000 to, you know, edit a couple video clips or, you know, maybe even more if you hire like an agency. But that would be honestly the best way to go about it. Yeah, so I'm not on every show. I'm on about three of them. So I'm on the, I'm the host of the state Tranquilo one,

which is the original podcast, and it's just usually me and a guest interviewing them. And then Breaking House Rules is me, Javan, and Cam. And it's just kind of like the three of us on a segment. And then the Tranquilo Sports,

which is a local sports show that we just talk, Miami Sports. And that's just me and a co-host, basically. And he kind of leads more of that effort. I just kind of sit on there. and sometimes I'm a floating guest if we want to bring in someone else, they come in.

So I'm not on everything. And as we've grown, I've kind of scaled myself out because what I didn't want it to be was like the Andre brand, you know? I wanted to just, I'm here involved, obviously, but, you know,

there's a multitude of other people that also are involved, and I want them to be the faces of the personalities for those shows. Yeah, my other question for that was, yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think, you know,

It started off as friends, basically. You know, hey, we're guys with similar interests that want to maybe start something together. So, you know, start it amongst your close-knit guys that have the same interest of maybe being on a show. That's where it starts. And then it's just kind of scaled out into, hey, I see you're already making content. You're maybe trying to monetize this content. We can help you through maybe some of our relationships, you know, scaling it out. We're doing the outreach.

We're doing the production. So we can help you with your production. We can help you with your monetization and you're already creating content. So why not come in and do content in partnership with us, right? Having some sort of connection point where they represent the brand in the right way, you know, they're not just out of left field and they have no connection to the brand at all. But if they have some sort of connection to the brand in the audience, then that's one, you know, kind of one criteria.

But also if they're already creating content, it's great because it's like, well, they've already kind of went through that hurdle where they don't, you know, it's awkward being a content creator. for some people, right? So maybe they don't feel comfortable being on camera. So if they already have some sort of familiarity, then we'll reach out to them and say, hey, do you want to join the network and kind of give our pitch if they have an existing podcast? But they have to also fit the mold of like what makes sense. Can you speak to the IP of your brand? So for those people who are starting, so like for example, there's some people that are starting up. So like I don't

you're just trademarked, right? So like, can you speak a little bit to IP? for people who maybe don't know and like when that should be a thing for you and how you know yeah it's tough it's day turn you it's trademark yeah yeah so that's why i was like can you speak a little bit to that yeah no definitely i you know i would say like if you're married to a name and you really think like you know there's weight to it in the long run try to trademark it as as soon as possible because all it takes is one clip to go crazy and then someone sees the vision of that and then they trade market. Yeah, I wouldn't say there's like an exact time because obviously a trademark is expensive, you know, so not everyone has, you know, the funds to be able to pay, you know,

a couple thousand dollars for a lawyer and going through that exercise of trademarking a product, right? But yeah, the earlier you can take care of that and, you know, obviously registering the business, you know, wherever that state may make sense for you and filing for the trademark, do it as early as possible because you want to own that property. And then that property itself has value too. So if you own the rights to it, someone wants to tap into that name for whatever reason, you can monetize off of that, right?

So for us, the reason we actually trademark the name was not even because of the podcast. And the podcast was around in the early stages, but we got approached by a beer brand that liked the name so much and wanted to use it as a tagline and pays us royalties now for being able to use the name.

And the only reason we were able to do that is because we owned, you know, the right. to the name. So you never really know what that ownership of that domain and that, you know, username or whatever you want to call it looks like because it could create other monetization opportunities through that. And the domain is you should like the web domain if you want to have a website. Yeah. And then owning the website obviously. Even if you're not active on this, you know, on the website, own it. And it's easy to make, you know, nowadays it's relatively easy

to make a website, right? And you use a site like Wix or Shopify, you know, whatever it might be go you know you get build it on go daddy right and you go there they have templates that you could build and you're there you just put the content on there if you want to or it's just as simple as to subscribe to our newsletter and then as it evolves you know you can put you can use it as your avenue to to drive brand sponsorships right because they're going to go look at your portfolio and be like oh let me look up more information on these guys then you can create merch around your pod right and then that's another monetization strategy that you know you can because you have fans.

How do you track the analytics? Like, you do get a sponsorship for you to repeat that business with them? Are you getting codes and stuff like that? So, yeah, there's a couple different ways. I mean, you know, we'll monitor social analytics for specific posts and just literally accumulate the numbers based off of what we did on social. We'll send them the full podcast audio. Like, if they're included in a podcast, we'll let them know, like, hey,

in those five episodes that you guys were part of, this is how many downloads were there. And then there are affiliate codes too that are starting to become more popular so they could track a little bit better And those aren't like the fairest way to track because somebody could still have gone to your website and didn't use the code and then all of a sudden you don't get credit for it kind of thing But yeah, I would say you know just monitoring viewership through you know social analytic tools and then affiliate codes would probably be the other one I know you said a last question So yeah, we share space with an artist named Vig Garcia. And we use his space as our studio, basically.

And then we float, we also float around too. So what do you mean? We'll be at a restaurant, we'll be at an office, we'll be in a backyard. What kind of... Pallet factory? We've recorded in a car. My wife and I, we invest in real estate. Okay.

What do you think? What are your thoughts on that? Dude. What do you think? There's a massive opportunity in just content creation space. Like creating us a workspace plus content space. You're starting to see a couple of them pop up, but they're not either in great locations, they're expensive, or they're just not functional spaces, right?

So like, well obviously warehouse spaces have become big into this whole content space because you can get huge into like how you can design the spaces. But I would say there's a massive opportunity specifically in Miami because so many people are getting into the space, but don't know where to. go to create space, right? Like the breaking house rules one, we go all the way to Boka to do it. And like, they're monetizing that space right now.

They, I think they charged us like $5,000, $6,000 for the whole year, right? Or for like a season of episodes, I think it was like 30 episodes or whatever it was. And they were supposed to help with audio, video, all that time. They could have, but it was terrible quality. The lighting was awful. Like the quality of the pod would have been terrible.

And then that's when we came in and we're like, all right, we're gonna do it ourselves. What catches your eye, like the lighting. Yeah, yeah, you got to get good lighting in there. You got to get good camera, soundproof walls, right? So if you can create a space that's like that, that say, hey, we're going to get the best quality, best kind of sets, designs, all that, you know, fluctuations. Like you have one set today, another set tomorrow, right? So having a space where it's just a create, I like, I call it the creation station, right?

Like, where people can just go and create, I think it could be cool and making sure that you build the infrastructure for something. like that but I do think there's a big opportunity.