Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome back for another episode of the unscripted small business podcast. I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Jeff Revola, the entrepreneurial force behind Padooti Live, a one of a kind podcast theater and live venue located just outside of Pittsburgh. With over 20 years of experience in digital marketing, Jeff has spent the last decade combining his expertise with his passion for podcasting and live streaming. Through Paduti Live, Jeff is redefining the podcasting industry by hosting dynamic live shows that bring creators and communities together in real time. In today's conversation, Jeff shares the challenges and rewards of building his business, the importance of community building, and his forward thinking approach to content creation. Get ready for some insightful stories, actionable lessons, and and a look into the exciting future of live podcasting. Let's jump in.
Jeff, I'm so excited to have you in the studio today. Thank you for being here.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Well, it looks like I'm saying our studios and my studio, but you have a studio behind you and it's absolutely stunning.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's actually something that's been stuck in my head for about seven years and I was turning 48 last year and I said, look, I need to know if this is a thing. I talk about this thing all the time. I have ideas for this thing. I'm going to be. I'm turning 48, I need to know by the time I'm 50, is this a real idea, a real business?
And I gave myself a two year window to figure it out and, and so far it's going it just like I can. I'll explain more, but you know, it is moving along at a faster pace than I'd expected at this point.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Oh my gosh. Well, that's amazing. Congratulations. And I love that you just went for something that you felt led to do.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. I grew up in skateboarding and punk rock in the 90s and 2000s, so I have a very independent spirit. I. I'm a big DIY guy. So by the time I found podcasting in 2006 and 2007, I knew there was something here for me.
You're the creator, you're the producer, you're in complete control of all your content and your destiny. It's all you. There's no more DIY than podcasting, and I just fell in love with it almost 20 years ago now.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Wow, that's incredible. And I'm sure you've seen quite a change in podcasting over the years.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, it used to be.
I joke around. I had my first ipod back in 2007. It's even in scripted.
Yeah. Happy Father's Day. And back then, you didn't have an app that you subscribed to. You actually had to go to your computer at your house, go to your itunes account, pick which podcast episode you wanted to download, cue them up, then plug in your ipod, sync your ipod. It would remove the ones you listen to, and it would add the new ones to listen to. And then you could take it with you. And there wasn't Bluetooth yet. Everything was through aux jack, so if you wanted to plug it into your car, you had to use the auxiliary jack to even try to listen to it or use headphones.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Wow. Did you have to pay for them like you would like Apple Music? I remember getting those itunes cards at the store, and then you'd put the song on the card and pay for it. Did you have to pay for podcasts?
[00:03:42] Speaker B: They were always free. It was always a distribution method. And really, itunes ran with the ability to push that RSS feed to a portal to a place to really connect with podcasters and very grateful for what they did. Because back then, I had a skateboard shop and manufacturing at a skate park, and I would be packing orders all morning, and I'd listen to shows like Marketing Over Coffee or the Beancast or Six Pixels of Separation with Mitch Joel. All those were around back then. And while I'm packing orders for the e commerce side of the business, I'd be getting a full education from these people who were immersed in digital marketing, who were figuring out email and social media and figuring out even buying AdWords back then. In 2003, 2004, I'm getting a full masterclass for free just because I subscribe to these people and I'm taking in all their content. So that power was something that resonated with me, you know, right off the bat, like, here's a way to communicate with the world. And it was obviously much, much easier, a lot less competition than there is now. So it was a great time to get involved and to really just become a fan of podcasting at that time.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: That's incredible. So I. I want to backtrack for a second because you said you worked for your packing orders for skateboards, so did you own that company as well?
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, you can find some videos on the Internet. There's some funny ones. It was called Blank Skate Supply, and I'm in kind of a depressed area. So Michael was the manufacturer Skateboards at a low cost, not a ton of graphics. We didn't paint them or anything. We were just selling blank skateboards to kids who really needed or couldn't buy a 50 or $60 board. I'm selling them for 20 to $25. So that was kind of like my little angle. And I like skating blank boards anyway. I was, I was a guy who didn't really invest a ton, you know, into my. I just wanted boards all the time. Because at a high level you're lucky if you get a week or two out of your skateboard deck. You like, that wood part gets replaced all the time. And if you don't have a sponsor and you're just doing it for fun, those costs add up rather quickly.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: That's so interesting. So I'm not familiar with the skateboarding world, even though I feel like I'm one of those posers because I wear vans all the time and I love vans, but I'm not a skateboarder. I'm the clumsiest person you'll probably ever meet in your life. But I've always found them to be so beautiful and I didn't know that. I didn't know you had to change the board out so much.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it's wood and it's flexible too. So. One thing you don't think, you think skateboards are these very hard, you know, form shapes of wood. But there's flex to them, there's give to them and they, they torque a little bit and there's all these little nuances that happen just in the shape and the construction and how they're cut out, that there's variances between every board and over time that flexing the boards lose what you'll hear skaters call pop. And pop is that brand new board that's really, you know, it's just been pressed. The glue is, you know, completely formed and it's strong. The board is very firm. Over time from that flexing and landing and jumping down steps and putting pressure on the tail to ollie, the board breaks down and starts to mush out a little bit. So at a high level you lose what's called the pop, the firmness of the board and you get kind of like this mushy, gross board, like.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: So interesting. Okay, so you've had quite a trajectory then within entrepreneurship, have you owned any other businesses besides that one?
[00:07:23] Speaker B: No, that was one that really set my whole career off. I've tried other little things. I've even did some multi level marketing in the 90s when I was 18.
I love the idea, but the skateboard skate shop really became a laboratory for me because there wasn't training on how to do AdWords or how to make a video for YouTube. You know, YouTube was only a year old at that time.
So, you know, I started figuring out, and this, these seven, eight years that I was there 12 hours a day, seven days a week turned out to be better than the education I received at college. Because I was immersed in this world. I was able to build my own social network. We were producing our own videos, we produced a magazine. And all these things gave me not just credibility, but experience in the digital world. And whenever I had to close down that business because I got really, really heavy into manufacturing, which also happened to coincide with what I didn't know at a time was called a housing crisis, I just watched my sales drop 30% a month, month after month after month, and I just got wiped out. I was so heavy leveraged in this expansion, I couldn't sell any boards anymore.
But what happened was those eight years, that education that I got, just grinding away day after day, I actually walked out of there and became a marketing director of an auto group. And I've been doing that for 15 years now, just based off what I've learned in that time period.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: That's incredible. And I love that it seems like you had to do what I feel like entrepreneurs favorite word is, which is pivot. You had to learn how to pivot through that time frame.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Pivot and jam. Like, figure out what you're doing, Is it working or not? If it is, do more of it. If it isn't, you know, change, you know, change course. Figure out why.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Absolutely. So tell us more about the digital marketing side. I'm curious now to hear kind of what you do within that realm now.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's grown a lot because I have a department of 10 now. We have 10 franchises that we're overseeing. And I have a section a quarter of my department is just based on building our own media. We build videos organically for a car dealership. We've had over 70 million organic views, not even paying for advertising. You know, nobody wakes up in the morning, wants to go watch your local car dealer video. But we do different things, like, very tactile things. You know, buying a car. Most of the time, most people don't care about horsepower, and they don't want to know what's under the hood, but they want to know, you know, what does this lever do when I pull it? How many cup holders are in there. You know, can I. Can the seats fold down? Do they fold down flat? So we really, about 10 years ago took this approach that we're not, we're not going to yell that we have a sale. We have the family owned and operated. We got the best prices in town. We're going to demonstrate the features of the car. And as soon as we pivoted from, you know, the typical car dealer commercial, as you know, lowest price, never lower, again this month early to, hey, the seats fold flat and you can fit like a sheet of plywood in a sedan. You know, something like that. Wow. We had hockey stick growth like almost overnight. The trajectory changed. And over time, we've actually. We're one of the only one of the few car dealers that have monetized all of our channels. So we get a check back every month from YouTube that we use to buy new equipment to go to conferences and keep reinvesting into the content.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: That's incredible. I love that you found that. That niche thing right within that industry, because like you said, that sound sounds really challenging. And I think that a lot of businesses probably have that, that struggle when their product is not necessarily something that's easily marketable that people are really looking for. And so to give them content that speaks to them and it's something that they actually would want to watch. I mean, that's, that's huge. And I love that you're doing that too, because I find that even within my own vehicle, there's things that I don't know about it, and I wish that I did. I have, I have a Mazda. And so the other day my friend was showing me how, like, I don't have to hold the fob down to unlock the door. I can just press the button when my keys are in my hands. And I had no idea. You know, it's just, it's the little things like that.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yes. You may even have windows that roll down automatically if you hold down unlock a few times. Some cars have that feature. I have an Acura if I hold down unlock two times, all my windows and sunroof open. So they don't show you that in the dealership. That's one of the things you have to figure out afterwards.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Right. And they should, because maybe that's a selling point for somebody.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, I love. Like, you can be, you know, 300ft away from your car in the summertime and you put all the windows down so you don't get that heat wave when you pop in. It was 100 degrees outside. But it's, you know, 120 inside.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. Okay, so you spend a lot of time on YouTube then, with your digital marketing. Are there any other platforms that you've been utilizing a lot?
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we do TikTok for the sake of being there. I think I know some other people who have had tremendous success virally on TikTok, but in our world, you know, the conversion doesn't necessarily happen online. It happens in the dealership. You know, most people don't put a lead in or don't call. They show up to a dealership, you know, and that's the first point of contact. So for us, the content that we're creating is, you know, awareness content. It's, hey, we're, you know, we're doing these things. We're having some fun where, you know, we enjoy what we do and. And we care about the customer. Those things over and over and over again on. You see that on YouTube, on our Facebook, on. On TikTok as well. We're just reaffirming that message. Like, hey, when you think of Mazda, you know, we're the Mazda dealer in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, or we're the Honda dealer in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, because you've seen us so many times.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that's so cool. Okay, so talk to us now about how you got into podcasting world and starting your own studio. Because you're still doing the digital marketing, but now you have your podcasting studio as well.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So back in 2015, there was a platform that kind of like came emerging onto the scene of live stream. It's called Blab. Some people were there, and if you were there, Blab still holds a place in your heart, like, 10 years later. It was the first four in the box live stream service. And it had the social element to it that when you went live, Blab would send like 30 to 40 people to your room just because of the way it was built. It was built to give people an audience. And I started doing my trivia show. I do a trivia show I've done for 10 years now called Stuff I Never Knew. And I would go live and I'd have eight people playing trivia from around the world. And I thought, how amazing is this that I can just go live? No plans. Like, I had the questions written, no audience members. They would just show up and want to participate. And I'm creating this community. I'm connecting with people in real time. And one of the things Blab did. Is it recorded for you? This is all a free service. They recorded it for you, and you could download the video. And what I would do is do my show, get the video, and then, you know, extract the audio from my podcast. And that was really, like, the first time I was like, okay, there's. There's more to podcasting than just having a home studio or a theater space like I have now. There's more to it. There's so much more to it. And Blab had a fiery death. Like, it. It grew so fast. It had no business model, and eventually just crumbled on its. Under its own weight. It couldn't. It couldn't do much more. It was out of money, and it went away, like, almost overnight. And people who were there were devastated. But it. And it does, like I said, it has. You know, we all have this affinity for. For Blab that stayed with me. I was like, how, you know, we were able to go live and have this community?
It was something that you don't get anywhere else. You can get comments, and if you have a podcast, you get download numbers at the end of the. At the end of the week, but you don't really get to connect with people like that. So in, like, 2018, 2019, I started playing around with the idea, well, if I can't go to Blab anymore, maybe I could just show up in the public, like at a park or along a riverwalk or at a pavilion, and just start recording shows and see what happens. Like, you know, Jeff on the street doing trivia. And I would. I thought, okay, I'll take the show to the people was kind of my first iteration. And I built this theater concept that called Theater anywhere. And I built it so it could fit in the backseat of my car. I could wheel it out, pop it up. I have a full system. I can live stream, and I can record the show from wherever I set it up and just pop up and do shows everywhere. I thought, okay, that's a great way to get the community together.
And then in 2020, a friend of mine opened a coffee shop and said, why don't we do some live shows? Come to my coffee shop. I'll buy tacos for everybody, and you'll do your show. We'll just charge $10. They're going to have unlimited tacos and drinks and trivia. And I said, great. Why. Why don't we schedule it for March 30, 2020? And he goes, yeah, it's a great idea. And so, you know, March 21, you know, things start shutting down because of the pandemic, and then like it was like March 26th and we're still deciding, like, do you think it's going to be done? You think we'll be able to still do the show? And eventually everything was shut down and we had to not do. But it gave me this idea that, okay, now we're stuck in our houses. What if I just had this in my basement? What if I set up my show as a stage show in my basement, had a couple people over, but I live streamed it at the same time. So I called it the Infinite Seat theater was the concept. And I went to PodFest in 2020. They had a called PodFest Origins, it was a virtual conference. And I presented this concept of a podcast theater that was an infinite seat theater. And the purpose was, hey, you could have these small little spaces. People could come in and do their show. There'd be a little bit of a community element. But then you're not bound by the seating capacity. You don't have to rent out a hotel ballroom or Madison Square Garden or your local theater. You can do this in a small room with friends, family, you know, real close personal fans and broadcast that out to the world of thousands of people. It didn't matter. So you can, your scale is quick and, you know, infinite. While your expenses are flat and never go up at any point other than credit card processing fees, that's on a per ticket basis. So now I have this concept that, okay, if you want to have a podcast and you want to have some sort of community element, this is a way to do that for, for podcasters. And most podcasters don't have the budget to rent out a room or a bar or, you know, even library sometimes will do like back rooms for $50.
You don't have to do any of that now. This is all turnkey and you could actually walk into this little theater space. Now start your show, I record it for you and then you can walk home. I'll email you the recording.
It's that simple. And the ability to connect from that stage, the stage that you see behind me here is. It's unbelievable. And behind that curtain there's a giant tv. So you could be in the stage, on the stage in the theater, and your guest could be in California. You could pull them up on stage. You could be interviewing in real time from the stage, interviewing somebody in California in front of people sitting in the theater in Tarentum while people from all around the world are leaving comments and interacting. So now the stage concept is almost like a portal to the world. When you get on there, anybody in the world can really hone in on you and look at your content and watch it and take it all in.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: That's incredible. How many people are typically in the studio at a given time?
[00:19:42] Speaker B: The studio holds 40. Typical shows are around 20 to 25. The live streams can go up to up to thousands.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: That's very cool. So it's very intimate then, for the people that actually get to go within the studio?
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Yes. What I'm trying to do. And again, just to show you, the chairs kind of wrap around the stage like the letter C. And I'm trying to create that feeling that when you're in your morning commute and you're listening to a podcast or you're at the gym and you have the podcast in your earbuds, it becomes this immersive, almost intimate experience between you and the host where you're just drawn in. You feel like you're in the room sometimes you're listening to the conversation. And that's what this theater space is. You can't help but be pulled. Your eyes are pulled to that stage, to that podcast that's happening right there in front of you, and it's that same experience. And that's why I think the small theater works this way, is because you're. I'm literally recreating the feeling of listening to a podcast by yourself. But now you're with, you know, 30 of your closest friends.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: I love the concept of it. I know in the beginning of our session, you started talking about how you weren't really anticipating it to grow as fast as it did. Walk us through what that felt like and maybe some of those challenges that you faced with just such a rapid growth.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it wasn't always rapid. I'll tell you. When I opened, we timed our opening with the town that I'm in. Tarentum was doing night markets, where they bring in artists and crafters and vendors, and they block off the streets and play music. And it's. So we would time it. And so because of that, we were getting interest from the public that would come in, sit down, watch a show. And so I thought, like, okay, I got some traction here. And by the time school started and we got towards the holidays, all of a sudden, I'm doing shows by myself. I'm just going down there, locking the door and recording a show to an empty audience, and it's just me. And I'm like, where is everybody going? Why? Why am I having so much trouble? And I did build in Runway with my Business model. I knew it was going to be nine months to a year before we started to get ramping. Before it, like, ramped up. I had to cover expenses for nine months. This is a. This is a brand new form of entertainment. This is a brand new way for podcasters to. To do their shows. So I'm building, you know, I'm fighting this on two fronts. I'm trying to teach the public that you can do this. Like, just like you go to a comedy club to see a comedian or go to a bar or a venue to see a rock band. Well, now you can go to out, you know, for the night out, go watch a live podcast. So, yeah, we're teaching the public and then we're teaching podcasters who are very comfortable. You know, even now, I'm at my home studio recording with a green screen. I'm very comfortable coming in here, turning everything on and doing a show, because I've set this up and I practice this, and I've done this year over year. I'm trying to teach podcasters, hey, trust me, come to my theater. I'll do everything for you. I'll produce it, I'll record it. I'll give you the recording.
So, you know, trying to attack this on two fronts. And by the time Christmas rolled around, like it was a ghost town. I had a couple people come to town and that was it. Like four shows maybe. But in the last 60 days, where this has really turned, as I started doing these podcaster meetups, I'm like, if I could just get people in here, demonstrate the technology, show them what it's about. So we've done three Pittsburgh meetups. I buy pizza and drinks, and we hang out and we talk about podcasting. We answer your most pressing questions. And I'm getting. What I'm doing is getting like 20 people to the theater. We're hanging out, we're talking podcasting, something that we love. And then they're seeing the upside of doing live performances. And, you know, three or four a night are booking live shows now. So.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: I've done a global podcast. I'm doing another one on Saturday, March 1.
But I'm getting these people now who are seeing the event. And I've now booked. I've booked three shows from last Saturday. Saturday we did the Pittsburgh meetup. I booked a magician from Buffalo. I have a guy from New York coming in to do four days of tr or four shows over two days of trivia. You know, I'm doing a trivia show. I have another guy with A show in the works. And so these meetups have been like this catalyst in the last 60, 90 days that have put this whole thing back on track. And it's firing on all cylinders. I'm getting two or three requests a day to like, hey, what's your space? Like, how do I use it? What's, you know, what's the business model? How does this all work? And so now people are seeing it and like, I saw, like, I saw that snowball building and building and building to the top of the hill. And I knew at some point it's just going to break and crest that hill and pummel me. It's good. I'm going to be so overworked. And it's happening now, and it's been happening in the, in the last 45 days, especially that there's just interest coming out of everywhere as people are really starting to get this concept. Because, like, one thing, I've been thinking about this for seven years, since 2015 with Blab, I thought about doing live shows. I realized after I opened last June, I'm the only one who's been thinking about live podcasting for seven years. I'm just. Now the rest of the world is like, starting to. Okay, there's something here. This is different because, you know, as a fan, when you go to see a podcast, you get to see a face, right? You know, you ever hear somebody, you try to guess what they look like, You've never been correct in your entire life. You think you know what somebody looks like from the sound of their voice, but you're always wrong. But now when you see the podcast that you've been listening to up on stage and you're meeting the host, right? You get to see them afterwards and ask them questions and shake their hands and say, hey, thank you. That episode you did back in November about honeycrisp apple pie was a huge hit at my family's Thanksgiving. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. So, as a fan, you get this whole other experience that you don't get just clicking subscribe and then seeing that episode show up on Tuesday. And for the podcaster, they're getting real time feedback from the stage. They tell a joke, they know right away if they're funny or not.
People can ask questions in the show. And then when they get to shake hands and see people and they're putting faces to their fans way more than if they were just to publish an episode and then in one week go back like, oh, I had 250 downloads. That's the only information you get when you release an MP3 as a podcast. But if you have the same people at your show, there's a much greater connection. You're building a better community by being there in front of people.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I love you Touched on so many things, you know, just as you were explaining that.
But one of the things that's coming to mind for me is just again, that transition into what podcasting is now. And I think that with social media, we're seeing a lot of videos of podcasters online. You can watch. One of my favorite podcasters is Jay Shetty, so I watch him do his interviews. And Lewis Howes, you can watch them with their guests, and they've got it kind of recorded in the studio, but it's a different feel. Like you said, when it's live, it's something unique. And I think too, people love studio audience shows. Like Ellen DeGeneres was popular and, you know, you could go to New York and go to a taping of the news and things like that. So I love that you kind of knew that this was going to be something worth doing a long time ago, and now it's like the world's catching up with you and your genius idea.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, at its essence, this is like a DIY television studio. Right. You couldn't piece together like, Saturday Night Live is a live audience with a stage that's being broadcasted to the world. Right. What am I doing? I have a live audience and a stage, and I'm broadcasting to the world. Ellen was the same way. A live audience. They have a stage, they record and release at a later date. But this is. This is a way for really anybody to have their own little TV studios. That's. Well, it's basically what it is. But in this case, we're focused on developing podcast and podcast talent. But it's no different. That's how much technology has changed that. This little guy from New Kensington now has a little TV studio in a 1600 square foot building.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: What are your plans for the studio moving forward now that you're seeing some of this momentum?
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Yeah, keep the momentum going, definitely. These meetups, they've been really a game changer. I think it's important for the community to keep connecting with each other. People are passing out business cards, they're booking appearances on their other shows, and this theater is becoming the pivot point for all those things. The center point of a pinwheel is this Paduti podcast theater. I'll give the name.
And we are that central that linchpin that's kind of building this community and building this idea of live podcasting. So I want to keep that going for sure. I want to bring in national and touring acts, there are people. And also as this idea grows, it's going to get copied into Cleveland and Baltimore and Cincinnati and then small podcasters like myself. I can spend a weekend going to Cincinnati and Baltimore and Cleveland and doing a little tour around the east coast here and making a couple bucks just having fun being a podcaster. So I see a community growing and a network growing, just like comedy clubs and venues for rock bands. They know where to tour, they know what size audience they can draw, and they go to these towns and draw an audience. So I want to see collaboration with other events, venues like this. And I want to keep developing. I want to get more into training and doing, you know, some larger scale events once a month where, you know, you come in, maybe it's a day, you know, it's a certain flat fee. But I bring in some of the best speakers because I, you know, because it is a virtual stage. I could bring in, you know, if I could afford a Jay Shetty, for example, he doesn't have to come to my town, he could be wherever he's at and appear on the stage through a live stream camera. So. And still have a one on one interaction with the audience there. So I have an advantage that I could bring in higher levels of talent without having to, you know, fund the traveling and fund the hotels and, you know, more money can go into their pockets as being speakers because I don't have to have to pay all those extra things. I can give them the money to show up. So that could give me a little bit of advantage to do, you know, bigger, more focused events for creators and podcasters.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Have you ever thought about franchising this?
[00:31:04] Speaker B: It's down the road, you know, right now it's. I want to. Proof of concept is these first two years, you know, can I get it out? Yeah, if I could, if I could put in a up a duty podcast theater in every small town, I would do it.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Well, I would love to see one here in Nashville. I think one of the things that we connected on when I first was messaging with you was, my goodness, I wish we had something like this here. I wish we had some type of studio. And not even just that, but just a space where you could go and record your podcast. And you're not distracted by dogs, you're not distracted by anything going on in the background. But you have A quiet, gorgeous space to record your studio without those large fees. Because I think the studios that we have around here, I mean, they're charging thousand dollars plus for like four hours of record time. So it gets challenging. So I love this concept and I love your business model. What inspired you to have that business model versus kind of charging people to rent out the space?
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, that punk rock mentality, that skateboard mentality is a big part of, of what you do when you're creative in that type of environment. And that independent DIY environment is, you know, you're constantly in the state of growing and learning. So. But you don't know everything that you know. So you, you know skateboarders who influence you or have style in a way that you wish you had style and, and musicians who, you know, play in a way that you wish you could play. So when you're starting out, you, you take what you see in the community and you develop from that. You develop from the people who came before you, and you make something now that's your own. So you, you kind of get inspired by the people that you knew. You make it your own and then you give it back to the community for someone else to make it their own and keep the scene going. So for me, it was important to. Let's, let's remove all the risk we talked about. If you wanted to rent a hotel room or a ballroom to run a podcast, it's thousands and thousands of dollars. If you wanted to run a small theater, thousands of dollars. My goal was to remove the risk from the content creators. So if you wanted to book this theater and run a show, the same business model applies to everybody you see on our events calendar is there's no contract, there's no minimum ticket sales, there's just a handshake deal. We build you an event landing page, we facilitate all the ticket sales.
We will record the event for you, we will produce the event live for you. We'll give you back the recordings, audio and video recordings, and at the end of the night, we sit down, I show you the dashboard where I sold the tickets. We tally everything up, we look, if there's any refunds, we get a total and we split it 50, 50. So this model, it's beneficial to the podcaster to, to bring in people, and it's beneficial to me to bring in people to deliver an audience to that podcast. Because we both win. We're both, you know, they have no risk of coming in. They're going to walk out with some money and a Recording, with which they were going to do at home anyway, but now they're going to get paid to get the recording done. And we split it. We split it 50, 50. There's some things that will change in that model over time. Like if, for example, that podcast starts drawing 3, 4, 500 people, it's not fair to the house to continue to take 50%, that actually, that split will actually move into the favor of the podcast. It might be 60, 40 or 70, 30, because we want them to grow and become a fixture of the theater, become known for being in the theater. And, you know, because they're helping us, too. Like, if they're selling 3, 400 tickets, a 30% cut of that is great for our business. We can cover the front of the house, the back of the house, get some new equipment, and our goal was to foster that kind of growth environment so that everybody's benefiting, everybody gets a little piece. Everybody. Everybody is happy with the end result, and they want to come back and do it again.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Jeff, I absolutely love your heart as you're explaining this, because I can just feel the passion that you have for this, you know, space that you've created, but also just the people. And I think that that's really important, because what I'm hearing from you is that this isn't a numbers game for you. This is really you just caring about your community and wanting to foster and build that more.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I love podcasting, and you'd be surprised. Even the shows that don't book with me, I still spend an hour or two hours giving them little pointers or helping them get the right equipment so that they're comfortable building it. This is what I do, and I love it. And my overhead isn't crazy. So I'm looking for a point of where we're just breaking even. If I can do one or two events a month, that I call them home run events, where they cover all my expenses for the month, then I have 28 other days where we can experiment. We can test new concepts. We can do things without worrying about, will the lights be on next month? Yeah, because we've covered all those expenses now. We can play around. We can. We can test the boundaries of what the stage can do, and we know we can. You know, you got to come up with a concept. You're like, there's no way anybody would ever invest in this concept. I'd say, let's try it out. Let's see what happens if we do that game or do a game show or a trivia game or just do a show called really Bad Bad Advice, where we just give bad advice to people. So things like that, we can test it out and see what the space can do. And that's kind of my goal for this first year, is to have fun. This should be a playground. You should, you know the name is Puduti, right? You should be walking in with a smile on your face. It should be fun. You should feel safe and be able to experiment and try, you know, new jokes and try new concepts and see what works and what doesn't in a fun, relaxing environment that you walked in with a smile and you leave with a smile. And that's kind of my goal this first year.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: Where did you get the name from?
[00:37:23] Speaker B: It's actually a little portmanteau of two words. Pod, obviously, podcasting. Everybody. Can everyone guess that one? But duty, as in mission, like my mission, my duty, you know, duty to country, duty to serve. So pod duty was just a mashup of. But I like to say Paduti because it makes everybody smile. Like you get. Everybody thinks like they're on the playground in kindergarten and somebody said duty. And the. It's a six letter domain name, pduti.com, which is if anybody is a, like a domain expert out there. It is very hard to get a five or six letter domain name. So to buy a six letter domain name, pduti.com. it's a brand that I'm building. It's. People remember it like, like I said, it invokes like a fun laughter feeling, a giddiness. Like, that's what this place is like. You're having a good time and it's silly what we're doing. We're creating ourselves and, you know, very DIY and very fun, very lighthearted. And we know we don't take ourselves too seriously. And, you know, it's just fun to say. I like saying it.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I love it too. I think I'm gonna have a fun time when I record the intro and I have to say the name of your studio.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: The first time you do it, you'll probably record like four or five times because you'll laugh so much and you're like, oh my God, I'm saying Paduti.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: I have a feeling I will, as silly as that is. But I love that, I love that you're invoking this sense of play because I think that's, you know, that's what brings creation to the forefront, is when we can bring in that element of play. And it sounds like you're really doing that within your studio and just even within your own podcast.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Somebody told me once, when you're a young father and you got girls that you're raising, and somebody pulled me aside, and they said, you know what? Your daughters laugh so much. I said, what do you mean?
They're just in the moment, and they're having a good time, and they're laughing, which is a sign that their other needs are met and they feel safe. They have an environment where they're cared for. And when you get to the point where you're laughing, you're meeting all the other needs. So for me, laughter. I'm a big goofball, too. I will joke around. Coming from skateboarding, you know, we're always a little, you know, harsh on each other. Not harsh, but, you know, playful with each other. Like friends, you know, are on the playground. And that. That ability to. To feel safe and to laugh is what I've realized really sparks creativity. Because if you're. If you're tense, if you're nervous, if you feel like you can't say what you want, then you're in a problem. Like, you're gonna hold back, and it's gonna restrict you from being free to. To create what you. What you want and who you are. So I. I always foster, like, this is a safe place. Like, this is a place we can hang out. We can respect each other. We can. We can just goof around and have fun. And we always do. We always goof around with respect. Like, that's a very important part of being funny is about being respectful, too. Some of the best jokes that you'll make are because you understand the person, you've researched their history, and then you can tie in some sort of abstract nonsense. That's so funny because you understand them and you respect them and you love them, and you're really honoring people when you tell a great joke or you have fun with your friends. So that's the environment I want to have. I want you to feel safe, not bottled up, not at a. No fear of releasing something. You know, this is a place to create and have fun.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Well, I bet your podcast is hilarious. And so now I want to start listening to your podcast. Where can we find you as the host?
[00:41:10] Speaker B: Sure. My podcast is called Stuff I Never Knew. It's a trivia game show. The last 70 episodes we've made for television, so they actually air on local cable. If you go to stuffinevernevernew.com, you can see the last one where there's Other channels on the Armstrong Neighborhood Channel and we had all the hosts come on and I kind of teased my producer a little bit where I played a game in round one where I said, who said this quote? Was it comedy legend Dave Chappelle or Armstrong Neighborhood Channel producer David Fedor? And you had to guess who said it. And I read you some quotes and I won't spoil it for you, but I thought it was one of the best bits I've ever done and enjoy. It's stuff I never knew. There's 170 some episodes out there.
It is goofy. It's me hosting just like this with people from all over the world. We have all kinds of podcasters and different people come on. I also host a podcast showcase called Rise and Outshine. Whereas we bring on a podcast, they do 10 minutes of their show and while they're doing it, just like on. I don't know if you ever watched old America's Funniest Home Videos, but at the end of the show, people would vote on their favorite video. Who would win the $10,000. Well, we do that. While you're doing your podcast for 10 minutes, the audience is scoring you on different criteria. And we're building a word cloud all in real time, all on your phone. And we pull it all up and you get to see. And we give this feedback back to the podcaster in real time. So they get to see like, how was their audio quality? Did the content match the expectation?
Was the host engaging? So they're getting this real time feedback and then we do a stream of conscious word cloud where the audience just, I say type whatever you feel. And so whatever happens during the 10 minutes, they're just typing in different words the stream of conscious. And they get this giant like 50 word word cloud at the end of their show. So they can see like what were people thinking about? Like people will just type things that made them laugh or inspirational or very encouraging. Great hosts. And it's been a great game changer for some of these podcasts that come on. They said I never got feedback at all. And this is amazing. It gets pretty emotional sometimes towards the end when they go through this because you're going through this process, you don't know really what to expect. You have to do 10 minutes of your show and you're getting scored on it at the same time. So it's very stressful. And when the stress ends and they get this feedback, they're very grateful. And I love the concept and I love seeing them light up at the End of the show.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Well, it sounds kind of nerve wracking, so I can see why people would say that. But that is where the growth is when we are under pressure like that. And to have that feedback, I can only imagine how beneficial that is as a host and somebody that wants to put out valuable content to have your audience tell you what they liked and what they didn't like. Because a lot of times people aren't leaving reviews, so you don't really truly know how people are feeling about the content. So I absolutely love that. What resources have you found to be helpful in improving just your overall way that you host your show and improving elements of your show that needed to be improved?
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Yeah, different connections I've made. Sometimes Facebook groups I can bounce questions off of. There's a lot of podcasts or Facebook groups out there.
Even I use Streamyard for my live streams. There's a Streamyard Facebook group, so that helps me out. I still listen to podcasts, you know, I still, I still listen to Libsyn's the Feed and I listen to Pod News Daily. And those things keep me on the cutting edge. Like I'll get great tips and great news stories, great calls to action from Libsyn. They'll tell me like, hey, there's this new service that's accepting your RSS feed. Make sure you get on that, make sure you just connect that subs. So I have an action item at the end of it. So those podcasts still are still teaching me even. Even after 20 years. Back in 2006 when I was packing the skateboard orders. I'm still getting tips and tricks from different podcasts.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: Have you ever thought about making your own course on podcasting?
[00:45:23] Speaker B: I've taught a course before. I have one recorded. I'm debating on. I might. I'm going to re record it and put it on Patreon so people can pick it up there pretty cheap. Like 50 bucks. I'd be excited for people to use use it and start doing their own podcast.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, that sounds incredible and I would love to take that course as well. Sounds very beneficial.
[00:45:45] Speaker B: I'll send it over.
[00:45:47] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, Jeff, this has been incredible. I've loved learning more about your journey and just your studio. I have one more question for you, and this is a question that I like to ask all of my guests at the end of the show. And it's kind of one of those mad lib, fill in the blank questions. So the question is you have to blank to blank.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: You have to blank to blank. I'm going to go with. Here's one of my favorite quotes. And I say this all the time and I hopefully you've picked up on some of this from our interview tonight. But I'm going to quote Bill S. Preston, Esq. And Ted Theodore Logan from the Bill and Ted movie. You have to be excellent to each other. And if you lived your life just serving and being excellent and being a great host and providing what people need, imagine what the world could be. Imagine how you could inspire them to be excellent to each other. So just, you know, go forth and be excellent to each other and party on dudes.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: I think I love that. Who have, who has been some of your biggest life mentors or who do you find to be incredibly inspiring?
[00:46:57] Speaker B: So many are just close friends, people who I can confide in, people I can say, hey, I got this idea and they do the same for me too. Some people are known in the industry, some people are keynote speakers and I just happen to have access them through certain slack groups and I just can't that idea that we don't have to be public with our relationships, but we can bounce ideas. And I'm thinking about doing this. I know you did this a few years ago. I want to kind of pivot and do it a little bit differently. How did you get started? So those, those private channels are invaluable to me. They, they give me a leverage that I didn't have four or five years ago.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: And I'm so glad that you have that sense of community and that support. I think that's so important, especially as an entrepreneur because not everybody's going to understand your vision the way that you do. But to have that support is so valuable.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I could, you know, not everybody does understand the vision.
My family's like, you're doing what? And I was like, trust me on this one. I think I got something here.
[00:48:03] Speaker A: Well, I love it. Well, it sounds like you, you really have quite the studio and game plan and I look forward to seeing how your studio continues to grow.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me here tonight.
[00:48:15] Speaker A: Thanks for being here, Jeff.
Thank you so much for listening. If you found value in today's conversation, make sure to subscribe, rate and leave a review. And as always, don't forget to share this episode with anyone that you think could benefit. And for more information about today's guest, be sure to check out the show notes. We'll see you next.
