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Al is a big fan of Letterkenny. He thinks it’s one of the best, funniest and most inclusive shows to come out of Canada. His wife Tanya thinks he’s crazy, so Al has created this podcast along with his friends Mat and Victor to try to convince Tanya that he’s not crazy.

That is just the beginning of an amazing story. We have a really fun chat with Al, Tanya, and Mat. Victor couldn’t make the show unfortunately but that just means we have to come back for a 2nd show!

Check out The Produce Stand online at: https://theproducestandpod.com/

Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-produce-stand-podcast/id1523972332?ls=1

Transcript powered by HappyScribe

Welcome back. This is Eric Right. I’m the host of the DiscoPosse podcast. And thank you for listening. Oh, and thank you for watching. If you want to see this episode in as real as real life can be on YouTube, you can go check out Youtube.com/discopossepodcast because this is definitely one of those fun ones that’s worth watching because there’s a ton of people on there. It really gives you a sense of who’s talking when because this features the team from the produce stand. Now, the produce stand is a really fantastic podcast. That’s about the show Letter Kenny. You’re probably saying to yourself, who are the produce stands? What is Letter Kenny? Well, you’re going to want to dig in because this is Tanya and Al Squirrely Matt. We were missing Victor because he’s the number four Mike on the whole crew. But this is absolutely a fun one to watch and listen to. So check it out.

We talk about podcasting, the idea of making first a show about a show and then even more so, the absolutely super involved in interactive community that they’ve built around it. Really, really cool. And I got to say that I’m proud of what they’re doing. They definitely are worth a listen and hopefully a watch. Let’s get them on YouTube as well. All right, speaking of YouTube and speaking of things, listening to and watching and that are worth it, I got to give a shout out to the sponsors that allow me to do this, that make this amazing thing happen. And I got to start with our fine friends over at Veeam Software, because whatever it is that you need for your data protection needs, they got you covered. Reason is today is a dangerous time. We’re losing data, we’re losing servers, we’re losing applications, we’re losing time. Don’t do it. Protect your assets, whether they’re on premises. Whether in the cloud. Whether they’re physical servers, whether they’re cloud native, use their casting platform. All sorts of really cool stuff. And hey, don’t just back it up, but actually do automated data and backup and full application recovery. Really cool team. Great products. Go check it out.

Go to vee.am/discoposse and you can see the very customized way in which you can get involved. Go check it out and listen to old Disco sent you. All right, speaking of really great things you got to check out. Also go to tryexpressvpn.com/discoposse. Get on a VPN because the world is weird and you got to protect your data in traffic and in transit. So let’s do it. Oh, right. One more thing. Get coffee, diabolicalcoffee.com. Also a sponsor of the Privacy. All right, let’s check it out.

Hi, my name is Tanya, and we’re here today with Al and Squarely Matt from the produce stand. And we’re on DiscoPosse podcast.

This is the fun part because when you get to have professional podcasters on a podcast, I get to just walk away like, I’m done. You folks can run with it. Thank you all for being on this side of the bike. This is weird, too. The last time we chatted, of course, I was a guest on your podcast, and thank you very much for that. And you are all part of something really cool. And if it’s new to people here, I hope they obviously check out the podcast. They check out the show the podcast talks about. But you’re much more than that because it’s a bunch of you. I got to go around Robin here. Now, the good part is we’re all going to sound as Canadian as possible, which is hilarious. People never know that I’m Canadian until I talk to another Canadian. And then for whatever reason, our accents kind of bleed pretty heavily in those ones. I’ve been watching some of the Ottawa trucker protests, and I think that I sound Canadian until I watch a live stream from Ottawa. And I’m like, oh, now I know why people think Canadians sound funny.

Well, they hide it there.

Those Canadians in particular. But we won’t go there tonight.

There’s a different breed altogether. So. All right, I will go in order of importance. Tanya, you’re up first.

Oh, you should know by now I don’t like going first on our podcast.

That’s exactly why I shoved you up front.

Fantastic.

Isn’t paying attention.

So if you want to do a quick bio and tell folks what brought you to the produce stand.

All right, my bio gosh, we’re not doing weight heightened measurements. What brought me to the Product Stand was, of course, Al, my husband. You watched the whole thing. And I would get snippets of it here and there. When I was coming into the room and ready, the kids were down for the night, and I was coming to sit and watch a show with him, and he’s like, oh, this show is great. This show is great. And he tried to force me to watch a couple of them, and I just thought it was the stupidest show I’ve ever seen in my life. And none of it made sense. None of it I liked. It wasn’t my kind of thing. It’s an acquirement that I have grown to appreciate and like, and in some cases, love. But yeah, he then came to me and said, I have an idea. This is during Covid. I want to do a podcast, and I want you on it. And I think my jaw dropped. And I was like, are you kidding me? Why do you want me involved in this? I don’t like the show. Like, you’re not going to make me like the show.

And he’s like, no, here’s my plan. Here’s my idea. I’m going to have Mat, I’m going to have Victor and you because you all have different outlooks on the show, and it will make for interesting podcasts. So it’s his brainchild. And I just kind of tagged along and there was nothing else to do, it was covid. So I’m like, hey, why not? And it was actually the best thing for me, for us. I think the whole team has all said that this is just one of those steps out of life and a moment to just sit back and laugh and share and enjoy something that is not anything to do with anything going on in the world today. And yeah, that’s kind of my thing.

We definitely need that. And yeah, it’s been great. And it’s funny. Like you said, the mix of voices and styles and opinions is what makes it good and Al, of course, since you’re next on Mike, I’ll pick on you as the next bio deliverer. Sure.

I’m Al Grego, and I am the producer and host of the Produce Stand Podcast. It’s a pandemic project, as many projects that started in the pandemic were. But I’ve always wanted to do a podcast since I knew what podcasts were. I’ve been listening to podcasts since probably 2003, 2005. I can’t remember now. And my first exposure to kind of an after show type podcast, which is what we do, was the Lost Jay and Dan podcast. And I really loved it because this is a show that I really enjoyed watching. And then I was starved for more content in between episodes. So I’d look online for anything I could. And I found this thing called the podcast, and I listened to it. And it’s all people who have the same interests as me talking about a show that I loved. And so that’s what we’re doing with the produce stand. And yeah, Tanya is right a little bit selfishly. I asked her to be on just because I knew this is going to take up some of my time. And if she was involved, she couldn’t complain about it.

But also..

We joked about that yesterday. Yeah.

It’s a great show. And I know superficially it looks like dumb humor, but there’s actually a lot of, like, heart and a lot of smartness behind the dumb jokes. And it’s a very accessible, it’s a very progressive show, despite on the surface what it looks like and I wanted to get the word out. And I looked it up and I saw what other podcasts are out there that talk about Letter Kenny. And one of the bigger ones is Dean and Tiara down in Seattle, who we’re going to have on tonight. They’re our biggest competitor, but they’re also our closest allies have been doing it a lot longer than us. But in terms of Canadian view for this show, there was another one based in Toronto, but he just didn’t – he stopped doing it after a while. I don’t know why. I reached out and I haven’t been able to contact them. So, yeah, it’s a Canadian podcast about a Canadian show. And we’re here to kind of translate all the Canadians on the show to those who want to watch and listen. And we have so many viewers from all over the world, and we’ve got an amazing community that we’ve built. And it’s been our recipe from all the craziness that’s been going on.

Yes. And that leaves the perfect final intro to what makes up the reason why you call yourself Squirrely Matt. Definitely a good show reference. And we should also know that we are missing Victor, who could not make it to the broadcast today, but also another great voice on the show. But Mat., you’re up.

Yeah, thanks for having us. So, yeah, Matt Belonje, aka Squirrely Mat. I’ll pull on everybody demand there. Father of three, hubby of one as he starts his off. And yeah, it’s been a blast to go back to the initial thing, how we got into it. It’s the same idea. This was definitely a joke. Love child out of covid boredom. I know Alan and I have known each other for years through work. We played around with some podcasting through work and other things. I have a bit of a media background that was sort of where I started. My career didn’t follow that path. Priorities change, some interests change. But I originally had some aspirations to be involved in film and television in some degree. So even though that’s not directly what this is, the media world and anything connected to it around it has always been a real passion and interest in the background. So, yeah, like Tanya said when covid kicked off, and then Al reached out to me one day and said, hey, do you want to be in a podcast with me or do you want to come to a podcast? I didn’t even ask him what it was about. I just said, sure. And then I said, well, what are we doing on? And then he said, Letter Kenny. And I laughed. I’m like, oh, really? Okay. All right, let’s do it. And I was really excited because I don’t know if you mentioned it, but I think I was the one who got you into Letter Kenny. Originally. It was definitely a show I was aware of. I watched, I was a fan of, and then I got out onto it and he got hooked. And I think he’s become the super fan of our group. But that’s okay. We all love it. And it just took off from there. And I think we were all very surprised and kind of thrown back a bit by what it’s become. And that’s been the real thing about it. I know Kobe hit people a lot of people very differently. I know early on I joked, but it was truth. I didn’t step inside another building outside of my own house for over 100 days. I’m not talking grocery stores like you name it. My wife did everything early days of just general concern. So we dedicated one person. So it was a very strange time, and it still is. But this definitely very quickly became that weekly escape where we could just put everything aside, come together with friends, laugh, argue, debate, have some fun. And regardless of what happened, it was just, we’ve had nothing but a blast. And now we’re trying to figure out how to keep it going because we’ve caught up to the series. But it’s been a blast. And I’m very thankful for what Al has led us through and what we’ve created as a group and now where we are here.

Well, if you talk about the fan base, too, you’ve got sort of competitors in the marketplace. I think of the days of message boards for talk radio groups, and there’d be like Ron and Fez, Nope and Anthony and all these talk radio was huge. Of course, we didn’t have much. We had Humble and Fred in Toronto and they’ve moved around a bit. You would have someone and someone. It was always like a goofy duo. Maybe they had a third person on who would be a bonus voice, the stunt boy, or whatever it was going to be. And then you would get these message boards because that was sort of the way that people communicated outside of the show. We didn’t have YouTube, we didn’t have these other ways to chat. So people would go on these message boards and then you’d get three message boards and they’d be sort of like warring for who was the top message board for whatever radio duo was. And it was hilarious because that was this fun competition. But obviously you’re all fans, so you’re not really competing. You believe in a common purpose, and it’s a fun community way to do it.

But now podcasting changed this, that you can be broadcasting, you can get your voice out there. Their limitations for access to this stuff is so good, right? It’s much lower and production quality. You folks do a really great job with production. As a guy that does zero post production. Like, I literally will record this. I will cut off the front in the back, and I will push it to air. Like it doesn’t get much treatment. I got a huge respect for the amount of work that you do, you know, as a group, I don’t know who wants to raise the hand. I imagine Al, you’re probably as the technician behind a lot of the stuff because I know you’ve got a real talent for that.

But yeah, a bit of background in audio engineering, obviously. It’s what I went to College for. Podcasting is a marriage of my love of radio, which I was a big fan of radio growing up. And my audio engineering background and just wanting to create content and knowing that I have a voice for Face for radio. But radio doesn’t exist anymore. Podcasting is just so much more accessible, for sure. I mean, I credit – I come from a corporate training background for 20 years. That’s how I made my living, working for various companies. But just recently in my latest role in my latest company, I started using podcasting as a training tool. And so that’s where I kind of started doing that and having some fun with it. And I credit actually Toronto Mike, who’s a big time podcaster in the Toronto area. I call him the Canadian version of Mark Marin. And actually today he just released his $1,000 episode. So kudos to him. He invited me into his house and he showed me his set up in his studio and we had some great chats. And he didn’t charge me for it. He was just, yeah, come on over because he knew I was a listener and a fan and we had a great time.

And from that knowledge, I went back to my office and I bought the equipment. I started podcasting, and that got the right amount of attention. So that when my company decided and I’ll mention the company name, Mineris, decided that they wanted to start a podcasting strategy of their own. I’m the one they tapped. So I went from training to marketing in the company, and I’ve never been in marketing before, but they saw me as kind of the resident expert, and that’s where now I make a living. Like the Protestant is a passion project. I make no money doing that. But now I’m making my living as a podcaster, which is amazing. I love it. Five years ago, that would have been unheard of now.

Now, Mat, you mentioned you had early aspirations for TV and broadcast stuff. What was your exposure to it? And then what was the diversion that took you out of that game?

Yeah. So I originally went to school, Loyalist College out in Belleville, Ontario, for television and new media production. So I was on the full production side, learning how to use a camera, edit graphics, direct, you name it for production. I very much enjoyed it. I will also say I was in my much younger years at the time and not so focused, so that definitely didn’t help. And then when I came out of it, I had a couple of co-ops and internships, and one of them which was actually up in Barry at the A channel at the time, which I believe is now CTV north or something like that. And it was also the time for Canadian folks I know Belglow Media Buyout. So Chum Media at the time got bought out by Belglow Media. And the industry was kind of in a weird spot where there was a lot of hiring. I think it was more firing as they were sort of dismantling and rearranging that. And that was the time I was trying to find a job. So it made it very difficult. I thought I had this great in, and then they pretty much put a freeze on at the station and that kind of derailed a little bit.

And it’s one of those industries, if you don’t stay close to it, you quickly get far from it. Right. It doesn’t take much. It’s like buying a new computer. By the time you buy and take it home, the better one’s already on the shelf, right? Same idea with these industries. You start stepping away from it, the longer you’re gone, the more difficult it is to get back. And then there was some things on the personal side. My family, we kind of had some movement around and I had to find a different gig just to keep myself going. And again stepped aside and side before I knew it, it was kind of felt too far. And then priorities changed. I had my oldest son a couple of years after that. And at that point I was like, I just need to keep my head above water. And it just seemed like a distant dream at the time. That said, as the years have gone on and I think Al too of the work we’ve done in our company, I’ve worked in fraud. I’ve worked in a number of other things, nothing to do with media.

But through his work and some of the cross stuff that we do, he had the opportunity to dabble with podcasting, dabble with internal videos for training materials. And he was nice enough to invite me in, knowing I had a bit of a passion for that in a former life. So he and I work closely to set up the green room and things of that, another green room, like the green screen space and do some lighting and play around. So he’s kept me close to that taste of that kind of life. And it’s been fun to play around with that. So when this came up to do podcasting – again, I’ve never had a ton of experience with podcasting, but I knew what it was right. I’ve always liked radio as well. But I’m like, I’m in. This is just going to be fun. And it’s really paid off as something that’s kept that flavor going. I’m also that nerd for film and television. I know when I drive around if I see a bunch of pylons on a road that actually I think they say TPS or something like that. I’m like that’s a film production and all often slow down.

I’ll sneak into what’s going on here. I get this weird excitement when I get near productions and I just want to know what’s going on. I know I won’t be a part of it, but it’s great. And we’re in Toronto, which is Hollywood North, right. So there’s productions all the time. Even my neighbor, he’s in a film crew and working on Titans and a number of other things. So I get to talk to him and banter about the industry a bit. So that’s good enough for me and my point of life. But yeah, that’s kind of what the diversion was. Priority changes. I’ll put it that way.

Yeah. And I think what’s great about it, though, like, look, 20 years back, ten years back even, when we think of the industry, like film, radio, you would get a job as an intern. And that was like a magical thing, right. You would be just getting exposure, the magical feeling of like, well, at least I’m in here. You’d get a pittance of a salary for the pleasure of doing coffee runs and grabbing production pieces and doing crazy after hours editing. Whatever it’s going to be to make that two hour show amazing. You get near zero credit for it. If you’re lucky, you get a little bit of credit for it. You never get mic time. You never get camera time. It was a very sort of like there’s a lot of machine wrapped around it. And they were like, you got to do your time, kid. You got to earn your keep. Then you eventually get up. If you’re lucky, you audition. Maybe you get an overnight show. It was a battle to get in. Nothing. Fuck it. I got an SM seven B. I got an Internet connection. I run a radio station now.

It’s awesome. The other big thing, I think a lot of it, looking back, my own growth and self awareness is confidence. Right. I look at younger version of Mat doing even this seems a stretch. I always had sort of my personality, but I had a real confidence issue when I was younger. So trying to step outside my comfort zone and put myself out there in a place of vulnerability, it was very challenging. So I didn’t do it, right. Now, I could give two fucks. I’m like, I’m going to do what I want. I don’t mind putting myself online, even in my line of work, even though it’s not related to this. I talked to people at all levels of the organization. I have no problem sort of calling out what’s what, because I’ve seen success. I felt what it feels like to be vulnerable and then see the outcomes of it and how it can be successful. And it’s not something that you should shy away from. Right. But when you’re young, you don’t know that you’re kind of forced into the system and find education. You know what you want to do, and no one really does.

Some people do. And, man, I wish I had that, but a lot of people don’t. And you kind of go through this whirlwind of trying to sort yourself out. And in all reality, it’s not till about your 30s that you figure even half of yourself out. And then I’m also at that time supposed to have had it all put together. So it’s challenging for sure. But again, it is what it is. And I’m very happy now with what’s going on.

Well, you mentioned too, new media, because I remember that’s kind of what it was called race time when you were going to school and you’re at Trevis, and we had other folks who we knew, Travis Watts, good friend of ours who we were all together with. We had a bunch of folks and they would get jobs in this like new media, which meant basically you’re doing Dreamweaver and funky early stage 3D animation and passing media. Macromedia was a product like a company that was worth investing in back in the day. Right now it’s just gone. But it was almost the same thing. It became this elite, you were just happy to be beside it kind of experience. And now it’s so just democratized and accessible. It’s fantastic because those limitations are gone. And I think kind of what you’re saying, Mat, like 20 year old me while being in a different mindset, because if I ever said if 20 year old me met 49 year old me and I said, I’m coming from a place of vulnerability, I’d have punched me in the ear, right, because I just would never thought I would ever think like this. But this is the truth. But 20 year old me would be more confident, I think, because of the accessibility of platforms and software and capability. Like, there’s no less of a barrier now. Other than your personal sort of choice to grind it out.

Less of a barrier but more of an overwhelming option, if that makes sense. There’s a lot more out there. But you’re right, you can get at anything you need to.

That young confidence, though, came more from kind of ignorance and not knowing any better, not so much. Because when I was at that age, I wouldn’t know where to start. Right. I would just start and then hope to work it out.

But yeah, I’m still doing that. What are you talking about? This is my approach to life.

The beauty of what I took in Trevis, the multimedia, is it kind of let me dabble in everything. Video, web, graphics, audio. And that suited me just fine now because now I look at any kind of job in marketing or any kind of creative work or content creation, you need to know all those things. But the tools are such so that you don’t need to have the same kind of level of knowledge that I had growing up. Because now a lot of it is pretty WYSIWYG and pretty easy to do. Point and click and push a button, apply a filter and you’re done. But still having that kind of foundation and also that well rounded knowledge of the different media, you know, video, audio, graphic art and stuff. I’m not a graphic artist, but I know good graphic art when I see it. So I know who to go to when I need a poster made. Right. So, yeah, that’s really served me well. And I think that really prepared me for what the world it is now.

And I guess for the folks that get to watch this on video. If you’re listening on audio, head on over to the YouTube channel. You can check this out. Speaking of posters, you have a plethora of really cool posters behind you, Al. And I know, of course, these are the Royal Pains posters. So you talk about the Royal Pains and give a little brief history on what the posters are from.

Well, I was the weekend rock star before everything shut down. And I was blessed to not only have a great band, but my guitarist was an insanely talented graphic artist who when we first started playing, he’s like, hey, do you want me to design some posters? And we’re all like, yeah, that’d be great because we knew the kind of art he did. And then he said, and then we can just kind of reuse them for every show. He’s like, no, I was going to make a poster for each show. I’m like, really? And he did. And so what I have on my wall here are just some samples. We played over 120 or so shows. We have a poster for every single one, and they’re all equally amazing. Again, we were blessed with talented musicians, but also talented artists in our band. Sadly, the band is no more. We can thank COVID for that. But yeah, continue rocking on and hopefully one day I’ll be back on stage again. But until then, we’ve got the memories.

You and I shared a stage a couple of times ourselves as well back in the day.

So that was poised for the worm. Yes.

That was still your Twitter handle too PftW, right?

That’s right.

Well, you know what it is. I mean, Gmail finally came and took away my Hotmail. Or else I’d still have my Hotmail, too. Because once you have that online persona, it’s kind of hard to switch, right? So poised for the worm. That was my persona from 20 years ago. And I just kept it because it was just easier to do that than find something else.

You’re talking to a guy that’s known around the world as Disco Posse. I get you.

This point.

I went to a tech conference in Paris, and this was hilarious thing. So it’s like a bunch of people showed up and of course, they’re common community. So in the tech community, we’re basically like Carney’s. We just go from town to town and it’s a different town, but it’s the same goofy asshole in the tent every time. So we just go and we would have a show. And I was speaking at one of the events. And there’s a guy who I’ve always been keen on chatting with, and we knew each other on Twitter, right? That was kind of how we communicated. And so this guy, Randy Bias, if you’re into cloud computing, he’s the guy that coined the phrase pets versus cattle, if you ever hear that phrase. So he’s the one that was the originator, we believe, of that phrase. Ray is a great guy, really wild personality, interesting character. And I’m just walking across this random sort of place in Paris and all I hear is Disco Posse yelled across. And I look. I’m like, what’s going on? And I look. And there’s Randy Bias finally for the first time meeting in person and you don’t call and yell Eric, everybody would be a bunch of them, probably.

So Disco Posse, there is only one I’m a safe bet there.

It’s funny when you have the online world kind of mixed worlds and you meet people in person for the first time. I remember Toronto Mike had one of his listener experiences where a bunch of listeners came together in person to meet each other. And we all had to have name tags with our online personas on the name tag.

Name, right.

Yeah. No one knew my name was Al. They knew I was PftW or Royal Pain or whatever. Right. It’s just hilarious. So we all had name Tags with nonsense at names on them or whatever. That’s awesome.

Well, I remember the first time I’ve even seen, like, cereal boxes when they wrote the Twitter handle on it for the company name. And I remembered thinking, like, I think this is when it’s going to take off. I was already on Twitter and you started to see it being talked about and news channels would have it in the Chiron and there’d be more presence of that stuff. And then it became that. And then the funny thing was choosing your identity, especially if you’re associated with a brand. Like, imagine that you were brandnew to it, then you’d be like @monarisAl. Right. That’s what people would often do is they put their company in there. And I was lucky enough that my presence was so separated from everything that I did that it never conflicted. So I would go and people would just know where I work, but I didn’t have to tag it along. And it’s funny that there was a time when you had to choose MySpace, Twitter, like all these things. And where do you put your effort to grinding up your audience?

Yeah, I’ve gone through a couple of handles all in I know in my early ICQ days and MSN days, it was dopeyxtc. I have no idea how that came to be.

Not a far cry from Squirrely Mat then.

Not a far cry, yeah. And at some point I realized I don’t think that’s going to work going forward. And then I landed on Dude North, and I don’t remember how it happened, but one day that came to my head and I laughed and I’m like because I was very much a specially a kid in high school, even when I was still dopextc, I almost only wore things that had a Canada flag on it. Like I was one of those weird hardcore Canadian Patriot guys. Like, I had 17 different T shirts with different slogans, and it was obsessive at one point. It was kind of weird. But anyways, and then so when Dude North came into my head, it made me laugh. I’m like, I’m the dude from the north, right? And it just stuck from there. And I’ve really held on to that one. So even when I didn’t even use Twitter in the early days, I went and set up @thedudenorth on Twitter. And then I walked in just in case. I started to use it more. And I’ve held on to it since because I’ve just really enjoyed that name. And as long as I’ll be able to keep it, it’s going to keep going, right?

It’s a solid brand. Oh, it’s a call.

I like it. Yeah.

Who the fuck knows what pftw is?

But to be honest, I’ve known you a long time. I think that’s the first time I’ve heard what it actually means.

I guess Pink Floyd the Wall.

Now, Tanya, you’re the interesting one of the bunch because you have zero online presence.

No, not zero. She can explain that.

Hold on, before you start growing her. So we have a great community, Eric, because you’re part of that group. They’re dying. They’re begging for Tanya to join the group. And she has joined the group because I made her join, but she won’t go on. She won’t go on and interact. She’s allergic to networking, which is hilarious.

But we’re going to find out after the fact that she’s probably been there the whole time. It was some other thing. It’s probably like, Dude West.

Babe West.

I’m so much like Wayne. It’s not even funny from the show. Like, I’m a person to person. Like, phone me. Mat tried sending me a bunch of messages, and I think after the fifth messages, I’m like, Screw this, call. I’m like, what’s going on? What do you need? I’m like, at work, I have a thousand emails a week, and it’s just so overwhelming on the computer all the time. And I’ve never been interested in the tech world. I would rather see somebody and sit with them and talk to them than look at Facebook pictures of what is going on in their life. I’ve not ever connected to people that way.

She doesn’t follow.

The whole thing of living your best timeline. You know what’s better about living your best timeline? Actually fucking living your best timeline like living it, not living it through the camera.

I think when the whole wave of cell phones, like I’m gonna sound real old. But when the wave came through and I disconnected for three years, I was home. When we had our daughter, I was home with her. And there’s just not a whole lot of time. There’s so many things that need to get done in a day, and I just never found the energy or the time to get on and connect with people that way. I was just picking up the phone and calling people.

You also have a bit of an addictive personality.

I do have.

What happens when she does get hooked onto something is she spends way too much time.

I can be very obsessive.

She’s in it to win it at that point.

Yeah. If you’re a fan of Fred Flintstone, you’ll know that reference. But I’m on the oldest of the bunch, so I’m the only one here who will understand that. Maybe a handful of listeners. But you see people at concerts and it’s like the same as if I was doing this podcast and I was doing this the whole time. It’s better. Like, I used to yell at people. I’m like, you know the show’s there, right? Like, not up there. You’re watching it through a three-inch screen. I don’t care if it’s bloody nickelback. Watch the fucking show. You’ve got eyes. You’re going to remember this. You’re never going to watch it. It’s like a wedding video. No one goes back to watch it.

[00:36:35.190] – Squirrely Mat
Yeah, it’s true. I definitely don’t hold up the whole time. And I go to concerts, I often will take a moment, catch a couple of moments. But even recently, I went back through my phone need to clean up some space. And I think every single concert video, especially I deleted, I’m like, that was cool. But watching it back, I’m like, it doesn’t take you there like you thought it would. It’s a memory, but the memory is the better part and you just want to hold on to that.

If you want to see footage again, just go to YouTube and watch the professionally shot.

Yeah, it’s all there.

Or one of the 1200 other idiots who’ve got their phone in their hand. Right. Like it’s going to be out there. I can understand at one point where it was a rarity to be the camera and to have the online presence and to build an audience. I’m going to bite myself by the fact that I’m answering the question of why people do it. Right. Because they want to be creators, they want to have something. But it’s more like, I’m with you, Mat. This idea that capture a snippet may be posted up on Twitter or whatever, but then that’s it. Enjoy the rest of the experience. It would be like having your kids chasing your kids around with nothing but a video camera. I take videos of the kids I don’t trust. I got four kids. I got to remember some of the early days. Right. But you put it down, right? You enjoy that and then you put it away. Some people say they wish they’d taken more. I’m like you’re saying that ten years later you got a memory.

Yeah.

Well, it’s even like in the photo side of things as I was clearing it through. It’s a whole exercise. I need to make a lot of space. I used up all the memory of my phone. And I started deleting all these scenery photos as well. And some of them were quite nice. And I’m like, but then I thought about it. I’m like, some of the places are like downtown Toronto or when I was in New Orleans and things like that. I’m like, yes, very cool. But that same photo has been taken a million times over. So if I really want it, I can Google it because like you said earlier, we have access to everything these days. And there it is. I don’t need to store it as a photo. If I’m in the photo or my wife and I are in the photo, very different story. You can hold onto those because that shows you are there. It takes you to get to that moment, but just generic photos of buildings. I’m not a photographer, so it’s not like I’m building a portfolio here. It’s a cool concept, but they don’t hold up over time.

And if I want it, like I said, I can go find it online and I’ll be just as happy.

Now. The one thing that we should really get back to, the origin of the podcast itself and the content. Letter Kenny is one of those shows that has become anything like this corner gas Letter Kenny. There’s a few that are so Canadian, but then they make it beyond, right? And when I grew up, it was CTV, right? That was the whole thing of watching stuff like that and 3D movies. It’s like this goofy things that you remember about that even. So, this is a funny story. I had a friend who her apartment was John Candy’s apartment on Roehampton Avenue. In it’s right its Eglington. It’s 100 Roehampton. And it was the one where they tossed the TVs off the balcony for the opener. That apartment is 100 Roehampton Avenue. And they’re very local things because, of course, we’re Canadian. We didn’t have much choice. You had Uncle Bobby, you had the Friendly Giant, and then you had whatever Canadian television you watched.

House of Freightenstein was one of my…

And Billy Van is actually like an incredible creator as far as other things he did just sort of an underwhelming presence in the industry, but he did a lot behind the scenes. You see, look at this idea of these Canadian, purely Canadian shows. And then now they go beyond like, I can find it on Hulu. I live in the United States and I can watch Letter Kenny on there. And I see random things on Reddit. Like, I think I told you guys I was searching for something for a space reference, and I wanted to get a picture of Roberta Bondar. And so what do I get? I’m scrolling through Reddit and I see this thing and it says, here’s a picture of Roberta Bondar underneath it. Was she sitting at the bar, crushing old fashioned. When you took this photo. So a Letter Kenny reference being written randomly on Reddit. He realized that these shows have a community and they have a reach that’s farther. And then you choose to create a thematic podcast. So let’s talk about the format of the podcast and what drew you to that style.

Well, like, I kind of mentioned a bit in my intro. It’s an after show. So just like other after shows, first of all, I talk about our weeks, and then I do a bit of a synopsis of episode recovering, and then we talk about it. We critique the episode and what I like about it. Again, we have these different voices and characters. Tanya came in as she was the person who hated the show until she loved it. Victor is a curmudgeon still to this day. Mat’s the squirrely one, and I’m supposed to be the parental figure to try to keep everything allegedly. Often I lose control. But that’s cool because our listeners love it. But yeah, we take it off in 20 to 25 minutes show and we basically make 2 hours of content about it, which is insane. But for the most part, people have really been responding to it.

Well, you really treat it like a morning show. Like I almost said Morning Zoo. But really that idea of a collaborative group of folks that talk about what happened the night before, like recapping the news and that’s like the opinion and the fun stories out of it are what makes that stuff fun. That’s why Humble and Fred did well, better between the music than they did during the music. And eventually when they started their podcast, which is actually one of the early sort of successful Canadian podcasts, because there wasn’t much of a podcast industry at that time. It was Mark Marin, who are the other guys. But it was like seriously, the early players in the game.

American Life, Prairie Home Companion, kind of the CBC and NPR podcast. But then you’re Mark Marin, you’re Kevin Smith’s smodcast, Adam Corolla, those are some early pioneers.

And that was funny. Back early on, there was a guy that found and bought up the patent rights to the idea of distributing an audio over RSS. So basically a podcast, and he went and bought up a bunch of patents and then sued all of Adam Corolla network, Mark Marin, Kevin Smith, all these folks to try and basically just see if you can get some cash out of it. Didn’t pay out because they’re like, you’ve got the concept, but you don’t get the content. And it was an interesting sort of legal challenge that happened

He was claiming ownership over the standard over the RSS.

Yeah, because he was saying that I owned so I should get a piece of royalty of everything that creates revenue based on the technology that I own a patent for.

Yeah, that’s like somebody trying to collect patent on HTML. It’s not going to happen. Every single website that ever existed would have to pay you a royalty because you have a website. That’s ridiculous.

It’s surprising how lucrative an industry it is because people like Rim just sold off a bunch of their old patents. And this is like all this company that bought them does is buy up thousands of patents and then ultimately look for licensing deals out of it. And actually, I know a few people that do it legitimately where they’ll license their patent because somebody says there’s no novel way to do what you’ve identified doing other than the way you’ve identified. Can we license your patent to do it? So it’s a weird thing that happens behind the scenes. I love this idea that you went with this after show, where did some of the concepts, the poem.

Our very first episode and the one we’ve actually marked as You Can Skip. This was our production meeting for the rest of the podcast. I recorded it because basically I brought everyone into a Zoom call and I said, okay, we’re going to do this. Let’s put some ideas out there. There are no bad ideas. Can’t get too precious. You try something and if it doesn’t work, you have to be ready to let it go. But yeah, it’s just evolved, right? It’s been an evolution. And the limerick happened maybe halfway through. And I think it happened because one of the cold opens on Letter Kenny was started with limericks, and then I started writing them for ours because it just made sense. So called Letter Kenny, he opened it with a Limerick, of course, and it’s been great in the Mat reading them and stuff. And now again, the community is amazing because there’s so much prep that goes into it. And almost the very last thing I do before we start recording is write the limerick. And it’s always a source of stress for me because..

All the pressure is on.

There isn’t a lot of stuff that you can rhyme with Letter Kenny or Djens or anyway. But now some of our listeners have stepped in and they’re writing them for us. So we’re almost like crowdsourcing now, a lot of our content, which is great. I love it.

Yeah, you’re not wrong. I mean, we talk about the community. I think I commented earlier, but that’s been the biggest surprise of this whole thing. It started off as a fun game, fun thing to do every week. And then we did invite a few people early on. So every third or fourth episode we might have a guest. And then at one point hit where we just had a line up and where at first it became sort of a fun little add on. It now became an ongoing absolute part of our show where we’re inviting our friends, I’m going to call them friends. We have made real relationships with many of these people onto the show to join in on the fun with us because that’s what this show. And if you’re a fan of Letter Kenny, the show is all about community, right? Everyone a lot of different people coming together in a show that may have differences here and there. But the end of the day, they all care about each other. They’re all this big sense of community. And all the people we met around the show who love it with us, all bring that to the table as well.

There are some amazing people out there. This show really does bring out a real interesting and awesome group of people that follow it and enjoy it, and we’ll continue to do so. We’re very thankful for all that as well. It’s now one of our favorite elements. I know I Ping out every week, oh, who’s joining us this week? Who’s joining us? And if I don’t know, I’m like, oh, yeah, someone new. And if it’s a repeat, like, I already know what to get ready for, and I get excited about it. So it’s one of my favorite elements is who’s joining us?

Some of Twitter, too.

It’s like rip notifications. You all have the most chatty, awesome DM group that goes on.

I did go on Twitter at one point, and I am on it. And I think in one day I think it was like only a couple of hours. And then I went and looked and I’m like, there’s 400 messages. I’m like, how on Earth does someone like, this is a full time job? I don’t have time to go through this many messages. Oh, my gosh.

And most of the conversation has nothing to do with Letter Kenny. There’s a full, active conversation right now happening about possums it appears. So it goes all over the map, but it’s all entertaining. It’s all in good fun. And sometimes it goes serious. Sometimes it just is banter. And I can’t keep up, though.

The amazing thing about that is what a difference of I can obviously choose my podcast as a different example of. I started mine through work, and I was like, hey, it’s a selfish reason for me to just try it out as a platform. Like, it’ll be fun. I got a bunch of nerd friends. I can have a nerd conversation, but get the story behind the tech, get the story behind the person and why they did something. I’ve always been enticed by the storytelling aspect. And then at one point they said, I probably saw the email somewhere saying, it doesn’t look like it’s actually leading to anything in pipeline revenue. So let’s just not spend time on this. All right? So I did a couple more, and then I was like, all right, I’ll just let it go. And all of a sudden, like three, four months later, I went and I looked on itunes. For some reason, I was searching something like, oh, I forgot. Probably got this podcast up there. I should check to see what the last episode was and I looked and there was comments and they said, I love the conversational style of the show or something like that.

And I was like, oh, man, I got to do it again. I got to keep it going because there’s someone listening, there’s somebody out there that’s going, like, refreshing their thing, going, Where’s the next episode? I’m like, all right. And I kind of committed to it. And that interaction was what made it gave me a reason to do it. And now, obviously, I’m a couple of hundred further in and it’s growing. But if I had a DM group, they would be me and maybe my wife. Don’t give a crap about this podcast to talk about it on a real time basis, but you’re the community side of what you do. Like I said, it really harkens back to that message board, super active collegial thing. And like you said, Matt, you could talk about anything. I love watching the random, like, these sort of non-sequitur things just show up and all of a sudden there’s a stream of like, what’s the right way to shave a Possum’s belly before you take it for its operation? Whatever bizarre thing. And then there’s somebody that’s got a real like, oh, yeah, I had to do this last year.

All walks of life are represented.

I always knew we had to form a community for the podcast to grow, right? Like, without a community, it’ll just be us yelling into the void, and maybe one or two people might listen. But the interesting thing, too, is the tool used for the community. Twitter dm isn’t exactly a community tool. It’s one on one, maybe a few on a few chat function at best. We have 75 people. We’ve maxed out our DM group. We can’t have anymore. We’d have to kick somebody off in order to add somebody on. And so there’s always been like, oh, maybe we should move this to a discord or something like that. But we tried that and it failed. People don’t want the immediacy of Twitter because it’s already on an app on your phone and you’re getting your notifications right away. For some reason that lends to the discussion because now you don’t have to log onto an app to post something. It’s Twitter. You have it with you all the time. It’s almost like an ongoing conversation wherever you go. And you just go on and answer whatever the latest question was, and you don’t have to worry about what thread you were.

Also, I don’t have to read all that.

No, you really don’t.

You don’t have to feel daunted about that.

A little add going, ok 400, let’s take this 1 hour at a time.

But if you accidentally tap it twice, it goes to the bottom. You’re like, oh, I missed a lot of conversations. I got to scroll back up and find my starting point.

And that’s great. Whatever like there are those, I mean, I try to because it’s always good to know what’s going on in that community. But if I log on and there’s like 400 messages and then a lot of it’s like deep cuts on Star Wars lore or some shit like that, which I’m not really interested in, I’ll just skip it. It’s no problem. They’re having fun with each other. No one’s fighting, no one’s misbehaving. So we just move on. But it’s funny, we hit a critical mass on Twitter DM, so I’m like, maybe we should move it to Discord. No one wants to.

Can you call the Twitter people and ask them for more?

Get an edit button. Just give me a larger DM groups like that true community type of aspect.

It makes you wonder too, if ever they decided to add maybe a threading function in your DM or whatever, would that be better or not? Is there something about the restrictive nature of a DM group that makes it work more entertaining? Maybe.

I don’t know, because it’s just weird.

And I think it’s platform of immediacy. Twitter for this type of interaction is like bike theft. It’s a crime of opportunity. You walk by, you see an undone chain hanging over a bike frame, you get on the goddamn bike and you ride like you stole it. So when you think of Twitter, it’s like I’m there doing other things. So I just tap that tab and I’m on there versus going to Discord. Now if you’re a developer or a gamer. And the reason why Discord is uper popular, my hypothesis of why it’s super popular with developers is because a large community of developers are also gamers. And Discord is a place, so they at night are on Discord. So they love like, why not just leave it running all day long and next thing there’s developer communities.

We have a 15 year old son and he’s got three monitors and one of his monitors is always on Discord. That’s the way he communicates with his friends. It’s a different mindset for I say younger people, but I know I am on Discord, but I don’t log on very often.

This is the funny thing. Every once in a while if I talk about my age with people that I didn’t grow up with, I don’t care. When I talk about you, I’m like, God damn it, now I remember everything. We’re actually old. This sucks. But it is amazing to think of that. And it used to at one point be, I want you to get real friends, right? And I remember even my oldest son, he’s 19. And this idea that getting told, like, I wish you would go out and find real friends and said, well, if you bring four of his friends together, they’re going to bring their laptops with them and sit in the room on Skype and game anyways. So why not let them do it wherever they are? And it became a practice of doing it and that’s why I think, like, podcasting, as a pattern of consumption, is such a popular place now because people can get it on demand. They can turn it on or off, they can download what they want, they can binge it, they can listen in the car. And I’ve been told over and over again, like, well, going long form will bury your podcast listenership because they said at 20 minutes, people have their attention goes like, well, that’s if you’re like, pitching or doing something, like, I’m having a conversation. You just get in or out whenever you want.

And I used to tell people, do you read books? Yeah. Do you read it from end to end? No. Well, how do you do that? How could you possibly put it down in chapter two, he’s like, Sorry, kids, you got to eat. Too bad I’m in chapter four, right? I got to keep going. You put it down. Your brain is the capability. And I found that it’s actually been better because the freedom of having no gap of, like, I’ve got to hit this time frame. I like that freedom.

Even early on, some of my favorite comments from listeners were always around, listening to your show, it’s like hanging out with a bunch of our friends, and they just wanted to be. And they felt like they knew us and they felt like they could see themselves sitting and hanging out and having the same conversation, which is probably part of why we invited them in anyways and said, well, hey, come join us. And that’s part of where I think a lot of it’s grown from. People just feel part of our discussions.

Yeah. The campfire sort of aspect of it, it really does feel just like a bunch of friends hanging around a table. Even though you’re physically separated, you really do sense that you’re sitting across from each other. You have the ability, especially over time, to get the queues of who’s going to jump in. And Zoom is the only thing that Zoom is a bit of a drag. And I’m sorry, I’m domain to trash Zoom just because I’m using signal wire. But the reason why I actually did this platform that I use is because it does multiplex audio. So if all four of us, like, all three cameras, started chatting at the same time, it all goes through.

Oh, really?

And the weird thing, though, is Zoom has trained us like idiots to be like a 1920s telephone system where one signal goes through, okay, pull that cable, go to the next one. As soon as you hear somebody talking, we all stop. Yeah, right. And it goes. It’s like Wayne and McMurray. Yeah. The advantage with this is that and Zoom is getting better, I think, where they allow more cross talk now, but it used to be really bad. We have, like, company meetings and people say, like, we’re going to welcome all the new recruits. Right. You got a bunch of new hires. Okay, everybody come off mute and let’s give them a round of applause. There’s 400 people, but only one of them gets the audio.

One of the early bread ideas we had from our production meeting was Victor is a really good guitarist. And we thought, oh, he could play a little guitar in the background while we’re talking about something. I forget what it was, and we tried it. And of course, Zoom doesn’t allow that. It gates. Like, if we’re talking, you can’t hear Victor playing, and if he’s playing for sure, that one didn’t last very long.

The only thing that I wish we had as far as this, like, for your show, is that idea that you could literally, everything should be commercially viable because you have such a fantastic group of people and a beautiful way of really being together and to actually see you folks sitting in a room. And I just wish you could get paid to do that because you do a great job of it. Right. One day. Exactly.

You can pay us a little bit more. And we’ll do well.

Talk about an avid community. As the co owner of Diabolical Coffee, you all contribute a lot to my success. I’ve actually got quite a few folks that are coming through the produce stand that are buyers. And it’s cool.

I mean, this sound a surprise, really. It’s working, though, showing any your commercial is the best.

Yeah. So this is the funny thing. People always wonder about sponsorships. Look, I’ve got sponsors, and I feel bad having them sometimes because the thing like, no one’s going to buy stuff because they listen to my goofy show. Right. But in the end, it actually does create awareness. And so the psychology of advertising is not about, I heard about a thing, quick, pause it, let me go buy that thing. But your community is very strong, and they do support brands that you mentioned and stuff like that, which is cool. And I see you got a couple of TPS hats there, which are very cool.

I love that. My favorite hat.

It’s fun to support. And trust me, if I made more money, you’d make more money. That’s the only problem. Your support is only limited by my revenue.

We appreciate all like the support you given us, Eric. I mean, we’re buds from before, but at the same time, it was great. It’s been great to have you on, and hopefully we continue as Shoresy starts up. I don’t know how big a story that is down there, but up here we can’t wait.

That’s going to be wild. Now, here’s the interesting thing. I think you and I may talk about this early on. At one point, I said, you’ve got a team, you’ve got a method, you’ve got a knack, you’ve got all the right things. In kind of the way that a salesperson can go from working for podunk widgets and then they can go and work for whiffle whaffle widgets, or even better, they can switch and they can sell cars or real estate. If you have the practice and the method, you can apply it to any industry. And so I’ve always listened to you as a group, as individuals, and think this is bigger than Letter Kenny. You have much more to bring. And I do hope that you kind of go, that you can find another thing that you can do, because as a group, you just keep grinding it out. As a guy that’s been grinding for a long time, I don’t know that it’s been worth anything more than having the fun of it. Right. But I’m seeing other benefits that are coming now, and you are all too good to stop because Letter Kenny stops.

Well, thank you. Appreciate that.

In a year and a half for almost two years, it will be two years in July. So maybe we’ve missed what, one week, two weeks? I mean, I’ve missed more time at my actual paying job than.

So true. And the other hilarious thing is if we’ve got such a defined schedule, if we shift things around, which is often my fault, we get yelled at by people saying like, oh, so I guess there’s nothing to listen to Friday morning, right? They get upset. I say upset, but it’s become a very comical thing. And Al gives them lots of notice as much as he can to say, hey, govern yourselves accordingly. We’re moving things around this week.

There is always that kind of reluctance, because without Letter Kenny, it’s the produce stands. We could talk about it. Sorry there’s an echo there. I don’t know if you’re getting it or not.

All clear here luckily.

Anyway. It’s called the Protestant, so really, I mean, it’s kind of only tangentially tied to Letter Kenny, so we could just continue doing it on other topics. The fear for me anyway, because we don’t want our feet to go stale. We want to make sure whatever we pick won’t alienate many of our regular listeners to go away. You know what I mean, right? Sure. He’s a good bet, because it’s a spin off from Letter Kenny, and there’s a lot of excitement happening there. So hopefully that happens in short time. Season eleven will launch, so maybe we have another runway of hopefully three or four months that we can continue doing this. But yeah, then the real work is going to start. What do we do next? What are the ideas? We need to get really creative with it for sure?

Well, if you think of the TPS report, right, almost as a joke of the office based thing, you could carry that through. And whether it’s commentary on anything, the tough part, which is weird because I’m an older fellow, I’ve got a reputation to preserve, and I’ve got a couple of nephews who are fantastic podcasters. The first thing they did was they got into, like, politics. I’m like, I can’t touch it because you want to be careful that you don’t ultimately alienate a big segment of your audience. So I’m very generic. I don’t talk about politics or religion or anything. And maybe it’s a Canadian thing too. We just steer clear of that stuff. But.

Doing some movie reviews or whatever, I had a notion that maybe we can review pilots, like during pilot season and then apply our kind of rating system and then see what shows will last. But I mean, even that’s different now because there’s no such thing as a network floating a pilot anymore. And then maybe they’ll pick it up now it’s like a whole season will get dropped. And then if they like it, you’ll continue. Right. So I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to see for sure. It’s a good problem to have now.

Oh, yeah, that’s it. And maybe you could go to the community in a way and kind of say like, hey, we’re going to test out an episode or test out a concept. And it could be whether it’s an Internet show or something that you pick and switch up the content and breaking it down. Look at me like, think of movies, Matt. Look at your background, right? That idea where you see something you’re like, I totally get it. Like a cold open. What the Hell’s a cold open, right? Just explain to people. Break down the format of a show. And my favorite thing, although you mentioned the right thing, though, forget about the pilot. But even just season one, episode one, just call it TPS. E. One. The best of every show is episode one always goes downhill after that. One of my favorite shows was Eastbound and down. Hilarious show, yes. But the moment that I watched the first one, I was like, I don’t know if I want to watch the second one because that was so God damn funny. And so it’s like Lost. Like if you watch Lost beyond the first few shows, shit goes sideways fast, right? And that’s why they ended up with all these bad threads, because they started to write for the audience, not for the story. That’s why I love The Wire. They’re like, we’re done. We wrote the end when we wrote the first episode, and we’re just going to film in towards it. So like, picking stuff like a first episode of something and saying, why did it work? And where did it break down? The jump, the Shark, episode two. Like that idea of oh, boy, let’s talk about why this one broke down.

When aliens visited. That’s when they lost it there.

Even if I look at YouTubers now and I’ve got young kids as well as older kids. And so I watch a lot of these goofy YouTube creator shows, and they’re like Vlad and Nikki and little Diana, and you’d see someone, they’re multimillionaires doing these YouTube enterprises. And then my wife and I were joking because you see a bunch of them that have, like, two kids and they’ll have, like, a five year run of content, and all of a sudden there’s a baby and you’re like, oh, that’s like the kid that showed up on Family Ties. They just added a new character, and it’s going to go Sharks now. But do what you do. You’re really good at it. And for people that don’t already subscribe, go check it out. It’s the produce stand. You can find it online. And I hope to see you all on YouTube, because I think as far as production capability, you’ve got the technical chops to deliver it. And I think it would be fun. Like, I’m living vicariously through your capabilities because I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m just hammering ahead.

You got some cool-ass gear there that I wish I could use.

But it’s getting there.

We’re just getting a Victor a better mic. Yeah.

Victor is the only one. Every time I see him, he’s, like, in a train station and cappascasing or he’s always, like, dial in from somewhere remote.

It always seems like he’s struggling with unicorn.

It’s by design. Like, Tanya was saying, he has a better mic. He just refuses to use it. It’s a little frustrating, but I think it has to curmudgeon in nature. I think people like that about them. I don’t know.

The diversity of voices is really neat, which gives people a chance to do it. But now the fun part is, like, in four years, when do you all break up as a team? Be like, oh, now you’re competing against each other, right? So there you go. For folks that do want to find you Al, give them all the socials. Where do we track down the produce stand and see what’s next?

I try to make it as easy as possible. It’s @producestandpod everywhere. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, even TikTok – @producestandpod. And if you want to join our DM group, it would have to mean that we’d have to kick somebody out.

This is a special members only club.

We still try to have as much fun as we can on Twitter. And every once in a while we do our AG hall socials. So not next week, but the following week will be one of our AG hall socials. And that’s when we invite any of our listeners to join us on a Zoom call. And this one’s extra special because it’s our 100th episode. And what we’ve got planned is we’ve asked our listeners to come with clips of their favorite moments of the previous 99 episodes. And we have no idea what’s going to be played. So they’re going to play them, and we’re going to react to them, and it’s going to be hijinks are going to ensue. I hope that is awesome.

There you go. TPS reacts. That’s your new YouTube channel. Get on it. I want to see you all become successful. Further success, right. You’re already successful and that you’ve really done a great thing. So it’s great to see and just the fact that we can do this and fit it into our day and it’s fun, it’s just fun. That’s success in my mind, right? I love doing this stuff. All right, crew. And for all the folks that do want to check it out. Of course, like I said, check out the podcast and I was lucky enough I was a guest on a couple of them. You can hunt it down and check out Letter K too. It’s a wicked cool show. Please do it. So there you go, pitter patter. Let’s get at her.

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Ryan Estes is the co-founder of Kitcaster. He validates and scales Kitcaster products. Prior to Kitcaster, Ryan owned a media and marketing agency for 10 years. For eight of those years, he has hosted the founder’s podcast Talklaunch.

We talk through the power of podcasting as a medium, how conversational media is the basically table stakes for companies, and also have a ton of fun diving into why we do what we do in podcasting and media in general.

Thank you for a great conversation, Ryan!

Check out Kitcaster here: https://kitcaster.com/discoposse/

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estesryan/