Latest / The Scene Projects / Live Podcasting Insights: Jeff Revilla on Theater, Industry Challenges, and Local Talent

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Live Podcasting Insights: Jeff Revilla on Theater, Industry Challenges, and Local Talent · The Scene Projects

• 0:01
  Well, welcome to a very exciting episode of The Scene.
• 0:04
  I'm your host Bubba Startz, and with me today is theater mogul from the Podcave Theater
• 0:08
  outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jeff Revilla.
• 0:11
  Jeff, welcome to the show, brother.
• 0:13
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:14
  I did make him say theater mogul.
• 0:16
  That one's on me.
• 0:17
  You can decide by the end of the show if I've earned that title or not.
• 0:22
  Well, why don't you go ahead and just tell us a little bit about the theater and yourself, and
• 0:26
  we'll make a judgment right away.
• 0:29
  I had this idea that, you know, what if I could compete against Madison Square Garden or, you
• 0:34
  know, some giant outdoor venue, but only have 40 seats in my theater?
• 0:39
  So, you know, ironically, I have the same capacity because we build a place for
• 0:44
  podcasters to come in, take the stage.
• 0:47
  They can perform in front of an audience of 40 people, but also livestream that to infinite
• 0:52
  seats.
• 0:53
  So, technically, my little tiny baby theater has more seats than Madison Square Garden.
• 0:59
  Amazing concept, man.
• 1:01
  And that's exactly what drew me to you when I kinda saw the Podcave.
• 1:06
  And I actually think that I saw it from someone else before I was kinda introduced to you and
• 1:11
  found out what you were doing, but just a fantastic idea.
• 1:15
  Obviously, we're podcasters here.
• 1:17
  We just won a big award for Content Creator of the Year from our Midwest Country Music
• 1:21
  Organization, kinda supporting our community of artists.
• 1:25
  What you have is kind of a missing link.
• 1:27
  Right?
• 1:28
  We're a central location to go, so one that we do, we call the Songwriter Showcase.
• 1:33
  And we go just take over a venue.
• 1:35
  We bring our cameras.
• 1:36
  We set up, and we shoot it all live inside of the venue.
• 1:40
  Well, as you know, most venues aren't really set up for that.
• 1:44
  So you're kinda left wanting a little bit.
• 1:47
  Right?
• 1:47
  So to have a studio and people that are watching can see the theater behind you on your
• 1:52
  green screen, just a beautiful space, man.
• 1:54
  It's awesome.
• 1:56
  It's just amazing, and I'm so in love with not just the concept, but your diligence in making
• 2:03
  it happen.
• 2:03
  It's no small feat to build a space like this and then to just stick with it.
• 2:08
  Yeah.
• 2:08
  One of the things that drew me to doing this business model was, you know, I love doing live
• 2:13
  events.
• 2:13
  I love getting in front of people.
• 2:15
  I love being a ham.
• 2:16
  You know, I love making people laugh, even make people throw things at me.
• 2:19
  It's so much fun, and I enjoy the chaos and being in the moment.
• 2:24
  And when I started thinking about how do I take my I did this little trivia show.
• 2:27
  It now airs on local television.
• 2:30
  But I was like, how do I take this to the people?
• 2:32
  How could I possibly do that?
• 2:34
  If you go to a hotel and say, hey.
• 2:36
  I wanna rent out a ballroom.
• 2:37
  You know, you're like, it's thousands of dollars by the time you add in
• 2:40
  AV equipment.
• 2:41
  Dollars minimum off the bat.
• 2:43
  Minimum.
• 2:44
  Just the signs of contract.
• 2:45
  Then you need AV.
• 2:46
  You need hospitality services.
• 2:48
  You need catering services.
• 2:50
  And it's a $10,000 investment.
• 2:53
  Most podcasters almost never make $10,000.
• 2:56
  So right off the bat, if you wanted to host an event, even a festival, that's still cost
• 3:01
  prohibitive to go somewhere, rent a space, and try to do your own events.
• 3:06
  It's really hard to do that.
• 3:07
  But with this model, you like, we're talking about this middle ground between where I'm at
• 3:12
  right now in my home studio and you're in your home studio.
• 3:15
  And I was joking about Madison Square Garden.
• 3:18
  But if you think about it, there is nothing in between for podcasters from their home studio
• 3:23
  to selling out arenas.
• 3:25
  And we know that arenas and theaters are becoming a place where podcasts are starting to
• 3:30
  sell those tickets.
• 3:30
  They're starting to fill up those places.
• 3:32
  But what's that bridge for us to get from home studio to theaters?
• 3:37
  There's no one developing that middle talent.
• 3:39
  I think places like this will become that middle ground.
• 3:42
  Well, and the only one that I can think of is the Mothership Austin.
• 3:47
  Right?
• 3:47
  Joe Rogan's place, but that's only because Kill Tony and Tony Hinchcliffe have been doing their
• 3:52
  thing for so long.
• 3:53
  Right?
• 3:54
  Doing it in the Original Room at the Comedy Store.
• 3:56
  Right?
• 3:57
  Exactly what you've done.
• 3:58
  Hey.
• 3:58
  We got this beautiful stage.
• 4:00
  We're just gonna do our thing.
• 4:02
  And what most podcasters, I think, forget is that, like, consistency is tough.
• 4:06
  And how consistent can you be when you're trying to build this huge idea without your own
• 4:12
  space?
• 4:12
  So you cut that out.
• 4:14
  You made your own space.
• 4:15
  It looks freaking amazing, man.
• 4:18
  My only regret is that I live 1,500 miles away.
• 4:21
  Right?
• 4:22
  And I can't just be there every single week doing our show and doing some of these other
• 4:26
  things that we have going on.
• 4:28
  So what have been some of the challenges that you faced?
• 4:32
  I mean, I'm sure that list is long, but give us, like, the top three, top five, you know,
• 4:36
  challenges that you've had, not just in podcasting yourself, but in, you know, building
• 4:41
  this theater and getting this model up off the ground.
• 4:44
  Yeah.
• 4:45
  I thought about this idea for about seven years before I finally pulled the trigger and went in
• 4:50
  on it.
• 4:51
  And I've been doing virtual events, IndiePods United, Women of IndiePods, some autism summits
• 4:57
  with Sarah.
• 4:58
  And these things were easy for me to fill up.
• 5:01
  I could I could say, hey.
• 5:02
  I'm gonna do a festival.
• 5:03
  I'd have 30 podcasters in three days sign up.
• 5:06
  It was easy to find talent when you pull talent from anywhere in the world.
• 5:10
  But when I launched this, you know, I thought it'd be the same way.
• 5:13
  People are thinking about this like I am, and it turns out I might have been a little bit
• 5:18
  ahead of the curve, a little bit ahead of the market.
• 5:20
  And while I've been thinking about it, no one else has.
• 5:23
  So it took me about a year.
• 5:25
  Like, now my Saturdays are booked out for two, three months.
• 5:28
  You know?
• 5:28
  I'm starting to fill in Fridays.
• 5:29
  I'm starting to get the volume.
• 5:32
  So finding the local talent is way harder than you think it is.
• 5:35
  It's you know, podcasting is such a digital medium.
• 5:37
  We exist in a virtual space.
• 5:39
  You and I connected.
• 5:40
  We never would have crossed paths if it wasn't for the Internet.
• 5:43
  So it's easier.
• 5:44
  Everything around me.
• 5:46
  Like, you know, the money's not come yet, but, you know, today, we just crested 45,000 views
• 5:52
  on our YouTube channel, and we've really only been going hard on our YouTube since January.
• 5:57
  So it was kind of the slow burn.
• 5:58
  Right?
• 5:58
  Building up the views.
• 5:59
  Most of your shorts are getting, like, 12 views.
• 6:02
  Well, now we're consistently getting 1,200 views.
• 6:04
  Right?
• 6:05
  And we went from 20 to 45 in about ten days.
• 6:09
  And it's like, oh, once you're consistent with this content rolling out, it starts to take off
• 6:14
  very quickly.
• 6:15
  But like you just mentioned, like, while in the digital space, we're like, oh my god.
• 6:22
  There's so many podcasters.
• 6:23
  In the real world, they are not anywhere close to you.
• 6:27
  Yeah.
• 6:27
  We spoke off camera.
• 6:29
  I live in South Dakota.
• 6:30
  My fans know I'm in the middle of nowhere, man.
• 6:32
  I can't there's no other podcasters within two hours of me.
• 6:37
  Right?
• 6:37
  And if they are, you know, they're not attacking it in the way that I am.
• 6:40
  So I think there's maybe a handful of podcasts in the entire state of South Dakota and even
• 6:45
  fewer that are as niched into supporting a music community like I am.
• 6:51
  Right?
• 6:51
  So it's very hard out there to find that.
• 6:54
  We have a content house, I guess I would call it, a podcast studio my friend Caleb Hoover has
• 7:00
  in Sioux Falls.
• 7:02
  A beautiful space.
• 7:03
  He's got all the pro cameras and doing all of it, but he's running into the same thing.
• 7:07
  So kind of the mission for me, I've said, is to start a million podcasters.
• 7:13
  A year ago, I didn't even have a podcast, Jeff.
• 7:16
  So I kinda started and started serving a community and went, oh, this is kinda what it's
• 7:21
  about.
• 7:21
  If you have the right personality and you have, you know, the community that needs to be
• 7:26
  served, you can make this go a lot faster than just coming out and going, well, I'm gonna do
• 7:32
  my thing, and I'm just gonna be about me.
• 7:35
  Instead, you'd be about the community.
• 7:37
  And that's what I love about your theater is it was about serving a need for a community of
• 7:42
  podcasters even if that community didn't exist yet.
• 7:45
  Yeah.
• 7:46
  Yeah.
• 7:47
  That I mean, that's the crazy part because I've met a lot of podcasters in Pittsburgh, but the
• 7:51
  podcasters who are ready to take that leap from the safeness of their home studio I know I can
• 7:57
  come home from work.
• 7:57
  You and I can connect.
• 7:59
  I can turn on my computer, and I'm gonna have pretty good audio right out of the gate.
• 8:02
  It's safe.
• 8:03
  Like, it's a controlled environment.
• 8:05
  I'm used to that.
• 8:06
  But when you get somebody out of that environment, like, okay.
• 8:09
  Let's take this show on the road.
• 8:10
  Let's put this on a stage in front of people.
• 8:13
  That's a whole different game.
• 8:14
  And it's something that I really believe if you look at just the data and the numbers and the
• 8:19
  evolution of other genres like comedy, like music.
• 8:23
  You know, they started in small clubs, back of bowling alleys.
• 8:27
  The Chinese restaurants would have shows, you know, before there were venues, and then there
• 8:31
  became venues.
• 8:32
  And then those venues opened up for bigger theaters, and those acts needed opening acts.
• 8:37
  So then they started to bring in more people.
• 8:38
  So, you know, a one-night show could have been three or four bands or three or four comedians.
• 8:43
  And if you tell me that podcasting is not on that same exact trajectory, you're not seeing
• 8:49
  the data the last 10 years.
• 8:50
  Thank you.
• 8:51
  You're 100%.
• 8:52
  Thank you.
• 8:52
  Heading towards this is a this is a form.
• 8:54
  This industry is headed for a massive explosion, and I feel bad for the guys that
• 8:59
  have been in it for 10 years that are so jaded.
• 9:02
  Right?
• 9:03
  I deal with a lot of them.
• 9:04
  I'm in some pretty large Facebook groups and, you know, oh, the podcast.
• 9:08
  Joe Rogan was the bubble, and it's ever nobody's ever gonna make any money podcasting.
• 9:12
  I was like, you are out of touch, man.
• 9:14
  You are really out of touch with what this is because mainstream media is gone.
• 9:19
  It's gone.
• 9:20
  And with that, all of that advertising space and those advertising dollars that they were
• 9:26
  sucking up.
• 9:27
  Right?
• 9:27
  So with all of that now gone, there is a now not anyone is going to fill one of those
• 9:34
  slices, right, where you had three major networks gobbling up 80% of the take.
• 9:39
  Well, now they're the 20%.
• 9:42
  And now this 60% that was completely controlled by three things is now in the hands of guys
• 9:48
  like us, right, where we're trying to figure out how do we get that support, how do we
• 9:52
  connect with these companies to bring them into what we're doing and to show them what we've
• 9:56
  done.
• 9:57
  And, unfortunately, it takes, you know, or fortunately for us, it takes guys with just
• 10:01
  these wild ideas to step out and to just do it and to say, hey.
• 10:06
  I'm willing to make that investment upfront to build all these things, to build the community,
• 10:11
  to build the theater, to do all the things so that when the money does come knocking, I'm
• 10:16
  already prepared.
• 10:17
  I'm not like, oh, well, I can build that for you and then having to go through the trials
• 10:21
  and tribulations.
• 10:23
  We're doing all of that and then ready to deliver a product at the end of the day.
• 10:28
  Yeah.
• 10:29
  You were mentioning, you know, ad revenue.
• 10:30
  Where's this ad revenue coming from?
• 10:32
  And I love the quote.
• 10:34
  Libsyn and Buzzsprout, they do these reports about how many average downloads does the
• 10:39
  average podcast get.
• 10:40
  And I always feel like this starts out as being kind of a very negative, a little bit of a
• 10:44
  downer.
• 10:45
  But 95% of podcasts don't get more than 1,100 downloads in the first seven days.
• 10:52
  So we built this model of podcasting on these host-read ads.
• 10:57
  So a good way to sell ads is a CPM, a cost per thousand.
• 11:01
  So for every thousand downloads, you can get about $20 to $25 per thousand downloads.
• 11:08
  And if 95% of the podcasts aren't getting a thousand downloads, the best they can hope for
• 11:13
  is a $20 ad on an ad read.
• 11:16
  And so I started thinking, like, well, how does this equate to business?
• 11:20
  That $20 per thousand is 2¢ per download.
• 11:24
  So the value of somebody downloading your show is 2¢.
• 11:26
  Now hear me out.
• 11:28
  So it took you a thousand downloads to make $20.
• 11:31
  If you were to do a live show, let's say you get five people show up.
• 11:35
  You sold $10 tickets.
• 11:37
  With my business model, we split the door fifty-fifty.
• 11:40
  You walk away with $25.
• 11:43
  Right?
• 11:43
  Five people is as much as a thousand downloads.
• 11:47
  The value of a live audience, the value of being in front of people is 250 times greater
• 11:53
  than the digital download.
• 11:55
  So I say think about it in the terms of a car.
• 11:56
  If you have a 1994 Ford Escort and a brand new Lamborghini, those are two different vehicles.
• 12:03
  They both get you to the same place, but one has significantly more value.
• 12:08
  Right?
• 12:08
  And that's what you get when you start thinking about podcasting, not just as a digital medium,
• 12:14
  but as an entertainment, as an act, as something you can take on the road, as
• 12:18
  something you can perform for people.
• 12:20
  The value of being in front of people is exponentially greater than hoping somebody
• 12:25
  downloads something and you get to look at your numbers in a week.
• 12:29
  Exactly, Jeff.
• 12:30
  And I'm a musician.
• 12:30
  I've been playing live for 25 years.
• 12:34
  Right?
• 12:34
  Like, I have been in that world of performing live and getting paid very well to do it.
• 12:39
  Right?
• 12:40
  And then understanding that, like, I'm not putting any money into streaming.
• 12:43
  I don't pay DistroKid or any, you know, things like that to get my music out there.
• 12:48
  I use a service called ONErpm.
• 12:50
  It's free.
• 12:51
  So a little free game for y'all out there in the music world.
• 12:53
  You don't have to pay to get your stuff out to these big places.
• 12:57
  Right?
• 12:58
  Like, stop giving other people your money into a model that is never going to pay you back.
• 13:04
  Never going to pay you back.
• 13:05
  Even if you make it to where most of us would feel they're not even getting paid, but Spotify
• 13:10
  builds the clout for them to go out and book gigs.
• 13:14
  I just bypass that.
• 13:15
  I said, I'll get my clout from somewhere else.
• 13:17
  I'll get my authority from somewhere else other than Spotify in this totally rigged game, and I
• 13:23
  will go out and build my own thing.
• 13:25
  And that's exactly what we've done, and it's exactly what you've done.
• 13:28
  So what we are building now is taking this out on the road.
• 13:32
  Right?
• 13:32
  I have a two 10-day tour planned.
• 13:35
  Now being around the music industry with the podcast and everything as well, it's easy for
• 13:39
  us to book shows at venues and to build that.
• 13:42
  But a lot of what we're trying to do is to bring this podcast world out to other people
• 13:46
  and let them see it, especially out here in the Midwest where most people don't know what a
• 13:51
  podcast is and are still new to the media and the medium itself.
• 13:57
  But then what it can look like.
• 13:59
  It doesn't have to be in a studio that looks like Joe Rogan's.
• 14:03
  That is not the only thing that these podcasts can be.
• 14:07
  They can look like a songwriters round in your local venue where you are supporting seven,
• 14:14
  eight songwriters.
• 14:15
  And then not only are you sharing that, but you're able to put that out in these digital
• 14:19
  spaces and have their message carried there as well.
• 14:22
  And that's really what we're bringing to the table with our programming.
• 14:26
  I know.
• 14:26
  Would you rather have a million Spotify downloads or play in front of 100 people and
• 14:31
  have a chance of that ticket revenue?
• 14:33
  You probably make more money playing in front of 100 people than you would relying on a
• 14:37
  royalty check from Spotify for a million downloads, right?
• 14:41
  That's it's just crazy that we, like you said, we give away all this power.
• 14:46
  We give away our rights when we get into these platforms and these third parties.
• 14:50
  And one thing you can do, I, you know, I use the Doug Benson model in this case is Doug
• 14:54
  Benson does a podcast called Doug Loves Movies.
• 14:57
  He goes in the com he does a comedy.
• 14:59
  He's a comedian.
• 15:00
  He goes around, plays clubs.
• 15:01
  But he says, hey, when I'm in Pittsburgh, one day on Saturday at 4:20, because he likes to,
• 15:08
  you know, enjoy a little extracurricular activity, at 4:20, he does his podcast at the
• 15:14
  comedy club.
• 15:15
  So not only is he selling a 7:00, a 9:00, and maybe 11:00 show, but now he's added a fourth
• 15:22
  show where he's doing his podcast, which is something you could even do, like, a meet and
• 15:26
  greet with the bands, like a VIP ticket for yeah.
• 15:29
  Come see the bands.
• 15:30
  We start at 7:00.
• 15:31
  But at 4:30, we're gonna do a meet and greet podcast where you come in.
• 15:35
  We're gonna interview the bands.
• 15:36
  You can ask them the questions that you've been dying to ask them, what road life is like and
• 15:40
  touring.
• 15:40
  And, you know, you get that little extra experience that you don't get just downloading,
• 15:45
  listening to music.
• 15:46
  You get to see their faces and see how they react and, you know, see if they throw
• 15:50
  drumsticks at you or something.
• 15:52
  Like, all that chaos comes from being one-on-one in person, and you build a much
• 15:56
  better relationship by being in the same room with the artist.
• 16:00
  Thank you, Jeff.
• 16:01
  That is going in my show now.
• 16:05
  You should do the, like, that's Doug Benson, the Doug Benson model.
• 16:08
  Yeah.
• 16:09
  Well, it's genius, man.
• 16:10
  And I love the energy that you have for this too, and you have the right demeanor that
• 16:16
  you're going to succeed.
• 16:17
  Right?
• 16:18
  You know?
• 16:18
  But it hasn't always been that way.
• 16:21
  Can you touch on maybe some of those darker moments when you were like, what the hell am I
• 16:25
  doing?
• 16:26
  Yeah.
• 16:27
  I mean, I grew up skateboarding and punk rock in the '80s and '90s.
• 16:29
  So, DIY and poor is in my vocabulary.
• 16:34
  Right?
• 16:34
  So, you know, there were times, like, even still, I may just do a silly show or experiment
• 16:40
  with something and try something.
• 16:42
  I might be the only one in the theater.
• 16:44
  I just lock the front door, and sadly, you know, I go do the show on my own.
• 16:49
  That's just part of growing.
• 16:51
  And because one of the things you said, where have I been failing at, not only trying to find
• 16:56
  the podcasters to fill the space and develop talent for the stage, I'm also trying to teach
• 17:02
  the public.
• 17:03
  This is a new form of entertainment.
• 17:05
  So I'm battling like, hey.
• 17:06
  Just like you go out to the comedy club, just like you go to the bar or a venue to see a
• 17:10
  music act, this is something you can do now on a Friday night.
• 17:14
  This is a new form of entertainment that's completely different than anything you've ever
• 17:18
  experienced, and you will walk away with a whole new perspective of what you can do on a
• 17:23
  Friday night.
• 17:24
  It's incredible.
• 17:24
  For, like, $5-10, come and see a podcast.
• 17:27
  They perform a whole 90-minute show live for you.
• 17:30
  You know, like, that was a pretty good time.
• 17:31
  We're right next door to a bar, hop over, get a drink, and some fried mushrooms, and call it a
• 17:36
  night.
• 17:36
  So it's a good time.
• 17:38
  And the, you know, that development of not only the talent for the stage, but the talent or the
• 17:44
  public's interest, you know, those are things I've been battling, and really until, like,
• 17:49
  November, December last year.
• 17:50
  I also mentioned, we just opened in June.
• 17:52
  We haven't even celebrated a year yet, so we're still really, really new at this.
• 17:57
  Yeah.
• 17:58
  Well, and it's a big ask, and it's a lot for one man to kind of do all of the things.
• 18:04
  That's why we built the Midwest Podcasting Network, and building the community of
• 18:10
  podcasters because I kind of fell into this a year ago and really just in the last maybe four
• 18:16
  or five months where I was like, okay.
• 18:18
  You're a podcaster.
• 18:19
  Right?
• 18:19
  Like, this is what you do now.
• 18:21
  You used to be a musician, but this is what you do.
• 18:24
  Well, and it's not just that, really.
• 18:25
  I mean, I love executive producing.
• 18:28
  Right?
• 18:28
  All of these shows, chasing down these ideas.
• 18:30
  We got a golf show.
• 18:31
  I have four different networks, Jeff.
• 18:33
  I'm running, you know, Get Better Together Project, which is more like mental health and,
• 18:38
  you know, sharing our shit a little bit.
• 18:40
  And then we have the Patriot Broadcasting Network because I wanna talk about politics and
• 18:44
  news and things that matter to me and share stories in that realm.
• 18:48
  But then we have The Scene Project, which is our more arts and culture and podcasters and
• 18:53
  all of these different things working together.
• 18:55
  I just started a sports network, The Scene Project Sports Network, because I love sports.
• 19:00
  Well, now that's giving me the opportunity to go down to some of these golf courses.
• 19:04
  Right?
• 19:05
  Yeah.
• 19:05
  And, hey, we'll shoot a promotional video for you.
• 19:07
  Let us hit nine.
• 19:09
  We'll do a little promo video.
• 19:10
  We'll come in, grab an interview with you, and to put your golf course out there is a really
• 19:14
  good light.
• 19:14
  Well, that's a pretty good moneymaker.
• 19:16
  Right?
• 19:17
  If you're able to come in and at, you know, a fraction of the cost of what a video, you know,
• 19:23
  media company would charge them to shoot a commercial, we can go, hey.
• 19:26
  We're gonna give you all this, and then we're gonna put it out on our network and share it,
• 19:29
  and we'll give you the footage for you to use for whatever you want to do as well.
• 19:35
  And I think we're stumbling into that not just on golf courses, but at breweries.
• 19:39
  Right?
• 19:40
  And all these different things, and it's really just having a business mind and understanding
• 19:44
  what you are.
• 19:45
  If a podcast can be a commercial for all of these places that are trying to do lead gens,
• 19:51
  right, which is a big that's the big side of where the money is in podcasting right now for
• 19:55
  coaches and consultants and different things like that.
• 19:58
  Well, why can't it be there for the entertainment and promotional value as well?
• 20:03
  And the answer is, oh, it is.
• 20:05
  There's just nobody out there selling it or not enough people out there selling it to where the
• 20:09
  market is saturated.
• 20:10
  Yeah.
• 20:11
  Now that you have sports, don't forget to ask for press passes because you can start to get
• 20:14
  into a lot of events for free.
• 20:16
  Already there, brother.
• 20:17
  I am trying to get in into we're, we're big Minnesota Vikings fans here.
• 20:22
  You know, South Dakota doesn't have its own professional sports teams, but, yeah, working
• 20:26
  all the angles.
• 20:27
  We got in to cover the Cinch Playoffs, which is a big rodeo, at the Denny Sanford Premier
• 20:32
  Center, which is the biggest venue in South Dakota.
• 20:34
  Right?
• 20:35
  So that was before, that was last fall.
• 20:37
  We didn't even know what the hell we were doing.
• 20:38
  They just didn't have anyone else that was really interested in covering the event.
• 20:42
  Well, that's one of their biggest deals of the year, right?
• 20:45
  The Governor's Cup, it's a big freaking deal.
• 20:48
  And the local news shows up 15 minutes late for the press conference, throws up their camera,
• 20:53
  tapes two minutes, and then walks away.
• 20:55
  And, like, that's all the coverage they get.
• 20:57
  So I went, oh, we're here for you, right?
• 20:59
  We're here.
• 21:01
  But that's, I mean, not only in South Dakota is that, but all of these little Midwest markets,
• 21:07
  right?
• 21:07
  Like, there is an opening for people to just dive in and do this, and I can't do them all,
• 21:13
  right?
• 21:13
  So starting a million podcasters, that's exactly why I was like, you could be the guy
• 21:19
  for this or the gal for this and really hone into that community, and you could build
• 21:25
  yourself a nice career out of it.
• 21:26
  So now the goal becomes, well, how do we start?
• 21:29
  How do we find the personalities that are comfortable getting in front of the camera and
• 21:33
  comfortable doing a little bit of these things?
• 21:35
  And how do we empower them to get out there and do it on their own and not have to go through
• 21:39
  the seven years of thinking about it or the, you know, the tens of thousands of dollars
• 21:44
  invested to just pull on the thread to figure out who and what you are.
• 21:49
  Yeah.
• 21:50
  Finding the people.
• 21:50
  I mean, that's that's like the great unknown.
• 21:52
  It's you meet people all day every day, but meeting people who do what you do and do it in
• 21:57
  front of people and that it's it's really a challenge.
• 22:00
  And I think at it it takes momentum to open up those doors.
• 22:05
  Like, I what I noticed is I started doing these Pittsburgh podcast meetups.
• 22:09
  Every third Saturday of the month, I buy pizza and drinks, and I've been attracting, like, 20
• 22:15
  people per night.
• 22:17
  I get about 80 to register, and, you know, you do Facebook, you ever do Facebook events, four
• 22:22
  times as many people sign up than show up, but that's pretty standard across
• 22:25
  the board.
• 22:25
  If you're running 25% on that, you're doing pretty well.
• 22:28
  I would say those are good numbers.
• 22:30
  I put, like, a 10 on or less on, like, flyers I hand out.
• 22:34
  Right?
• 22:34
  If I print 100 flyers, I might get 10 people to show up for that event.
• 22:38
  Right?
• 22:38
  So getting the, you know, so I'm building these local lists of local podcasters, and I'm
• 22:43
  connecting with them.
• 22:43
  And my goal is, like you said, for lead gen, I'm getting 20 people in the theater.
• 22:49
  My goal was to get 10% of them to book to do a night on the stage.
• 22:53
  So I've been hitting that.
• 22:54
  I've been getting, like, you know, two to three people from these events come back, and they do
• 22:59
  a show later on.
• 23:00
  So the pizza investment is paying off.
• 23:02
  It's paying dividends.
• 23:03
  Yeah.
• 23:04
  Feed a Pittsburgher, they'll podcast for life.
• 23:09
  That's what they say about Pittsburghers, that makes sense.
• 23:12
  Yeah.
• 23:13
  Yeah.
• 23:13
  Just give them a sandwich and put french fries on it, and they'll be happy.
• 23:17
  Right?
• 23:18
  Oh, Jeff, I feel like we could talk for hours about all this stuff, and I have a feeling that
• 23:24
  we probably will in the future.
• 23:26
  We like to usually wrap these episodes up around this time and just to give people a
• 23:31
  little taste of what's to come.
• 23:33
  Go ahead and plug everything, and then I'm gonna chat with you off camera for a few
• 23:37
  minutes too.
• 23:38
  Yeah.
• 23:38
  If you're just thinking about live podcasting, you may not have something like this in your
• 23:42
  neighborhood.
• 23:43
  That's okay.
• 23:44
  There's tons of places to start.
• 23:45
  Your local library often has media rooms.
• 23:48
  Coffee shops are kinda empty at 3 p.m.
• 23:51
  on a Saturday.
• 23:52
  You know, there's places to go and do live podcasting.
• 23:56
  You know, get started.
• 23:57
  Do it somewhere, and, you know, start to build up that base.
• 24:01
  And if you have questions, reach out to me.
• 24:03
  I'm Jeff.
• 24:03
  I'm at Poduty.
• 24:04
  Poduty dot com, p o d u t y dot com.
• 24:07
  You can take a look at all of our upcoming events.
• 24:09
  About 70% of the events are livestreamed as well, so you can watch them from anywhere in
• 24:15
  the world.
• 24:15
  Poduty.com, p o d u t y dot com.
• 24:17
  Dates and deets at Poduty dot com.
• 24:21
  Jeff Revilla, thanks for being part of the scene, brother.
• 24:24
  Thank you so much for having us.
• 24:25
  It's been a blast.