John Cloonan from Audacity Marketing, Zach Yokum from Mileshko, and Mike Christensen from The Voice Monkey

Speaker1: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia, it’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Speaker2: Welcome to Cherokee Business RadioX Stone Payton here with you this morning, and today’s episode is brought to you in part by Alma Coffey, sustainably grown, veteran owned and direct trade, which means, of course, from seed to cup, there are no middlemen. Please go check them out at my Alma Coffee Dotcom and go visit their street cafe at 348 Holly Springs Parkway and Canton asked for Letitia or Harry and tell them that St. Cincher you guys are in for such a treat today. We’ve got a studio full, these gentlemen. So much energy before we even came on the air. I know we’re going to have a lot of fun. We’re going to learn a lot. First up on Cherokee Business RadioX this morning, please join me in welcoming to the broadcast and back to the Business RadioX microphone, the man himself with audacity marketing, Mr. John Clune. And how are you doing, man?

Speaker3: Doing great. Stone This has been great fun to come back.

Speaker2: It’s been

Speaker1: Too long.

Speaker3: Eleven, eleven years has it been.

Speaker2: But it looks like we’re both going to make it. I, you know, our business is I think we’re going to make it.

Speaker1: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker2: So I have been invigorated and inspired since I’ve moved to the Woodstock community. One of the things I’ve had the pleasure of doing is become part of the Woodstock business club. It’s a it’s a four minute walk from my home and it’s the second or third bar by the time I’ve walked that four minutes from my home. But, you know, at eight thirty in the morning, we drink Almac coffee. We don’t we don’t hit the Reformation Bridges yet.

Speaker3: I was going to say it’s in the brewery. So you do have that opportunity.

Speaker2: Absolutely. And I make a point of doing that. But one of the things that I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I get a new shot in the arm. It’s a big group. So it’s pretty quick. Like when we introduce each other, John almost always stands on a table, stands on a bit and always says something funny or exciting or different to say. So I’m really glad to be kind of back in your circle. I was.

Speaker3: And, you know, part of the reason I stand on stuff is because I’m five foot seven inches tall. So, you know, being a little short guy, you know, I get that Napoleon thing going. So I have to make myself seen.

Speaker2: So so Zach and I, we resemble that remark a little bit later on. We’re going to get it

Speaker4: Just we’re fun size, right? I like to say we’re energy efficient.

Speaker1: It’s energy efficient. We get more with less.

Speaker2: So audacity, marketing mission purpose. What are you out there trying to do for folks?

Speaker3: So Audacity is a full service marketing agency, but we focus very specifically on better creativity through perspective. So, you know, while, you know, I’m an old white guy, I have partners who are diverse and we focus on hiring diverse people and getting diverse clients because we me personally, but we as an organization truly believe that you get better creative and better ideas if you have people who are from different backgrounds in the space. So we cross cultural ethnic age. Every line you can cross, we cross it.

Speaker2: So was that a decision? Was that decision to to operate in that fashion, partially a product of this? I’ll call it a movement of recent years, or did you get on that boat early?

Speaker3: You know, I’ve been on that boat for a long time because my you know, as you you know, as we were talking about earlier, you know, I’ve been in marketing for a long time. And my first agency you interviewed me when I had my first agency really see, I

Speaker2: Did not remember that. So it was a different agency.

Speaker3: This is. Yeah. So I sold that agency shortly after

Speaker1: After the interview. That’s always underground, right?

Speaker3: Absolutely. But we sold that agency shortly after the interview and then I refounded back last August. But I’ve always believed that, I’ve always believed that if you have a bunch of people in the room who all look alike, you’re going to get a certain set of ideas. Right. But if you change that mix, you get different ideas and better creativity and just better results. And there’s data that proves it. So it’s a good business decision.

Speaker2: Now, did you own this this time around? Did you decide to focus on on an industry or a size or any kind of niche or what decisions did you make in that regard?

Speaker3: I mean, we best serve B2B and small to medium, and I define small to medium as one hundred million dollars or less. Now we have some clients that are bigger than that.

Speaker2: So I’m small, my business small. I don’t know about you guys, my exact. These are our other guest this morning. We are you under a hundred million, you guys?

Speaker4: I’d say we must be atom size.

Speaker1: In your criteria, we do

Speaker3: Work with we do work with a lot of start ups actually, and very like micro business, but, you know, if they have to have a little money because we do like to get pet funding is nice. But, you know, overall, it’s that business spectrum allows us to serve them effectively. We come in, we build the strategy and then help with the execution. You know, when you get larger than that, most of those organizations larger than that have a marketing team and they they don’t need as much strategic help.

Speaker2: So what does an and maybe a loaded question Romney smash almost ask

Speaker1: To go to?

Speaker2: What does an engagement cycle look like? You’re working with a small company, a Business RadioX like in our case, we’ve got 17 studios where we’re in, I don’t know. Twenty nine markets total. But we’re kind of a small team. We certainly don’t have a vice president of marketing unless I met him, but I also empty the trash. So yeah, walk us through kind of what an engagement might look like. I’m particularly interested in what happens on the front end. Sure. Yeah.

Speaker3: So there’s two we operate under two different kinds of engagements. One is just a project like you identify a need and we come and fill that need. An example might be you decide you need to redo your website. So we come in and do that. That’s a that’s a small piece of what we do. A more common engagement is you stone come to me and say. John, I need to make this change, I need I’m having this business

Speaker2: You don’t have to get through. Let me give you a real and let me get some free consulting here.

Speaker1: Absolutely. Go to town.

Speaker2: Again, it is my job. Right? Right. So we have we’re in 17. We have 17 physical studios. We want to be in a thousand.

Speaker1: Right.

Speaker2: Locally, I feel like I have got the she. Isn’t it the thing you need if you’re local and you want to meet other local to be people inviting them to come on your radio shows. Pretty cool way to meet people and build relationships. It works. It always works. It never doesn’t work. When I’m trying to have a conversation with someone in Pittsburgh because I want someone in Pittsburgh to run a Business RadioX studio. Right. I’m like every other poor schlub out there trying to figure out how do I get conversations in Pittsburgh? So that’s like a real problem challenge. Absolutely. Is that a good one? Just kind of. That’s exactly. OK, so,

Speaker3: You know, we would look at, OK, you know, we would start that with, OK, you have this business problem of you’re trying to expand very quickly into a lot of markets in which you don’t have physical presence. Right. That yes. Our fair assumption. Yeah. OK, so then looking at that is then we would build a target. So who are you trying to reach in Pittsburgh? Because it’s not everybody, right? It’s it’s a very specific demographic psychographic, technocratic profile. So people who look a certain way, if you will, in from a business perspective. Right. And then we would build a plan as to how you might do that, like how do you reach that specific target? And the answer to that is where does that target live? You know, and that’s across both the that’s across the digital and traditional space. So, you know, digital is a big thing like and you can find honestly, you’ll find a hundred digital marketing agencies probably just here in Woodstock.

Speaker2: It’s across your business is it is crowded. Yeah. You know,

Speaker3: It’s feels that way. Can I tell you why? Yes, because you absolutely need no credential whatsoever to call yourself a marketer.

Speaker1: Oh, you know,

Speaker2: The Zach Stone marketing agency. I mean, we can do that this afternoon.

Speaker3: We could do that right now, you know, and that’s a differentiator for audacity because, you know, I have twenty five years of marketing experience both in corporate and agency. And I have a master’s degree and I have an MBA in marketing. Oh, wow. You know, I’ve led global sized organizations, multibillion dollar organizations in the marketing space. So that makes us a little different than, you know. You know, you’re a young person who knows social media and decides to call themselves a digital marketer because we can look strategically across the entire spectrum of marketing activity. So it’s a little different. It’s a lot of different, really.

Speaker2: So it occurs to me that even in that initial conversation where we’re trying to figure out who they are, where they are, that we may have a preconceived notion, then after talking it through with you a little bit, you know, that’s not really who after at all. And then once you get that figured out, you got this whole say, OK, well, OK. Now, how do we find them? What do we say to get their attention and what do we say to get there? So all of this is this is this is where your expertize your experience base and that’s where all of this really comes into play, I would say.

Speaker3: Absolutely. Because, you know, it’s interesting. You talk about preconceived notion. Yeah. Because we just worked with a local roofer who has a slightly different take on the roofing business, like they’re into preserving rather than replacing your roof. Oh, wow. And so we were talking about an emotional connection to your home. So who has that? There are people who like Reid home rags who, you know, who are very into safety and security and comfort. And those were the emotions we were trying to get after. So we were looking at, OK, how do we reach those people? Well, gee, the home rags is a good place to start, but there’s also broader campaigns. There’s websites on Pinterest is big on the home decor side. So we were looking at those things as to how do you find these people now? Of course, I have some, you know, and again, because like you’re saying, like, I’ve been at this for a few minutes, I have some definite ideas as to how to reach certain demographic technocratic psychographic profiles. But in the end of the day, so much just research, so and knowing where to research and how to

Speaker2: Sew, even if it doesn’t come immediately to you, you know how to to set up the research, to go get the answers that you need.

Speaker3: Yeah, because the data sources are not common in that space. Like there’s not something it’s not something that like

Speaker2: You don’t just call this broker them.

Speaker1: No, please don’t call this broker. You may have less brokers because my list broker. Yeah. There goes your broker Shadowman, but you don’t call this broker.

Speaker3: But there’s data sources available to. They are not as commonly known that will give you better profiling. Oh, and then, of course, the digital space, I mean, the you know, the Facebook and so and Twitter and LinkedIn, social media algorithms are very powerful to reach a group if you know how to utilize them properly. And there’s a difference between I know how to put together an ad campaign than there is. I know how to target that ad campaign effectively and how to run it such that Facebook reaches the people. Facebook particularly reaches the people you want it to reach.

Speaker2: Right. So like in other areas of life, do you find that success in a in a marketing campaign, a marketing strategy is really a moving target, like, OK, this is a great strategy for now. And, you know, let’s all recognize 18 months from now we may be doing something, you know, 180 degrees out from what we’re doing now because circumstances change.

Speaker3: Oh, absolutely. Because, you know, I mean, first thing is, is your business in 18 months is not going to be the same business it is today. So your targets may change your you have different expansion opportunities, the trends in the market change. So this is a yeah, it’s a moving target. I mean, but there’s certain principles that always are maintained. So you’re going to do some of your activity is going to be the same, but it’s going to be this nuance. The nuances will change. Does that make sense?

Speaker2: It does. It does. I got a question for you, and it touches on a pre conversation that I had before we came on the on the air about what was the phrase I use eating, eating your own cooking. Yeah.

Speaker4: So I’m curious and I follow that up. I think that’s why you never trust a skinny cook.

Speaker1: They’re not going to eat their own food. Are you there?

Speaker2: That’s great insight. Aren’t you glad he’s going to be on the show? We’re going to learn a ton and a little bit. We’re just showing the fat right now. The learning segment of the show is coming up, guys. What was I going to say? It was really. Oh, so how do you when you go to market, are you at a point now where the phone just rings or you can you can stroll down to the Woodstock business club and have a cup of coffee and you’re going to get plenty of business? Or do you find that you two have to be thinking through these things and making these adjustments for your own business?

Speaker3: Oh, well, first thing is, is that as a marketing company, if your marketing doesn’t look good, people don’t find you credible. Well, I mean,

Speaker2: You can’t be a skinny guy.

Speaker3: I can’t be skinny. Now, the downside to that right now is that, you know, we’re a we’re a 10 month old company, you know, so we’re still putting a lot of that in place. So, like, if you go out to the Audacity Facebook page, unfortunately, you’re not going to see anything.

Speaker2: It exists, but

Speaker3: There’s no content there yet because we’ve just finished building our content calendar. So, you know, you go there next month, there’ll be a pile, you know, but there’s you know, these things do take time to build. And that’s something that I like to let the client know as well, is like if we build you a program, it takes time and effort and resources to execute. Right. So but, you know, within but you really do have to eat your own dog food like I you know, do we have you know, are we running a good business? Are we profitable? And do we have clients? Yeah, absolutely. Is that going you know, but a lot of that is based on networking and personal network will eventually you have to scale beyond that.

Speaker1: Right.

Speaker2: So what are you because this is kind of a it’s a it’s a new endeavor for you. What do you enjoy the most and what do you get what do you get in having the most fun with.

Speaker3: Oh, wow, Bill, I’m a strategist like that, right. Deep in my heart of hearts, if you give me anything else to do, is I’m going to write your program and I’m going to show you why this is going to work. So like building those programs, executing on them and then watching the results come in as expected or better is like that’s that’s the love of my life right there. You know, know don’t tell my girlfriend that. But, you know, that’s that’s the part that really, you know, really gets you know, it gets me up in the morning is being able to look at a client and say, look, we built this program for you. We built the strategy, we helped you execute on it. And here’s results, because at the end of the day, marketing is about growing your business. Right. And so we’re here to help companies grow their businesses. And if we’re not seeing those results, it’s a drag on.

Speaker1: It’s well, I

Speaker2: Want to talk about results for a moment here at Business RadioX. We chose very early on not to try to fight the battle of getting a huge audience and then charging you a fee to tap into this audience. We built our whole thing around using the platform. Formed to build relationships, so our clients are looking for 10 more clients this year, not 10000 more Facebook buddies, right. So in our world, the results, the metrics are very simple, straightforward. Did you meet 50 more people that you really needed to meet? And did 10 of those people write you checks in your world? I suspect sometimes audience is an important metric in viewership and all that kind of stuff. Is that is that to just very case specific and part of that consultative

Speaker3: Peace for you? Yeah, that’s absolutely case specific, because there’s really a couple different levels to this. One is, is brand building and brand awareness. Right. Which is and that’s a pure reach play. How many people know Business RadioX. Right. And then, you know, and that’s a top of the funnel activity. Right. And then you go to the next level down is influencing decisions. You know, how many people are going are, you know, engaging with your social media as an example? Right. Right. So they may not necessarily be a customer, but they might influence buy in the future or they may become a future customer. And then the bottom of that funnel is actually lead gen. How many people did you get in the door who are potentially buyers? And in the B2B space, like we don’t generally measure, you know, once that’s sort of where the marketing piece ends and sales picks up. Right. Because we’re not going to, you know, as an example. Right. Are, you know, using audacity as an example. Right. You’re not going to buy a marketing program online, clicking a button. You’re going to have to talk to a salesperson, which is, you know, these days is

Speaker1: You do

Speaker3: A sales. Yeah, I’m not much of a salesperson that you are going to have to talk to me. So, you know, so we’re that’s really we’re in the B2B space. Our measurement stops. We brought you a person who is qualified to purchase your product or service.

Speaker2: Got it. But some of those other things that the higher up in the funnel, those are leading indicators or, you know, you’re getting traction all the way through.

Speaker3: Yeah. I mean, and you have to. Right. Because you if you look at a funnel like you can generally and this is on a business by business basis, you can look at different stages in the funnel and determine your success. So as an example, if you have a huge top of the funnel audience, but very few of them engage, you know, you’re very likely not to have very many at the very at the bottom. Right. So you need to make sure that your percentages kind of line up across the entire funnel so that that top of the funnel person who is aware of your brand, a portion of them eventually by.

Speaker2: Right. And so if you run into that scenario, you may put more energy into that next phase. The why why get them more in the top. Let’s fix the middle.

Speaker3: Absolutely right. And that’s and that’s part of the consultative sell because. Or the consultative service. Because you’re. And I go back to that, you know, the St. Johns Act marketing agency, right, is you know, you may know how to get audience right and get views, but you may not know how to take those viewers and turn them engaged. And you may not know how to take that engaged group and make them convert. And there’s strategies across that whole thing.

Speaker2: And you can’t buy a gallon of milk on them on views.

Speaker1: No, it doesn’t. No, no, no. You know,

Speaker2: We had 300000 downloads. Yeah.

Speaker1: You know, I mean,

Speaker3: I keep showing them my 10000 Twitter followers and they’re like, yeah, those are great.

Speaker1: But, you know, I mean, you mentioned milk.

Speaker4: If 10000 people come into Kroger but don’t buy anything,

Speaker1: There’s not going to be open next month. There you go. This is

Speaker2: Exactly right. So for the Zachs, the Stones, we also have my Mike Christensen, who is the voice monkey. We’re going to talk to you later. You know, we’re running we’re running these small businesses that Zach and I both have business partners. What are some telltale signs, some symptoms or some milestones? That that’s just for me to, you know, like I mean, I have a standing call, you know, Tuesdays at noon after the show. What am I looking for? What kind of things would we see in our business to say, you know what, we we might want to take a look at getting some outside help? Yeah. When do you know that it’s maybe time to have that conversation? You know,

Speaker3: When you I always like to think of audacity is the last we’re the last people you’re going to talk to. Right. So you’ve tried things right. You know, maybe you’ve run some Facebook marketing campaigns and they’ve fallen in their face. You know, we’ve been brought in to turn around software product launches as an example with some very, very big companies, you know, who launch software products and then say, oh, this didn’t go anywhere. So, you know, you when you realize that you have a problem and you’ve either attempted to address it and failed or you just don’t have any idea, like you’re like, OK, how do we fix this? Because the the like asking the question to a point will cost you nothing. Right. You know, like stone like as an example, like you were saying you want to like if you called me up and said, hey, we’re trying to get these thousand studios open, how do we do that? You know, that first, you know, hour or so of me just talking through that with you don’t cost you anything.

Speaker2: A couple of beers maybe. Yeah. Oh, I don’t drink.

Speaker1: Oh. You know, coffee by the cup. OK, you can bring me all the coffee, you know,

Speaker3: Because, you know, powered by caffeine. But, you know, it’s really I dunno, it’s really understanding that I have a business problem and I’ve either tried stuff and it’s failed or I just don’t even know where to begin. Right. Because marketing crosses almost every aspect of the business except for like accounting.

Speaker1: Right, right.

Speaker2: Mayor, before we wrap up, I want to make sure that our listeners know how to get in touch with you, to have a conversation with you or somebody on your team. So whatever you feel like is appropriate, where there’s the LinkedIn or the Facebook or the email phone, whatever you feel like is appropriate.

Speaker3: Sure. I think the best you know, the best way to reach out to us is there’s a contact form on our website, Audacity dot marketing. It is not audacity dot marketing, dot com. It is audacity dot marketing. And you can actually reach me directly on it. Audacity, dot marketing. I have you know, we are a we are still a relatively small company. We do have some team members. But if I’m not the person you need to talk to, I’m you know, I’m the traffic coordinator, if you will. So, John, it audacity, not marketing or audacity not marketing.

Speaker2: Fantastic man. I am so glad we’re getting a chance to to reconnect after all this time. It’s been an absolute delight having you in the in the studio. Keep us posted. Let’s let’s have you come in on some rhythm. I’d love for you to come in and just kind of get us I don’t know, maybe we should do like the marketing minute or something. I don’t wanna be doing super fun. Yeah. And I think it might be fun because I know you have a lot of local clients. It might be fun to have you and a local client or two like a special episode, and we’ll spotlight their businesses and we’ll learn about that. But I’d love to maybe in also just hear about how you guys work together. Sure. So put some thought into that. Well, and we’ll make that happen if you like.

Speaker3: Absolutely. Stone and super appreciate being invited back on the show after, you know, like I said, eleven years.

Speaker2: You know, I know I had black hair back then. I think

Speaker3: You did.

Speaker1: And I think I had. You had.

Speaker2: So yeah. So once again, this contact points of contact again,

Speaker3: John, at Audacity not marketing or Audacity, not marketing is our website.

Speaker2: Oh, right. Hey, man, how about hanging out with us while we visit with our other guests? Absolutely. All right. Next up on Cherokee Business RadioX, we have with us with my Alesco, Mr. Zach Yocum. Good morning, sir.

Speaker4: Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be here. And may I say, I’m so excited to go in the middle because with the name Zach Yocum, I’m normally going last alphabetically. So very excited.

Speaker2: It was elementary school. You were like the last one to get the date. So what did you learn in that last segment, man? What did you take away from that?

Speaker4: Well, I am so excited to have Jon on the show because working with marketing agencies is what we love to do, because we’re the content creators that help fuel their campaigns. So I will probably be giving you a call and then, hey, what content are you creating for your your clients you can do locally?

Speaker2: I think I have some permission slips here in the file cabinet. I’ll hand them both

Speaker1: Know

Speaker2: It does happen in the studio a lot. Right. And I will share with you guys. I’m not I’ve never very strategic about this, but because we’re all about supporting and celebrating local businesses, it’s not at all uncommon for some marvelous relationships to get forged. And there’s little done by fifteen room. So that’s marvelous serendipity. Tell me more. What are you guys out there trying to do for folks? And before you get too deep into it, you got to tell us why it’s called Malenko.

Speaker4: Well, Malashenko is the name of our founder, Tom Alesco. And if you’ve never heard it before, it’s because it’s Belorussian. Last name. Oh, my. So you actually said it correctly, too. So because we get the whole gamut. Malashenko Molaskey. Oh yeah. Also props to you for saying it correctly, but in Belarus it’s kind of like Smith. So here, it’s here, it’s foreign, but over there they’re like,

Speaker1: Oh OK, sure,

Speaker4: But that’s the name. And the reason we stuck with it is Tom has been in business here in the Atlanta area for forty years. He was a photographer. And so I came on in 2012 when he was kind of noticing the industry was going toward hybridization versus specialization when it came to content creation, because you don’t just go to one person to get photography and one of the person get videography and another person get graphic design. Sometimes you just need an agency that does all of them. So it can be kind of that one stop shop. And so Tom had these wonderful relationships. You can cultivate it over 40 years. And so we thought, hey, let’s stick with Malashenko. It’s catchy. You don’t hear it often. And we it sticks to our thinking of creating that relationship long term. It’s all in the name.

Speaker2: All right. So going from what I learned in the last segment and demographic psychographic tech, that techno graphic that I’ve not heard that word before. And the who who are these folks and where are they hanging out, the folks you’re trying to work with?

Speaker4: So the big thing we bring is often when you think of the creative, you think of that person with the tussled hair, ripped jeans. Who’s going to tell you? All right, I’m going to tell you about the feeling of melancholy as we create this this campaign for you. And what Tom realized early on is you have these corporations that have deadlines. They need you to deliver on time. And so. Taking this right brain creativity and really combine it with the left brain of productivity. So our target market is bigger corporations that aren’t just trying to create something, they need it created at scale. So when you think training media, all right, they don’t need just one one minute video, they need 60 one minute videos that teach you about a process. So our big niche is finding how do we give them something creative but at scale. So our our target audience is things like we do a lot of work with Chick fil A WellStar, which is a big conglomerate.

Speaker2: I’ve heard of them.

Speaker1: You might have seen one or two places. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker4: But, you know, we had to diversify so we could serve people on Sundays as well. But that is what we found to be a huge need because you can go to someone that can. All right. Will make you the one commercial. The one video. But what when you need 80 of those things produced in the same amount of time. So our big thing was figuring out how do we do this efficiently while still giving you something creative.

Speaker2: So a long, long time ago when I did have black hair and something a little closer to a real job, I was in the training consulting. That’s Fariña. I sold consulting, specifically Change Management Consulting. So and my wife still has a real job. She’s a change management grand poobah or something. And IBM, but we’re from the Hollowly. Both are from that training consulting world. And yeah, it strikes me like that must be a really great source of business, a revenue stream for you doing these training. And not all of it might have been leadership development, change in sales like we were. But some of it’s like compliance like you have to have. Well, I don’t know if you have two videos, but you have to have you have to prove that you’ve that you’ve checked these boxes on sexual harassment and probably diversity and inclusion and all this stuff. Right.

Speaker4: You get the legal team to approve that. Yes. We have said the sentence. So our butts are covered.

Speaker2: Right. So you find yourself creating creating a high volume of video for that, for that kind of thing. So is the consultative creative process as involved as it might be for like on the agency side of stuff or or is that kind of come a little bit precooked? And and for you guys, it’s more about making sure the lighting is right and you got people who can execute on the create on getting it done.

Speaker4: Well, like John mentioned, a lot of times a client will come to us with a problem such as we need training material and they may not even know what that exactly looks like. So we will consult on how can we best execute on getting you this material. And then we will very readily say, and here is our friend John, who will tell you how to market it and get this great material.

Speaker2: Okay, so you team up with people like organizations like John’s to you don’t try to be try to be that too.

Speaker4: Right. So so what we what we kind of describe is we will help you create the best painting in the world, will help you source the paint, make sure that the canvas looks really good, that it represents you, it’s nice and branded, and then we’ll hand it to someone who can then market that painting so lots of people want to buy it. So we will give you the the material that makes you look good. And then someone can come in that will partner with and they’ll make sure that they can get it to as many people as possible. Got it. So we try to we like to say we try to make John’s job easy because we’ll give him something that looks so good that he’ll be able to market it, whoever needs to do well.

Speaker2: And this is a this is a growing beast, right, John? These these venues, these platforms that you capitalize on, these, they are ravenous. They’re hungry for for food, right?

Speaker3: Absolutely. I mean, you know, social media is a content suck, right?

Speaker1: Oh, yeah. Content is

Speaker3: Everywhere. And and it’s and it’s according to the platform to write like Twitter is the worst. You have to be on Twitter, like on average. I tell clients that they have to be on Twitter minimum five times a day.

Speaker4: Holy cow. That sounds about right.

Speaker2: I’m not incidentally.

Speaker4: Well and videos every. Wow. I mean, I’m sure you’ve gone to the gas station pumping your gas and then all of a sudden, hey, welcome to Stevie Wonder.

Speaker1: This video on my gas pump now. Yeah, I

Speaker4: Need for content. I mean, that’s how you’re getting eyeballs now is through video. I mean, the stats are out there that by 2024, over 82 percent of the Internet is just going to be video. Wow. I mean, shifting from text and photo, it’ll be video. So there’s such a need to have this content and oftentimes you need a lot of it very quickly. Like you mentioned, your Facebook page, right now, there’s not a lot of content while you need this quickly and you may need it at scale. So we try to work with companies. All right. You need enough content to fill a Facebook page for a month. How can we strategically and cost efficiently film stuff? Kind of like what you’re saying about this show. Hey, we’re going to have this one recording session. You may have content for eight months.

Speaker2: So, yes, I will say this. Having a real radio show is a content factory. Exactly. And for me and you know, I don’t have the formal training in the expertize of. You guys are in that kind of thing, but I will tell you, just hanging out and talking about people’s businesses comes easy to most people. And then, yeah, before you know it, you know, by tomorrow we’ve got this 45 minute, 60 minute. I mean, I think it’s pretty darn good content and we’re just hanging out, chewing the fat. Right. And it is. And I suspect video has this version of that now for me. We feel real good about what we’re doing in terms of radio. I am very reluctant for me to try to do much in this room during this experience with video because I’m concerned about the lighting and all that jazz. But I bet you there’s a place for it. Maybe not trying to replace what you’re doing. But I mean, you get the visual element. And I do know that we’ve had people take this the audio from the shows that we’ve done and make it into a video. Right. So there’s a ton of stuff you can you can do with it. But but yeah, it’s a hungry beast. We’ve got to have the content to feed it. I asked Jon earlier what he found the most rewarding, what he was enjoying the most. And I do want to hear that from you. But I’ll also ask you, what what are you finding to be the biggest challenge when it comes to either getting the client or working effectively with the client or getting them the results they need? What’s what’s the biggest challenge, you think?

Speaker4: I’d say the challenge is educating the client into what is actually going to work for them because they will come and say, hey, we want you to create this 45 minute video of a guy talking. All right. That might have been great.

Speaker2: And our boss is really smart.

Speaker1: Right.

Speaker4: And he may be a subject matter expert and can talk authoritatively for 45 minutes, but but people will consume it better if it’s in 30 second increments. So I tell people it’s the the YouTube effect to where we try to help our clients think in smaller bite sized bits because no one will watch a 40 minute video. They’ll see that length and the next thing in the feed. But funnily enough, if you make forty one minute videos,

Speaker2: They’ll watch 40.

Speaker4: Maybe they’ll sit there and go, Hey, I like that first one, I’ll watch the next one. So it’s kind of like popcorn. You read a hundred pieces of popcorn without thinking about it, but would you eat that same if it was on one giant corn cob?

Speaker2: Yeah, probably not. So I got to know, what is your back story? How did you how did you find your way into this?

Speaker4: Well, I’m up here in the north because I’m from down in Fayetteville,

Speaker1: So I’m excited to be up here in the Woodstock area

Speaker4: On the other side of the clock of Atlanta. But I actually I’ve been holding a camera since I was two years old. So this has always been something I’ve wanted to do it. I didn’t do it. Well, it looked like The Blair Witch Project because I was holding the camera the wrong way and my eyeball was in the lens. And but that was my first film. And then I went to film school for college.

Speaker2: Oh, you got like legit credentials. You’re a little bit like Clooney

Speaker1: Degrees, too,

Speaker4: As legit as a film green. But I learned the craft and then realized really early on that you can go to Hollywood and, you know, it’s kind of a feast and famine kind of life. But I wanted to have a family I like actually, no, my kids know my wife. And so I found that in corporate video, you get to use all these technical skills, you get to use that creativity. But it’s consistent work and you get to be home at five o’clock. And so there’s such a need. But I just realized it’s not the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, but it’s all the consistency and creativity of what I want. So that’s that’s a bit of a background fun.

Speaker2: Ok, so you’re all the way down in Fayetteville, your business partner, Nathan.

Speaker4: Yeah, Nathan Fowler, he runs up the geography side of things.

Speaker2: He’s in Woodstock.

Speaker4: Yeah, he’s he’s right here. It’s like right where Woodstock and Canton meet. But you’ll see him you’ll see him there at the copper coin coffee shop most days.

Speaker1: That’s where Scicluna just came from, as good as you’ll see there pretty much every day.

Speaker4: He’s a fueled by caffeine kind of guy as well.

Speaker3: Yeah, I’ll introduce him to Basar Coffee and Kenton’s.

Speaker4: Ok, well he probably knows like he’s our coffee connoisseur on the team so I don’t mind. He, he, he told me about all my coffee as well that you started the show off with. So he’s our coffee guy.

Speaker2: That’s typical. The Fayetteville guy drives up here for the show

Speaker1: Would start guys.

Speaker4: Well it’s because Nathan is in New York actually. You know, we we say that we were working mobile before. It was cool because we we never really invested in a brick and mortar studio because we found, hey, let’s go to the client film on their turf and use their own environment as part of the marketing in what we’re filming, like show them in their space. They don’t have to come to us. So Nathan’s up in New York shooting some stuff for Chick fil A right now. So he couldn’t be here. But so I got the short end of the stick.

Speaker2: I got this pretty good excuse shooting stuff for Chick fil A.

Speaker1: Yeah, we’ll take it.

Speaker2: So day to day, though, you’re not in Fayetteville, you’re on side. You’re on location.

Speaker4: I’m all we tell people. You know, you got two eighty five all around. Atlanta, so we serve people around the clock of Atlanta, so it’s very rare that I’m actually working from home, so I’ll be up in Canton one day, I’ll be over in Loganville. I’ll be right by the airport. So we’re all over serving clients around Atlanta.

Speaker2: So. So your work, not unlike Johns and a little bit like ours before we actually launch, are accustomed. So there’s this consulting kind of educational component to your work that you described, because I asked you, you know, what’s a challenge area? But I mean, you got to get that right or the whole thing crumbles, right?

Speaker4: Right. Well, our our big thing is we want to make the content production easy for the client and sometimes making it easier for them is educating them on, hey, what’s going to be the best method for this? Like you may have come in and asked. But once we understand what you’re trying to do, we may offer, hey, based off of our experience, we can consult and say, here’s a method we think will work even better. So so I’ll take it. For instance, we had a a beauty products company come to us and say, hey, we need this commercial because our products are going to go into Wal-Mart. And they wanted to have this like ten minute segment where the owner was going to come on and talk about their journey. And we consult and said, hey, where is this going to live on Facebook? All right. Well, then ten minutes is already out because no one is going to watch 10 minutes of anything on Facebook. So instead, we are able to say, hey, based off of now what we know you’re trying to do, may we suggest a video that’s more like the 30 second ten minute range? And let’s not worry about your story. Let’s just talk about what the consumer like, what’s the benefit the consumer is going to get? You can tell your story on your website so we can include that at the end of this thing. Go to the website and check out the full story. And so then they were able to take that raw video that we gave them work with a marketing agency. And now the word is out that, hey, you can now buy this product at Wal-Mart.

Speaker2: Now, do you find yourself writing copy or that more John’s thing? Or you guys might collaborate on a client and figure out who should be writing copy.

Speaker4: And so we will absolutely admit when we are not the best fit for someone to wear if they need extensive copyright and they will say, hey, may we introduce you to our friends at insert marketing agency name? But if it’s a matter of, hey, they’ve given us this training material and that just needs to be modified to fit better for video because there will be a sentence’s looks fantastic written that you would never say in person. And so we can help.

Speaker2: Like I would write that dog won’t hunt and then you might say yes. So maybe you ought to use a different phrase here in New York.

Speaker1: Well, a lot of times that voice goes like

Speaker4: A lot of times it’s taken corporate ese and translated, oh, usually

Speaker2: It’s coming the other way. Someone will say that’s refreshing. Maybe that dog would be great.

Speaker1: No, I would say

Speaker4: Make it more colloquial,

Speaker1: Make it more approachable,

Speaker4: Because a lot of times would be like, well, the organization’s self fulfillment of the supply chain reorganization was quite a no no. Just say, hey, the trucks get there sooner, right? That’s what the audience will understand. Right. So it’s helping the lawyers and the really high falutin legal people translate it into more layman terms. Yeah.

Speaker2: All right. So before we wrap near term plans, were you and Nathan going to be putting your energy in the next, I don’t know, to 18, 18 months? Is there a focus area or two growth scaling?

Speaker4: So right now, it’s just finding a lot more of those. So you mentioned 100 hundred million plus clients where we find that since we’re creating content at scale, we’re targeting those one billion plus dollar clients that, hey, they’ve realized that their need for production is beyond what even just an in-house group can do. So they need you know, we can serve as that pressure relief valve to we can make it more efficient and at scale. So we’re looking for those kind of partnerships which there’s more and more of those companies moving here to Cherokee County. It’s isn’t

Speaker2: That exciting. So so there is the prospect of doing that work and there’s the work of getting that work.

Speaker1: Yep.

Speaker2: So you may have to have like this three layered chest conversation with John or whomever that you trust, because you two, you can’t be the skinny cook. You got to use all of your all of your skills. Exactly. And where’s because you’ve got to get in conversation with so who. So it’s not the CEO of a gazillion dollars. Who who are you talking to and trying to have a conversation with those countries and how. I’m not saying we can’t help, but how can we help you get some pretty smart folks in the room?

Speaker4: Well, you talk about the the demographic techno graphic, like we found that we can best help marketing directors, content producers, those people that are in these corporations, internal marketing. Yeah. They’re tasked with you need to create all this content and they may have the option to go to an internal team that very often we found that those internal teams are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They’re going to lose. They don’t. So much going on. But hey, yet. We still need this marketing campaign next week so we can serve as, hey, where the pinch hitter bring us in when you need that extra work done, when it’s when it’s pouring, you’re normally used to it raining, but when it’s pouring, we can come in and serve as that scaleable option.

Speaker2: Got it. So you got some job security man. You got you got plenty of work ahead of you.

Speaker4: We’re excited to be able to serve.

Speaker2: Fantastic. All right. Somebody who’s listening would like to reach out and have a conversation with you or Nathan or someone else on your team. What’s what’s the best way for him to do that?

Speaker4: Well, you said, you know, eat your own cookies. I direct them to our cookies, which is our website. That’s Malashenko Dotcom. That’s my LSH Cayo Dotcom. And you’ll see all of our work there. And if you like something, we can make that for you.

Speaker2: Marvelous. Well, thanks so much for joining us, man. And I am delighted to get you and John together. And I look to see some great things coming from that. Hey, how about staying with us? We got one more guests that we’re going to visit with. Absolutely fantastic. Y’all ready for the headliner? He’s been. He has been. So, you know, the undercard is now over. This guy has been so patient. He’s the only pro in the room.

Speaker1: When you say he’s going to show us

Speaker2: He’s going to nail like a comedy club. Right. You suffer the

Speaker1: Job. We’re done. So Zach and I might as well just go home. So.

Speaker2: All right. Next up on Cherokee Business RadioX, please join me in welcoming to the program of the voice monkey, Mr. Mike Christensen. How you doing, man?

Speaker5: I’m great. Sorry I’ve been so quiet. I’m learning so much from these two guys and it’s soaking it all in.

Speaker2: Well, I never expected that candidly. I thought he’d be interjecting the whole show or, you know, even, you know, once in a while in a world, you know, doing one of those things. But no, I guess the pros don’t really do that. They wait till it’s lights, camera, action on them. So my voice, Smokey. So I you must do voice over kind of kind of work. How in the world does one decide to go? And it strikes me as like, how do you know if you’re good at cliff diving, you know,

Speaker1: How does

Speaker2: One decide to become a voice monkey?

Speaker5: Well, the best way to do to learn cliff diving is just to jump. And that’s kind of what I did with this. I worked in veterinary medicine for a long, long time. The initial plan in my life was to be a vet. And when that didn’t work out, I didn’t quite know what to do after that. So I kind of floundered around for a little while, worked in radio here in town at Eagle, one of six point seven, which was y y y I did that. I found out that it was just I loved it. You know, radio is not a job. It’s something fun to do. Aimen And you know, after we got left, let go from there, I found some people that used to work there. They did. Voiceover They helped train me, work on my demos, got me into that world. That was back in 2012. So I’ve been doing it ever since.

Speaker2: And so you’re doing that you can, I guess, do that largely at home. Right. You probably have some set up, more sophisticated than the one we’re using right now for this conversation. But, well,

Speaker5: You know, whatever works at home, some people have varying degrees of of home studios that you can make. Well, we talked about before. So anybody can call themselves a marketer. Well, anybody can buy a microphone off Amazon and call themselves a voice, a voiceover actor. It takes a lot more than that. There’s training, equipment, anything. Anybody can just read a script and, you know, I’m reading it. But to really connect with the copy and really get the message across, it takes a lot of work.

Speaker2: Do you find yourself doing like we were talking about earlier commercials, training videos? Because I mean, because well, going back to music, you know, sometimes you don’t really want Stone doing the commercial, even though it might be about Business RadioX. You want you want the voice, you say in the smart stuff.

Speaker4: Right. Depending on who your audience is and who you’re trying to appeal to.

Speaker2: Got it. OK, so you so are you doing training videos, that kind of stuff. And I have done them.

Speaker5: I’ve done training videos for new employee safety videos. I did car wash up north where it’s, you know, don’t jump in the car wash when it’s on that kind of thing.

Speaker2: Oh, there’s a pro tip

Speaker1: For,

Speaker5: You know, anybody can do a video. But what I always tell people is you want to make that impression. The best that you can make with your clients and hiring a pro voice is one of the best ways you can do that. You can have a great video. You can have a great marketing campaign. But if you get a guy going, well, let’s see, we got this and it just

Speaker2: I don’t know, even your own sounds good.

Speaker1: Even his own is an awesome cool. Sounds good to me. He’s got that Morgan Freeman. Oh, that’s right.

Speaker2: I get what you’re saying though. So I wonder if you could not potentially suffer and suffers maybe a little bit of a strong word, but. In my world, there’s this, there’s this and a conference or trade show environment, which is an incredibly great way to to do a trade show. I mean, I’m looking through a very biased lens. And there’s everybody in your brother, including my nephew, who has a podcast. So in some ways, the podcasting movement has been great for us because at least gets the conversation going. But then we’re tasked with having a conversation about the difference between trying to do it yourself, you know, or be part of the Business RadioX network. It strikes me I haven’t looked, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that on some of these freelance kind of sites that there would be people who present themselves as over actors and they may not they may not be voice monkey caliber.

Speaker5: All right. Well, there’s room. There’s room for everybody. There’s tons of work out there. You can say, oh, you’re a voice actor or you on cartoons, you on you know, what have I heard you on kind of thing. But if you listen to every TV ad, every radio ad, every podcast, every thing that you hear, a voice that’s a voice actor doing it right. And it’s not just a national commercial for Budweiser or Coca-Cola or whoever. It’s training videos. It’s explainer videos. I do a lot of those where, you know, this is our product and it’s animated and it’s that kind of thing. There’s YouTube, there’s, you know, podcast intros. I’ve done a lot of those there. Oh, I thought about that. Interesting. You know, like you said, there are tons of podcasts out there, right? Hundreds of thousands of podcasts where somebody sets up a microphone in their garage and they want to talk about movies or whatever they’re interested in. And that’s certainly fine. But to stand out, you need to grab them as soon as they try. You know, they want to hear the subject, but then they hear they don’t want to hear you clicking your tape player in front of the microphone on. Yeah, they want to hear something produced and sounds

Speaker2: Good and coming right out of the box like that. Right, guys? I mean, that that sort of sets the tone, right? If you’ve got a Mike Christensen voice over and then if you’re talking about trout fishing or whatever is still it’s it’s a better package

Speaker3: To talk, right? I mean, that’s you’ve got to create the hook no matter what. Ryan, VOICE-OVER Like Mike says, a good way to do that.

Speaker4: I say for the recorded version of this episode, just to have Mike redo the opening.

Speaker1: There you go. I’ll have you do that. I’m not saying it’s a great idea saying no, I have

Speaker2: Mike do the library for Alma and then I’m sitting here and Letitia Bill.

Speaker1: There you go.

Speaker5: But with the technology now, I mean, what we’ve got your setup here, right, is something that anybody can get.

Speaker2: It’s getting easier and fantastic.

Speaker5: It is. It is is getting the barrier to entry is low technology wise. It’s not super cheap. But and I’ve built my own recording booth at home, so it sounds good. And you need to have the environment is more important than most anything if it’s the greatest microphone in the world. Sounds terrible in your bathroom, Yop. So you need to have an acoustically treated space, and especially over the last year when everybody couldn’t get together. Right. You had to be at home. There was a rise in home studios and I’ve been working from home for years. So last year was one of my best years because I’m home. I’m ready to go. Hire me. Let’s go. As opposed to hold on. I got to build something. I got to figure out how to do this. And I’m calling people and and so it’s I’ve got it all set up at home and that’s great.

Speaker2: So even in every business that I’ve talked to over the last six or eight interviews, there’s some sort of onboarding process, initial consultation, discovery, the different names for it. Is that true in your world to do you also or by the time it comes to you, is it pretty much this is exactly what I want. I want upbeat tempo. I want these words I want. And so a lot of time, I guess, to you, that’s pretty. Maybe it’s even coming from John or from Zaca, an agency, or is that how it is for you?

Speaker5: Generally, when it gets to me, it’s at the end of the process, OK, the creative is already done. They know their vision. They have the script. They know what they want. Right. They send out the script either to agents or on freelance sites or I have connections with other production studios. They send me scripts directly to audition. They say we want. Yeah, upbeat, conversational, whatever.

Speaker2: I never even thought about it. So you could send it out. They’ll send it to Mike and two other people. And it’s just it’s probably not even personal a reflection of the quality of your work. It might be. We like that other guy’s accent more for what we’re doing today. So there’s an audition thing.

Speaker5: It’s it’s a real just if your voice is what they want, that day just is what it is and you got it. It’s not. You don’t. And it’s nothing

Speaker2: Person. You can’t take it personally.

Speaker5: Right, unless you’re really horrible at

Speaker1: It and

Speaker5: Do something. They want conversational. And you come in like in a world and they go, no, we don’t want that. But if it is it just kind of you know, you just you match it up and you go, oh, OK, I got the job. And I mean, there’s companies I’ve auditioned for four years. You finally book something. And it is as long as they keep sending you auditions, then you’re OK. Then they have faith in you. They know, like, OK, let’s give this guy more chance if they stop and then you got to and you got a problem.

Speaker2: And so and I suspect there’s not a terrible degree of hard cost overhead and knocking out a brief audition. It’s just part of your business model, like we pay rent here. This is part of our business model.

Speaker5: Everything leading up to the audition is, well, the cost is all the classes I’ve taken. Right, right. Right. And I continue to take, you know, Zoome classes now, especially over the last year, have really been able to connect me with some higher in coaching and things like that. Right. Building your space at home, the equipment, the microphone, the editing software, learning how to use the software to make yourself sound good or sound better. I usually just send wrong files because my recording space is so good. Right. Not to brag, but but it’s one of those things where a lot of the the cost people don’t see. So we talked about you can’t go to Kroger and buy things with you know, it was all my followers. I’ve got you know, we have a joke in the voice of a world where they say, oh, you’ll get exposure

Speaker1: For this, don’t you? Like, I can’t pay my mortgage with exposure to any artist two years that just dies inside. Yes.

Speaker3: Creatives, creators of all kind. Because, you know, I’ve you know, we’re in the creative space and we well, we have this great project. And, you know, if you help us with this, you’ll get great exposure. I’m like, that’s great. Are you going to pay my mortgage with that?

Speaker4: I can’t pay my rent with exposure.

Speaker3: I’d like to keep my car. That would be

Speaker1: Cool.

Speaker5: Yeah, well, my exposure is good to a certain point of because it could get you other clients out there.

Speaker3: It’s brand rich.

Speaker5: It is. It is. But at the same time, you’re right, you do need to get paid at a certain point. And I’ve never seen more people offer to pay less than with voiceover. I had one the other day where they said, we want you to read. I think it was like 2000 words, you know, we want it this way. And they were very strict about we want it bum, bum, bum, bum. We want offers less than five dollars and it’s five bucks. And that’s that’s kind of the thing where I make I copy it and send it to all my friends and we make fun of it because it’s and then they go, how? What do you mean you’re going to charge me, you know, this much these hundreds of dollars and it’s so easy for you to do it. Yeah. But you don’t see a lot of what went into getting me to set up to this point.

Speaker4: Yeah, and you’re training, right? Because I have a I’m the guy who sends out the auditions and I have so much respect for the voiceover artist because I know you’re taking that intentionality and putting that into everything you read.

Speaker5: And I love doing it. I mean, it’s something that I’m able to work from home and kind of hang around my family. And it’s it’s great as long as they stay out when I’m recording

Speaker1: It all the.

Speaker5: Yeah, there’s plenty of times my recordings have messed up with Daddy.

Speaker2: Can we go like.

Speaker1: No, no,

Speaker4: I don’t think it’s authentic, you

Speaker5: Know. Yeah, it’s right. It’s real life. But yeah, it’s, it’s fun to to work from home and a lot does go into it and.

Speaker2: So so when it comes to surprise and delight in just doing good work, and we all know here that one of the most marvelous sales tools you can have is doing good work. Are there some things that you try to to do or not do so that you are genuinely received as kind of a cut above the. The rank and file, their

Speaker5: Customer service to me is very important, a fast turnaround is in turnaround. OK. All right. Because like I said, a lot of times, I’m at the end of the rainbow when it comes to a project. I don’t want them waiting on me to turn something around. I want wanted 24 hours and I’m usually less than 20 is the same day. I’ll get it done and sent back out.

Speaker2: Wow. I mean, to me, that seems great. I mean, that would be in particular

Speaker5: A lot of people. You don’t want them waiting on you. I don’t want to be a diva. That’s one of the things like if you’re difficult to work with, that spreads faster than any good you do for anybody. If you’re like, I’m not going to do that for less than this much or I’m, you know, no, no, no. Know that your your directions are wrong and needs to be read this way or just to be difficult with somebody. Why why would you do that? There’s so much work out there and there’s so many people who are voice actors out there that are better than I am or worse than I am. You got to find the voice, why be difficult? Be happy, be quick, be follow up, be nice. It’s like Patrick Swayze, he said, and Roadhouse, you know, just be nice.

Speaker2: I love that

Speaker5: It doesn’t cost you anything to be nice and it could earn you a whole bunch of business

Speaker4: Or just communicative. That’s something I’ve always valued in a voice over. Artist is just answering my email and it’s the right. Is there a voiceover

Speaker1: Artist to talk to me?

Speaker5: No, I don’t. I hate when people just kind of ghost you and and like, oh, what do you think about this? And there’s nothing out there. Please just write me back. It doesn’t take that long just to especially if I see you’ve looked at my message and then you don’t reply on.

Speaker2: So your marketing for your services, is there much outbound stuff? Or if you kind of get things set up and you get some inbound activity from the Zak’s and the Johns the world?

Speaker5: Well, for many years I did the kind of let business come to me model. I was on a what’s called a pay to play website where you pay a yearly fee and you get audition’s from that. And I booked work through that. It was fine. But over the last few years, I’ve kind of realized that, no, you need to go out and you need to earn that work. You need to go out and get that work. I worked with a marketing guy last year and his name is Corey Dison. He does voice over marketing on social media marketing. We worked on branding, so we kind of had the voice monkey thing kind of come out. I got the logo to

Speaker2: Say that got my attention. That was I thought that was cool.

Speaker5: I like it’s a lot of

Speaker4: Fun at the veterinary background.

Speaker1: You know,

Speaker5: It’s a funny story. I used to watch a show on Discovery Channel called Fast and Loud with Gas Monkey Garage.

Speaker1: Right, exactly. You know, I know it well.

Speaker5: And every time he would sell a car, he would go gas monkey gets paid. So every time I would get a check in the mail, I would make a joke and go voice monkey gets pages and then they just kind of stuff.

Speaker1: It’s great.

Speaker5: And it’s one of those things were like, yeah, I can be serious about it, but I also like to play around and have fun. And and so we said, you need one stick with the voice monkey thing. And we did and built a website and got everything put together and started a marketing campaign where it’s, you know, a lot of it was just, you know, kind of monkey puns and things.

Speaker1: A voice that appeals, right.

Speaker5: Yes. I need to write that it said

Speaker2: In his bio that he was good at puns. We didn’t go there yet or barbecue anybody. We have a barbecue and

Speaker4: I’ve been tame

Speaker1: That.

Speaker2: We’ll have a whole episode dedicated to his sons and dad jokes.

Speaker1: Or do you want to go dad jokes? Hey, let’s go.

Speaker3: I got eighteen years of dad jokes.

Speaker2: So. So the marketing so are. So you are kind of getting out there building. I mean still in all these businesses. I mean relationships are just important. They’re so key and that’s why that’s the way you approach being communicative and not ghosting people. These are all this is important.

Speaker5: It’s 100 percent relationships. If people don’t know you’re there, they can’t hire you right now. You need to get out on social media. I even have a tick tock, which I’m kind of embarrassed about, but it’s there. You never know where work is going to come from. I’ve got fishing poles and tons of different. It used to be you had to have an agent and that’s how you got your work. I really they were the gatekeepers to all the good jobs and they still give you good, you know, that kind of higher end auditions. But it’s still nothing prevents you from firing off a bunch of emails or calling production companies or creative directors or wherever you can find a little niche and exploit it and go in there and find this, find that I’ve done spec commercials, I’ve written them and recorded them, and I’ve had a friend do a video for them and things like that. And you put that out there and people go, Oh, man, that’s pretty cool, who is this guy? And then they get that relationship going and things like that. So.

Speaker2: All right. So for you, what what’s next and how can we help?

Speaker5: Just getting the getting my name out there is the, like I said, exposure,

Speaker1: This is the best thing.

Speaker2: You guys can’t see it, but we’ve got some air quotes from that with that word exposure.

Speaker5: A lot of that helps, you know, with your reads. If you do, you know, using me with my hands around. That’s what I do anyway when I’m in the studio, because it brings more authenticity to the read as opposed to just standing here with my hands in my pockets going,

Speaker4: Well, you see that? And it’s boring. And, you know, Pixar, when they’re doing the voice over there, they’re like, oh, yeah, gesticulating all over the place.

Speaker5: And that’s real voice acting. And when you yeah. You’re waving around, you’re yelling, you’re screaming. And I’ve done things like that for video games and and things where I’ve had to, you know, turn the mike down a little bit, back way off the mic and yell. And then I take a day to recover and thought

Speaker2: About the video games is another

Speaker4: Oh, isn’t video games is huge isn’t it. Like the number one is

Speaker5: It doesn’t pay real well and it’s a lot of stress, a lot of stuff because a lot of it’s yelling and a lot of it’s like, OK, you have to die 17 different ways and you’re screaming and getting stabbed.

Speaker1: What’s your family think in there?

Speaker5: Here’s one funny thing is I’ve done a couple of things where I really let it go. And they didn’t they didn’t hear me because I’m kind of in the closet off the part of the house and I come out like, guys, OK, you hear that? And they’re like, no, like I would just get my own shoot off by a zombie. You didn’t hear that? And I’m in there screaming my head off like now. I didn’t hear. They don’t pay attention, so it’s fine.

Speaker2: That’s funny. All right, we’re can our listeners get in touch with you and have a conversation with you about these services?

Speaker5: The best way to find me is my website is the voice monkey dotcom thing is voice monkey dotcom was already taken. So I’m going to go with the sound official.

Speaker2: I love it. Well, thanks for coming.

Speaker5: Hanging out with. Thanks for having me. This has been awesome.

Speaker2: Yeah. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you next time on Cherokee Business Radio.