A Conversation With Jeremy Slate of Command Your Brand
Turns out podcast experts make great podcast guests, and they don’t just talk about…podcasts! Jeremy Slate runs a leading PR firm for the podcast space — Command Your Brand.
As you’d expect after 1,000 or so guest spots, he’s smart, relaxed, affable, funny and extremely thoughtful about the space.
True to form for The Future Of Email, this conversation doesn’t stick to a script. Jeremy has some keen insights (and concerns) about AI and the changes it may bring. He’s optimistic (refreshing) and isn’t expecting the Terminator at the front door.
Another fun thing about Jeremy - he’s a serious expert (Master, in fast) on the Roman Empire. Apparently that’s a thing with a certain segment of the population, but for two business guys in the media space, with a shared interest in history, it’s just a super-fun ball to bat around.
Email does come up — along with Spotify, MTV, Alexander the Great, and, oh yeah, podcasts. Want to command your brand? Check out this conversation — and take a look at Jeremy’s agency :-)
TRANSCRIPT
A Conversation With Jeremy Slate of Command Your Brand
===
[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning, this is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of E mail, back after a little bit of a hiatus. Sorry, guys. My guest today, a guy who's done a lot more podcasting than I have, Jeremy Slate of Command Your Brand. Uh, Jeremy, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. We have not spoken before, so this is Get Acquainted.
[00:00:29] Matthew Dunn: Get acquainted on the air. We were comparing notes about podcast spaces. Tell people, uh, first a little bit about command your brand. Then we'll talk about you a whole bunch after that.
[00:00:40] Jeremy Slate: Yeah, so we are, um, the PR firm for the podcast, you know, space. We've been doing this since 2016 and we try to help, uh, you know, great clients get on great shows and also great hosts to find, you know, great guests, right?
[00:00:51] Jeremy Slate: Because it's, it's a marriage between both, right? Like, you know, a client might want to go on a show, but if it's not the right show, then it, that it's not a right fit. So I think that's a really important part to what I see and [00:01:00] it's because I'm a podcaster, right? I've been in this space for gosh, since 2014 myself.
[00:01:04] Jeremy Slate: So. I know there are certain things that we're all looking for. And that's what we try to do here at command your brand.
[00:01:08] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And you've, you've, you've done like a couple thousand to yourself, if I recall, right, right.
[00:01:14] Jeremy Slate: Well, it's so 1200 interviews on my main show. Um, I think we just crossed over a hundred on our secondary show.
[00:01:20] Jeremy Slate: And then I have lost count of how many shows I've actually like been on, but it's been a lot.
[00:01:25] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. That, that, that's, that's a lot. I mean, that's a lot of, it's a lot of long face to face conversation time. With with people like it's kind of a treasure. I would think to do that
[00:01:39] Jeremy Slate: It's actually so this is funny because it's actually to me.
[00:01:42] Jeremy Slate: It's been one of the best personal development things i've ever done Um before I started a podcast I you you could not put me on a stage. It was not gonna you know, go well Um, that's why my show was originally audio only because I didn't want to have to look at It didn't didn't want to look at that other person.
[00:01:56] Jeremy Slate: It might be too hard. Yeah, and You know, now it's we're in, we're in [00:02:00] 2024. I've spoken in seven different countries. I've kind of done like, I would not have been able to do that before having thousands of conversations on a podcast.
[00:02:07] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Let's do, let's, let's, let's compare notes a little bit because, uh, opposite for me, my first career was theater.
[00:02:18] Matthew Dunn: Um, my wife hates this, but I'm like, yeah, you got to go on an airdrop me in front of a thousand people. Sounds like fun. I actually, I, I like that. Um, And, and so that the face to face part of it didn't bother me. And, and we started future of email. As video from the, from the get go, uh, she started voice. So then when did you switch over to video?
[00:02:41] Jeremy Slate: Um, probably a lot later than I should have, but we started really producing video about three years ago. And I will tell you, like, it's been a massive leap for the brand because YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. So it's like, you know, audio podcasts are very hard to grow, but doing video is a lot easier to get found.
[00:02:58] Jeremy Slate: And it's, it's been a kind of a big [00:03:00] growth movement for us.
[00:03:01] Matthew Dunn: Interesting. And
[00:03:01] Jeremy Slate: I will tell you the thing that stopped me is just. It was a lot less, uh, cost prohibitive, you know, three years ago than it is now, just with all the AI tools and everything we've seen, like the ability to create an awesome video product now, it's just, it's so attainable.
[00:03:15] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And we, we, we definitely want to talk about AI and production tools a good bit as well. Um, a couple of questions about video specifically, one, did you find that, that, uh, footage handling made production a whole bunch more complex? I mean, when you made the jump from audio to adding the visual as well.
[00:03:37] Jeremy Slate: It did. But I will tell you, like, we didn't do a lot of like heavy editing initially. It was kind of just putting on an intro and outro. And then if there was any terrible gaps that happened, we would cut those out. Yeah. There weren't typically a lot of those because I, I don't know. I feel like you get better at kind of managing the show, the more shows you host.
[00:03:53] Jeremy Slate: So those things don't typically, typically happen. Um, so that, that was kind of it. And then. Over the [00:04:00] years we've like our production quality has just gone up so much like number one like building the studio space was great Having a dedicated space to record has been good. We've also changed a lot of like how we interview So I've started using Riverside FM about three years ago.
[00:04:16] Jeremy Slate: Mm hmm and It doesn't record through the internet. It actually records natively on each side and uploads to the cloud progressively. So you get a much better audio and video product than you would just on like, you know, Skype or Zoom or something like that. Yeah,
[00:04:28] Matthew Dunn: I mean, we're, we're, we're here, we're here on, on Zoom and we'll delve into why that, but yeah, okay.
[00:04:34] Matthew Dunn: So you, you guys are doing, you guys are doing it the right way in the real world. And at the same time, right, think about it. You're in the television business in a way. Yes. Thanks. It's not like you needed a zillion dollars in an FCC permit to do it.
[00:04:49] Jeremy Slate: That's
[00:04:50] Matthew Dunn: pretty important. Yeah,
[00:04:51] Jeremy Slate: it is. And although I do think there's gonna be some sort of FCC regulation in the future.
[00:04:57] Jeremy Slate: 'cause I know, I know there's been, um, the [00:05:00] FTC has been coming down kind of hard on people doing advertising without disclosing, so I don't, I think. I think regulators haven't quite figured us out yet, but they're starting to look at us a little bit Um, I don't know if it'll quite be the same as how they've looked at other other media But I do think there there has been some some looking into it.
[00:05:16] Jeremy Slate: FTC has been big recently because there's been a lot of people Um, like maybe it's like a paid guest spot or something like that. They're not disclosing that so it's caused a lot of issues with Um, like large shows kind of getting in trouble for that. So there there is regulators are starting to look at us a little bit I don't know if it'll ever be exactly the same as tv though
[00:05:34] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, and, and, and at least currently, I would say, while podcasting might come up as a target, I've watched the FTC pretty carefully the last couple of years because, um, Lena Khan, current head of the FTC, like remarkable to see her put in that spot at a relatively young age and, and very focused on the digital monopolies.
[00:05:58] Matthew Dunn: Podcasting is [00:06:00] not a big problem in the digital monopoly space compared to right
[00:06:03] Jeremy Slate: now, but they have come down hard actually, um, on a lot of marketers and promise claims and stuff like that. I don't know if you've seen this. There's been a big issue recently, especially in the digital space in the coaching space, particularly, um, with people promising certain results and things like that.
[00:06:17] Jeremy Slate: So it has changed marketing dramatically. And that's been an NFTC, um, regulation that started a lot of that.
[00:06:22] Matthew Dunn: Uh, good. Maybe good. There is a sense, this is a lateral, but there is a sense to me that marketing, advertising, and the really blurred line between, uh, marketing and content that we see now, it, it feels a bit Victorian.
[00:06:40] Matthew Dunn: You know, outrageous claims couched as something else, science, an article or whatever else. And we're not calling BS on each other. Well, I don't know
[00:06:50] Jeremy Slate: about you, but I feel like my filter's gotten a lot better. Cause I, now I read a lot of headlines and I'm like, there's no way, no way man, that's not happening.
[00:06:58] Jeremy Slate: Yeah,
[00:06:58] Matthew Dunn: right? Yeah. Yeah. [00:07:00] Well, our filters, our filters have gotten better. In fact, our filters have gotten so good that it's really hard to connect with people.
[00:07:07] Jeremy Slate: Yeah, well, here's the thing I think is actually a benefit in this. I think a lot of marketers are seeing this and a lot of podcasters particularly are seeing this.
[00:07:14] Jeremy Slate: The more human you are, the more believable it is because the more we've, we've gotten. You know stronger with a lot of these things. Yeah, what we've lacked as a human element I think that's why people have gone so hard towards podcasting because they really want that human element right like they like your Um that you spelled a title wrong or they enjoy that There's a typo in your description or maybe there's something wrong with your thumbnail because people think I would make that same mistake So I think actually becoming a lot more human is benefiting people more.
[00:07:42] Matthew Dunn: Yeah well, so Isolate down on, let's isolate down on, on podcasting, and I mean podcasting in the audio sense for the moment, okay? Um, it's been intriguing to me to watch podcasting sort of, not take off isn't [00:08:00] quite the right word, but just kind of steadily expand a footprint. The technical means have been there for a, what, a decade at least?
[00:08:09] Jeremy Slate: Um, they've been there for a decade at least, but they haven't been as like reachable, right? Like, you know, you couldn't get a mic that was a good USB mic that wasn't a stupid snowball or something like that. You know, like a lot of those early, like the technology has gotten so much better and so much more attainable and also like the ability to record.
[00:08:26] Jeremy Slate: So I think the software has come a long way.
[00:08:27] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, but that you're looking at that from the producer and from the, from the consumer end of things, right? Could someone get a podcast? Let me put it a different way, more succinctly. Yeah. Um, Podcast became feasible more or less as smartphone became common. Is that fair?
[00:08:44] Jeremy Slate: Yeah. And the thing that really changed it dramatically, I don't remember which iOS version it was. It was, it was, it was a long time ago, but they actually, there, there is a change to be able to stream over, over data. Yeah, and that was a big change for a podcast because now it wasn't like [00:09:00] I remember back in the days of the pod father himself, Adam Curry, like you had to actually download a podcast and put it on a device and listen to it.
[00:09:07] Jeremy Slate: You had to be on wifi in order to get it. So a major change for her. Um, for smartphones was cause smartphones did have podcasts earlier. I think it was iOS seven where they came out with the purple podcast app, but then you couldn't initially stream them over data. That came a little bit later and that was a big growth thing.
[00:09:24] Jeremy Slate: I think it was like 2017 where you could stream over data. So that changed because it's, it's much more available to people.
[00:09:30] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and the, the, the mobile bandwidth. Is, is dramatically different than it was not so long ago. God, you, you just did a six degrees of separation connection. You mentioned Adam Curry and one of my early guests, friend of mine, Chris Marriott, who's like one of the world experts in email platforms.
[00:09:50] Matthew Dunn: Mentioned Adam Curry in our conversation because apparently they're, they're friends from way back when or something like that. And, and I'm old enough to remember Adam Curry when he was doing the MTV [00:10:00] thing. So there you go.
[00:10:01] Jeremy Slate: I've interviewed Adam twice. He's a really, really cool guy. And it's, it's, yeah, he's a really cool guy.
[00:10:07] Jeremy Slate: And we were in constant email contact. Oh,
[00:10:09] Matthew Dunn: nice. Nice. Well, so human voice and human voice and audio and human contact technical means out of the way. We've got a bit of a hunger for that. What would you say?
[00:10:19] Jeremy Slate: I would say so because if you look at it like You know, with AI and a lot of different other things, we're losing the human touch.
[00:10:25] Jeremy Slate: So I think people thirst for that much more, right? They thirst for real conversations. They thirst for things that, that aren't scripted. Right? So I think that's the difference we're seeing because people don't do appointment television viewing anymore. It's just not a thing. Right. And if they, if they do watch it, it's Netflix or prime or something like that.
[00:10:42] Jeremy Slate: And it's when they want to watch it and what they want to watch. So I think that consumer behavior, we're seeing a lot more of that in the podcast world, and I think as well. People are just dying for that human connection because everywhere we're losing it, whether it's, you know, your car drives itself now or, um, and hopefully it doesn't hit [00:11:00] anything, but like you're seeing the human touch being taken out of a lot of things.
[00:11:03] Jeremy Slate: And I think you're, you're going to see, you are seeing, but you're going to see even more a thirst for more humanity because we're losing it.
[00:11:09] Matthew Dunn: I think I'd take your thesis one notch forward and say one of the risks we're already bumping into is that. The human touch is being relatively effectively faked AI and, and so we're getting even more sort of sanguine and guarded about is, you know, is this real?
[00:11:35] Matthew Dunn: Was this done by by a person, not a thing? And that's a very daunting prospect.
[00:11:43] Jeremy Slate: Have you gotten an AI phone support, uh, thing yet? Because I have, and it's weird. Because you realize, you're not talking to a person, so if you don't give it the correct prompt, and it doesn't understand that, like, like, here's, here's an example.
[00:11:57] Jeremy Slate: Um, I had a flight delayed a [00:12:00] couple weeks ago, and I get to the airport at like 1. 30 in the morning to get home. Um, and so I arrive at Newark airport at 1 30. I am cranky as a, as anybody could imagine, and we cannot find the shuttle to get me to where my car is parked.
[00:12:12] Matthew Dunn: Yeah.
[00:12:13] Jeremy Slate: So I called a hotel and it's an AI assistant that answers the phone and the, nobody knows where the shuttle prompt is not in there.
[00:12:22] Jeremy Slate: So I sat there for three hours until I called an Uber to come help me because, because nobody could find the shuttle guy. Apparently he fell asleep, but a regular human would say, You know what? Let me go wake up the shuttle guy. Yeah. Yeah. He might be sleeping. Yeah.
[00:12:33] Matthew Dunn: The
[00:12:33] Jeremy Slate: AI didn't know how to do that and said I had to go find a way to get home on my own.
[00:12:37] Jeremy Slate: Oh.
[00:12:38] Matthew Dunn: Oh. Yeah. And there's a particular At three in the morning. There's a particular kind of tired and cranky that only comes at the end of the trip. Right? Yeah. At the, at the airport. So you've got a, you've got a, a series of layers of, of companies who, for their own business reasons, they're right. Oh gosh, paying someone to sit and be available on the [00:13:00] phone at late at night, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
[00:13:03] Matthew Dunn: We may not actually get that many calls. We'll sort of outsource it to Skippy the robot and that'll be fine. And you just said, oops, right? Does it work very well when it actually comes down to a crunch? Cause that. AI doesn't have the human agency to go wake up the driver.
[00:13:20] Jeremy Slate: I think that the issue is, cause I, there was, this wasn't that long ago.
[00:13:24] Jeremy Slate: There was a lawyer that actually got disbarred for using chat TPT to write a legal brief and the legal brief didn't exist. So it made up the precedent. Yeah. But I think what you, what you are going to see is I think there's a lot of benefit to AI and marketing. There's a lot of benefit to AI and podcasting, but.
[00:13:38] Jeremy Slate: It's people that learn how to use these tools to be more effective at what they're already doing not trying to replace an action totally with AI. Because there is no human agency or human element there to make sure that step runs correct. You get what I'm saying? Like, it's kind of like using it as a better tool to sharpen what you're doing.
[00:13:56] Jeremy Slate: But I think if you try to over replace it. It just doesn't work. [00:14:00]
[00:14:01] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I'd agree. And I'm, I'm, I'm on the Terminator's not showing up at the doorstep, uh, side of the fence. Like, oh, for God's sake, relax. Um, I know where the, I know where the, Cord goes into the wall, if it's really a crisis, we'll unplug the dang thing.
[00:14:20] Jeremy Slate: Yeah, if my computer ever looks at me and goes, get me John Connor. I know I have a
[00:14:24] Matthew Dunn: problem. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Seriously. And at the same time, I think I saw that in some of the notes and background reading I was doing about you and your company. You're leveraging AI technologies, digital technologies, to do the job of being an agency, to do the job of producing audio and video.
[00:14:45] Matthew Dunn: And it makes the job easier, right?
[00:14:47] Jeremy Slate: Well, it's, it's more scalable, right? Because if you look at it, so like one of my favorite tools, um, Adobe has a post production product and they just changed the name of it. So I don't know a hundred percent what it is, but like sometimes you get a, a podcast file that's not recorded on a mic [00:15:00] and they sound really bad, right?
[00:15:01] Jeremy Slate: If it's on a computer microphone. Yeah. So this Adobe, I think it's called Adobe enhance. So if you already have Adobe, um, like a Adobe subscription, you can use it. It's, it's part of that suite. It's one, it's a web only tool, but you can basically run it through that. It takes a few minutes. And it'll make it sound pretty darn close if it was recorded on a mic.
[00:15:20] Jeremy Slate: So like, there's a few of the, like, if you put an audio engineer to fix that. That's ours, and it's still not going to sound as good as this AI does, because it has an algorithm that can read it and fix it. That's very, very useful. Another thing as well is, we do a three camera edit. A three camera edit meaning, a camera of the guest, a camera of the host, and a camera of the guest and host side by side.
[00:15:40] Jeremy Slate: Now, to actually edit that into frames is going to take hours, so we use a plug in for Premiere Pro called Autopop. And you can put in these three, um, three files, and it's going to give you, You know the bulk of your podcast edited now you're going to want to add in the commercials and the cut scenes and the intros and outros and stuff yourself, but that takes out like 70 percent of the time and it's [00:16:00] it's just as good as a as a video editor would do hand in hand.
[00:16:03] Jeremy Slate: So I think there's a lot of ways that we've managed to save time and also up our production. I think that's what it's all about is being able to up your production quantity and quality because it's producing a better show than we could have produced before.
[00:16:14] Matthew Dunn: But go back, go back to the audio one. This is an intriguing thread.
[00:16:17] Matthew Dunn: Go back to the, go back to the audio mastering enhanced thing for just a second. No doubt somewhere, there's an audio engineer who's gnashing her or his teeth. About being replaced because doing, doing that manually, doing that the hard way was what they got really good at.
[00:16:41] Jeremy Slate: But I guess the thing I would say is like the industrial revolution that kind of changed a lot of things.
[00:16:47] Jeremy Slate: It creates new jobs, it creates new requirements, because here's, here's the thing you're going to find. It's a great tool, but I just used it last week. And halfway through my, um, my enhancement, it made the persons just start humming, even though they were [00:17:00] talking, right? So like, you get what I'm saying? So it's, it's a very useful tool and it can help you a lot of things, but it's still not a replacement for a human being.
[00:17:07] Jeremy Slate: And I think like in the industrial revolution, you saw job roles change. You saw titles change. We went more to an information economy with what people are doing. So I think as well, you're going to see roles and titles and things change, but I think the cream still rises at the top, if you get what I'm saying.
[00:17:23] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, I do. And, and I doubt just to go back to the audio engineer for a second. I, I doubt that we'll see the best musician say, yeah, just go ahead and master this with, you know, fill in the blanks product from Adobe, right? Because there's a, there's a particular sound and nuance and balance and tone that they want.
[00:17:49] Matthew Dunn: That probably is going to take a really skilled engineer. To get in, in, in mastering that complex mix. My, my, but for
[00:17:57] Jeremy Slate: your person that couldn't afford an audio [00:18:00] engineer or or something like that, I think it's a better than it's better than where they would have been. You know what I mean?
[00:18:04] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Oh, leaps and bounds.
[00:18:06] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. My, my, uh, my older son's a musician for a living and he has mentioned a couple of sort of digital master AI's that he's taken a look at and he said, They're shockingly good. Like they're shockingly good. If your band does a recording and you want to master it and you don't have the budget to get someone to do it the old fashioned, expensive way, they're really quite good and like, Hmm, okay, well, stuff's more likely to get out in the world.
[00:18:35] Matthew Dunn: I like that. So yeah, yeah. So we're on the, we're on the brink of. The next really big revolution, you think?
[00:18:43] Jeremy Slate: I think so. And as I said, like, I, I, I, Terminator is not coming, like you said. So I think like AI tools are going to be useful, but I think they're never going to fully replace humans. It's just going to take humans that are really good at what they do and enhance them.
[00:18:57] Jeremy Slate: And I think as you, as I mentioned, that P that category of [00:19:00] person that maybe couldn't afford certain things, you know, they could get way better than what they would have had. So I think, I think it's also going to enhance kind of the, Um, the end product we're getting across the board, you get what I'm saying?
[00:19:11] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, no, I, I, I, I, I do and I actually, I agree with that. I also think that the guy who does fill in the blanks for a living, almost anything, had better start figuring out how to master the new set of tools to keep doing fill in the blanks because Otherwise, you know, like I'll do it the way I always did it.
[00:19:32] Matthew Dunn: That's a recipe for being a bug, buggy whip, whip manufacturer. When the car shows up, it's just not a good way to make a living.
[00:19:41] Jeremy Slate: No. And I, and I think there's always going to be opportunity for people that are looking for it. I just think it comes down to, you know, finding out where those gaps you can replace, because there's always going to be new gaps, even when there's new technologies.
[00:19:51] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and the new technology will actually create new gaps and new needs back to your, um, back to what you said about the. [00:20:00] the hunger for the human. Um, in the, in the podcast world broadly, am I accurate in guessing that it's a mostly quite fragmented podcast finds audience space?
[00:20:16] Matthew Dunn: It's not like there's not like there are that many hit podcasts. I mean, I'm pulling off the top of my head, Joe Rogan, a couple of others, but are there, are there, is it a more even distribution than you'd see in, let's say music?
[00:20:32] Jeremy Slate: So there's like 3.5 million podcasts out there. And it, once again, it depends on what host you ask.
[00:20:37] Jeremy Slate: You know, apple Podcast wants to claim there's more. Mm-Hmm. or less. Spotify wants to claim there's more because then they can claim they own the internet. Mm-Hmm. . So it is also like, you know, that side of things, but let's say there's about 3.5 million outta there. Okay. The top 95% are shows that get a hundred listens or more.
[00:20:51] Jeremy Slate: Okay. So it is, the top 5% is pretty top heavy. Okay? And when you get into that top 1%, that top 1% mm-hmm, , and that top one half of [00:21:00] 1%. It's a large percentage of those shows that you've said it offhand, but I think the thing that's really cool about that, though, is you have so many niche markets that can survive on smaller podcast numbers because they're handling so particular things.
[00:21:14] Jeremy Slate: Like, you know, I come to the show for, um, money management of a practice that only works with kittens that don't have a left hand. You know what I mean? Like there's like, you can get so in depth and so granular that you don't need a huge audience to actually have a huge impact. So I think that's what's kind of cool about it.
[00:21:30] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And I would expect it's just, it's just how, it's just how market, it's just how flow systems work. Ultimately we'll have a power curve structured just like Chris Anderson observed. in the long tail about book sales, right? Relatively few books up in the one half of one percent, a lot of money there, but actually about an equal number down in the long tail of the power curve, probably an equal number of listeners in the long tail of niche [00:22:00] podcasts for, you know, left handed, uh, kittens or whatever.
[00:22:03] Matthew Dunn: And I think your perspective would be that that can serve a, uh, a business and entrepreneur, a company rather well, especially if they're after that niche.
[00:22:14] Jeremy Slate: Yeah, and it's, it's, it's just, it's really so interesting. I made this joke one time. It was like a podcast for, for CFOs that don't like CMOs that only work on Wednesdays.
[00:22:23] Jeremy Slate: Like you can get, get that granular. And I think that's, what's really cool about it. Because it really helps even small groups of people to find their tribe. And in order to have a company that's really servicing the right public.
[00:22:36] Matthew Dunn: Yeah.
[00:22:36] Jeremy Slate: It is so cool about how granular you can get on that.
[00:22:39] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, it is.
[00:22:40] Matthew Dunn: Well, I mean, email is definitely, that's, that's pretty. That's pretty flippin niche y. And, and, and I, I'm sure most of the listeners for this modest little podcast are, you know, my tribe are the, are the folks that I know, uh, and like so much in, in the email space. And that's like, that's [00:23:00] fine. That's, that's why we're, uh, that's why we're doing this.
[00:23:02] Matthew Dunn: Although I love bringing in people from completely lateral, uh, Fields and somehow connecting it back to email if we get a chance to do that. Um, you mentioned Spotify and there was a little bit of energy. Uh, when you mentioned Spotify, can you expand on that?
[00:23:19] Jeremy Slate: Yeah, because they've been spending a lot of money.
[00:23:21] Jeremy Slate: Like for app, if you look at Apple for years. Apple doesn't really make money off Apple Podcasts, they just made it because people use it, right? Like, it's not really something that people say, Oh, we gotta Spotify was one of the first big companies to really start throwing money at it. Yeah. I don't remember, I don't know the terms of the original Joe Rogan contract, but there's been talks of it was like 200 million or something like that, and they just did a re sign contract, which was very interesting by the way, I don't know if you noticed that, like, They allowed him to have the rights back for YouTube and some of these other platforms.
[00:23:49] Jeremy Slate: Now he's back on Apple Podcasts. So it's not exclusive, but they're still paying him for sure. So it's, it's kind of, kind of interesting to see where that goes. But um, Thanks It's because Spotify has tried to buy the [00:24:00] podcasting world. In some places it's worked out, and in other places it really hasn't.
[00:24:03] Jeremy Slate: Like, I know they gave, uh, Meghan Markle and, and Harry a podcast, and it didn't last very long. So, like, they spent a lot of money, and in some places it really worked, and in some places it really didn't work. Um, I, I think that the issue with podcasting is, You can't buy the network if that makes sense because the network is so distributed across like what people are looking for it's it's different than like, you know It's abc news or nbc or cbs.
[00:24:27] Jeremy Slate: Like it's not it's not a network like that And I think that's what spotify was trying to create and your podcast listener doesn't care about that They care about I like this show and that show and all these shows are not connected and they have no Um, you know no relationship with each other. So I think that's the thing is it's very different Distributed and what people are looking for so they haven't been able to monetize the network in the way they thought they could.
[00:24:49] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, well, there's also there's a term switching cost on the switching cost for me to exit listening to something on Spotify [00:25:00] and go to listening on something else is pretty much zero.
[00:25:03] Jeremy Slate: Right. Well, Spotify, you actually have to pay for it to even be able to listen to those shows. Like if you're not paying their monthly fee of like, I think it's like 20 bucks, then you can't use it.
[00:25:11] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. But, but by, by contrast, uh, radio television switching costs was actually more prohibitive and you had, you had far fewer channels and we're now in a position of if I want to go find the niche for my hobby or business or whatever. It's not that hard to do it. Um, do you see the, do you think the equivalent battle over network and content is likely to happen in the video podcast space?
[00:25:40] Matthew Dunn: Or are we going to stay in the wild west free sort of free field of YouTube for a long time?
[00:25:46] Jeremy Slate: Well, you know, I, so I think the platforms won't really change, right? Cause you have your, uh, you have you, but here's the thing I will say is cause rumble has done rumble exclusive shows. I don't know if you're aware of this.
[00:25:57] Jeremy Slate: Um, and they've started paying creators to, [00:26:00] to create only on rumble. So they're trying to do that. And I'm interested to see kind of where that goes because They don't have the money backing that YouTube has, so I, I, I think it's interesting to see where that goes. I do think though, if you look at kind of the larger picture of things, you are seeing kind of a network effect start to happen in the podcast world.
[00:26:17] Jeremy Slate: I know like, um, Patrick Bet David's Valuetainment has a whole bunch of shows on his network. Um, we were actually down there, uh, last week in Miami with them. And, um, you have like, you know, The Timcast company has a whole bunch of, uh, podcasts on there. The Blaze has done this. Um, trying to think of who else.
[00:26:35] Jeremy Slate: There's been a lot of companies that have started trying to create networks on it and bring in, um, bring in personalities. And you see it more with the video show than with the audio show, because there is so much more production that's required of that.
[00:26:45] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. And it also, Video show takes a different kind of attention than an audio show.
[00:26:53] Matthew Dunn: Like, especially if it's
[00:26:54] Jeremy Slate: daily, like you need to produce like a, basically a producer to set you up a guest daily if it's daily.
[00:26:59] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. [00:27:00] Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And it takes a different. It takes a different engagement from the listener as well. Hopefully, there are relatively few people watching video podcasts as they drive, for example.
[00:27:12] Jeremy Slate: I was stuck in traffic the other day on the George Washington Bridge. Yeah. And the guy next to me had his phone on his steering wheel. I don't know what he was watching, but I didn't feel very safe. Let me tell you that right now. Yeah,
[00:27:23] Matthew Dunn: yeah. Right, exactly. And if the Terminator's not showing up, I don't want self driving cars showing up.
[00:27:30] Matthew Dunn: Yet either cuz I don't he wasn't even
[00:27:32] Jeremy Slate: driving a car. He was driving a truck. So I'm like, oh, oh boy
[00:27:38] Matthew Dunn: Parenthetical I think I read somewhere that truck drivers are big consumers of podcasts which kind of makes sense the audio only yeah Hopefully audio only hey, let's jump somewhere completely different I've kind of keeping an eye on the clock because we could probably talk for a few hours But did I read that you were a high school teacher at one
[00:27:57] Jeremy Slate: point?
[00:27:58] Jeremy Slate: I was I so I my master's in [00:28:00] the roman empire, which nobody cared about until till recently Um, but I I I taught um in a private catholic school. I taught history. Um sociology and criminology And um, you know, i'm almost 40 and I think I look pretty young now So you can imagine how young I looked at 24 when I had this job It did not go well for that reason.
[00:28:20] Jeremy Slate: Um, I had young kids running over me because I taught sophomores in high school. So it's kind of like they're not scared enough to be freshmen yet. They're not cool enough to be juniors yet.
[00:28:28] Matthew Dunn: Yeah.
[00:28:28] Jeremy Slate: Kind of like right in your face. So I got that two years is all I could, all I could handle that.
[00:28:33] Matthew Dunn: Well, yeah, I taught high school kids as well.
[00:28:36] Matthew Dunn: It's one of the reasons I I wanted to ask you about that, although I taught them in a considerably different generation, um, than you did. The
[00:28:46] Jeremy Slate: school I was in got rid of number grades, too. Like, there were only, like, weighted letter grades. So, like, the kids had figured out, like, the strategy on, like, you could fail everything but pass one major thing and you're in good shape.
[00:28:58] Jeremy Slate: So, like, it was kind of, like, [00:29:00] herding cats at the end of the world. That makes sense.
[00:29:02] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I don't think I would like doing that. I did like it when, when I did it, but, uh, I was, I was hard nosed about grades and, and my students darn well knew that I was hard nosed about it and there was no, there was no option.
[00:29:18] Matthew Dunn: There was no way around it. Um, yeah, it teachings, uh, It's a, it's a wonderful thing to have done in terms of informing all sorts of other stages in a profession, but it's a, it's a hard job.
[00:29:34] Jeremy Slate: But you know what I find it, which is funny, I feel like, you know, especially now that I'm doing more history stuff, like I'm actually teaching a lot more people now, right?
[00:29:43] Jeremy Slate: And the amount of engagement I'm getting back, like, oh my gosh, I didn't know this or I didn't learn this in school or like, thank you for helping this make sense to me. Like, yeah, it's actually I'm doing what I wanted to do. It's just way more rewarding, you know what I mean?
[00:29:54] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the audience is there voluntarily, which [00:30:00] makes a big darn difference, right?
[00:30:02] Matthew Dunn: And it's also on you to be informed, interesting, thoughtful, um, et cetera. Like you, you, you can't just read the dittos. And I know that's a very dated reference, but you got to be on your game or someone's going to just turn the podcast off.
[00:30:16] Jeremy Slate: Well, I think that's like where a lot of history people struggle, right?
[00:30:20] Jeremy Slate: Like, and I think that's where I've been able to try to make that connection because I think people get too much into the minutiae of like, you have to know everything. And I've always been, I had a history professor that used to make fun of me in school. Um, because I said, like, I think it's more important to know about the forces of history than, you know, all of the individual events that go in between.
[00:30:37] Jeremy Slate: If you can understand the narrative and how you got there, you're going to have a better understanding of history and a better grasp on it. Yeah. But there's a lot of historians that are so stuck on like, And this year and that year and this year and that year and like you're going to lose people because it's complexity, man.
[00:30:49] Jeremy Slate: Like you got to make it so people can understand it.
[00:30:51] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And, and there's, there's too much of it to be that fine, do that fine slice on everything. I mean, [00:31:00] don't get me wrong. I'd love to talk to a fill in the blanks, you know, naval historian who gets off on knowing how the ships were constructed, but, uh, that's not big forces and big vectors like you were.
[00:31:12] Matthew Dunn: Like you were alluding to, sounds like you've kept your, uh, Roman history frame alive and intact, though,
[00:31:21] Jeremy Slate: I have, and it's, it's funny because I'm barely even on tick tock. Like I have somebody on my team that post for me there, but I don't even really use it. But this whole, like, men thinking about the Roman Empire thing popped up on tick tock.
[00:31:32] Jeremy Slate: And I, my, my wife looks at me Yeah, it was like, how often do men think about the Roman Empire? It was women always asking men this. It just was like six months ago, this started popping up. And men are like, I think about it all the time. Um, I don't know if it's a real thing, but like, it's basically, it started this trend.
[00:31:47] Jeremy Slate: So my wife goes, Honey, I think you're relevant now. I'm like, I wasn't relevant. I wasn't relevant before. I wasn't relevant before. She goes, I think you can actually make the connection between these two things because of your educational background. And people will be like, well, he has a [00:32:00] master's degree.
[00:32:00] Jeremy Slate: I guess it matters.
[00:32:01] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, I didn't know that that was a thing on Tik Tok and I'm, I'm, I'm a pretty, I'm a pretty avid reader of history because I'm curious about it. And I, I, I do feel like many of the adults I talk to have a shockingly shallow historical background. That's been
[00:32:24] Jeremy Slate: the surprising part to me and talking about like, cause I've, for the last six months I've been doing a lot of media appearance about the Roman empire.
[00:32:30] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. The
[00:32:30] Jeremy Slate: shocking thing to me.
[00:32:32] Matthew Dunn: Yeah.
[00:32:32] Jeremy Slate: Is it? Nobody knows anything like it's in that it's nobody literally knows anything about the Roman Empire. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is such important stuff. Cause it like is one of the longest empires to ever exist. Like there's so much we can learn from that, you know?
[00:32:45] Jeremy Slate: Yeah.
[00:32:45] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the story about why the space shuttle is the size it is. Oh, you're going to dig this. Um, it's Roman related by the way. Oh, okay. And the space shuttle is the size it is because of the size of a [00:33:00] horse's ass. Roman roads, five feet, eight and a half inches, two horses, right?
[00:33:06] Matthew Dunn: Pulling a chariot. And they were meticulous about their standards and, and they did a great job laying roads. Okay. You fast forward to what? 1800 years or so. And when the railroad revolution started, we were talking about industrial revolution. The convenient place to put rail beds was old Roman road beds, and they settled on the gauge for standard gauge rail tracks.
[00:33:32] Matthew Dunn: Because of the size of those Roman roadbeds, the gating factor on moving parts to construct a space shuttle was how much weight and time And breadth, a rail car could hold on a standard, that's how they transported them on a standard gauge rail. So the gating factor on the size of the space shuttle was Roman based size of a horse's ass and Romans wrote Roman roads.[00:34:00]
[00:34:00] Jeremy Slate: That's pretty great. That's hilarious. That's pretty great. And have you ever seen like how they build those roads? It's incredible. Like they're, they're like five or eight feet deep of like what they actually build. They even like make them last.
[00:34:11] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I'm
[00:34:12] Jeremy Slate: here in New Jersey, man. And like. You, you try to drive on some of these highways that are two years old and you're, they just, the potholes will kill you.
[00:34:18] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, and the, the, the technique of, you know, you basically scoop out the side, put it up to make the roadbed, I, was a lot of work, but, I mean, those are still intact, used, you know, roadways in use now, all over the place, a couple thousand years old from the Romans. Wow. That's, uh, that's, that's gotta feel a little rewarding, right?
[00:34:40] Matthew Dunn: Because you invested a few years in really digging deep into this.
[00:34:44] Jeremy Slate: And let me tell you, I went way too deep because my master's was on, uh, like, ruler worship and how it started in Rome, so I've, I've read some esoteric stuff you wouldn't even imagine.
[00:34:53] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, but that's, that's, that is kind of the funny of, of history when you, you know, when you [00:35:00] get gripped by something, right?
[00:35:01] Matthew Dunn: Because it, it was, it wasn't esoteric to you, it was darn interesting to you.
[00:35:05] Jeremy Slate: It was shocking. Like, I read this article about after the battle of Actium in 31 BC, Augustus Who's the first emperor, kneels before the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great, who'd been dead for 300 years at this point, and prays.
[00:35:17] Jeremy Slate: I'm like, that's really weird. Why is he doing that? Yeah, yeah. Just took me down this, this rabbit trail that took a couple years of my life.
[00:35:24] Matthew Dunn: What? Yeah, different frame of reference. And, and, that, that rabbit trail, that digging deep into a subject, even if that's not what you do for a living for the next, you know, whatever.
[00:35:35] Matthew Dunn: Um, you know how to dig and that's pretty important tool set.
[00:35:39] Jeremy Slate: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:40] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, fun. I, I, I find myself concerned. And I'll tie this back to podcasting. I find myself concerned that we're forgetting how to dig deep and, and invest the amount of personal time it takes to really understand a thing. Yes.
[00:35:59] Matthew Dunn: [00:36:00] So much content that you can just skate along the surface and be endlessly entertained and not actually expand your knowledge set or understanding of things particularly in the course of that.
[00:36:12] Jeremy Slate: Thoughts? No, yeah, and I see this big time in podcasting because I think the number one thing that stops people is they do it for 30 days and they're not Joe Rogan and they're surprised it's you have to be willing to commit to this thing and I usually say be willing to commit to making nothing off of it for a year, but I also think when it would like they have the wrong idea of around a podcast a lot of people think It's you.
[00:36:34] Jeremy Slate: Build a podcast up, get the CPM high and start making advertising money off your show. And for most people, a podcast should be the front end to a business that already exists. So people know you, like you, and trust you. And because of that, want to do more business with you. But I think often there's a lot of people that, you know, you know, think they're starting a podcast like it's another MLM, you know what I mean?
[00:36:54] Jeremy Slate: And they're gonna just start this thing, make a whole bunch of money and then retire. And it's just, it's, it's really from, [00:37:00] it's the dream, but for a lot of people, it's not the reality. I think the reality is figuring out how do I build this amazing vehicle where you can communicate to so many people in so many different ways into what I'm already doing so that my business grows more and so that people know it more and so that people trust it more, you know?
[00:37:14] Matthew Dunn: Right. Put the, it's, it's a way of putting a human face on, on the business. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's some of what you guys help clients do in your business, right?
[00:37:26] Jeremy Slate: Yeah, because I one of the number one ways for people to find out about your show is to go on other shows, right? Like they have those conversation because I've it's funny at Jordan Harbinger had done something about this a number of years ago But there's like I don't know and it's gotten better in the last couple years, but like five years ago There was like ten steps to teach people how to subscribe to a podcast.
[00:37:43] Jeremy Slate: I didn't already listen to one So it's like if you're gonna if you have a podcast and you want to get more people listening your podcast We'll go where people listen to podcasts, right? So that is yeah, it makes the most sense already You Go where the fish are, you know?
[00:37:55] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it does make, does make sense.
[00:37:58] Matthew Dunn: And I do seem to [00:38:00] see people who do this podcast stuff well, show up on others. Like they, they, they get the value exchange of doing that. Um, and it's, it's a win win for everybody. Plus, People who are comfortable in front of a mic make for interesting conversations in front of a mic.
[00:38:20] Jeremy Slate: Absolutely.
[00:38:22] Matthew Dunn: Because when you've done it a couple thousand times like you have, you're like, yeah, I'm perfectly cool with this.
[00:38:26] Matthew Dunn: We don't care where it goes.
[00:38:27] Jeremy Slate: Well, it's, it's having the right things in place too. Like, I think that's also important too. Cause like from an email marketing perspective, just cause I know your audience cares a lot about this. Like there's actually a few things that you should be doing, which are really going to enhance when you're going on podcasts.
[00:38:41] Jeremy Slate: Like number one, You have to look at education as always has two parts, the theory of it and the practical of it. So whatever you're giving away, on a podcast, like whatever that opt in is you're giving at the end. Number one, it should be something really easy. Not like your website. com and, you know, your, your name's Polish or Italian and people can't spell it.
[00:38:58] Jeremy Slate: It should be something really easy. Yeah. [00:39:00] And it should be just a domain that goes there. Yep. But it should be a tool to help them to do what you taught them to do in the podcast. Right. It's like something that's going to help them apply it. You know, whether it's one pager or whether that's a, a masterclass or something that's really going to help them in that way.
[00:39:14] Jeremy Slate: And then when you have that landing page, there's a couple of different things you'd have in that landing page. Number one. You should have your retargeting pixel for Facebook. retargeting audiences. You can also do that with, with X as well. And, um, they changed the name of this company recently. Um, But it used to be called, if you put in the domain, it'll still go there.
[00:39:31] Jeremy Slate: But get emails. com is a email retargeting system that they can basically opt people into your list that are on their list. And it's kind of totally white hat. So it's another way to like really grow your list as well. So you should be figuring out how to take that episode and, and really make sure that you're actually building it into your marketing.
[00:39:49] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And, and on the last point about email capture, I, I think I speak for my tribe when I'd say don't do that. [00:40:00] Because, if I explicitly give you my email, that's fine. If you find a way to grab it because I'm on a webpage, uh, borderline legality, no border in terms of morality, I didn't say yes. Don't put me on your list.
[00:40:15] Matthew Dunn: That's what, that's, that's, that's the, uh, that's a hardcore email marketers perspective. They're a surprisingly white hatch, uh, do the right thing, um, group of people. Um, and if I opted in for one mass list, doesn't mean I opted in for this niche business would be the argument. and I think a fairly sound one.
[00:40:37] Matthew Dunn: Um, do you get more email than you want?
[00:40:42] Jeremy Slate: Um. Yes and no. Um, what I do, what I, what I do find, and this is the one I don't like, is a lot of people grab my email from LinkedIn. Yeah. And I end up on so many lists from LinkedIn from people I've actually never met. Yeah. Um, so that, I find that is my biggest problem is people grabbing my contact information from LinkedIn.
[00:40:58] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, you get the [00:41:00] Apollo, Hunter IO, uh, there's, there, there are a zillion sort of, they're, they're farms of LinkedIn information turned into business contacts. And I imagine you get a lot of the, uh, Business outreach kind of dribble that I
[00:41:15] Jeremy Slate: find linkedin is not really that useful to me because I just get auto messages like every day and then I added people's email lists.
[00:41:21] Jeremy Slate: It's I don't, I don't, I post on there. I try to engage on there, but I just find the messaging features worthless.
[00:41:28] Matthew Dunn: And it's getting noisy like all the other networks. I actually put the Dr. period Matthew in the first name field in LinkedIn intentionally. It's not, it's not to fly the academic flag. It's, it's my spotter for scrapers and bots.
[00:41:47] Matthew Dunn: When I get an email to, Hey, Dr. Matthew, delete.
[00:41:51] Jeremy Slate: The same thing I do with, um, so like, I don't like using my middle name to because I'm egotistical. I use it because somebody else named me, my parents named me after an actor. [00:42:00] So like it would go hard to get found in Google for years, but also I, for every first name field I put in Jeremy Ryan.
[00:42:06] Jeremy Slate: So I know like if people, how people actually got to me.
[00:42:09] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, I got you. Same thing. Ryan, which, which
[00:42:11] Jeremy Slate: actor Ryan? Uh, his name is, his name is Jeremy Slate. Um, and, uh, he's from New Jersey as well. He was in movies like, um, a lot of John Wayne movies. He was in a Bonanza. And, uh, when he. When he died in 2017 and they stopped paying his fan site hosting, I did buy his URL.
[00:42:27] Jeremy Slate: But, uh, there are still a lot of, uh, a lot of backlinks out there to him.
[00:42:31] Matthew Dunn: Are there? Oh, that's, that's cool. I mean, at least you got the backstory of your name. Not everybody's got that, right? You know, obscure uncle. Where do, uh, so closing, closing question. Where do you want to take, uh, where do you want to take the business?
[00:42:46] Matthew Dunn: Your business.
[00:42:48] Jeremy Slate: So we're really trying to, you know, build up this new media space because I think it's become less about it's just podcasting, but it's it's forming a new type of media, and we're really trying to be a driving force behind that because [00:43:00] it's about long conversations. It's about free speech, and that's really we're trying to create a place where people can can have better conversations and create better ideas because I think traditional media.
[00:43:10] Jeremy Slate: You can't handle conversations in 30 seconds or in the five minutes you get it, whatever it might be like you have to get to better ideas. And unless we can have long conversations, we can't do that.
[00:43:20] Matthew Dunn: Interesting. I like that thesis. So the, you know, the, the, the place for substantive is, is over here because the, you know, distribution of technical means.
[00:43:32] Matthew Dunn: Are are so cost accessible that you don't have a barrier. Oh, oh, um, any sectors you think are particularly Jumping on that now,
[00:43:45] Jeremy Slate: so it depends because it's gotten harder in certain sectors. Um, like I know Um, it's become very hard on on video platforms to talk about a lot of health related things because it's you know Like I know like youtube made a partnership with the who and stuff like that So it's become [00:44:00] it's become a little bit harder in that world to do it.
[00:44:02] Jeremy Slate: Um, I think kind of the You The culture and political talking heads. We've seen people like Joe Rogan and stuff like that. I think that's a really great space to be in right now. It has become a lot harder, um, and I'm sure it'll change in the future, but at the moment it's become a lot harder in health related things to have conversations.
[00:44:17] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Um, anybody doing this in a broad, broad term to use, but anyone doing this in, in science fields? Well,
[00:44:29] Jeremy Slate: yes. Um, Dr. Brian Keating has a podcast and it's a, it's a really big one. It's called into the impossible. Um, so, and he's a, he's an interesting guy too. He wrote a book called how I lost the Nobel prize.
[00:44:40] Jeremy Slate: Um, cause he had this idea of like, yeah. It was a black hole that had to do with the foundation of the universe and it turned out to be totally wrong So he thought he was going to win the nobel prize and then they looked into his idea and they're like We hate to tell you this dr. Keating, but it doesn't work.
[00:44:53] Jeremy Slate: Right? So But it was like how he kind of got, you know, people noticing him. He's a really smart, uh, [00:45:00] cosmologist. I think UC San Diego is where he is at. Um, but he actually takes a look at science and foundations of the universe and sometimes aliens, and he's got a really, really great show. It's, it's called into the impossible.
[00:45:10] Jeremy Slate: Nice.
[00:45:11] Matthew Dunn: Nice. I'm glad to hear that. What about history? Any great historian podcasts?
[00:45:17] Jeremy Slate: There's a few and those are the main ones I listen to. So the first is called Hardcore History by Dan Carlin. It's been around forever and he only releases, I actually don't even think he released more than one episode last year, but he releases a few episodes a year because they're usually like, Hours, like six hours, eight hours.
[00:45:32] Jeremy Slate: So I'm sure it like takes him like months to record this. Wow. And write the scripts and everything else. Um, so that's one of my favorite shows. Um, Dan Jones calls a great one called this is history. It's another really, really good one. Um, The History of Rome by Patrick Wyman is a good one. Um, Tides of History by Patrick Wyman.
[00:45:52] Jeremy Slate: I have a lot of history podcasts I listen to.
[00:45:53] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, sounds, sounds, sounds like it. Um, this is not a podcast question, but did you ever run into an author named [00:46:00] Ben, Ben Thompson wrote the series Badass?
[00:46:03] Jeremy Slate: No, I haven't.
[00:46:05] Matthew Dunn: Uh, I got to give him a plug my, my, when my sons were relatively young, you know, eight, nine, 10 or something like that.
[00:46:13] Matthew Dunn: My wife brought home this book from our local bookstore because she thought it would, they like to read, but she thought it would kind of get them interested in reading history. And the book's called badass author, Ben Thompson. He wrote a series of two or three of them and very, very sound historical research.
[00:46:32] Matthew Dunn: But presented as if it was frat boys with beer talking about those significant battles and figures and stuff like he, he really did a great job of ferreting out the badasses of history and bringing them to life. But it turned for both of my sons, they actually have, I'm astonished at some of the moments of history that they grasp and connect.
[00:46:58] Matthew Dunn: And I'm like, Did you get that from [00:47:00] Ben Thompson? They're like, uh huh. Okay. He brought history to life in a way that was really accessible for, you know, nine, 10, 11 year old boys, which is not an easy feat
[00:47:09] Jeremy Slate: to pull off. Well, that was one of the biggest ways I got interested in like it and even did a master's in history as an, as an undergrad.
[00:47:16] Jeremy Slate: I had the coolest professor. Um, he looked like Neil Patrick Harris and he would tell these stories that you're just like, Wait, is this real or fake? And like, he just made history like so real and engaging. And like, and like, he'd be like, like, he's like, he's like, so in Latin, sex vultures means six vultures.
[00:47:34] Jeremy Slate: And it was one of the foundings of Rome. He goes, also the name of my punk band in high school. Like, these are the type of stories he would tell. And he'd just be like, wait, what did he say? So like, like he, or he would just start you know, reading the Iliad from memory. Like this guy was so engaging.
[00:47:48] Matthew Dunn: Nice.
[00:47:48] Matthew Dunn: Nice. And, and very story centric. You just said it. Yeah, yeah, not names and dates.
[00:47:56] Jeremy Slate: Yes, yeah, and it's, like, the names and dates you'll find can actually come easier when you get the [00:48:00] story. They
[00:48:00] Matthew Dunn: stick, yeah, that gives you a frame to, yeah, the narrative gives you a frame to hang them on so you actually understand why a particular date might matter.
[00:48:08] Jeremy Slate: Yeah, and his recommendation was always, like, if you find you don't understand something, just try and write it out by sequence, and you'll find you'll start being able to work it out, like, it becomes easier that way. Nice.
[00:48:19] Matthew Dunn: Nice. I might have to do that with a database problem. Sorry. Lateral. Lateral. Well, I should free you up.
[00:48:27] Matthew Dunn: I, I, uh, I figured we'd have fun and I figured we could go way over time. But, uh, any, any parting, like where does someone find you if they say, Oh man, this would help me grow my business, for example, where do they find you?
[00:48:40] Jeremy Slate: So we're at command your brand. com or if they, you know, really want to get some basic PR and podcasting things in, I have a great resource called command your empire.
[00:48:48] Jeremy Slate: So if they go to command your empire. com, it's going to help you start understanding PR better, understanding podcasting better, and actually start getting some results for it. And it is totally free. It's like seven or eight pages. It's kind of [00:49:00] a, a really, really useful tool. So that's command your empire.
[00:49:02] Jeremy Slate: com. You've also got a couple of. Books out, don't you? I do. Um, the first is called unremarkable to extraordinary, and that has to aligns a lot more with my, my own podcast, right? Take, uh, people that are very skilled and very good at things and analyze them and learn about them. Um, the other is called command your brand.
[00:49:20] Jeremy Slate: And, uh, that's where we're really taking a look at, uh, how do you command a brand? How do you get out there? How do you utilize the podcast world? And it's something I think that aligns more with what we do as a business than, you know, what I'm personally interested in. Cool.
[00:49:32] Matthew Dunn: Well, Jeremy, it's been a gas.
[00:49:34] Matthew Dunn: Absolutely. I enjoyed this. Thanks for making the time. I'm going to hit end on record.
[0