Alright guys, so a lot of people access how do they make a podcast? I'm let you in on a secret on the easiest most productive way to start a podcast and get it up and running and that is the app called anchor is free. They have all kind of cool creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or computer. They will distribute your podcast for you to all of the major Outlets including spot.Why Apple Google many more and you can make money from your podcast with no minimum listenership is everything you need to make a podcast in one simple easy place. So if you're interested in starting a podcast Go download the free anchor app or go to Anchor dot f m-- to get started. Let's do it. What's up, y'all? Happy New Year to all our earners out. There is 20/20 and we're kicking it off with a bang. That's right. We're giving you two episodes this week. It's podcast week. So we got two of the biggest host in the game from horrible decisions. We got Mandy be that's the episode you're about to watch right now and then Friday at 5:00. We're putting out an episode with our brother while oh two six seven of million dollars worth of game. Make sure you tune in the both. Comment, like subscribe. Peace. We love you. All right, guys, welcome back UIL is going to be a very very exciting for sure. But before we start I want to let you guys know last-minute run, but we are headed to Atlanta. It's you got probably lot of times comes out few. Days to get tickets it's going to be crazy ACLU on the way and we touch the town January 25th, January 26. It's going to be it's a two-day event. We're doing a live podcast on January 25th with the ptg boys. I got Brandon in the whole crew. They running the car game right now. They're going to be guest. You also want to have celebrity real turkey out on Watson from Atlanta. She's doing a thing First Family Fitness going to be their first family of Fitness. Mr. And mrs. Two weeks out. They donate thing in Atlanta for sure and I brother He burns who the legend? Yeah, well being a lesbian. I'm sure for sure of culture himself. It's a fact and then after that it's open bar and is Catered and it's a private networking event. Everybody act accordingly. It's a whole vibe stay off the any it down Sunday the day after we have a workshop with our guy Alex good energy Dome on trucking Andy from watching cake resolutions on talk about credit mg2 mortgage guys, what's gonna go over mortgages and everything, you know about real estate and the king of wholesaling Max Maxwell's want About wholesaling. Solid that alumni list of size crazy and this is strong list. Everybody else is coming Wall Street. Trapper will be in the building mobile homes. Elite will be in a building this business will eat it our guest today will be in the building. That's crazy man. Like I said shot to take Morrison spoke to him. He might pop out. So yeah, all the information is online is a couple different varieties as far as if you want to break it up on the Ernie Alicia.com event tab. So Atlanta looking forward So seeing you guys man, can't wait. I'm silly. So we going to jump right into it. This is this this is going to be a very good episode. So it was crazy because I'm me and Troy was out at dinner about two weeks back a few weeks back. Yeah, and one of our friends are good friends of ours told us about a podcast and on the podcast name was horrible decisions and go home. She was out with a double. Yeah. And she was telling us about it and that's interesting and then she like not a big like it's really like a big deal. It's a big deal and then like two days later as fate would have it one of his Stars when the stars the end us and told us about their podcast and was like, yo, I'm interested in being on your podcast. I'm like, yeah funny you say that so I thought it was people I thought it was a setup. I'm like, yeah, they said that so they can hit us all. My no, none of those things just a coincidence. Yeah, so so we got none other than Mandy be AKA full-court pumps. Yes, co-host horrible decisions podcast. So horrible decisions is a sex podcast. Yes, and it's huge. It's one of the top podcasts in the top one percent that we shouldn't even just say sex those you say women's empowerment. So it's women empowerment, but we focus on anti we do anti slut-shaming anti Kink shaming. So we don't allow the king shaming to happen, but we focus on just bringing more. So the things that are taboo and sex to the Forefront and having those conversations with everyday people who are in The Kinks space and just having those conversations that you made that you probably never had with your mom and dad. Hopefully never so we literally we dive into a weekly. So we drop every Monday and we are joined by again different people in the king space. Some of our other podcasts are friends and some influencers and we just talk about sex dating and relationships. That's a fact. Hey pal. Yeah, so but the sort of the interesting part of the story for our students with a business podcast is that Mandy used to be in Corporate America? Yeah, and we're gonna go buy her journey, but so the podcast industry is a unique industry and we've talked about podcast little bit from our standpoint. But this is the first time we've actually had another podcast Iran. Oh well. I shouldn't say that but this is the first time that we've had another podcast going in depth about podcast industry. And so this is gonna be interesting conversation because you're on break down the numbers and stuff like that and it's a really dope business model as far as for podcast and every podcast there is different as far as like how they how they want to run their business. But one of the good things I like about, you know, the age that we're in right now is that ain't especially with podcast anybody could be a podcaster anybody without of your home. You don't say funny funny you say that so I'll so yeah, so it's going to be a dope. I really dope exciting conversation. So all right. It's what is 2022 and I'm just want to make that and I was like, we want to empower women. Well, we wouldn't make a conscious effort to make sure we have more women on. I literally told him on the phone. I said Johnny more wood. So here's 2020 that we make it. So you're a full-time podcast is what you do for a living. I just left my corporate job June 26 2009 teen. Yes, so can you talk about that? Cause you was with Earnest young? Yes, I understand. So I worked at Ernst & Young for I left right before my one-year anniversary prior to that. I was at Goldman Sachs for about a year and a half and then this was all while I was in school obtaining two of my degrees. So I was on path to be a CPA in New York. You need a hundred and fifty credits to get. CPA license, so I ended up getting two bachelor's degrees in a four year time. So that was a hundred and fifty-one credits in four years. And so I have my BS and accounting and my BA in Business Administration with a focus on marketing dope and what you do I go man. So I go home and I did the same so I did investment tax that was in the investment tax group. And then at Ernst & Young I did taxes for financial services. So I did taxes for hedge funds and private Equity Funds. So that's my institution. Do you don't do you come from a family? Family of Finance or hell you're just like I'm a Florida. So like I actually even wanted to get into opening these conversations to just the younger generations of careers that you could have. I went to a school that focused on putting everyone either in as a nurse or cosmetology. That's it. That's what they push people for just to go to college. Neither of my parents went to college. Either of my parents have college degrees. They just believed in working and so initially out of high school all the bartender. And my dad thought that that wasn't a real job. He said you need to get a real job and it wasn't until I moved up here to New York. I've been up here about seven years. I didn't know what to do. So I was between bartending and working at temp jobs and within the top jobs. I could only get like a receptionist role and I was like, I'm smart I can do way more than be receptionist. Right, but they all wanted that sheet of paper. So I literally put myself in school. I was like, I'm going to get this piece of paper so that I can make some real money got it done in love that so there's that so All right. So so so you got one of the top podcast in the world, thank you. And you do this full time. You quit your job at Corporate America, which couldn't have been an easy decision to make how much were you making an Earnest young? I'm so Ernst & Young as a first-year associate. Yeah, so I was well, I was a staff accountant. Okay, so you go through about two-and-a-half to three years of being a staff before you reach senior. Then you go through three levels of being a senior before you reach manager and then that goes up until you can make Partner's like this mapped out. Yeah, nothing but as an accountant you like every year you get a raise. So every year you're moving up in the ladder until after 10 to 12 years. You could be a senior manager and then go to being a partner. So that was the path. I was ready to take until you know, I opened up my own firm. I had it all planned out. So coming straight out of college without my Master's with your Masters. You make 68 without your Masters. You're at about 60 to 62. Okay. So you making 68,000 on a career path to a couple of years by making over $100,000. Yes, and you quit to do the podcast full-time. So can you walk us through the Journey of your podcast Journey? We're gonna talk about like funding and all that like but when you first started a podcast because you did the podcast simultaneously while you're working a job while I was in school and working. So what was this? What was the step to start the podcast? Um, so the steps weren't much it was okay me and my co-host at it are like we had dinner I owed her some money because she didn't sleep with the one I thought she was going to sleep with so I was like, Fine, I'll take you out to dinner since you won the BET. And so we sat literally across the table from each other at dinner and planned out what we wanted as a podcast. I'm very organized. I'm the friend that when we go on vacation. I have an Excel spreadsheet on one everyone arrives the tours were taking the hotel we're staying at well, so I was like, we're not just gonna go in and talk I said, so let's think of segments we want to have yeah, but when you have some experience though, you had a podcast from yes. So I had a podcast with Lamar Woodley and and thousand found that was his name and we did a sports podcast. And even with that we made sure we touched on certain events that happened in the week our thoughts on the business aspect of sports gossip. We literally added those into that that podcast which stock because we were all remote thousand was in Pittsburgh Lamar at the time. We started the podcast. I believe he had just left the Cardinals either the Cardinals or the Raiders. I think actually the Raiders was his last team and so he was you know transitioning from becoming an NFL player to now figuring out What he wanted to do after his career so that fell off with all of our schedules. So anyways, I started we decided to sit down. She's like, let's name it horrible and I'm like, okay. Well horrible what so I we went through we brainstormed came up with the name almost immediately. We knew we wanted to talk about sex and I'm very big on making things educational as someone who was in school. I just didn't want it to be me talking about my sexual Adventures. So we literally said we would you know, Um start with ketchup on our dating lives Sex Lies what was going on? We introduced the king of the week we found there was a list of like 260 something Kinks things. We had never heard of people apparently are aroused by statues. Hmm bugs things that we were just like, oh my God, this is crazy. And so we literally and then we knew that we would talk about a horrible decision and as most podcast have listener letters or emails where people can write in so it's very we had our three to five Segments, so people are writing in their own stories and your reading they want advice from us. Okay, so any relationship sex advice and now we are flooded with you know emails all the time. Yeah, and she actually had a studio that she recorded out of and so we went there it was $35 an hour and I was like, all right, let's do it. And so we started literally recording out of out of Brooklyn, so I would leave from having a half a day at school. Half a day at work and go from Jersey City at the time all the way to Brooklyn to record these episodes. This episode of earn your leisure is sponsored by jumping jack text the fastest growing minority owned tax company in the country Jumbo. Jack tax is owned by our own alumni. That's right Prince Donnell and Dana Chanel when they've helped over 600 family startx businesses and 2019 with your support and getting your taxes done with jumping jack tax. We can bring back Millions to our community that are being garnished by corporate tax companies who do not care about us join the mission of bringing minority ownership back to the taxi industry by downloading the jumping jack tax app right now. Well on Apple and Google Play Stores to find a certified tax professional in your area. Don't wait don't hesitate head over to Apple and Google Play stores right now and download the jumping jack tax app. And then when you first recorded, are you uploading it? Because you would it were for our agency now, but before that use independent, we still own 100% of our contact all of it. So even though we're signed with an agency, even though we're on a network we owned 100% of our content. So literally, I mean it's not much to Google. We SoundCloud as our host and then amongst being on Soundcloud. I ended up getting spreaker so that we can be distributed to iHeartRadio and Spotify. And so we pay those two hosting the month and in the beginning. I was just like girl don't say nothing. We can't cut out because we had no one really editing. So everyone got the full episode. We did we weren't doing much editing. We didn't have a music to start. We didn't have sound bites. We were like, okay. Well, we just talk for an hour. Here you go. Who do you sprinkle Lisa spreaker? Breaker breaker. So speaker would our data distribution. They distributed before you could actually get before you could just go to Spotify Spotify was actually hard and so was I heart radio. So this was a host that could distribute your concept for your RSS feed just through being a member on there. I'm paying I don't know. We paid $8 a month with them and $15 a month with SoundCloud or you want to go until the RSS feed. So the RSV is the actual I guess it would be like the website address for your actual podcast. So when you put that Doubt it and you could distribute on multiple networks so we can be on anchor and we can be on Spotify. We can be on Apple podcast or Stitcher a multitude of things at that time. How many were you Hollywood we started I mean so our host was SoundCloud and at that time we also set up our Apple podcast, which was separately. Well, it was linked to look I didn't know. No, that's when I started so excited. We got the email. So it's linked to that. I was like, well I have iTunes. Let's just go and have a podcast. So now everything I threw my iCloud account which I wouldn't suggest for anyone but yeah just just literally made it on iTunes and SoundCloud and I didn't even know how to check analytics until I would see an r on Soundcloud. Oh Google Play is getting us to and we started popping up on all of these different podcasts apps that I wasn't familiar with but we saw it in in our set. Yeah, actually, I told a story about that the other day I was on the phone with his young man that we met in DC and he was like, what podcast should I listen to what God would you guys listen to I'm like, well, we really didn't listen to any I don't know if that's a good way to go about it. But we kind of just did this thing like when you do it and then I think after like three months we even like we didn't know that there was a charts for podcasts. Oh, yeah, like wait, huh? We're on a chart. Yeah, we were wondering why we never got into the new and noteworthy and then there's a whole politics regarding where all these things are now. Yeah, we we really didn't know much either and like I said, she's a huge Bodega boys fan. So she listened to them. I had only really listen to the read and gotten into Brewing idiot around Time and now I literally listen to Joe Budden Faithfully, but like even yeah, we started the podcast and outside of me having a podcast. I still wasn't familiar with the space. Yeah. I think I think that's the point that's the point of a people understand too is that we haven't really done that. But what about how to start a podcast people have always asked for that and it's like it's really not that difficult not it's like it doesn't take a lot of money. Yeah. We use anchor for now do the right thing Spotify and oh, yeah, that's it. Fact so I'll and they distribute our show to like eight different channels. So like iTunes Spotify where else are we on one pod, bean pod being Stitcher the stitcher or last recorded and then you upload it from the computer or whatever device you have something like that. Yeah, you put it out and it's just not so that's the easy quick book is really easy. Did the heart the hard part's actually grow the audience, right? That's what most tough enough for most people struggle with. So, how do you how do you call your audio? Um, honestly, And we like to say Well done pretty organically. I did already have I mean, oh, I would say a regular sized not even a regular sized following because I had the blog and I was very active on Twitter since o9. I was a part of black Twitter like when we all remember when we started the podcast I did I was babysitting on 40,000 followers. So I was like, okay, let me just fill this is something new that I have. Let me shoot this out to them. And then I had a lot of friends also with a lot of followers, so I think by By our third episode. I brought entree pizzi who's a rapper in the Bronx. He has his following in the by episode six or seven. We had be Simone who is now at the time. She only had 300,000 followers and she is now too big. She's not on tour with Martin Lawrence. Is he? Yes, well, I she was on the show with a little kid only one of the already is our first episode of 2020 we have built together and what she's done and and like I said, I know I new mall prior so mall was on like episode 31 But from the Joe Biden podcast and we just literally brought all of our friends who are already in the space because we're like, okay they have podcast people maybe want to hear them on another one. So cross-promotion cross promoted a ton and it wasn't until we landed on loudspeaker and had that brilliant idiots feature that literally shut us up 30,000 people changed everything it did and then what's crazy is I thought that was our biggest jump and then we had Rory on from the Jill Biden podcast and In you with just really dope content that our numbers kept growing. So it wasn't just the spike from from Brewing idiots. We were able to keep those listeners obtain them and then keep growing with also being on brilliant idiots point a it's Joe that's Charlemagne's podcast by doesn't know that increased your listener Base by 30,000 per episode her yes part episode. So so we literally went from like how many kind of 12,000 a week and after that we were seeing between Thirty and forty. How many listeners do they have? Oh God, they probably get a quarter million quarter million per episode. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. How did you get connected with them? So I want to about a king who was a part of loudspeaker. I remember he got brought into like our third episode of recording and the studio at the time the guy who's the owner of that was just like yo, these girls are dope so he came in and listen to us and he was like, yo y'all got something here keep working on it. We were three episodes in he didn't know we were going to last a month later because podcast start and don't finish their not consistent. So he's like y'all keep going y'all got something good and me and him maintained a friendship until it was just like listen. We just sold out of show. Our numbers are going up. We're now almost at 10K a week like bring us on the goddamn Network. This is we're doing this. So and then he we decided it was Charlemagne also because he's on the network they were like, okay, we'll bring you in London. The first so yeah, I'm glad we're having this conversation for a lot especially for people that start and pocket because this is all stuff that we're learning like we didn't know because me and Troy never listen to podcast before we start a podcast. We still only listen to podcast to be on that whole decisions is now on the it was strapped to it. So you couldn't make a little raunchy phones needed not so fast. Yes, but so but it's important to notice because nobody really knows this stuff. So the pie Podcast world is kind of similar to the music industry. I'm finding out much. Whereas like the music industry. You have labels, right? So you have like a Def Jam you have Universal you have labels, right? So you have networks in a podcast game. So you're on loudspeaker. Yeah. That's a that's a network. So and we're on a network with probably as I mentioned the top 1% of podcast specifically in the black space of podcasting. I'm amongst the top. So there's three Friend zone who also does touring they just had it they just went on tour with McDonald's at hbcus. Of course, you have angelis lip service, which I love and I love her and also Brewing idiots with Charlemagne and results and flagrant 2, which Andrew is now selling out everything. He's doing everything. So yeah, so that's so that's that's the network, but you have shouts shouts our brother wallow to six seven and Gilly congratulations. They just saw a Barstool Parcels huge. That's it. Network so there's a few other networks so and similar to a record label so like if you if you are deaf Jim artist right is easy. They're going to they're going to collab with other Deaf Jam artists, right? So if Jesus is on Def Jam and they just got a new artist on Def Jam the best way to give him that look is to put them on a record. How's everybody wants like quality control? Right like quality control like they got little baby the best way to give him a look is to put quavo on the hook. So now you come Want to the label for pretty much for the people to understand it and was featured on your first angle. So to anything what you want being an idiot. So how did that how did that work? Like they have to and I knew they were scared of us. We literally were also on only for the last 20 25 minutes of the episode. So Andrew Charlemagne did a whole episode we come in the last 20 25 minutes. So to have been able to reach 30,000 new listeners in a 20 to 25-minute. Here you go. Go like they put us on the hook. We didn't even get a purse. Okay, so so did they have to get the okay from Charlemagne Chris Morrow who is head of loudspeaker? He I'm sure they do spoken. He's like guys cool whatever they were. Like these girls are ready. Not because this is interesting because like I said, all right, so all right. So in this equation, if you're a loyal listener in your leisure wear like Koch records, like we're completely way completely independent and which is flying by the bootstraps. We don't we don't know anything. We're just figure it out as we go. So it's good to know this stuff because it's like oh this is how these things actually work on the other side of the Grave right? We're like done the dogs in this whole scenario will know even even talking to you guys. A lot of people look at podcasting as it's a hobby. It's something to do with your friends and I remember even the conversation with and I had before starting the show. I'll just like listen if we're going to follow the model to try to make money on this thing. We got to look at this as a business. Yes, we have to operate as a business and also, you know money girl. I got a career. I'm going through gotta I gotta plan to, you know, I never in my wildest dreams again. We started this podcast less than three years ago April of 2017. It's now 20 20 and we've done we're now on our second technically tour. And like I said, we made a quarter million dollars last year on what a lot of people see as a hobby and I was able to leave what I thought would be. Career for the next 20 30 years and it's only going to get bigger from here. Yeah, that's the plan called Willa. That's the Flasher. So alright. So we're gonna go in the next time we will talk about the business break down how you actually making money. But before that you said like when in the arm podcast world, there's like politics like stuff like that, right? Yes, so he talked about that briefly because it's like so like if you're on one network, you might not be able to collab with some on another network. No, I haven't seen that really happen, but we're all humans. So you have I don't want to say An error but human relationships and so you do have people who aren't friends or have a history for some personal reasons and now you'll probably never see them collab and that's just that's just more. So yeah that and then you also have to look at it as a business. Like does it make sense for me to go on a podcast that talks about cooking? Probably somebody that might have a full sentence, but you also have to look at Like okay does this make sense for me to collab with this person? Does it benefit my brand of the benefit their brand and again also, like I said, there is the human aspect of things. So even though we're all packed podcasters that just like all rappers aren't friends all podcasts and there's a whole underworld a podcast. So I definitely thank you for giving us information. Thank my brother while oh, he gave us a lot of good time Chad 85 South show who's looks like I love I love I love I love Carlos and come on supporting everything there. Yeah, and I could they just give us game and it's like, you know, those those guys are established in the podcast worlds like this podcast award shows his like I heart and it's like different things and it's like exclusive deals. Now that podcasters assigning like exclusively what I apples or Spotify and it's so much different stuff what we're gonna see in the space of podcasting even over there. Just getting started like it's just getting started specifically in our space where talk radio And out Howard Stern what I'm doing now, isn't it? We're talking about sex in the same way that Howard Stern did he brought on porn stars and had them do wild things but it was just talk radio talk radio is essentially what podcasting is, but an art, I guess communities we didn't listen to talk radio. No one wanted to turn on to hear people talk. But now we're getting in a space where it's very open. And again, the everyday person is finding themselves. What a podcast with a lot of wisdom they found because they found a lot of value in it. Right? So like this is the way we are Educate now like we just we used to get educated to the music the music so much that we listen to now that kids listen to now not the same message, right? So now many books really they want to get a 140 character tweet exactly going on and that's the limits of what they're reading. So we put in today. We're putting it through the air the same way we learn from music now, we're putting this education to the is because that's what people have they have their phones. They could just hit the podcast right and they go away with the education. That's a fact. So alright so our next segment we want we want to get to what everybody wants to know is how do Make money on a podcast. Yeah, we won't blow it out the water pressure. Ernest you currently paying off student loan debt interested in improving your financial literacy or looking for new ways to earn income and today's ever-changing digital landscape. Well on the talk money with the mesh lakhani podcast mesh will follow Paper Trails chat with experts break down complex ideas and bring Clarity to the mystical Financial phenomenon. Each episode will be filled with compelling stories covering a broad range of subjects from buying Bitcoin dealing with student loan debt and everything in between. So listen to talk money with mesh lakhani on Spotify or Have you listened to your favorite podcast and learn how to spend invest in learn in today's economy All right. So in this segment, we're going to go into the deep dive of the numbers because I'm as you say you're not doing a podcast just for fun, you know, no business in my living. I mean you walked away from a full-fledged career. Yeah from from being a public accountant. I walked away and again I spent for long stressful years of my life getting getting the degree to that point just to get to that point and I left it within the first year. Can you can you just talk about that for just like a second like the Or the build-up to knowing that you know what I have to leave or I can't do both at the same time anymore. Um, I mean it came from not only just juggling time. I mean when I first started my job and I started in July, so it was right before we got into busy season and me and her were recording still like I have to go so I was like they wanted me to stay and I'm like, I got this schedule Studio. It's seven o'clock. I gotta be up out of here. Like I can't say so I mean when I first started my job, I was they were they thought I was sick. Sick as I had all these doctors appointments every week and they're like you need to schedule these on another time because we need you to say these days and I literally told him I couldn't stay at work and it wasn't until we started we planned our tour and I went into the office to my senior manager. Finally had to open up like hey guys, Friday's I may have to leave early sometimes because I am going on a tour and know what and they're like, what are you doing? I'm like, um, It's like a radio show because no one really knows what a podcast is all the way. So I'm like it's like a radio. So they're like really what you talked about and I was like women empowerment. You know, what that's my that was my Cobra thing moving to Paris. I didn't want it, you know and you know dating and relationships didn't add in the sex in there and then it wasn't until like I'm being noticed that my DNA event from Partners at my firm like, oh my God. I knew you worked at one of the big fours, but I didn't know which one and then I'm being spotted in. Cafeteria during the week and I'm just like this is gonna hold up much longer. So yeah in the beginning it was hard to balance it. The anxiety of leaving I literally was like, okay. I made my salary in the first five months of 2019. I matched it with what I was doing with a podcast and so before I left I kind of set a date to myself. I was like, I don't want to do another busy season busy seasons and public accounting I was crying week. Glee I was getting into work at nine o'clock wasn't leaving the office until 1:00 2:00 in the morning and then they said I wasn't staying late enough because there was people saying so five I said not me I'm getting my sleep and so, you know just them even feeling like I wasn't giving them enough time and I'm like, I'm working 9:00 to 2:00 a.m. That's crazy. So I'm busting 70 80 hour weeks and I'm like I'm giving someone else 70 80 hour weeks of me at a salary. I said those additional hour. And even the hours I'm giving them if I put that into myself, right? What can I really make it? So I paid off some of my credit cards. I started to savings and I was raised in a single parent household. My mom was a tech nurse. We grow up Section 8 food stamps. That's my life. So that idea of a savings. I had never had. My mom is never had. My dad isn't rad a savings account was not something I grew up knowing about so I wanted to make sure I had a safety net just in case so got my savings paid off my debt raise my car. Its core to where I was like, okay, maybe I can get a couple things now and left my job got to do it, right. So, all right, so to podcast made a quarter million dollars in the first six months of 2019 right now. So a quarter million dollars in 2019 its way 1920 19, we made a quarter million dollars through all of our Avenues but by May which is when we finished our first tour with ads with patreon with that I had matched my accounting salary. So I had made 60,000. So I'm looking I'm like, okay, so I made about sixty thousand and five months with the podcast. I just worked half a year. So as I saw a hundred grand in like the first half of the 2019 most I've ever seen in my life. And so I was like, okay and again, I gave all of these hours to a corporation. I was like, what can I do the next six months? Oh, yeah. I left in June. All right, but yeah I so so how did you make the money so there's a couple different ways how you make money on a podcast and Your guys specifically so first I want to talk about patreon. Yes patreon is something that once again we out to them. We didn't know anything about peanuts. So we started a podcast and somebody actually put in a comment on Instagram like you guys have a patreon and what's that? You know, I'm like yo, you know, what patreon is it? We like no, I'm like, all right. Let me just type it in. Let's see what this is. So this actually that's the one site that there's a ton to Google about like when you start podcasting there's is no blueprint to what we're doing is not theirs. So I can give you all of the steps that I did exactly. That doesn't mean you're going to see the success money. I made there's just really no blueprints of this. But Patron there is and again at this point we first started the podcast we were paying for Studio we were paying for edits. We needed fires We There was expenses coming out and we were like, okay, let's find a way to bring money in and so we started our patreon account. So how alright so you guys will be doing really well with patreon. So can you talk about that? Like what should worship your model for patrons for a patreon? We want it to to you have to give them more than what they're getting. So as podcasting I don't think people realize like the amount of information we give out that's for free to a lot of people and we started growing we really have supporters. I like to think of our audience as there are sisters. There are best friends. We're in their head as those things and so being as vulnerable as we have and transparent with our lives people wanted to support us, but we were just giving them content for free so we were like, okay. What can we give them for a subscription? That's what patreon is. It's a script. It's a subscription platform that you can add to your already present platform for creatives for quick and it doesn't have to be podcasts videos. Anybody can have a paint can have a patreon account and how much you make on patreon So currently we're seeing close to nine Grandma. So what do you what do you what do you have? No right. Now we offer a $2.00 here a $5 here and a $15 here and for our $15. Errands and $5 patrons, they get three bonus episodes a month. So as a Creator we are, you know creating now seven to eight episodes a month and then for our $15 tear patrons, we send them out merch so every four months they are able to receive merch from us and it can be anything from a crewneck a sweat shirt a tee shirt socks a mug. And so every four months they're now getting merch that you can only get as being a top-tier patron, which is don't because now that we do live shows and they come With the merch we know that their supporters and it's just a different connection that we have with them. But also it allows them to have their own Community boards. They talk with each other. We give information that we only give to our patrons that we don't put on our public platforms. And then now that we are also on tour is the only place that you can be to get access to presale tickets, which was a big thing because our patreon community sold out our VIP tickets for our New York show before it was even open to the public. So people feel like you know there Still getting value and being a part of that Community don't and how long did it take to grow? How many patrons you have? We have about 1400 hello and take the grown-up. We started our patreon account December of 2017 and I can remember shit. Sorry. I think we started with maybe getting $80 a month and then that grew to two and three hundred and it's a slow climb, but then that's when we went. From giving them one episode two two episodes 2 now 3 episodes. So we've grown to let them know that they're getting you know, their money's worth and I was crazy the first monthly we start a patreon. Like I said, we had no idea like even creating the tears. It was like how even price it we try to figure out what we make sense it in like the first month. We had like two people we were happy because we were like hardly know like now we weren't having to pay for the studio because these five people who, you know wanted to support us was now it was covered. During our cost no patreon is a great idea. Like I said, not just for podcasters any creative that's looking to grow organically because what it allows is for your natural supportive people that really really support to support you financially and it's not just charity. They're getting something for it as well. So like what we've done with our patreon is that we've given like the top-tier top two tiers access to our online university. Okay, what's called? Uio University. They also get access to a live stream of events all of our events that get discounts to our events. I think I 20% discount of 10% to the to Vance end to the end to emerge when I go to Ernie Leeds.com Nick about emergency get Face Time called at the highest level, right? Yeah, we're gonna so like now we started to call my girl. We believe we're in the process of revamping it because it's like yeah, we've added so much content now that we can maybe offer like another episode. So we're going to start doing things like that to write maybe even transcription transcription episode. That's how people want to like. They take note they won't open above so I really like when you told me that you was making nine thousand a month on patreon. I really like that because it's a way to to because like you said the partner podcast of free, right? So it's like it's hard for podcasters to provide certain people don't understand how much work it takes to take his crazy. Yeah, but even so and then travel oh and that's what I was going to say. So with those funds we were able to like I told you our merch for our tour this go-around cost us damn near 8 gram like it's expensive to buy. Merge to sell merch to go on the road. And so our very first tour that we did mind you again just being on a network we still own a lot of our our content. And so our first tour we had no agent. So patreon funded our first tour we spent about twenty thousand dollars getting the venues and this was throughout eight cities. We did 13 shows and we literally were like, okay, let's look at our analytics. What cities are we going to we looked at our South? Cloud analytics and was like, okay we have audiences here. We picked what we would feel comfortable as far as venue size. And literally when people ask we were like, okay, we're going to Atlanta. Google Atlanta Peter, that's what we did we go to the city followed by the word theater a list came up and we started emailing and calling those places asking for availability and rental cost. And so we went through all of these cities. We picked the venue's we got the rental cost. We knew what we wanted to stay between as far as money. So I think our most expensive video of course was Caroline's how much New York City that one was about 5,000. Yeah, and for a matinee show the comedy clubs weren't dealing with us at all. They didn't know who we were they didn't really gotta you gotta performance before 4 p.m. On a Sunday. So um for you know for the comedy clubs, they were a little bit more pricey, but our venues ranged anywhere from you know, our venue in Chicago was our least expensive. That one was I don't know. I think we got for like a hundred fifty an hour and it's that People we did the numbers. We price our tickets. We had our friends check people in we said here's an extra phone skin them on Eventbrite. We put all of our tickets on have been bribed had our friends at the door. We were like, we not popular we don't need security had no security for the first tour and we knew we had to be at a certain time because we weren't paying no over fees. So we rented the the venue's kept a hundred percent of the door and we covered our own hotel and transportation expenses. So for some of the city's I was like girl I'm staying with you even though we You know, I'm on tour I'm saying with my homegirls. How many cities how many sales you doing? First of all our first tour we did eight cities and in about three or four of the Cities. We had to add an extra show because we sold out the first time and how much money you make on your first tour our first our first tour we made about a hundred and ten thousand profit. If you take out the the venue cause we saw almost a hundred grand and but now you got a agent yeah those different that's change some things change the game for you. Yes. We are now signed to WME Me and they are now doing our second tour and we went from doing eight cities to 17 cities and how has that helped you as far as like boost up the amount of cities. It's been amazing because we don't have to we don't have to call the venues and be like, hey, so we want to do a show like that was the thing. We're walking into these venues. We're doing Tech we're doing sound we're making sure the Green Room is cool. We're handling the guest list. They're like y'all don't have anyone and it was literally me and my co-host With our friends that wanted to help and so we're going into these venues as the booker the talent the management the producers of everything, but now the agent takes cook all those rolls know the agent takes care of booking the venues that we now have a tour manager and a tour assistant that deal with the writers production to where we can now show up and put on a show and they get they get paid. Yes, they get percentage off of that our assistant. We pay salary our tour manager. We pay salary and the agent takes a percentage said writers. Or writers writers. So like the list of things you need the things the hospitality writer, but we asked for in our green room. So I wanted to try to get ahold of right with the purple ones take it out. But I was like, we went to Howard Theater which was one of our biggest venues and my name was on the road. I was like I need all the time. But no, I'm a writer. It's Tito's which I might have to update because if you gone before the show start, so I got Tito's my co-host has Red Bull, like it's simple that's our Hospitality writer and then we have our production writer. So what we need on stage the music that we're going to play the host what time we want them and come out so we still are very much in charge with the production of our show. Okay and as though because that's important to us. This is soda podcast game is becoming like a real real crazy thing where it's like at the park at you can go on tour just like a musician can go on tour and you get the same benefits and it's like what you described for your first year that's like where we're at right now because we're doing not we're on our tour right now, but we do everything ourselves. So that's the thing that I will say. A lot of people see a lot of podcasts going on tours or doing live shows and they automatically think they have to do it. I would go against that I think a lot of people think that you know, if they're not doing live shows in they're not successful and I think they need to focus on may be reaching Their audience more before just okay, we're going to do a live show because I do know a lot of podcasters that are like, okay, it's time for me to do a live show. They get the venue, they start selling tickets and no tickets are being what we did. And this is a tip for people. Well, our blueprint was we did networking event. We did free networking events in six cities in America. We did a la Chicago Houston, New York Atlanta anywhere else. I got more five. We did five frequency and no we're not networking event. All right there five free networking events last year free completely free come and you don't we just made money off of me? Birch and a bar we split the seams on the bar, right? We did that for a few different reasons a we wanted to just get out and touch the cities like interact with the people and we used it as a real-time gauge to see how hot we was in those. I really liked that sort of pop up shower our first live show again. Like I was I was telling you guys before as an accountant. I'm looking at margins and break even and all of the things as Terry and looking at what we had to put out and So what we needed to sell tickets at we did have our studio that we recorded at the time he put up the money and then we paid him back with the ticket sales. But we literally our first show we saw no money at all and we did we weren't doing it for money, but we were doing it to reach our audience. So I would say that that would maybe be another tip is to make sure you price the tickets at something where you could at least break even and not to look at your first live show as something to make a ton of money off of so maybe Sizing your Venue down with something. That's not going to cost a lot. Yeah, and yeah, so it's dope but it's also a learning experiences. It's like so fast now, like I said, we're in the stage where we're not sign of anybody. We don't have any booking agent anything. So we're doing all the stuff. It's a lot of work and I thought we kind of liked spread it out like six weeks in between shows and we do too. So we do like a lot of pockets and we do a workshop to so it's like a two-day event, but when we got invited like I said shot 285 South and we got invited to They were guests on lip service. Yeah on a lip service Angela yeast podcast. So we went to to the show that they had in New York City at the Apollo. No at all. What was that Troy? Lincoln Home was Lincoln Hall. I think it was. Okay. Yeah, but it was so they were guests on lip service. Yes. So we got there before 85 South got there. So they would they brought us today like run the green room and like they had the liquor bottles and it was like a real like backstage for for I'm working with as a podcast, especially if you're doing a lot like you're an artist. Yeah, like and so yeah, it's great. You got the entertainment of the generation being on tour like we're going through Riders we have day calls we have might like we have sound checks we have it's really crazy like and when I'm talking to my friends who are in the music industry, they're like, you know, dang you have like a real tour like a real schedule like and I'm like, yeah, it's kind of like I'm a music artist Scott. Yeah. Well, I put plaster I have to say it's like it's always a progression in Business so it's like as you so now you you have staff. Yeah that handles your touring for you that helps it out. Now, you can add more shows and it makes it you know an easier transition and that's something that a lot of times people don't really think about as far as like, especially like when a podcast or any type of creative it's like there's more to it than just the content but I think I think and it's one of the things that we're trying to get now, I don't think people realize the importance of a team and so For a lot of the beginning of us. It was just me and her and we did thought we could do it all like we like I said, we were every position imaginable and it's there's only so far that you could take yourself before you create a team. So you guys having someone behind the camera that's still you guys now don't have to deal with the video element of something and you have him doing that us now having an engineer helps without me having to do the editing when we're dealing with a tour. We're looking for an assistant social media person like you it takes a team. Which I think is why you have these people like Angela Yee and bring idiots and Joe Budden who has been able to go so far because they have people that have the rolls. That's a fact eighty five shows a day that 19 people. Yeah. Yeah, and they said they started what they was doing thing like a hundred to two hundred people not a do like 3,000 3,000 people. They start out with a wood table and three microphones. Yeah. You don't say I mean anyone looking to get into the space if they're looking for it to be a Business this definitely is something that you can grow to be like very, you know profitable. So hosting you get paid on hosting to it. How's that Channel's host things that just goes with bookings and and I love it because it's literally like where I'm getting paid to talk. It's like like this is still it's a Nuance that I can't even explain. Like, I'm the one that had to be told to shut up in the classrooms like talking too much speaking engagements, you know, so they're speaking engagements right now. We're trying to do Party's Just again, just to be more have the event after our live shows again. You have to realize that the booking of hosting's and clubs that whole scene has changed. They realized that certain people aren't bringing it out just because you have a million followers doesn't mean you're even going to bring a crowd. So right now because promoters don't do that as much anymore. It's us trying to y'all don't understand though. Our reach is here. So as far as Club hosting's that's not really a thing, but it's more so yes speaking. Pants and and we're doing mocha Fest in Jamaica. So that's a booking where it's not really talking but we're going to be doing a live show in Jamaica DEA agent handles that stuff for you know, we got booked on that by ourselves. Okay. Yeah, so you another major portion of your money comes from ads, right? Yes, it'll add space good and that's probably one of the hardest things for podcasters and it's probably the one thing that they look to start to get is ads and that's the Thing I think to get as as a podcaster. You don't know who to reach out to you know, okay, we talk about sex. Okay blue to Adam and Eve like there's certain brands that we know would align well with us, but who do you get in touch with to say? Hey give me money so that I can say your name. It's like it's hard to come about so loud speaker plays the middleman in that they bring in majority of our ads outside of any ad agencies that just reach out to us personally prior to that speaker. Were you guys when you were doing it in? Apparently, how did you get those people or did you get them at all? We did I remember this guy hit us up and was like, I got a song and I think we charge them like I come on for 150. We got other people that would send us stuff and we were doing as but we were doing for like $50 like just so that we can well this will cover our studio time. So, you know, when we first started we we literally were getting we thought it was in anything that mattered. Oh, we're making money. Yeah, but then as we got further and we saw that our Audience really bought into the things that we said again our relationship with our audience was most important. So we had sex toy companies that hit us up. We were like, we're not giving a nap until we try the product. So there's been companies that have stuff so there would be companies that will hit us up and I was like girl my vibrator died the first time like we not doing that at on the show so I know but there is probably the product there. Behind this problem. I think it's important that you're not just accepting any money that comes in because it's being thrown at you at first or just in general even at first we were like listen like we were talking about how much we liked our vacation in Thailand. We would get DM's because you said you're going to Thailand I'm going now, where did you stay and we noticed just how much like people were following. Thank you. Yeah, we had a strong impact and I was like, well if we're going to have our people spend their hard-earned dollars not only at our shows but in products that Endorsing. I want it to be worth endorsing so that became important. I know like just recently a tobacco company had us up. I figure we're not doing that. I don't care how much the past we're I'm not endorsing tobacco. So it's also just really having that. You know, that all money isn't worth it. Nice of fact, yeah and you were told that before another episode like CPM got engaged. Can you just talk about that? Like what CPM if you Google it, this is how you can determine how much maybe an ad would be worth. On your podcast. So $25 is the basic CPM rate. You multiply that by every thousand listens that you get so if you're getting 10,000 listens X $25 per thousand that's 250 dollars, right and you can get that per ad and of course the number of ads that you approve on your shows up to you. We don't really like to go over 4, and that's maybe two Rolls into pre-rolls most and rolls don't really count as anything. No, nobody's buying and roll. Yeah. A lot of people don't listen to a full podcast. So those are normally thrown in for free, but you can decide how many you want to take. But again if you're seeing 10,000 10,000 listens and you take on for ads that's $1,000 for that one episode and if you're someone who may be recorded out of your house and doesn't have much overhead, you're seeing that as profit. Yeah, because now you're not, you know, putting that into your Production. So for us and sometimes you can give a discount you can be like, okay. I know that standard is 25 I'll give it to you for 22 and so you can gauge it off that right. Now. We base it off of about 70,000 listens and that fluctuates. You also normally go based off of your numbers for about the six six week Mark. So this is net six weeks, right because some people look at it. Like what's your first week? Right? Yeah. No no 30 days. So yes, so and also you have to realize when you're getting paid. These sometimes you're not getting paid until net 30 or net 60. So even though you're getting this money, you're not getting it up front you're saying the ad and you're not seeing that money till down the line. So being kind of up on when you're owed when to send invoices. This becomes now a part of the business where you need to keep track of what your money is coming in and what's going out now also some point for podcasters understand too is that they allowed to ad agencies. They base your numbers off of previously dated like Data, so it's like we're we could be in January right now and then they'll base the numbers off of October. Yeah, and it's like 6,000 less listeners than what you currently have. Right? And then by the time you get paid, it's not to March right now. You gotta hold so it's like you're always chasing back but also knowing that you can include your numbers not only from your audio, but you could be like yo. Listen. I also get another 30,000 views on YouTube. So so allowed to kind of combine those, you know, it's funny that you say are not to cut you up with a lot of because I was talking once again to one of our good friends in the podcast space and they were saying that another Ad Agency that he used to use and that we kind of use sometimes they don't they didn't allow that a lot of ads don't allow you to yeah, but it doesn't it's changing a little bit now, but also if you guys want to make money for your visuals in your audio, you can just face your audio numbers, which is what we do now because our videos have been I'm pretty inconsistent. So it's not fair to the to the you know Advertiser but there's Google AdSense. Yeah, so you can still make money off of all of the ads that YouTube is putting into your videos as they still please. We're not able to be as monetized because of our content. So if you have a business, you know podcast or something more kid-friendly which now they even added if yeah, you have to plus, you know chuckle but you can log in and get Your Google AdSense and you can monetize and get paid off of what YouTube ads are being another podcast hack to get paid double is that you can do an ad for audio because most most companies just want to advertise audio so you can do the ad for audio but then if somebody else wants to do it at you might not have enough aspects you can do the ad for YouTube and you can outside of the the as that they already give you like you can place an ad in the episode just for YouTube. So and I wanted to say that too so because our Cast is not current event based. We do pre-record a ton of content. So we'll go into the studio and bust out two or three episodes in one sitting and so we may get an ad last minute and now I have to record it and we're fitting it into audio. So that's also something for people who pre-record their content. Don't feel like you have to miss out on an ad you can always record it edit the audio and fit it inside make sure you transition it right and say hey before we get to that segment this Was brought to you by and you could always feed it into it organically because a lot of you know advertisers do want an organic sounding add. They don't want it just placed in so you can still find ways to transition it if you're editing in a good, you know, a roundabout way, especially if you have segments the way you guys yeah, and that's like for people to know so its like if you have a business that you know, you're promoting, you know, teeth straightening, you know, if you're a dentist and somebody else wants to do the exact same thing. You can't have two of the same companies. Sighs on audio what you could do is say okay is $500 for audio for your teeth straightening company. So we don't have space but our YouTube numbers might be half of that so we can insert a short clip on video just on YouTube charge you 250 because it's less so now you get in 750 and the YouTube listeners aren't hearing audio. Audio listeners are watching YouTube for the most part. It's two different audiences to different audiences and a beauty beauty of the YouTube. Is that literally you can place it anywhere and as many as you want Really? It was just has to be after I think 10 minutes. That's when you can start placing ads so you could just place them anywhere like so that's what we write and then I mean if you are a podcast that is going to start inserting all of these ads that's where patreon becomes a great platform because now you can say this is bad free content for so a lot of people don't like they don't hear don't want to hear it. And so now that becomes a selling point to where okay. Well, you can listen to the episodes ad-free and our patreon members. To our episodes early. Not only yeah, not only add free but early as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we ran into a a comment like we have posted that we're about to put out the episode and somebody was like yo, I loved it was our favorite and we were like, how do you hear it was like, I'm on patreon my oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah shoutouts not actually I made a calm like, you know, you didn't come out. Yeah. Hey why I started laughing in the comment section. He's like, you know, he's bugging and you're like not my patient. I apologize. But I mean salute all of our patrons fight of making the the money. I think one of the other things that is the most important as a content creator is to literally just learn whatever you think you're going to have to pay somebody to do teach yourself. So like I was saying I got a Macbook at the gift because I said, I need a Macbook because I need Premiere Pro the to edit because all of the people who edit stuff have MacBooks, so I need a Macbook and so I taught myself how to edit audio on Audacity. GarageBand and Premiere Pro. I created our Media Kit. I taught myself how to cut social media Clips how to create social media content like audiograms and videos and anything that I felt we needed as marketing material and those are things that sometimes you have to pay if you don't know how to do it. So I literally taught myself on YouTube. I would go in and be like, okay, how do I split this track? And there's YouTube videos for literally everything so for people Maybe have a job but don't have the money to invest in cameras or equipment or studio time or Outsourcing all of these these jobs. You can teach yourself how to do it. And it's editing audio is fairly simple. It is it's really simple there. You have it ladies and gentlemen the blueprint of how to make money on a podcast a lot of jewelry in that and that segment for sure. So last segment we gon we gon bring it home with a few more actionable items in scaling model for you going forward. What's up, y'all? So if you're listening to this you obviously like podcast and you probably like music just as much on Spotify. You can listen to all your favorite artists and podcasts in one place for free. You don't need a premium account Spotify has a huge catalogue of podcast on every topic including the one you're listening to right now on Spotify. You can follow your favorite podcast. So you never miss an episode premium users can download episodes to listen to offline wherever you are and it's really easy to What you've been listening to with your friends on Instagram if you haven't done so already be sure to download the Spotify app search for Ernie Leisure on Spotify or browse podcast in the your library tab. Also, make sure to follow us so you never miss an episode of Ernie Leisure again. Alright, so we're going we're going to close it out before we do. I want to Troy. Can you just tell because a lot of people always ask I get this question so much my personal page on your Legions DM what mics will use with cameras. You want to try to help people as much as we possibly can to get them up and started running if I kind of did an episode on our you lose Universe. Are you lose University? We give the whole entire exactly actually put the boxes down like yo, this is the Box. Yeah, but so far the mice we were looking at industry standards. And so we kept watching podcast and I'm like, oh listen, that's the one we need. I went to The Breakfast Club and like we need that so little mice we use are the Shure sm7b mics and they're like the industry standard sh you re sure sure. Yeah Shu re yep, and they run about 400 out there pricey, but they get the job done. So If you look at the early episodes, even on YouTube, we got wire on the table. We got like the shotgun stands and it's like I already know was terrible there's a and yeah, I think Mike's are probably one of the most important questions at voice needs to be heard. It has to be so we try to get something that would cancel out noise and capture everything that were saying I say what not to do tell that I see a lot of new podcasters doing and I wish they would stop there's a mic that you just sit down. It's supposed to be a globe Mike. Oh, yeah. Stop doing it if you have guessed if you have more than one host it does it picks up everything and it literally sounds like you're in a bathroom and we struggled with audio even being in the studio sometimes like or even you know, guess would lean back or come over. You can't change that is nice. So there's nothing you can do with even when you're editing audio, but when you have just a globe and you can't multitrack a session, yeah forget about it. Yeah. Well track is important multitrack is very important. If you're going to have a podcast with five hosts, right you need five Mike's just know that every every person needs to have their own mind. I could have somebody important and am I listening to like was multi-tracking so multitrack means like every Mike has a trap that goes into where's recording from so right now our laptop is recording three different tracks cause it's three different mic. So we have four guests before and fight. So if I came here and I was talking like this most of the episodes right? They could actually raise your own my levels. Is that and then once you compress S all of the files together. It's just one MP3 or wav track and then it all sounds fine. But you can actually adjust levels if you're a multi-term. Most people like we like to use wave because it keeps the audio and its purest form sometimes an empty files are also a lot larger. Yes. Yes larger spaces important. You gotta have space so that we got a we got like one of the highest here's that the Google drive because we have not only do we do the audio but we also obviously do the visuals, right? So you want to talk about large files like every time we do an episode we're talking about 60 gigs per camera, right? So that's important. Okay, and if you have patreon they don't allow large file so picture on is and P3 upload and Yahweh files are large. So what kind of cameras so we went we for the cameras we obviously we started with the iPhones, but we got these looming it but I felt awful like straight out and I'm talking like iPhone 6 like yeah. Yeah, it was ugly. But we got the job done the content with me. He had a he had an iPhone 6. Yeah, but I never got to eat. 8 + I to turn you got 10 out of 8 plus. Okay, that sounds about right. Yeah, so last year took no I got this for my father. I got a cell phone, but I'm not we got the Lumix cameras and somebody actually asked me why do we use the Lumix ones? Noumic's 95s is because we want to record in HD and most cameras. If you even try like they'll let you record not easy for k then let you report for 2 minutes 30 minutes at all. 30 min. That's it. Yeah, that's it. See what the limits take it out and then put it back in. Hopefully, hopefully they'll come. Check out of this but the Lumix 95. It's unlimited 4K. Oh, wow. That is good. Yeah, so like that was like a huge thing because like a lot of our content is like an hour-long right? So when we can record in 4k, there's no time limit to it. Okay, and part of that is like you have to have storage for to so like orange have been large ScanDisk right 512 gigabytes just to hold an episode. So that's that's pricey too because I was like $200 a piece, right? So get multiples of those and then when you start recording two or three episodes and A week. It's like all right, we got to start shipping these off so we can erase and create more files. But like that's the most important things like unlimited 4K recording. That's why we chose these cameras. And also what I learned is that you can actually make a movie on an iPhone because what I learned is that lighting is the most important thing if you have bad lightning you got the best cameras in the world and it's not going to be nothing. I see you guys. Yeah. Yeah, we had we had a zester lights because it's like lighting changes. dang, you got an iPhone with good lighting and it looks just like any camera but All right, you're also on the road without without UIL toward staying in hotels and all types of Air B&B. So we don't always have the best Sleep Quality and what it really comes down to is the mattress to have on and nothing compares to our Helix sleep matches that we have at our home. If you're not up on helix or watch yourself. Don't play yourself anymore get rid of that old mattress get you a helix. Here's what you do. It's real easy. He looks has a quiz that takes just two minutes to complete and matches your body type and see preferences to the perfect mattress for you whether you're a side sleeper a hot sleeper like a plush or firm bed with helix. No more confusion and no more compromising on an average mattress. Helix sleep was even awarded the number one best overall mattress pick in 2019 by GQ and Wired Magazine. Just go to Helix sleep.com Leisure take their two minutes sleep quiz, and they'll match you to your customized mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. They have a 10 year warranty and you get to try out the mattress for a hundred nights risk-free. They even pick it up for you if you don't love it, but I'm sure you will right now. He lives his offering up to $125. Of all mattress orders for our listeners at Helix sleep.com / Leisure, that's Helix. Hele IX sleep.com Leisure for up to a hundred and twenty five dollars off lighting. So that's it - that's another tip lighting is extremely with lights the way you so we got the gvm the great maker lights. We went to B and H said what can we get for a relatively respectable price and get three of them, right? So if you look like obviously they know the green wall. That's my dining room. Place the room up a little bit differently and you can also just get ring lights on Amazon as well realize watching. Those are very very like a hundred dollars if that you can get them for the throttle. Oh, that's why I said people think like, oh, it's a podcast but I'm like now we need all this like some people have seen us in the airport, right? They like go. Where are you going all this and I'm like now we're podcast scaring my retractable banner. I carry my my phone in my I mean my microphone and my book bag and of course that has to go through Through again. It's a hassle. Like what do you do like that? Then we upload the audio to garage man. Yeah, he's great. So the audio right now is going into garage garage man. What is that? So that is our interface. That's what we're recording on so everything people like to use logic some people want to use other things. I'm like yo, listen, I'm going to use GarageBand because it came with the mac and I'm just going to do that. So for people that have no idea about computers, like myself, what does that mean? Like what is garage that so the rise band so like right now we're talking right GarageBand is recording it, right? So once that Is now we can turn volumes up will turn them down or we can edit Parts out or we can add ads into the space. You can add some things you can split the tracks with track exactly. So there's GarageBand like I mentioned earlier for post-production. I've focused now on Audacity. That's another program using Premiere Pro which Premiere Pro is very pricey. But what you could do is actually purchase the Adobe suite and pay $20 a month, which is what I do. So instead of spending $1000 on the adobe's Sweet or however much. It is very pricey for the Adobe suite you get Premiere Pro you get Photoshop you get PowerPoint. Now PowerPoint is Microsoft. Yeah, but you get all of these resources that you can use to edit and create content. And one thing I told one thing I was crazy. One of our favorite episodes is Chris Gotti shout-out to Chris. He Irv Gotti brother used to run Murder Inc. And he says something that was extremely key. He said for Independent Artists music artist, he was like, yeah. Not competing with other independent artist you're competing with Drake even though you don't know it. So we like in a club like be yet having a record mixed in masses is extremely important because like in the club when they played a record and it doesn't hit nobody's going to say, oh, they just didn't have the budget. They're going to listen to it. Like it doesn't sound that sound like how drink and that's the whole point of having him your music mixed and mastered and it's the same thing with the podcast like the audio and that's what I'll remember I was telling Troy. I'm like I was like, we're not can't because as I said before early in the podcast where independent we're not on any channel, we're not signed to anybody. So we doing all this ourselves, but I'm like we wanted to talk business podcast in the world, right? So we're not competing Flex not a fad in the world, but we're not we're not competing with what other Independent Business podcast. We're competing with Wall Street Journal Gary V Grant Cardone. So our audio needs to sound like them because there are competitors, right? I was like in the car and I'll be listening to it. And like I said, I'm like turn it up. He's sound louder they like not like no it needs to sound louder like who's going back and forth the feet and this is what we learned. That's when I learned like oh, I'm sending him the MP3 when I listen to it. It's a WAV file. So one of those turning up the levels to where a lot of our number one audiences in New York to me if I can't hear you on the train at the problem. So now I'm like I would much rather people turn us down. Once your turned up you can't turn up. No more you can turn down low like you can turn a phone down. So to me as long as you're not hearing a static I want to be sure everyone is at their highest level. I speak loud. My co-host speaks loud when we have guests. I want them or their levels up and to me it's making sure we can be heard on a train in New York City. That's what my glasses down for audio. That should be the same. It's a learning lesson. There was like, well, he would call us yo, this is how y'all even listening to this. I'm not your bro. It sounds fine when I'm listening to it, and then I realized like When I have to send it to him, he listens to the MP3 version. I'm like, okay, that's why the same way certain music bumps through headphones and you can hear them listen to through headphones. I want I want you to have to turn down your head. That was like it I put it I put it he didn't have to I kept telling her I kept telling her like go. It doesn't sound it doesn't sound good. Like it's not a lot. He's like no, it's loud enough. I'm like come on my car. So I came my car and I played the radio I play the radio on the highest level possible black blow the speaker's out. I'm like, that's how it should sound the highest. Level and I played our audio on the highest level and it didn't say anything close to that. Right? Like like you said, it's rather. I'd rather people turn it down right then. I have absolutely turn all the way up and it's still not loud enough. I agree and that's where I mean. We struggled a lot of people know with our sound for a lot but we've changed Engineers again. I was doing some of the the editing for a long time so it's me changing. But again when you have people talking way from Mike, there's only so much you can do and I'm not the one who can adjust your level for this sentence. Not the rest of your chart like there's there's just a lot when it comes to audio that even regular podcasting Engineers aren't going to do so, it's really also making sure you perfect your craft into talking into the microphone projecting your voice and making sure that everyone is hearing everything. That's okay. That's a fact that's yeah extremely important extremely important. So they're right wrap that car visit. I went inside I was like studying. How do you do this? Like because it's not your call. Everything could go right but then it's like one thing that went wrong. I'm like, I can't sleep like I lose sleep over stuff like that. So it's like I just watched that Kevin Hart documenting. It was like we're a lot alike and I know if you were coming down on him on some certain things that I was like nah, he's a beast. I was like, he's an enemy he is a beast in a little black man by he kills me and him are the same. Well, I wash I had read of these it just came on and I just started playing I actually watched the entire season. I was like that's not my thought it was three episodes notes like seven. Yeah. I just I was a wolf I literally watched from the beginning to end. But in this space as people, I would never tell someone to quit their job and chase their dreams that is not realistic and you need money to live you need money to invest so I would never tell someone a quit their job and go for it starting from the beginning which is why I I didn't quit school which is why I didn't quit my offer and just be like, well, I'm going to be a podcaster now I can make it happen. I think that that's unrealistic and a lot of us do need to still have our income coming in. If we want to be able to invest in equipment invest in building a team invest in learning like a lot of there's a lot of portals. There's a lot of books. There's a lot of things that we have to pay for that information. So I think it's important to keep working keep money flowing in and then invest until Find a couple of companies we say that all the time and you're not the father is your first investor. All right. So, you know, I appreciate what and I said this to you earlier. It was like just because of what you talked about on your podcast people think you lack intelligence. Yes, you're like a you're brilliant. So I think that's so dope. Thank you and it's funny because my friend used to shout out to him. He's like like will be talking and I'll send him my media kit that I made on campus and he's like yo, you never cease to amaze me what girl is like, here's my media kit that I made on Campbell while also editing audio. And like I was saying like it is unfortunate that as women we can't be sexually liberated or be a hoe and also be smart. So and it's also a part of me. I'm not able to share as much on the podcast right but like even before, you know, we met and my friend that's here now like she knew me when I was interviewing for the Obama Administration at one point. I was working I work for the Department of Financial Services Goldman Sachs ey and when you say these names are so Prestige and We were talking about separating my government with my Alias Duality like oh, yeah, they have no idea and then even when I go into these interviews and I'm landing these interviews and they're like, what are you saying that these people because I know you girl. What are you saying to them? And I'm like, you know, it's I turn it on and off but then as soon as I got hired you getting me so I'm like, yeah, I got that for you. What's going on? I'm already hired. Y'all paid a lot of money for me to have my if it's and to get me in the door, you can't fire me because you don't like a top. So once I got in the door, I was very much myself still getting my braids and doing things in Corporate America that it's kind of hard like and it was a challenge to have to turn it on and off but I did it and so again, you can have a podcast where you talk about. Hopefully not killing people but you could talk about this thing and have a completely different life with with your 9 to 5, and it be okay and I and that's one of the tell me about it. Like I said, I'll say this whole entire your leisure is a tint that welcomes everybody. Yes, and we have people from all walks of life. We have people that went to Harvard people that did 20 years in jail tour the citizens. Yep. Be have people that have sex Kink podcast, but you know, the good thing is that everybody has a story everybody and everybody has a business story. And is this somebody that can relate to everybody? So what did I say that correctly? Yeah not it's summer. Everybody cares so much. You know what? I mean? One of those things. Yeah, whatever. Yeah like Harvard graduate. Yeah. I went to a City University. I went to laymen didn't know about it. I'm from Florida. I'm like, oh, you know about leaving before you guys I didn't know about Baruch. I didn't know about none of these schools. I was like, I remember $400. I'm not even gonna lie to you. I remember when I was looking for schools to go to I was like I need to get back into school because I don't want to be a receptionist at a temp agency for a bartender for the rest of my life. So I'm looking at school. And I all I knew Fordham Columbia and what is that root cause of what I was like, oh that's injury. That's not an option. So I'm like, okay former Columbia. I said 48 thousand a year for them. That was for them. I said, okay there has to be other options. So I figured out what a City University wasn't a thing me going to Lehman and not even Baruch to be able to not be at a school where even people would go and recruit. I'm in the face of Goldman. I'm in the face of a big for I'm sending my resume off to the White House and going through the entire interview process where I know I'm competing against Fordham students Harvard students Howard students and having those opportunities and not allowing the CUNY system to deter me from the shots. Excuse of New York. Yeah, man. Yeah. Well man, he's been a pleasure. Thank you for And I swear welcome to the alumni. Oh, yeah, ey ey alumni, thank you. If anyone has any questions relating to podcasting listen back to this episode. No, but I do want to give a shout out to my friend if I can. Yes, Carla will Maris if you guys are looking to start your podcast she offers a portal so I know again I found you guys through Alex who has the trucking industry portal. And again, thank you for that episode. I'm looking to now invest So Alex you what? Yes, man. Yeah, my friend Carla. Will Maris she has a launch platform. Well, I'm sorry where she actually takes you through the steps. It's a five-week portal literally from start to finish you can get your podcasts off of the ground. So she helps with the equipment you need you starting your trailer curating your cover art everything. And so if you have questions slide in the dams of at Carla will mirrors don't slide him ideas. A lot of people hit me up. I don't offer the services of coaching and mentoring I did it. I don't want to be responsible for how you go about your business. This was my journey, but I don't have the time to you know, answer all these questions, but for the people that offer that I want to give a shout out to them. So Carla Wilm AR is she has a portal she has PDFs everything that you guys need with this information to start your podcast and how can people check your podcast out and your associate. So if you guys want to listen to a sex-based podcast for colored people it is for us. I'm not going to lie white people would talk about y'all but we it is a safe space for black people wanting to listen to sex dating and relationship conversations. You can catch us every Monday wherever you listen to your favorite platforms horrible decisions.com type in whore, whre we pop up and if you guys want to catch up with everything I have going on you. Check out Mandy b.com. You can hit the Subscribe now and it will introduce you to my newsletter and with my newsletter you guys will be up on my solo podcast that is dropping and that podcast will actually be more mental health base. It's going to me talk about I'm going through going into college as a non-traditional adult. So I didn't go straight out of college. I'm going to talk about growing up in a single-parent household being biracial leaving my corporate job anxiety and it's kind of going to be like a chapter book through my life. So that'll be coming in February. Be wary so if you guys go to many b.com subscribe to that you guys will get the newsletter of everything going on. And yeah, follow me at Full Court pumps on everything. That's my socials full-court pumps. Yes, Max Troy dish out to everybody on patreon.com will are patriots. We have some new ones Taja and Tasha is interesting story. She actually came as a gift from somebody somebody give them a patreon membership. So shouts, IJ and Eliza and James Those are new members and James I think comes in at a tier 4 or 5. So he'll be getting eyl University. He has access to that and that is our weekly school. Really? I heard you not say I say yo my dad got a school. Yes, that is our school three days a week. We are dropping a lot of Education right Monday was we have met that mg. The mortgage guy who talks about different aspects of real estate and Wednesday. We have a guest webinar with some of our alumni and some people who just Experts in their field and Thursday kind of a floating day Rashad and I always do a podcast about something related in business. We don't mean like as a lesson a lesson. I'm sorry. You got webinar webinar night. Also, I know you guys listen to the podcast follow them on Instagram. You guys go live almost every day but live with a lot of just entrepreneurs and alumni and I see a lot of dope and the lives are like a lot really? Yeah. Yeah, it's like so like when we go live is usually like I'll go on our journey Leisure he goes on his page but night I like watching people call in. So it's like it's going to need to come with a function where we have like a particle like we can both be on and we can take it or take guess calls because that's what I really like seeing. I'm like yo somebody called in from London. I'm like, yo, I'm tuned in like I work like wow, he heard us in London somebody calling from South Africa. I'm like, wow, it sounds like a really dope and I appreciate that you guys do that. The reach is crazy here. So shout out everybody. On patreon shoutouts everybody that has been supporting oranges.com and buying a merger obviously see that we have our UIL University as far as apparel on today and we're going to be coming to Atlanta with a lot more of the Peril. Yeah, Selena got it for Atlanta. So anyone who may be listening that's a part of the whore Hive which is what we call those girls school. Yeah belted or Hub. And we're Hive if any of you guys are in Atlanta and are looking to get into any type of Investments or just You know be around me. I'll be there something get your ticket. That's a fact Mandy will be in the building. She actually where I take it before she even became an alumna. Yeah. Well she had yeah, you should be there Sunday. So make sure I'm Tony on time. I just saying is I'm gonna is gonna be crazy two day event 25th 26th. We got all our friends come in everybody's coming out. So if you're in Atlanta man, don't sleep on it, make sure you make sure you pull up on this for sure. I booked it for this week is start with Y great book. We so once again, thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you next week. Peace, please.
Mandii B aka Full Court Pumps is the host of Whoreible Decisions Podcast. Her show ranks in the top 1% of all podcast in regards to listenership. She left her job as an accountant at one of the largest accounting firms in the world last year to become a full-time podcaster when she matched her annual corporate salary from her show in the first 5 months of the year. In episode 56 we teamed up with Mandii to cover one of our most requested topics, how to start and make money from a podcast. Mandii broke down her show’s revenue model step by step and explained how they brought in a quarter-million dollars last year. She explained the touring process, patreon, ads and more. She also gave a look into the politics and inner workings of being on the top podcast network. The World of podcasting has a lot more millionaires to make in the next few years. In this episode we gave all the tools and insight anyone needs to get going. Mandii’s energy is contagious, there are no dull moments in this episode. https://anchor.fm/app  Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/earnyourleisure/support 