Finding each other through similar experiences with grief from the deaths of their brothers to overdose, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs shared an immediate bond, a sense of hope, and a deep motivation to help “make life suck less” for others. From there, the idea of Lemonada Media was born. We sat down with the podcasting network’s CEO and Chief Creative Officer on their personal journeys and what goes into developing multiple top-performing shows.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
We call it the status Meet cute that ever existed.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Hi, I'm Michael Casson. Welcome to Good Company. We're all
explore how marketing, media, entertainment and tech are intersecting, transforming
our lives and the way we do business at a
breakneck speed. I'll be joined by some of the greatest
business minds at strongest leaders who will share how they
built companies from the ground up or transformed them from
the inside out. My bet is you'll pick up a
(00:32):
lesson or two along the way. It's all good. I
want to welcome everybody to Good Company today and tell
you that I'm excited to have the pleasure of speaking
with Lemonada Media CEO and co founder Jessica Cordova Kramer
and the co founder and chief creative Officer Stephanie whittles Wax.
(00:54):
Lemonada is an award winning independent audio first podcast network
with a mission to make life suck less. Holy Schmanoli,
I can't wait to hear more from Jessica and Stephanie.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Welcome guys, Thank you, thank you for having us.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's a pleasure, and you know what attracted me in
our first conversation was the road you've taken to get here,
and it was inspiring to me on a level. And Jess,
I think in that very first conversation you knew you
kind of in my best Renee Zellwagger moment, you had
me at hello when you told me that story. But
(01:31):
I wonder if you could share that story with our
audience about your backgrounds respectively, both professionally and personally. And
you know what were the motivators behind you coming up
with the idea and founding Lemonada.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Well, I'm Jess and in twenty seventeen, I was making
a podcast called pod Seeds of People with Deray as
part of Crook and Media and saving happened, which is
I lost my little brother accidentally too overdose. He had
battled addiction for about a decade and I got the
news nobody wants to get and it completely rocked my world.
On the one hand, and on the other I'm a
(02:09):
mom with two kids. I had a crazy job, a husband,
and a house, and I was trying to put one
foot in front of the other and keep my life together.
Losing Stefano was not something I ever thought I would
have to deal with and as part of my grieving process,
I found this podcast about people dying, and if anyone's
been through grief, it's like the misery loves company or
(02:30):
just being in community is helpful. Hearing other people have
survived things that are similar to what you're dealing with
is helpful. And I saved this episode of this podcast.
The podcast is called Terrible, Thanks for Asking. It's a
fantastic show. I saw the description and it said sister
of a brother who died of a heroin overdose, and
I was like, oh, that sounds like a good podcast
for me to listen to on my birthday, which you know,
(02:52):
these milestones after loss are just awful. First birthday after
losing my little brother, and it was February, it was Minnesota,
where I live. I took a walk, I popped my
earbuds in and I felt myself physically smiling for the
first time because there was this hilarious woman on this
podcast named Stephanie Whittles wax with her mother two Jews,
(03:14):
so freaking funny on the other side of grief two
years after losing their son and their brother, Harris Whittles
to the same illness that killed my brother and Harris
was the person who wrote Parks and rec and Master
of None and was a phenomenal comedian. I didn't know
anything about Stephanie at that moment. All I knew she
was me, She was like me, and she was surviving
(03:34):
and she was funny. I didn't know she was a
world renowned voice actress. I didn't know she was a writer.
I didn't know she was a theater director. I didn't
know we'd gone to NYU together and lived in the
same dorm. There were a million things I didn't know.
But and I'll let her pick up the story from here.
I did reach out to her and say, hey, we're
the same. Can you grab some time and chat, and
under the guise of being a producer at a big
(03:54):
podcast network, she said yes. The end of the story
is that I slowly wore her down and made her
start this company with around our barrel of lemons. But
I'll let her pick up the story from there.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's rare. At that point,
I was a week away from giving birth to my
second child, in no position to be taking calls from strangers,
and yet something about Jess. You know, like she said,
when you hear someone who has lived your exact experience.
You want to commune with them, you want to share
(04:28):
and swap stories. So we got on the phone. We
talked for ninety minutes, and at the very end, she
snuck in, would you ever want to make a podcast
about the opioid's crisis? And I, at this point had
written a book about losing my brother. I'd gone on
a tour about it. I, you know, like her, my
life was truly destroyed by heroin, and I didn't want
(04:49):
to talk about it anymore. I didn't want to think
about it anymore. I didn't want to have anything to
do with it. I hated it, and I wanted to
have the baby and just keep going with my quote
unquote normal life. Fortunately, when these things happen, they shake
you so violently out of your current circumstances. It's almost
like I can't actually go back to the way things
(05:11):
were because I'm completely fundamentally different inside now, and I
tried to ignore the seed that Jess planted in my life.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's definitely I want to interrupt for a second because
I want to just ask a question because you said
something that really resonated with me there, and I don't
want to break your flow, but I want to know.
You know, I remember sticking out to me when Cheryl
Sandberg went through the loss of David, her husband. She
wrote that book Clan b or whatever, which was you know,
that's not what you just said. She said something early on,
(05:40):
which it won't be what it was, it won't be
the same. No, No, it's not going to get back
to normal. It's a new normal. However, she articulated. I
remember that just making sense to me. Yes, you'll go
on with life, but it's not going on the same way.
It's going on a different way. And you were kind
of alluding to that.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
I just no, it's so profound and it's so universal.
In fact, the first essay that I wrote after my
brother died, because this is how I process. I've always
been a writer and a storyteller, it was called the
New Normal. That was the essay. That's what it was called.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Right, And I remember Cheryl saying that. And I happen
to know David well and Cheryl Well, so it was
closer to home when he passed. But that's what i'd remember.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, And you know, these moments, I didn't ask for it.
I didn't want it I honestly, I would have rather
the plan a let's use Cheryl's book title, because it
would have my brother still here, who was, in addition
to being my blood sibling, my best friend, my best friend.
When Jess and I talk about this, it's like we
(06:46):
have lost our history. We've lost our identity as sisters.
We've lost the person who when our mother is driving
us insane. Sorry Mom, if you're listening, I love you.
I can call and say, dude, what is wrong with
this person? Right and no one else in the world.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
We'll do it on a level. Yeah, lost a sibling.
Not under the same circumstances, certainly, but having lost a sibling,
I say, I had the expectation at some point i'd
lose a parent. Yeah, it's different with a sibling.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
It is, it really is, it really is.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
It feels really fundamentally unfair. It feels like this is
not what's supposed to happen. And it's like I used
to say to stuff, like, you know, we had to
put our parents first because they lost their kids, and
she'd be like, you know what, they like get to
pass away. At some point, We're just stuck here, standing
alone with no one to go through life with it's
worse for us. It's worse for us.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
It's we were close with our brothers.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
We were close, has proven when we chatted the very
first time. I could talk about this part of Manada
for hours because the emotional connection is real. But I
want to focus on what that, How that acted? Yeah,
as the motivator for you to you know, to make
life suck less is.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
An yeah, to start a media company. Yes, funny story
there is that. It didn't Michael like, there was this
very organic Jess and I had this true mission to
figure out what we could have done differently to save
our brothers. Right, We were like, yeah, let's get in there,
let's figure it out. And in the doing that, we
were like, hey, life is so hard. This was before
(08:27):
COVID life is so it is hard in so many ways,
not just drugs. What if we really leaned in on
that and made content and community around all of this
stuff that is sucking for people, that is keeping me
awake at night at three am, or waking me up
from a ted sleep at three am panicking about something.
(08:47):
What if we leaned in and really did that with
authenticity and honesty and first person narratives. And you know,
Jess and I are both very driven type A some
might say workaholics, if you will, and when you also
lose the most important person to you and your life
is sort of blown up. And we were just talking
(09:08):
about this. You're forced to go on a different path
because you're no longer who you were. The stakes are
less high in terms of, well, what if the business fails.
Jess and I were both very aligned from the beginning.
If the business fails, that's not the worst thing that
could happen. We've survived the worst thing that could happen.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Yeah, I mean the business side of this story is
we were pitching this show, Last Day, which Stephanie hosts
around It's our flagship show and it's fourth season now,
it's wildly successful. It's just one. It's like eleventh Award
a webbe for Best Documentary. And we were getting back
from people and it's too dark to niche and nothing
(09:45):
we do is too dark. Everything we do, just like
this conversation has humor and levity. The first episode of
Last Day's Sarah Silverman and asase, I'm sorry, it's funny.
It's funny even though we're talking about death. And sad things.
We're making it palatable. And we said to ourselves, Man,
no one's going to take the show because no one
gets it. Let's just do it ourselves. Like I had
been at Crooked Stuff, had run her own theater. We
(10:07):
had a whole bunch of other things on our resumes
that made us potential entrepreneurs. Neither of us had ever
run a venture backed media company, but we had nothing
to lose, so we decided we would create an entire network.
We went to market with all this data around how
miserable people were. In twenty nineteen when we launched, something
like forty four percent of people reported feeling extremely lonely
(10:30):
pre pandemic. Interestingly enough, pre pandemic, pre pandemic. Right and
Last Day launched, and we did it really with our
own fash and we created a very small, mostly contractor
based network and didn't pay ourselves in the beginning. We
got that show out, it was huge from the start,
and then the pandemic hit and all of a sudden,
(10:52):
a company that was about making life suck less and
helping people get out of bed in the morning with
non political, brand, safe, thoughtful content that near the human
experience and tried to make a little bit better, a
lot of sense, and that is sort of how we
went from a tragedy to an idea to We now
have thirty seven original podcasts under our belt. We'll have
(11:13):
about forty five by the end of the year.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
And I think today is kind of a milestone for
us to be having this conversation because I did some
homework occasionally I do, and I noted that between blind
plea and Wiser than Me, you have the number one
and the number five podcast right now as we speak,
So thank you. So those of you who are listening
(11:35):
to us, as soon as you're done listening to us,
you know where you need to go. But talk about that,
because that's a pretty interesting statistic to lay down at
the start of a conversation about Lemonada, to be number
one and number five. You know, I'm curious who's two, three,
and four, But I like the number one position.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah. I just told Jess this morning. I went to
lunch with my family yesterday and I have a nine
year old and a five year old. I told just
the five year old could care less. What I have
to say is in another world altogether. My nine year old,
who was planted on Earth was having a conversation and saying, Mom,
that's so cool. You know you have two shows in
(12:13):
the top ten. Wow, And I said, it is so cool.
And also please note that these shows were number thirty
six and thirty seven. There are thirty five before this
that did not hit number one. It has taken us
five years to get to the point where we have
enough experience and failures and you know, data to sort
(12:35):
of pull from and tweaking and sustaining those moments where
you want to throw in the towel and you know,
just say forget it.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
You know, the story from a Hollywood perspective, when Larry
Tish bought CBS years and years and years ago for
a hot minute. The Tish family owned CBS and it
was pilot season and the development executives came in to
see him and said, mister Tish, we just want to
let you know that we've got twenty eight pilots that
we're going to put up, but the likelihood is only
(13:04):
one or two of them will see the light of day.
And he said, well, good, just make those two right,
if only.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Right, exactly exactly. It's so meaningful to get here, I
think because we know what it has taken to get
here and how much strategy and blood, sweat and tears
you know, have gone into it.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah. One of our executive producers is Sabrina mirage On.
She's helped finance Blindly, which is our number one show
right now, and the range of these two shows I'll
talk about in the seconds. We do a lot of
different kinds of shows. But Sabrina texted me this morning
and was like, what are the tricks? How did you
get the show to number one? It's like I was like, literally,
no tricks, Michael, there's no tricks.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
One of the things that I have asked content media
executives over the last several years is, back in the day,
these things were done by your gut. Those who've got
a good gut generally picked and whatever. But now that
you have data, what's the level of relying on your
gut and what's the level of you know, modifying your
gut with data and what leads if you're making a
(14:13):
decision on you know, what's the trajectory of that show?
Do I think you know what are the criteria and
you know, are you using that data to help make
those decisions or are you using your gut that says
I think this is a good story. I think this
is in line with our ethos of you know, make
life suck less. And you know what, say you yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
I mean there's always a level of instinct that comes
with us, and anyone who tries to algorithms their way
to hit shows exclusively is going to be very sad
when things don't work out. So there's there's.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
A lot about AI coming because what you just said is, yeah,
you still need the human touch.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
You still need a human touch, and you need it
at every level. So what I always say to people
is it's a million little things done well, even if
the show doesn't hit number one, even if it's you know,
just a successful series. But we do have an algorithm.
We call it the lemanat a scorecard, and some audiences
we call it moneyball for podcasting. But it helps us
understand what elements of a show consistently make it more
(15:12):
likely to be a hit series or a mega hit
in some cases. And you know, we're not going to
share the details and proprietary, but it's so it's so obvious,
it's just hard to do. It's like, if there's a host,
is the host going to hustle. Are they in it?
Is this their priority? Is their white space? Is this
something that fifty other people are doing, or is it
solving a unique issue that people really need solved for them?
(15:35):
Lots of people. So there's things like that that we'll
sort of look at and we hone it every single
year with our new shows that have launched to help,
you know, inform our understanding. But in the end, there's
a million things that Stephanie's team on the production side
and creative side and new content development side, and my
team on the marketing and more operational and business side
(15:55):
are doing altogether arms linked to help each show thrive
in its own way. And for us, the brand is
make Life Suckless, and really there's a million things that
can fall into that. So for these two examples. With
Blind Flea, we've got a series that is told in
the true crime fashion but is really about criminalized survival,
black women in the justice system, and generational trauma. And
(16:16):
we want people to learn about those things, but we
want to reach millions of people, not small numbers of people.
So we create something.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Blind coming from Justice is blind. I presume it's actually.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Called blind Plea because there's a thing that nobody knows
about called blind Please, where prosecutors and judges give defendants
a choice between going to trial or taking a plea
deal that they don't know the sentence.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
For got it, so that's why. So I didn't do
it work, so I wouldn't know that.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, Well, lots of lawyers don't know about it anyway,
like it's very rare. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
And then on the other side, we have Julia Louis
Dreyfus's show Or the Knee, which sat at number one
for a month straight and is still in the top
five podcasts, and is a show where she's no step
Why don't you tell about the show?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah? She Julia had a really clear vision for this,
which is that we don't hear from older women in
our country. We throw them away. You know, they're sort
of tropes, and you know, we're ignoring the wisdom of
half the population. Julia said, I want to get knowledge
from the front lines. I want to know how they
did it, how we can nail this life thing right.
(17:31):
And we helped her bring that vision into a concrete
show that people are just absolutely raving about. At the
end of every episode, she calls her mother. They download
about it. The conversations are just absolutely riveting. It's like
the stuff, the stories, the pearls that you will never
get by googling, you will never write. And when you
think about somebody like Jane Fonda, who's been interviewed a
(17:52):
billion times that's an official stat. We're hearing and learning
things in this show that she's never said before.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Marvelous storyteller.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I mean Sam with Julia, Yeah, but it's I mean
to your question, though, I think the gut part really
has to come in in the beginning, right when you
see that sort of kernel of an idea and you say,
like this is something, there is a gut instinct around that.
And then there's obviously when you get into the making
of the show that is an incredibly arduous process. I mean,
(18:23):
I think the first episode of Blind Plea has gone
through over thirty revisions, right. The script says V thirty five, right,
because we are honing and honing and honing and an
Ai can't do that. That is what is the pacing?
How is this affecting me? What is the sort of
visceral experience of the audience that takes such a fine
paintbrush to sort of get those details. And so, you know,
(18:46):
I think we are having a really nice mix of
data and gut instinct and those are working in relationship
all the time.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
So let me ask you a question. Over the past year,
and obviously you launched in nineteen, I guess I came
up with something. You know, we talk about BC and AD,
I guess we have to be talking about BP and PP,
you know, pre pandemic or PP and PP. Yeah, pre
pandemic and POST or before pandemic, most pandemic. I don't
(19:14):
know where we got it.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
We got it. We got it PP and and and
PEP PEP.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yeah. Okay, but you started in the BP. Over this
last year, as we're on the PP of it all,
is there any surprising content development that you know, nobody
would have expected that X would happen? I mean, you know,
I was chatting with somebody this morning who is a
famous creator, and he was talking about the fact that,
(19:42):
you know, one particular show that got buried nobody thought
would happen, and I just read it. It was just
how somebody had turned down you know, it's legendary in Hollywood.
This studio turned down this and it becomes the biggest
hit in the world. So was there anything surprising this
year that you went, boy, I didn't expect that, either
(20:02):
within your stable or in the market in general, where
it was a standback and whoa kind of a moment
for you. Was there anything you saw in content development
that made you stand back and go WHOA.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'll speak for myself. I see jess as still thinking,
So I know when she's thinking. You know when your
business partner, my god, I like every single facial expression.
I know, it's like she haunts my Steph Waltz.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
It is when you can have nonverbal communication with your
business partner, or your life partner or just close friends,
that's a magical moment because you, first of all, it's
an advantage is the two communicating and I had no idea,
So that's number one. And you knew exactly what each
one was thinking, which is you know, one for you
(20:49):
and a portion look out here saying what did that mean?
Go ahead?
Speaker 2 (20:54):
No, it's true though, I mean that is that is
This bond between the two of us is uh pretty amazing.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
It is.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It is probably the most intense relationship I've ever had,
and I'm married for a long time, but the relationship
with your partner is really something.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Well, I can tell you that because you know recently
Media Link not recently anymore. A year and a half ago,
I bought Media Link back from the company. I sold
the two and we partnered with United Talent Agencies. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And someone said to me the other night we were
out to dinner, and they said, so, Michael, it's a
year and a half. How's it working out with Uta?
I said, what, it's about an eight out of ten?
They said, only eight out of ten? And my wife
was there and I said, well, let's be clear. I said,
we've been married for forty nine years and that's only
an eight out of ten?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Yeah, what are we what are we going for here?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Perfection? I said? Relaxed. I said, relax, honey, I'm the eight.
You're the ten. Wait?
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Nice, waited, very nice?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Good safe, that's very nice.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
You're still married. Good, good job, Way to go. So
I think what was surprising to me is that, you know,
Julia's show is wonderful. It is wonderful. She is an
absolute delight. I mean like being in a room with
her is just a form of pure joy. To hear
(22:16):
her laugh. It really does lift the spirits in a
way that is singular. However, at the end of the day,
this is a show with two people sitting down and
having a conversation, right, That is like the crux of
that is why the art Forum was invented. Like people
in a room behind two microphones just chatting, right, And
(22:36):
yet like this still has the potential to have this
much power. Right, I think that the idea that I
think we feel like as creators, we've got to keep
doing it more and better and bigger, and keep surpassing
all the things we've already done and throwing more bells
and more whistles. And really, at the end of the day,
what we had was a tremendously hard working, charismatic host
(22:58):
who prepped her butt off for each of these conversations,
who became a true expert in the person she was
interviewing over the course of many prep sessions, and then
sat down and had this beautiful exchange. And the audience
is like weeping and loving it and sharing it. And
it's like this power of just two people connecting that
is so simple and not complicated whatsoever. And I think
(23:23):
I was I mean, I knew it was going to
do well I knew the show was going to do well.
I don't think I understood that it would do as
well as it did.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
I think it's breaking like every podcast record that has
ever existed in terms of downloads and yeah, yeah, and
it is like it's an interview show. But to continue
to answer your question, Michael, I think if you zoom out,
what's happening is that people are extremely tired of how
difficult life is. We all just live through a pandemic.
A lot of people died during that time. Some of
(23:53):
them died of COVID, some of them died of other things.
A lot of bad things happened. It was terrifying. We've
been through some traumatic political times in our country, and
I think if you're seeing stuff that's really working, Apple
TV has Ted Lasso. I'm just watching somewhere somebody on HBO,
(24:14):
Tig Nataro, just came on one of our shows and
talked to stuff about just how much people's personal experiences
are permeating comedy.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Now.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
John Mulaney's stand up is to Die For literally one
of the best things I've ever seen in my life.
People are willing to experience and understand through story other
people's pain so blindly is a story about a black
woman in Alabama who doesn't get justice even though she
deserved it. And people want to hear about that too.
Like if you package it in a way that is
(24:43):
helpful to people and healing to them, then that is
what people are consuming right now. They are just desperately
wanting that.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Am I just taking away sadness? Or am I taking
away lessons?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:54):
And lessons are better than sadness. But sadness is okay too,
because sadness. You know, I was taught by my grandmother
in relationships, one must go through four seasons, you know, summer, winter, spring,
and falls. It's called life. So you're going to have
those moments of sadness, You're going to have those moments
of cloudiness, You're going to have those moments of sunshine,
(25:16):
and so shining a light on them, you know, I
looked at the pandemic in an interesting way, I said,
trying to use humor for a not funny circumstance, but
the idea of other than that, Missus Lincoln, how was
the play? You know, put most of what went on
during the pandemic and the other than that bucket? And
(25:36):
you looked at them some of the magic. Again, it's
hard to use the word magic when so many, you know,
tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people were going
through devastation, and yet we were able to fortunately have
some magic that came out of that. And sometimes you
feel guilty for saying that, because you say, gee, how
(25:56):
can I have had a good circumstance when everyone else
was suffering? And you know that's not thoughtful either, But
yet I look at that moment and say, yeah, they
were really depressing times. And yes, the kids who got
cheated out of graduations and senior years and education and
all of those things. Forget the obvious devastation. Hard to
(26:16):
replace that, but the experiences that we all had, those
of us who were more fortunate to not go through
direct trauma. You know, we did lose some friends, but mostly,
to be honest, parents of our friends, you know, elderly,
so it wasn't We didn't get many direct COVID hits,
(26:37):
although crazy as it is, we did more recently. But
where I'm going is, even in the in the darkness,
you can make life suck less by lesson on that dot.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
That's exactly the space we live in. Constantly like there
is such beauty and magic that has come out of
like the most profound sorrow and tragedy that she and
I have experienced, but finding each other and building this thing.
You know, Lemonada would not exist if there had not
(27:08):
been trauma before that. So there's this constant feeling of
like I've gotten something really meaningful out of this because
I have to. How else am I going to go
on if I don't?
Speaker 3 (27:19):
What's next for Lemonada? Guys?
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Boy? Yeah, I mean, now.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
What are we going to be talking about?
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Well, I mean let's let's let's figure out what's happening
with this financial situation in this country. But right now
we're holding steady. The thing about Make Life Sucklesses brands
are like, yes, where do I how do we? Let's
do this? Like this is exactly what people you know,
if you if you're a person who created a meal kid,
or you're a person who runs a huge health company,
like that's exactly what you're trying to do too as
(27:49):
an entrepreneur or as a runner of a Fortune five company.
So it is really awesome to be able to grow
and align like beyond just the talent side, which is
incredible and talent's coming to us now. It's like, if
you've built a career in comedy or in writing or
in any other space, you want to trust the podcast
(28:10):
network you're working with to care about your career too.
So we're building this beautiful thing, and our plan for
twenty twenty four is household name. That's our sort of
north star is we want someone. We want someone to
walk into your kitchen and be like, I'm listening to
a Lemanada podcast and the other person be like, oh,
which one, and to know exactly what that means, and
to find some sense of solidarity with that person, like,
(28:32):
oh I listened to this. Do you listen to this?
I'm listening to it when I'm taking a walk because
I can make my mental list of how to make
my life better or oh my god, it's a riveting
story and I did all these things as a result
of it. So that's our sort of north star at
the moment. And our team is really aligned, our producers,
our marketing team, everyone around that goal. It's a really
mission aligned organization. That is one of our core values.
(28:54):
So growth in a way that is actually helpful to people,
I would say, is what we're aiming for right now.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And what about the opportunities for those podcasts to be
reimagined in video and another I mean, how do you
look at that as a potential? Not next step, but
you know, ancillary step.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
We've always been audio first. We said from the beginning, like,
we are going to do the thing that we know
how to do best. And you know, if Jess and
I the first week we ever met, the first weekend
we ever met, her husband and her came down to Texas,
where I lived at the time. I now live in California.
A pandemic move, Thank you pandemic. Speaking of the magic Michael,
(29:35):
I never would have left Texas had it not been
for the pandemic. But anyway, they came down and we met,
and we did We took out a big giant white
post it and did the Simon Sinek, What is the why? Right?
Why are we doing this? And the inner circle of
our why is to make the hard a little easier?
That was what we wanted to do, and now we've
turned that into make life suckless, which is much catchier
(29:57):
in my opinion. And so the sort of next of
that was by making podcasts. How are we going to
do that by making podcasts. The next part of that
is to get it into more eyes and ears. So obviously,
if our content can hit more people on a greater
sort of more massive scale, we are all in for that.
But it's you know, it's not life changing in terms
(30:18):
of like the the financial profit you're going to make,
like you know, from optioning a script or something like that,
or optioning an idea, But there is that potential of
getting eyes and ears on more of our of our work,
which is always our goal, right, that's part of the
household name aspect of our of our goal, of our strategy.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Yeah, and we have we have some stuff out there
we own and control most of our ip or co
own it with our talent. So when it makes sense
when we're working with there's like producers out there, writers
who just see the world the way we see it
and want to make mass market TV shows, film scripted
unscripted that near the experiences we've created on the podcast,
we're down well.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
You know, in the spirit of time, I want to say,
first of all, thank you because this has been for me,
you know, forty five minutes of really kind of making
life suck less, and I can't take that. You own it,
but you certainly done that for me, and I hope
for our listeners today because just listening to your stories
(31:19):
and the serendipity, really, I'm sure that's probably too lively
a word for going through what you went through and
what brought you together. And I always look at those
things is what brought people together, the sliding doors aspect
of that. If you both didn't have that moment in
your life, you wouldn't be together and Lemonada wouldn't be here.
So I'm a fatalist that way. That was a little
(31:42):
movie that a lot of people didn't see, but it
kind of transcend. Yeah, a little movie tell of having
asked my wife out on our first date and she
didn't respond, and then on that Friday she never responded,
and the likelihood was zero that I would ever called
her again. And I mean she took the call, she said,
(32:02):
I don't know, I may be going out of town,
and then never called me. And on that Friday afternoon,
we were crossing the street and literally ran into each
other in the middle of the street and I looked
at her and I'd only seen her for five minutes before,
but I looked at her and I said, well, I
guess you didn't go out of town and she said
so embarrassed, she said, I can go out. If we
(32:23):
didn't run into each other in the middle of the street,
I wouldn't be sitting here. So I'm a big believer
in that. And guys had a sliding door moment on
something horrible, but that's how life works.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
We call it the saddest meet cute that ever existed.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Is our story, correct, you know, Jessica and Stephanie. I
want to really thank you for taking the time today.
As I said, you made my life suck less and
I'm certain our listeners will share that. Thank you for
joining me on Good Company, and thank you for bringing
Lemonada to the world.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Michael, thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I'm Michael Casson. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
A Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio. A special
thanks to Lena Peterson, chief brand Officer and Managing Director
of Media Link for her vision on Good Company, and
to Jen Sealey, Vice President Marketing Communications of media Link
for programming amazing talent and content
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
We call it the status Meet cute that ever existed.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Hi, I'm Michael Casson. Welcome to Good Company. We're all
explore how marketing, media, entertainment and tech are intersecting, transforming
our lives and the way we do business at a
breakneck speed. I'll be joined by some of the greatest
business minds at strongest leaders who will share how they
built companies from the ground up or transformed them from
the inside out. My bet is you'll pick up a
(00:32):
lesson or two along the way. It's all good. I
want to welcome everybody to Good Company today and tell
you that I'm excited to have the pleasure of speaking
with Lemonada Media CEO and co founder Jessica Cordova Kramer
and the co founder and chief creative Officer Stephanie whittles Wax.
(00:54):
Lemonada is an award winning independent audio first podcast network
with a mission to make life suck less. Holy Schmanoli,
I can't wait to hear more from Jessica and Stephanie.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Welcome guys, Thank you, thank you for having us.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's a pleasure, and you know what attracted me in
our first conversation was the road you've taken to get here,
and it was inspiring to me on a level. And Jess,
I think in that very first conversation you knew you
kind of in my best Renee Zellwagger moment, you had
me at hello when you told me that story. But
(01:31):
I wonder if you could share that story with our
audience about your backgrounds respectively, both professionally and personally. And
you know what were the motivators behind you coming up
with the idea and founding Lemonada.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Well, I'm Jess and in twenty seventeen, I was making
a podcast called pod Seeds of People with Deray as
part of Crook and Media and saving happened, which is
I lost my little brother accidentally too overdose. He had
battled addiction for about a decade and I got the
news nobody wants to get and it completely rocked my world.
On the one hand, and on the other I'm a
(02:09):
mom with two kids. I had a crazy job, a husband,
and a house, and I was trying to put one
foot in front of the other and keep my life together.
Losing Stefano was not something I ever thought I would
have to deal with and as part of my grieving process,
I found this podcast about people dying, and if anyone's
been through grief, it's like the misery loves company or
(02:30):
just being in community is helpful. Hearing other people have
survived things that are similar to what you're dealing with
is helpful. And I saved this episode of this podcast.
The podcast is called Terrible, Thanks for Asking. It's a
fantastic show. I saw the description and it said sister
of a brother who died of a heroin overdose, and
I was like, oh, that sounds like a good podcast
for me to listen to on my birthday, which you know,
(02:52):
these milestones after loss are just awful. First birthday after
losing my little brother, and it was February, it was Minnesota,
where I live. I took a walk, I popped my
earbuds in and I felt myself physically smiling for the
first time because there was this hilarious woman on this
podcast named Stephanie Whittles wax with her mother two Jews,
(03:14):
so freaking funny on the other side of grief two
years after losing their son and their brother, Harris Whittles
to the same illness that killed my brother and Harris
was the person who wrote Parks and rec and Master
of None and was a phenomenal comedian. I didn't know
anything about Stephanie at that moment. All I knew she
was me, She was like me, and she was surviving
(03:34):
and she was funny. I didn't know she was a
world renowned voice actress. I didn't know she was a writer.
I didn't know she was a theater director. I didn't
know we'd gone to NYU together and lived in the
same dorm. There were a million things I didn't know.
But and I'll let her pick up the story from here.
I did reach out to her and say, hey, we're
the same. Can you grab some time and chat, and
under the guise of being a producer at a big
(03:54):
podcast network, she said yes. The end of the story
is that I slowly wore her down and made her
start this company with around our barrel of lemons. But
I'll let her pick up the story from there.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's rare. At that point,
I was a week away from giving birth to my
second child, in no position to be taking calls from strangers,
and yet something about Jess. You know, like she said,
when you hear someone who has lived your exact experience.
You want to commune with them, you want to share
(04:28):
and swap stories. So we got on the phone. We
talked for ninety minutes, and at the very end, she
snuck in, would you ever want to make a podcast
about the opioid's crisis? And I, at this point had
written a book about losing my brother. I'd gone on
a tour about it. I, you know, like her, my
life was truly destroyed by heroin, and I didn't want
(04:49):
to talk about it anymore. I didn't want to think
about it anymore. I didn't want to have anything to
do with it. I hated it, and I wanted to
have the baby and just keep going with my quote
unquote normal life. Fortunately, when these things happen, they shake
you so violently out of your current circumstances. It's almost
like I can't actually go back to the way things
(05:11):
were because I'm completely fundamentally different inside now, and I
tried to ignore the seed that Jess planted in my life.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's definitely I want to interrupt for a second because
I want to just ask a question because you said
something that really resonated with me there, and I don't
want to break your flow, but I want to know.
You know, I remember sticking out to me when Cheryl
Sandberg went through the loss of David, her husband. She
wrote that book Clan b or whatever, which was you know,
that's not what you just said. She said something early on,
(05:40):
which it won't be what it was, it won't be
the same. No, No, it's not going to get back
to normal. It's a new normal. However, she articulated. I
remember that just making sense to me. Yes, you'll go
on with life, but it's not going on the same way.
It's going on a different way. And you were kind
of alluding to that.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
I just no, it's so profound and it's so universal.
In fact, the first essay that I wrote after my
brother died, because this is how I process. I've always
been a writer and a storyteller, it was called the
New Normal. That was the essay. That's what it was called.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Right, And I remember Cheryl saying that. And I happen
to know David well and Cheryl Well, so it was
closer to home when he passed. But that's what i'd remember.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, And you know, these moments, I didn't ask for it.
I didn't want it I honestly, I would have rather
the plan a let's use Cheryl's book title, because it
would have my brother still here, who was, in addition
to being my blood sibling, my best friend, my best friend.
When Jess and I talk about this, it's like we
(06:46):
have lost our history. We've lost our identity as sisters.
We've lost the person who when our mother is driving
us insane. Sorry Mom, if you're listening, I love you.
I can call and say, dude, what is wrong with
this person? Right and no one else in the world.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
We'll do it on a level. Yeah, lost a sibling.
Not under the same circumstances, certainly, but having lost a sibling,
I say, I had the expectation at some point i'd
lose a parent. Yeah, it's different with a sibling.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
It is, it really is, it really is.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
It feels really fundamentally unfair. It feels like this is
not what's supposed to happen. And it's like I used
to say to stuff, like, you know, we had to
put our parents first because they lost their kids, and
she'd be like, you know what, they like get to
pass away. At some point, We're just stuck here, standing
alone with no one to go through life with it's
worse for us. It's worse for us.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
It's we were close with our brothers.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
We were close, has proven when we chatted the very
first time. I could talk about this part of Manada
for hours because the emotional connection is real. But I
want to focus on what that, How that acted? Yeah,
as the motivator for you to you know, to make
life suck less is.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
An yeah, to start a media company. Yes, funny story
there is that. It didn't Michael like, there was this
very organic Jess and I had this true mission to
figure out what we could have done differently to save
our brothers. Right, We were like, yeah, let's get in there,
let's figure it out. And in the doing that, we
were like, hey, life is so hard. This was before
(08:27):
COVID life is so it is hard in so many ways,
not just drugs. What if we really leaned in on
that and made content and community around all of this
stuff that is sucking for people, that is keeping me
awake at night at three am, or waking me up
from a ted sleep at three am panicking about something.
(08:47):
What if we leaned in and really did that with
authenticity and honesty and first person narratives. And you know,
Jess and I are both very driven type A some
might say workaholics, if you will, and when you also
lose the most important person to you and your life
is sort of blown up. And we were just talking
(09:08):
about this. You're forced to go on a different path
because you're no longer who you were. The stakes are
less high in terms of, well, what if the business fails.
Jess and I were both very aligned from the beginning.
If the business fails, that's not the worst thing that
could happen. We've survived the worst thing that could happen.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Yeah, I mean the business side of this story is
we were pitching this show, Last Day, which Stephanie hosts
around It's our flagship show and it's fourth season now,
it's wildly successful. It's just one. It's like eleventh Award
a webbe for Best Documentary. And we were getting back
from people and it's too dark to niche and nothing
(09:45):
we do is too dark. Everything we do, just like
this conversation has humor and levity. The first episode of
Last Day's Sarah Silverman and asase, I'm sorry, it's funny.
It's funny even though we're talking about death. And sad things.
We're making it palatable. And we said to ourselves, Man,
no one's going to take the show because no one
gets it. Let's just do it ourselves. Like I had
been at Crooked Stuff, had run her own theater. We
(10:07):
had a whole bunch of other things on our resumes
that made us potential entrepreneurs. Neither of us had ever
run a venture backed media company, but we had nothing
to lose, so we decided we would create an entire network.
We went to market with all this data around how
miserable people were. In twenty nineteen when we launched, something
like forty four percent of people reported feeling extremely lonely
(10:30):
pre pandemic. Interestingly enough, pre pandemic, pre pandemic. Right and
Last Day launched, and we did it really with our
own fash and we created a very small, mostly contractor
based network and didn't pay ourselves in the beginning. We
got that show out, it was huge from the start,
and then the pandemic hit and all of a sudden,
(10:52):
a company that was about making life suck less and
helping people get out of bed in the morning with
non political, brand, safe, thoughtful content that near the human
experience and tried to make a little bit better, a
lot of sense, and that is sort of how we
went from a tragedy to an idea to We now
have thirty seven original podcasts under our belt. We'll have
(11:13):
about forty five by the end of the year.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
And I think today is kind of a milestone for
us to be having this conversation because I did some
homework occasionally I do, and I noted that between blind
plea and Wiser than Me, you have the number one
and the number five podcast right now as we speak,
So thank you. So those of you who are listening
(11:35):
to us, as soon as you're done listening to us,
you know where you need to go. But talk about that,
because that's a pretty interesting statistic to lay down at
the start of a conversation about Lemonada, to be number
one and number five. You know, I'm curious who's two, three,
and four, But I like the number one position.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah. I just told Jess this morning. I went to
lunch with my family yesterday and I have a nine
year old and a five year old. I told just
the five year old could care less. What I have
to say is in another world altogether. My nine year old,
who was planted on Earth was having a conversation and saying, Mom,
that's so cool. You know you have two shows in
(12:13):
the top ten. Wow, And I said, it is so cool.
And also please note that these shows were number thirty
six and thirty seven. There are thirty five before this
that did not hit number one. It has taken us
five years to get to the point where we have
enough experience and failures and you know, data to sort
(12:35):
of pull from and tweaking and sustaining those moments where
you want to throw in the towel and you know,
just say forget it.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
You know, the story from a Hollywood perspective, when Larry
Tish bought CBS years and years and years ago for
a hot minute. The Tish family owned CBS and it
was pilot season and the development executives came in to
see him and said, mister Tish, we just want to
let you know that we've got twenty eight pilots that
we're going to put up, but the likelihood is only
(13:04):
one or two of them will see the light of day.
And he said, well, good, just make those two right,
if only.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Right, exactly exactly. It's so meaningful to get here, I
think because we know what it has taken to get
here and how much strategy and blood, sweat and tears
you know, have gone into it.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah. One of our executive producers is Sabrina mirage On.
She's helped finance Blindly, which is our number one show
right now, and the range of these two shows I'll
talk about in the seconds. We do a lot of
different kinds of shows. But Sabrina texted me this morning
and was like, what are the tricks? How did you
get the show to number one? It's like I was like, literally,
no tricks, Michael, there's no tricks.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
One of the things that I have asked content media
executives over the last several years is, back in the day,
these things were done by your gut. Those who've got
a good gut generally picked and whatever. But now that
you have data, what's the level of relying on your
gut and what's the level of you know, modifying your
gut with data and what leads if you're making a
(14:13):
decision on you know, what's the trajectory of that show?
Do I think you know what are the criteria and
you know, are you using that data to help make
those decisions or are you using your gut that says
I think this is a good story. I think this
is in line with our ethos of you know, make
life suck less. And you know what, say you yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
I mean there's always a level of instinct that comes
with us, and anyone who tries to algorithms their way
to hit shows exclusively is going to be very sad
when things don't work out. So there's there's.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
A lot about AI coming because what you just said is, yeah,
you still need the human touch.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
You still need a human touch, and you need it
at every level. So what I always say to people
is it's a million little things done well, even if
the show doesn't hit number one, even if it's you know,
just a successful series. But we do have an algorithm.
We call it the lemanat a scorecard, and some audiences
we call it moneyball for podcasting. But it helps us
understand what elements of a show consistently make it more
(15:12):
likely to be a hit series or a mega hit
in some cases. And you know, we're not going to
share the details and proprietary, but it's so it's so obvious,
it's just hard to do. It's like, if there's a host,
is the host going to hustle. Are they in it?
Is this their priority? Is their white space? Is this
something that fifty other people are doing, or is it
solving a unique issue that people really need solved for them?
(15:35):
Lots of people. So there's things like that that we'll
sort of look at and we hone it every single
year with our new shows that have launched to help,
you know, inform our understanding. But in the end, there's
a million things that Stephanie's team on the production side
and creative side and new content development side, and my
team on the marketing and more operational and business side
(15:55):
are doing altogether arms linked to help each show thrive
in its own way. And for us, the brand is
make Life Suckless, and really there's a million things that
can fall into that. So for these two examples. With
Blind Flea, we've got a series that is told in
the true crime fashion but is really about criminalized survival,
black women in the justice system, and generational trauma. And
(16:16):
we want people to learn about those things, but we
want to reach millions of people, not small numbers of people.
So we create something.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Blind coming from Justice is blind. I presume it's actually.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Called blind Plea because there's a thing that nobody knows
about called blind Please, where prosecutors and judges give defendants
a choice between going to trial or taking a plea
deal that they don't know the sentence.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
For got it, so that's why. So I didn't do
it work, so I wouldn't know that.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, Well, lots of lawyers don't know about it anyway,
like it's very rare. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
And then on the other side, we have Julia Louis
Dreyfus's show Or the Knee, which sat at number one
for a month straight and is still in the top
five podcasts, and is a show where she's no step
Why don't you tell about the show?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah? She Julia had a really clear vision for this,
which is that we don't hear from older women in
our country. We throw them away. You know, they're sort
of tropes, and you know, we're ignoring the wisdom of
half the population. Julia said, I want to get knowledge
from the front lines. I want to know how they
did it, how we can nail this life thing right.
(17:31):
And we helped her bring that vision into a concrete
show that people are just absolutely raving about. At the
end of every episode, she calls her mother. They download
about it. The conversations are just absolutely riveting. It's like
the stuff, the stories, the pearls that you will never
get by googling, you will never write. And when you
think about somebody like Jane Fonda, who's been interviewed a
(17:52):
billion times that's an official stat. We're hearing and learning
things in this show that she's never said before.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Marvelous storyteller.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I mean Sam with Julia, Yeah, but it's I mean
to your question, though, I think the gut part really
has to come in in the beginning, right when you
see that sort of kernel of an idea and you say,
like this is something, there is a gut instinct around that.
And then there's obviously when you get into the making
of the show that is an incredibly arduous process. I mean,
(18:23):
I think the first episode of Blind Plea has gone
through over thirty revisions, right. The script says V thirty five, right,
because we are honing and honing and honing and an
Ai can't do that. That is what is the pacing?
How is this affecting me? What is the sort of
visceral experience of the audience that takes such a fine
paintbrush to sort of get those details. And so, you know,
(18:46):
I think we are having a really nice mix of
data and gut instinct and those are working in relationship
all the time.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
So let me ask you a question. Over the past year,
and obviously you launched in nineteen, I guess I came
up with something. You know, we talk about BC and AD,
I guess we have to be talking about BP and PP,
you know, pre pandemic or PP and PP. Yeah, pre
pandemic and POST or before pandemic, most pandemic. I don't
(19:14):
know where we got it.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
We got it. We got it PP and and and
PEP PEP.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yeah. Okay, but you started in the BP. Over this
last year, as we're on the PP of it all,
is there any surprising content development that you know, nobody
would have expected that X would happen? I mean, you know,
I was chatting with somebody this morning who is a
famous creator, and he was talking about the fact that,
(19:42):
you know, one particular show that got buried nobody thought
would happen, and I just read it. It was just
how somebody had turned down you know, it's legendary in Hollywood.
This studio turned down this and it becomes the biggest
hit in the world. So was there anything surprising this
year that you went, boy, I didn't expect that, either
(20:02):
within your stable or in the market in general, where
it was a standback and whoa kind of a moment
for you. Was there anything you saw in content development
that made you stand back and go WHOA.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'll speak for myself. I see jess as still thinking,
So I know when she's thinking. You know when your
business partner, my god, I like every single facial expression.
I know, it's like she haunts my Steph Waltz.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
It is when you can have nonverbal communication with your
business partner, or your life partner or just close friends,
that's a magical moment because you, first of all, it's
an advantage is the two communicating and I had no idea,
So that's number one. And you knew exactly what each
one was thinking, which is you know, one for you
(20:49):
and a portion look out here saying what did that mean?
Go ahead?
Speaker 2 (20:54):
No, it's true though, I mean that is that is
This bond between the two of us is uh pretty amazing.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
It is.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It is probably the most intense relationship I've ever had,
and I'm married for a long time, but the relationship
with your partner is really something.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Well, I can tell you that because you know recently
Media Link not recently anymore. A year and a half ago,
I bought Media Link back from the company. I sold
the two and we partnered with United Talent Agencies. You know.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And someone said to me the other night we were
out to dinner, and they said, so, Michael, it's a
year and a half. How's it working out with Uta?
I said, what, it's about an eight out of ten?
They said, only eight out of ten? And my wife
was there and I said, well, let's be clear. I said,
we've been married for forty nine years and that's only
an eight out of ten?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Yeah, what are we what are we going for here?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Perfection? I said? Relaxed. I said, relax, honey, I'm the eight.
You're the ten. Wait?
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Nice, waited, very nice?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Good safe, that's very nice.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
You're still married. Good, good job, Way to go. So
I think what was surprising to me is that, you know,
Julia's show is wonderful. It is wonderful. She is an
absolute delight. I mean like being in a room with
her is just a form of pure joy. To hear
(22:16):
her laugh. It really does lift the spirits in a
way that is singular. However, at the end of the day,
this is a show with two people sitting down and
having a conversation, right, That is like the crux of
that is why the art Forum was invented. Like people
in a room behind two microphones just chatting, right, And
(22:36):
yet like this still has the potential to have this
much power. Right, I think that the idea that I
think we feel like as creators, we've got to keep
doing it more and better and bigger, and keep surpassing
all the things we've already done and throwing more bells
and more whistles. And really, at the end of the day,
what we had was a tremendously hard working, charismatic host
(22:58):
who prepped her butt off for each of these conversations,
who became a true expert in the person she was
interviewing over the course of many prep sessions, and then
sat down and had this beautiful exchange. And the audience
is like weeping and loving it and sharing it. And
it's like this power of just two people connecting that
is so simple and not complicated whatsoever. And I think
(23:23):
I was I mean, I knew it was going to
do well I knew the show was going to do well.
I don't think I understood that it would do as
well as it did.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
I think it's breaking like every podcast record that has
ever existed in terms of downloads and yeah, yeah, and
it is like it's an interview show. But to continue
to answer your question, Michael, I think if you zoom out,
what's happening is that people are extremely tired of how
difficult life is. We all just live through a pandemic.
A lot of people died during that time. Some of
(23:53):
them died of COVID, some of them died of other things.
A lot of bad things happened. It was terrifying. We've
been through some traumatic political times in our country, and
I think if you're seeing stuff that's really working, Apple
TV has Ted Lasso. I'm just watching somewhere somebody on HBO,
(24:14):
Tig Nataro, just came on one of our shows and
talked to stuff about just how much people's personal experiences
are permeating comedy.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Now.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
John Mulaney's stand up is to Die For literally one
of the best things I've ever seen in my life.
People are willing to experience and understand through story other
people's pain so blindly is a story about a black
woman in Alabama who doesn't get justice even though she
deserved it. And people want to hear about that too.
Like if you package it in a way that is
(24:43):
helpful to people and healing to them, then that is
what people are consuming right now. They are just desperately
wanting that.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Am I just taking away sadness? Or am I taking
away lessons?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:54):
And lessons are better than sadness. But sadness is okay too,
because sadness. You know, I was taught by my grandmother
in relationships, one must go through four seasons, you know, summer, winter, spring,
and falls. It's called life. So you're going to have
those moments of sadness, You're going to have those moments
of cloudiness, You're going to have those moments of sunshine,
(25:16):
and so shining a light on them, you know, I
looked at the pandemic in an interesting way, I said,
trying to use humor for a not funny circumstance, but
the idea of other than that, Missus Lincoln, how was
the play? You know, put most of what went on
during the pandemic and the other than that bucket? And
(25:36):
you looked at them some of the magic. Again, it's
hard to use the word magic when so many, you know,
tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people were going
through devastation, and yet we were able to fortunately have
some magic that came out of that. And sometimes you
feel guilty for saying that, because you say, gee, how
(25:56):
can I have had a good circumstance when everyone else
was suffering? And you know that's not thoughtful either, But
yet I look at that moment and say, yeah, they
were really depressing times. And yes, the kids who got
cheated out of graduations and senior years and education and
all of those things. Forget the obvious devastation. Hard to
(26:16):
replace that, but the experiences that we all had, those
of us who were more fortunate to not go through
direct trauma. You know, we did lose some friends, but mostly,
to be honest, parents of our friends, you know, elderly,
so it wasn't We didn't get many direct COVID hits,
(26:37):
although crazy as it is, we did more recently. But
where I'm going is, even in the in the darkness,
you can make life suck less by lesson on that dot.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
That's exactly the space we live in. Constantly like there
is such beauty and magic that has come out of
like the most profound sorrow and tragedy that she and
I have experienced, but finding each other and building this thing.
You know, Lemonada would not exist if there had not
(27:08):
been trauma before that. So there's this constant feeling of
like I've gotten something really meaningful out of this because
I have to. How else am I going to go
on if I don't?
Speaker 3 (27:19):
What's next for Lemonada? Guys?
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Boy? Yeah, I mean, now.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
What are we going to be talking about?
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Well, I mean let's let's let's figure out what's happening
with this financial situation in this country. But right now
we're holding steady. The thing about Make Life Sucklesses brands
are like, yes, where do I how do we? Let's
do this? Like this is exactly what people you know,
if you if you're a person who created a meal kid,
or you're a person who runs a huge health company,
like that's exactly what you're trying to do too as
(27:49):
an entrepreneur or as a runner of a Fortune five company.
So it is really awesome to be able to grow
and align like beyond just the talent side, which is
incredible and talent's coming to us now. It's like, if
you've built a career in comedy or in writing or
in any other space, you want to trust the podcast
(28:10):
network you're working with to care about your career too.
So we're building this beautiful thing, and our plan for
twenty twenty four is household name. That's our sort of
north star is we want someone. We want someone to
walk into your kitchen and be like, I'm listening to
a Lemanada podcast and the other person be like, oh,
which one, and to know exactly what that means, and
to find some sense of solidarity with that person, like,
(28:32):
oh I listened to this. Do you listen to this?
I'm listening to it when I'm taking a walk because
I can make my mental list of how to make
my life better or oh my god, it's a riveting
story and I did all these things as a result
of it. So that's our sort of north star at
the moment. And our team is really aligned, our producers,
our marketing team, everyone around that goal. It's a really
mission aligned organization. That is one of our core values.
(28:54):
So growth in a way that is actually helpful to people,
I would say, is what we're aiming for right now.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And what about the opportunities for those podcasts to be
reimagined in video and another I mean, how do you
look at that as a potential? Not next step, but
you know, ancillary step.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
We've always been audio first. We said from the beginning, like,
we are going to do the thing that we know
how to do best. And you know, if Jess and
I the first week we ever met, the first weekend
we ever met, her husband and her came down to Texas,
where I lived at the time. I now live in California.
A pandemic move, Thank you pandemic. Speaking of the magic Michael,
(29:35):
I never would have left Texas had it not been
for the pandemic. But anyway, they came down and we met,
and we did We took out a big giant white
post it and did the Simon Sinek, What is the why? Right?
Why are we doing this? And the inner circle of
our why is to make the hard a little easier?
That was what we wanted to do, and now we've
turned that into make life suckless, which is much catchier
(29:57):
in my opinion. And so the sort of next of
that was by making podcasts. How are we going to
do that by making podcasts. The next part of that
is to get it into more eyes and ears. So obviously,
if our content can hit more people on a greater
sort of more massive scale, we are all in for that.
But it's you know, it's not life changing in terms
(30:18):
of like the the financial profit you're going to make,
like you know, from optioning a script or something like that,
or optioning an idea, But there is that potential of
getting eyes and ears on more of our of our work,
which is always our goal, right, that's part of the
household name aspect of our of our goal, of our strategy.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Yeah, and we have we have some stuff out there
we own and control most of our ip or co
own it with our talent. So when it makes sense
when we're working with there's like producers out there, writers
who just see the world the way we see it
and want to make mass market TV shows, film scripted
unscripted that near the experiences we've created on the podcast,
we're down well.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
You know, in the spirit of time, I want to say,
first of all, thank you because this has been for me,
you know, forty five minutes of really kind of making
life suck less, and I can't take that. You own it,
but you certainly done that for me, and I hope
for our listeners today because just listening to your stories
(31:19):
and the serendipity, really, I'm sure that's probably too lively
a word for going through what you went through and
what brought you together. And I always look at those
things is what brought people together, the sliding doors aspect
of that. If you both didn't have that moment in
your life, you wouldn't be together and Lemonada wouldn't be here.
So I'm a fatalist that way. That was a little
(31:42):
movie that a lot of people didn't see, but it
kind of transcend. Yeah, a little movie tell of having
asked my wife out on our first date and she
didn't respond, and then on that Friday she never responded,
and the likelihood was zero that I would ever called
her again. And I mean she took the call, she said,
(32:02):
I don't know, I may be going out of town,
and then never called me. And on that Friday afternoon,
we were crossing the street and literally ran into each
other in the middle of the street and I looked
at her and I'd only seen her for five minutes before,
but I looked at her and I said, well, I
guess you didn't go out of town and she said
so embarrassed, she said, I can go out. If we
(32:23):
didn't run into each other in the middle of the street,
I wouldn't be sitting here. So I'm a big believer
in that. And guys had a sliding door moment on
something horrible, but that's how life works.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
We call it the saddest meet cute that ever existed.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Is our story, correct, you know, Jessica and Stephanie. I
want to really thank you for taking the time today.
As I said, you made my life suck less and
I'm certain our listeners will share that. Thank you for
joining me on Good Company, and thank you for bringing
Lemonada to the world.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Michael, thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I'm Michael Casson. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
A Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio. A special
thanks to Lena Peterson, chief brand Officer and Managing Director
of Media Link for her vision on Good Company, and
to Jen Sealey, Vice President Marketing Communications of media Link
for programming amazing talent and content
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