How Podcasting Leads to Growth/Simon Chou - Personal Branding, Community, Hot Sauce ~ Spark of Ages Ep 32 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
Today's guest is Simon Chow.
Simon is a multifacetedmarketing leader, podcast host
and community builder.
He's the founder of the verypopular Marketing on Mars
podcast, where he interviewsmarketers and founders folks
like myself about theirmarketing strategies, along with

(00:27):
unique hot sauce challenges.
So, beyond podcasting, simonadvises organizations on
leveraging podcasting andLinkedIn for thought leadership
and is actively building cool AIcapabilities at his firm,
clifford AI.
He's also deeply involved inthe startup and VC community in
Vancouver, fostering connectionsthrough his happy hour events

(00:50):
and building thrivingcommunities for founders, hr
professionals, recruiters andyoung tech professionals in
Canada.
Go Canada, so many people fromthe Bay Area want to move there.
Formerly the CEO of VC Jobs,simon brings over a decade of
global leadership and marketingexperience guiding B2B
organizations and possesses awide range of skills, from

(01:13):
digital networking and contentcreation to SEO and personal
brand building.
Some of the key takeaways youcan expect from this episode
number one insights on buildinga personal brand through
podcasting and LinkedIn.
Number two strategies forgrowing a podcast audience.
Number three knowledge nuggetsfrom Simon's interviews with an

(01:33):
amazing set of marketers.
And number four understandingthe key ingredients for creating
a strong and engaged community,especially in the digital world
.
So, simon, welcome to the Sparkof Ages.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Can I just bring you everywhere, for you to introduce
me everywhere.
I go at every single event.
That was amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
I will be your digital announcer.
I'm super happy about that.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Or in person.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
We might meet in person in San Francisco soon.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So I'll just bring you everywhere, that's right.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
I'm in for that.
I'm glad you're visiting.
It's great you, that's right,I'm in for that.
I'm glad you're visiting.
It's great you have woken upsuper early.
I know you're in South Korearight now because you just go
everywhere and you're willing todo anything from anywhere, so
thank you for joining me fromall the way out there.
Before we jump into all thisabout podcasts, we have a little
bit of research to talk about,so interesting, about what's

(02:24):
happened with podcasts.
I'd love to get your sense onthis.
40% or 41% of Americans havelistened to a podcast on a
monthly basis.
Most of them are between theages of 12 and 54.
About 55% of the 12 to34-year-olds listen every month,
50% of 35 to 54-year-oldslisten to it monthly as well,

(02:47):
and 21% are 55 and older.
So it's for really that middle,young to middle segment and
where they listen to them.
About 49% listen at home, 70%listen using their smartphones
and they listen to it either inthe morning, the afternoon I
mean, it's all day.
So and it's just amazing.

(03:09):
The revenue from podcastsforecast to reach over $4
billion by 2024.
Ad spend is about $2.5 billion.
There are two and a halfmillion podcasts on Apple
podcast.
Only 450,000 of them are active, so a lot of people with
intention Hard to follow through.
82% of shows haven't released anew episode in 90 days.

(03:33):
So one of the things you'regoing to tell us about, simon,
is the importance of beingconsistent, and here's a couple
weird facts Half of podcastlisteners use a podcast to fall
asleep.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
I'm definitely in that camp.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Really you do.
Do you listen to a podcast tofall asleep?
I listen to my own to fallasleep.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Sometimes, like this is so boring, I want to fall
asleep.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
I'm too keyed up.
When I listen to mine, I'm likehow many mistakes did I make?
How many scoops, how many wayscan I improve?
It's very stressful for me.
54% of those listeners rememberan ad the next day.
So if you're a marketer and youadvertise on these things, it
can be incredibly effective,especially if the host is doing
the ad which is what you do withyour hot sauce takes, which I

(04:24):
think works really well for thatbrand, and 37% of B2B podcasts
are content marketing.
For B2B topics, 37% are contentmarketing and content
distribution is 25%, and sopodcast listeners are nearly as
likely to listen to a brandedpodcast as they are to a

(04:46):
celebrity show.
So that's pretty amazing.
In terms of platforms and we'llget into some of this YouTube
is number one.
As of Q3 2024, 30% of podcastlisteners chose YouTube,
followed by Spotify 29% andApple Podcasts 15%.
Podcast marketing and brandingPodcast Lift brand awareness by

(05:07):
89%.
85% of companies capture videoand 65% of branded podcast
showrunners share short clips atleast once a week, and I know
you're a big fan of that.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Oh yeah, huge.
Yeah, I'll try to remember asmany of those stats as possible.
Yeah, I'll try to remember asmany of those stats as possible,
but certainly some of the onesthat stood out to me.
Youtube definitely is our topchannel.
I think it's because everysingle channel has its own
purpose.

(05:38):
For LinkedIn, we use it as kindof like our resume, so we
always want to show our best.
It's always our best footforward.
So a lot of LinkedIn posts andcontent that's posted on
LinkedIn are very filtered.
Yeah, twitter is like kind ofthe renegades and don't want to
listen to the, you know, kind ofagainst the rule kind of thing

(05:59):
like free speech and all that.
And so the stuff on twitter isis highly unfiltered and, um,
they hate stuff that is filtered.
And, uh, when I say they, Imean the people that are, you
know, bigger, the biggest usersof uh twitter, now called x.
Youtube is where you learn.
I think it's where you learn,but in a educational way, I

(06:23):
think, which is why podcasts dowell, because podcasts, uh like,
like yours and like manypodcasts most, some of them
think about the most popularpodcasts that you listen to.
They're educational, butthey're entertaining in some way
or fashion.
Um, I chose to put in hot saucehot takes as an entertainment

(06:45):
factor.
Other other, even verysuccessful people.
You lot think about Elon Musk.
When you think about Elon Musk,you think about that interview
with Joe Rogan, right?
Um think, uh, you know it'seducational but entertaining and
that's why, uh, youtube doesreally well that's cool.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
And, yeah, youtube's a place where, when you go there
, you're willing to listen for awhile right, you go there,
you're willing to listen for awhile.
Right, you get on it, you'rewilling to listen.
And there's the expectation oflonger form content, which is
very different from TikTok,where you still may spend a lot
of time 90 minutes but you'relistening to, you're watching 30
second or 15 second videosMaximum yeah.

(07:21):
So that hasn't been one of yourfavorite places to go, right
maximum.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, so that hasn't been one of your favorite place
to go.
Right, we've tried on, we'vetried on tiktok and, uh, the
clips that does well on tiktok,not surprisingly, are the hot
sauce takes.
They're only in it for the hotsauce.
They just want to make them soyou make them.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
The interesting part about you is if, if someone
doesn't answer the question,answer the question like when
you, when you ask them how muchthey much they make.
I think that's the one whereyou get them.
They have to chug hot sauce.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, so like literally hot takes, because as
a host and you probably run intothis all the time it's like
what can I ask that won't offendthem or won't get them to?
You know, not answer, because Idon't want to make them feel
uncomfortable.
Now I kind of spun that aroundand I'm like now, as a host, I

(08:13):
don't have to think about thatanymore and you and I have had
several conversations so I'vetold you there's nothing that's
off limits for me um, no, I.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
That's one thing I like about it.
You're gutsysy about that.
You ask people what they makeor what their revenues are, and
for private companies, a lot ofpeople don't want to talk about
that, no, and so that's whereyou get them to drink some hot
sauce, and it's kind of fun.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
How much does do you guys make position square?

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Oh, if you look at our taxes, we're probably about
a $100 million company.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Revenue top line, bottom line, would have been a
little crazy, would have been alittle harder.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Private company, but we invest a lot into building
our own AI platforms Nice.
So why make money when you canput it in a technology that can
really change the world, whichis what I'm about.
So one thing I like about yourpodcast is you have had tons of
great CMOs on there.
So CMOs of Zoom Info, one ofthe guests that we got, alice

(09:16):
Crowder Crispy Crunchy Chicken.
She was freaking awesome onours.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
She's amazing.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
I love having her there.
She was episode 25 for us,for's amazing.
I love having her there.
She was episode 25 for us.
For you, I think it was episode100.
We had Melissa Rosenthal ofOutliver, formerly CDO or Chief
Design Officer, chief CreativeOfficer of ClickUp, so she was
episode 26.
So she was episode 26.

(09:44):
And I know you had her andAlice on a multi-person episode
along with the CMO of Headspace.
So you've got some great folkscoming on your show Same thing
same.
Zoom info.
So how do you get these folks?

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Personal brand, I think, is the biggest thing.
So I've been very intentional.
I knew that when I started mypodcast, my number one goal was
to build a personal brand.
It wasn't to generate revenue,it wasn't even to get a lot of
views.
I didn't set out.
I started one podcast in thebeginning of COVID and it took

(10:25):
off.
But it didn't take off likeMark and Omar's and so I knew
how challenging it would be toget viewership.
Like viewership wasn't going tobe the number one metric for me
and it's funny.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Um, now we're doing quite well in terms of
viewerships, but when we firststarted, you were talking about
what you're getting at tens ofthousands of views per episode.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, on on YouTube.
On YouTube we get, uh, each perepisode, we get three to 6,000,
sometimes 25,000 for, like, areally good episode.
Um, spotify, we get a ton ofdownloads from there and and,
yeah, like we, we get a lot ofviewership on on LinkedIn as
well.
I made a post recently, andthis was like a month ago now.

(11:07):
I made one post and I got100,000 impressions, wow, and
that was with Henry Shi fromSuper.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah, that's a very recent one right.
I mean that's the one you weretalking about, the $150 million
from Supercom, so well-known,and so you just reached out to
him and he said, yes, right,cause they've heard of you.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, I've, I've been , yeah, I, so I can kind of walk
through the process but yeah,built a brand on LinkedIn so
that when I reach outpre-podcast, I think my
acceptance rate, my coldoutreach to acceptance rate rate
, was like I'll get one responsein every 20 messages, or 25
messages.
Now is like one response inevery five or six.

(11:49):
So the, so the response andresponse rates have been have
gotten really really high.
Um, and it's because I've builta brand on on youtube and
linkedin and I really focus onthe channels.
Like, back to what you'resaying tiktok didn't work for us
, so we stopped posting ontiktok.
Tiktok didn't work for us, sowe stopped posting on TikTok.
Twitter didn't work for us, sowe stopped posting on Twitter.
And I think just find out whichaudience, which platform has

(12:11):
your audience and my audience.
I was catering towards juniorto intermediate marketers or
just marketers in general, likewe have marketers listed to us
from junior to intermediate, allthe way to senior level
marketers, and they're all onLinkedIn.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
So LinkedIn for me, I knew, had to be the channel to
focus on had to be reallyimportant for you, because you
had to nail that, and that's aknown audience.
You can actually go back andwhen they comment you can
actually figure out who they areright, as opposed to YouTube
where it's hard to tell.
So, as part of your growthstrategy, is that how you kind
of did this?
You put out in, you put outcontent, you waited for feedback

(12:49):
and then you built it that way,or did you have to?
I mean, I was told, basicallyyou had to have a number of
podcasts just to establish thatyou're there, right.
So, almost you almost blow offthe first 20 or 25.
In fact, I was told wait till100 before you, before you have
anything.
How do you think about it?
Or how did you think about it?

Speaker 2 (13:10):
okay, so I started one podcast, uh, during covet
2020 to 2022.
Uh, that one took us like 25 orI think it was 25 or 27
episodes before we broke athousand downloads and, in terms
of viewerships, same thing likeit.
We were hovering around, youknow, we would post on youtube

(13:32):
and we would get 50 views or 20views, um, per episode, and it's
very, very common.
So it didn't take off untillike episode 20, something for
us, um, I wanted to not play thethat game anymore, so I really
wanted to focus on the qualityof the guests, yeah, and so, um,
this, the second episode, thesecond podcast, market of mars.

(13:54):
We started late 2022, around2023, so it's been like a year
and a half, almost two years now, and our show took off around
episode 18 when we brought onMicrosoft on the show.
So we got an exec member.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
It was like a CMO of Microsoft Teams yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
VP of Teams.
He was the one who createdMicrosoft Teams, where you and I
met on Teams recently.
There we go.
This guy started the wholething, so we brought him on the
show.
He talked about the journey ofbuilding it and growing from
zero to 500 million downloads,and obviously for a company like
microsoft it wasn't toodifficult.
Um, and then from there we gotthe cmo of aloe yoga and then

(14:36):
the cmo barbie.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
That episode did really well for us that must
have popped right, because,because I and I find this like
um, I was mostly doing2B stuffand that's because that's what
we focus on.
We do a lot of B2B but we alsodo some B2C, but the B2C topics
are easier for people toapproach.
So if you're talking to Aliceabout crispy crunchy chicken and
chicken sandwiches, so mucheasier.
Everyone can relate to thatright, so Barbie must have been.

(15:00):
The shared experience ismassive.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
And we posted it a week and a half after barbie was
released clever so that one hadlike 50, some 50 something
downloads, 50 000 downloads onyoutube alone, wow.
And then on on spotify.
We had like 2 000 uh downloads,sorry, 50 000 uh views.
And then on uh, and I hate howevery single platform uses

(15:25):
different things.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, different metrics all over the place.
Downloads versus views.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
I find views and impressions are pretty similar
in terms of a metric, and thendownloads are quite separate,
and you and I can probablyrelate to this.
On Spotify, their downloadmetrics, they get updated quite
often.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
That's been.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
My number one challenge with Spotify is
figuring out what my actualnumbers are.
They tend to update them quiteoften.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
What do you care about the most?
Like what, if you were to gothrough a cycle of, if you were
to turn this into a frameworkand you probably you know, as
you're going along, you'reprobably experimenting as you go
and it's probably not thisperfect little consulting
framework, but if I were toforce you to do one, what would
it be?

Speaker 2 (16:14):
I just focus on who comes on the show.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Got it.
Your number one goal is getgreat people.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Get great people.
And I do have a metric and Ican share this.
My metric is companies have tobe making $100 million plus in
revenue and the reason why Ihave a reason for that companies
that are making $100 millionplus and you kind of fall into
that category is typically whenyou're at that scale, you have a
very large team.
Typically when you're at thatscale, you have a very large

(16:43):
team.
And when you have a very largeteam, we can do a lot of, we can
do a collaboration we can, wecan both work together to push
the episode, whereas if I'mgetting in the early days, I was
getting on founders and CMOswho had like a team of 15.
So even if they pushed thisepisode that we were recording
right now to their team maximum,they'll get 15 or 20 views

(17:06):
additional Because their team isthe only one, exactly, unless
they have a great voice in acommunity, right?

Speaker 1 (17:12):
So, yeah, yes, but even then it's probably not as
professionally run, and I'veseen this with some folks where,
after they go from the bigcompany to doing their own thing
, if they can't continue thatvoice when they post again, it's
not as resonant.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
I've.
This is a very good point.
Yeah, like a lot of us andunfortunately I don't fall into
this camp but a lot of people,they spend, you know, 10, 15, 20
years in one company and thentheir identity is with this one
company.
And I actually just spoke withsomeone recently who worked for

(17:51):
one of the big fan companies I'mnot going to name which company
and worked there for 15, 20years, built a very solid brand
very, very high up, but recentlystarted thinking maybe I should
build my network outside andprepare for the future that we
just saw.
I don't know how many of yourlisteners are basketball fans.

(18:12):
Luka Doncic got traded forAnthony David and who?
I thought, like you know you'rehigh, high up, but you still
can get traded Same thing for,you know, at a big company.
You know you, regardless howhigh up.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
You are, you can leave for any reason or things
cannot work out and you move toanother place and then you start
all over again, right, and soand you're talking about this it
brings up the question, right.
So you've talked about um wewere talking about podcasts and
the community and growing thepodcast, but you've also done
community building, not justaround your podcast but through

(18:49):
events like your happy hour,right so?
And you've done a lot,especially in that BC area or in
Vancouver, about building thatstrong, engaged community.
I think that a lot of your firstefforts were around that, and
so talk about the keyingredients that you have in
terms of building that a reallystrong and engaged community,
and then relate it to thedigital world.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, I love to talk about your community as well.
I mean, you have your, you havea community.
Yeah, that I like.
I mean I'm sure both, both ofour learnings are quite similar
and it's it's just very hard tobuild an engaged community.
It's very, very hard and eventoday we're still learning.

(19:33):
When I first started runningevents, I was running events for
30 to 50 people.
It grew to 100 plus people perevent.
But then over time, peoplealways want new People always
want excitement and fun.
It's just what we live for.
So if you always constantly runinto same events, which is what

(19:55):
I was doing it was engagement,engagement, exciting and
exciting.
And then it started to be likeum, we started seeing like the
number of people that werereturning to the events, kind of
fade.
And especially when you'rerunning events for founders and
executives, they always want tomeet new people.
They're there for one purposeis to network and grow the

(20:16):
network.
So if you're constantly seeingthe same people, so even if
people, even if you got a lot ofreturning people, if they're
seeing the same people over andover and over again, you're not
going to see as much value inthe.
So I thought I was doing a goodthing with the return visitors
and returning members, but thatactually wasn't the right metric
, and so it was just thisconstant back and forth, and so

(20:40):
nowadays we're doing a lot ofpoker.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Poker seems to resonate really well with
founders, and it's something youcan do without being
specifically about networking,right?
If you go to an event that'sjust about networking, then the
people who go are the connectorsand not necessarily the content
creators or the thought leaders, right, unless they're trying
to promote their content.

(21:03):
But you're not going to getsome of those people that have
really special, special thingsto add because they're like oh,
I got to go to a freakingnetworking.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, this really sucks.
So the only time they go iswhen they're out of the job.
Exactly, exactly.
And you don't want those kindof people Like that's not,
that's not the kind ofenvironment.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
No, if you get a whole bunch of people, then you
just have networking networkerstalking to networking, about
networking.
No, I mean so that, yeah, we'vetalked about this in one of my
other episodes, but we have ourgrowth marketing summit and
that's an invitation only smallevent.
It's very different than thebigger events that I do, that we
do as a company, or I do inassociation with this group

(21:42):
called the Go-To-Market LeaderSociety, with my friend AJ
Gandhi and my friend Eli Cohen.
Called the Go-To-Market LeaderSociety with my friend AJ Gandhi
and my friend Eli Cohen.
So that's one group is abouthitting some level of scale, as
well as private dinners and thatkind of thing.
We have our own special one,which is just people invite only
a special core group of peoplethat are content creators or

(22:05):
thought leaders or CEOs coregroup of people that are content
creators or or thought leadersor ceos, um, and and it's just
very special because it's asmall group and it's over four
days and we're in a compoundtogether.
It's very, it's expensive, um,but I'm really happy that that
group has done a lot of worktogether, done a lot of business
together, put each other ineach other's boards, suggest,

(22:27):
recommend investments together.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
And like what is your North Star?
I find that every greatcommunity leader has a North
Star.
Like for me, my North Star hasalways been keep it fun, keep it
light.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
So every single event has to be like what was yours?
Well, I'd say it goes to mypurpose, which is connecting
great souls.
So, just like you talked about,I just want to meet with high
quality people and do and learn.
For me it's very similar I justwant to be around great people

(23:00):
and put them together, andfulfillment for me is them
establishing great connectionswith each other.
So that's the goal and right ofcourse we're going to measure it
later on was there revenue orbusiness or whatever?
But you can't do that as aimmediate output.
You have to basically look atit as a you know what I'm going

(23:22):
to do this for three or fouryears and then see what I get
out of it.
And that's a very expensive wayof doing things.
But you can tell, becausethings eventually work itself
out or don't, and if they don'tdrop it, but give it time.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
If you start dating, you're 20 something.
You start dating because youwant a marriage and you approach
every single date like you havea marriage certificate on the
table and you're ready to signit right.
I think that's a very differentapproach than if you're dating
to just try to find the rightperson and you're open to
meeting different types ofpeople.
And I think um, playing thelong game sometimes works in

(23:59):
your favor.
You sometimes get a lot ofthings happen in a faster way
than that then you would haveoriginally thought.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
But I totally agree with you on that there.
There are times where theremight be people that I really
want to talk to at an event, butI know that they may be coming
back to another one.
This happened a lot in covid.
We were, a whole bunch of uswere getting together and I
wouldn't try to overdo it.
You know, like you don't want tojust go in and go, come in hot

(24:28):
and say, hey, let's go worktogether.
It's like just get to know them, make them you know, see if
they're someone that could beyour friend, and then things
will happen.
I'd say, like some of my bestfriends are people I just met at
things over time and I justlooked at.
I'm like I'm going to befriends with this person someday
.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
I wasn't too like you're saying forward about it.
It just sort of happened andyou have quite the network in SF
.
I think it just goes back.
I think good podcasters andgood brand builders are
naturally good people.
People.
I think there there's somethingto be said about that.
Yes, you might, you might have,you might be very smart or you

(25:15):
know hardworking or whatever.
Like you have a lot of thingsgoing for you but at the end of
the day, you gotta be somedecently good with people to
have a very strong brand.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
You have to like them , right, and and I think that's
you know, so, like if you wereto relate that to you said this
is about some of this.
A lot of this is about personalbranding, right?
Was there a personal brand thatyou were looking to build and
there's an archetype that youwere looking for as part of it?
And, like you said, you talkedabout not trying to go for the

(25:47):
kill in the first meeting.
Did you find that there werespecific ways that, when you
watch people, how they are ableto be authentic and impactful?

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, so I was very lucky to have actually one of my
mentors.
He's based in Vancouver and healso has an agency.
They do over 150 mil in revenueas well.
And when I watch him talk andit's not that I was trying to be

(26:18):
him or, but a lot of what he'staught me you can't be someone,
you have to learn from someoneelse and kind of and kind of
take it and do it in your ownway, but, uh, but the way he's,
he he's he said it was verysimilar to you.
It's like you.
You're just trying to build goodrelationships with people and

(26:38):
if business comes out of therelationships, great, but at the
end of the day, business is aperson to person, it's a human
to human connection.
So you got to be able to startwith that first and business
will come second.
And that really resonated withme and how I approached my
personal brand.
But I would say I kind of skewway far left into the

(27:02):
non-selling category, which iswhy I find I've been able to
build a stronger community thanmost people in Vancouver and so
we've expanded to Seattle andSan Francisco.
Is, I'm just like, very focusedon community and what, just
giving, giving, giving, giving10, 15x and maybe, maybe the one

(27:27):
will come back, but I think,because I've skewed so far into
the giving category, I haven'tbeen taking as much, and I think
that's what I'm trying to learnthis year is how to be a better
salesperson and how to sellmyself to those others.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
I think it's great to give and they encourage that.
But I think to your point, likeif you're always in the giving
mode, sometimes people don'trealize they got to take care of
you too, and I think it's okayto ask for the order sometimes.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
And it's not their responsibility to care for you.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
So there's this notion and I can't remember
where I got it from, but it'slike sometimes, when you present
yourself as everything's great,they don't know that you may
need help, right, or thatthere's there's ways they can
help you, or they want to findways, but you're not telling
them that.
So there's nothing wrong withat some point saying hey, you
know, I'd like to get some morebusiness for my company, I'd

(28:21):
like to do this, can you help me, and that.
But that can come later, afteryou've, like you say, you've
given a bunch of times.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah, I wish there was like a little AI angel on my
shoulder.
Just go.
Hey, you've given 15 times toRajiv.
Now maybe it's time to ask.
I don't have that, it's not inmy blood and I think I'm working

(28:51):
through that.
It's like a.
It's like a giving therapy,would you?
Would you?

Speaker 1 (28:54):
say that's like something you grew up with.
Is that something you got fromyour parents or from your?

Speaker 2 (28:58):
yeah, I think so, like my, my mom, um, she grew up
as a as a single mom, uh,raising me and my brother, so a
lot of it was just giving,giving to us and not asking for
anything.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
Um, but after you know many, many years, she
realized she had to take care ofherself as well.
But it just took a long time toget there.
And so I think I'm kind of, um,I'm, I'm going through the
process right now and, um, I'min, I'm in my early thirties
right now.
And uh, I think this is a goodtime to start, and so I started.

(29:40):
I started a couple of startupsin the last um five years.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah, and I and I think it's, I think it's good to
start asking for the order.
Right, this is maybe a goodtime to start asking for the
order from the folks you've met.
So, if you were to go like, youhave this podcast that has done
well over a million views ordownloads or impressions right,
I think one to two million donereally well.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
We just reached two million views.
Wow, 2 million views anddownloads.
We do some kind of conversionwith downloads to views.
It's usually about four viewsequals to one download.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Got it.
That makes a lot of sense.
You've built up a greataudience.
You're in the marketing world.
You've started, but you're alsobuilding technology through AI.
So what's a day in the life ofSimon Chow?

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, so the podcast has gotten to over 100 episodes
now, so it kind of runs on itsown.
I spend very little time on it.
We have a small little team.
We have a sponsor All GearDigital.
Shout out to All Gear Digital.
They raise money.
They raise like 50, somethingaround $50 million and they

(30:55):
became like a private equityfirm of some sort.
So they just bought a bunch ofassets.
So they own like over 20different sites and they just
buy these sites that are thatare in different verticals,
usually on the outdoor gear orvertical, and they just kind of
take it all in-house and thenall they'll share resources and
so they've they've done reallywell in that sense and so

(31:17):
they're our main sponsor.
But yeah, like that the podcastruns on its own.
I spend a lot of time nowadaysbrainstorming with potential
clients and users of AI.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Right.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
And we found a niche right now with non-tech
industries.
So I'm talking to a couple ofcompanies.
I'm talking to One is in thedental area.
So it's a founder, owner ofthree different dental clinics.
They know nothing about AI andthey're trying to revolutionize

(31:56):
their tool stack.
They went to CES and they weremind blown about AI and they
were just thinking what can wedo with AI to automate a lot of
our repetitive tasks?
And so we're working with themright now.
And then a law firm as well Oneof my friends.
He owns a crypto law firm.
They have over 200 clients, sothey're busy.

(32:19):
They're very, very busy.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Especially in crypto, there's a lot of law A lot of
law and so much of a lawyer.
lawyer, a paralegal's taskespecially, are just pushing
renaming emails and pushingemails yeah, it's a lot of non,
it's a lot of well you well withlaw.
You have to really nail.
You can't make mistakes, soit's got to be.

(32:42):
It's very granular, but there'sa lot of I'm sure there's a lot
of repetitive tasks.
My son is a lawyer, so I've uhlearned quite a bit from him,
but I have a lot of friends thatare yeah yeah, so so there are.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
So there are revenue generating tasks like that,
where you can't script the law.
But then there are just smallrepetitive tasks, mindless stuff
, right?
Yeah, mindless things that youshouldn't pay a lawyer $300 an
hour for, and so if you canremove that, if you can remove
those tasks, automate that sothat you can focus on more
revenue generating tasks andmore client facing tasks.

(33:16):
I think that can be very goodfor law firms for retention
client retention et cetera, soyou're building tools for that
area.
Yeah, and I think that's goingto be the secret.
That's what AI is going tounlock us.
It's going to give us a lotmore time for revenue
client-facing.
We're going to be able toconnect more in person.
That's great, because all therepetitive, mindless things will

(33:38):
all be automated away, which isunfortunate for a lot of jobs
like data analysts, for example,even developers, if people are
saying the number of developersrequired will be reducing.
Salesforce came out.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Mark Benninghoff came out and said that the whole
agentic agent force right.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, yeah, agent force, they're not hiring
anymore.
No, they're not hiring anymore.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Seth Iñadela is saying.
He's saying SaaS applicationsare going to die, but really he
means transform to more of anenergetic set of capabilities.
They'll still need to accessapplications, but they'll be
using these agents as a way offunctioning and driving things
forward.
So you're working in that world, but you're applying it to

(34:21):
small and mid-sized businesses,which I think is a great place
to go, because then you canbuild scale right, Probably
through a lot of the marketingthat you've learned by by
interviewing all these greatpeople yeah, and I think I mean
you've been.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
You've been through this.
You've been through like therise of, remember, the website.
When the website first came outand it's like everyone wasn't
sure how to build a website.
A website cost ten thousanddollars to build.
Now it's like everyone canbuild it for under $400 if you
really wanted to.
But back then there were nooptions.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Well, you could do a very template-based one.
My company would not do a $400website.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
If you want that, we don't want you.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah, but there wasn't even that option.
That wasn't that option.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Now there's amazing templates coming out that you
could exactly build for it.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
So yes, doesn't work for a lot of people.
But then there's at leastthere's a, there's a low level,
and then there's also the high,customized level, and that's
what.
What we're seeing with the gentech.
It's kind of opening this newworld where things can be
automated.
For you know, know, if youreally wanted to $150 a month,
if you really wanted to, if youreally wanted to.
But if you wanted to becustomized with your entire flow

(35:36):
, you're probably going to haveto pay $10,000, $15,000.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
And I think, the higher end and, by the way,
there's firms that will paymillions of dollars for it but
the higher end is really moreabout massive scale.
So if you're at, if you aregoogle cloud security, you've
got thousands of pages, you havea lot of content, you are
around the world, differentproducts have to be nailed and

(36:00):
so and have to work acrossmultiple devices, multiple
places.
So, but you're going afterscale and I think, like you're
to your point, the, the newwebsite will not be a single
like oh, here's my home page.
It's really custom to you and Ithink that's the important part
we're.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
We're building an ai solution right now for bc jobs,
um and bc jobs company that Iused to um work for.
I mean, I'm still there.
I sat, I stepped down as a CEO,I'm an advisor now and still
advised the day to day, andright now they're building a
genetic flow to manage theirwhole stack.

(36:39):
They've been around for 15years, so they have some stack,
some of their stack flow.
They're usingnet still RightCoding language as like ancient
nowadays.
So what AI solution nowadayswill be able to integrate with
all these different?
I think their total stack haslike 20 different solutions.

(36:59):
One has to talk to another hasto talk to another has to talk
to another.
How do you build an AI?
What?
What ai workflow can, can, canhelp them?
And the answer is none.
They have to build it.
Um, they have to build it kindof customized and so that's what
they're.
That's what they're workingthrough to your point.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
That's your point.
Like that, you have to build itsuper.
You have to build a custom toyour situation and that's what's
going to matter.
I also think, like you'resaying, is that there's going to
be multiple buyers.
When someone goes to buysomething B2B, it even happens
B2C, but you have to customizethe sale and that customization,
or enabling it to switch andcustomize and pick different

(37:38):
points of the buying journey.
That's where the complexitycomes in and that's where AI can
be helpful and, of course, whenyou do that, you have to run
experiments.
So there's tons to do.
All right, so I have a question.
So did you know you alwayswanted to work in marketing?
Was there a moment that justgot you that said this is my
field?
Did it come from your mom?
Did it come from friends?
How'd you discover it?

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Oh man, that's a good question, I don't.
I think you just kind of Idon't know.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
You have a finance degree right.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, I had a finance degree and then I worked in
crypto.
So I worked at Litecoin, Ihelped Litecoin.
I don't know how many of yourlisteners know Litecoin.
They're not so relevant now,but they were really relevant
between 2016 to really up tolike 2019, 2020, until the owner

(38:34):
, charlie, decided to sell a lotof his coins and just a lot of
things didn't get built out andthe public lost interest in them
.
But I built community for themfrom between 2017 to the end of
2018.
Oh wow.
Built community for them frombetween 2017 to like the end of
2018 oh wow.
And and so from finance tocrypto, but I did mostly

(38:58):
marketing there.
Yeah, I did community buildingand so that was like my my kind
of intro into marketing.
I didn't fully immerse myselfinto marketing, but I was
touching crypto.
Uh, community and and cryptocommunities are like heavy on pr
heavy on influencer marketingand so I got a touch, a little

(39:18):
bit of that and then, from that,from that, when I left crypto
after the crash of 2018, Ijumped right into b2b sass and I
don't think I it's not like I Ididn't think I was going to be
like I was like a born marketeror whatever.
It was just like a couple ofroles that were were available
at the time Um and I got reallylucky and um joined joined a

(39:41):
marketing agency and um thatagency.
I ended up being one of theearly founders of it and it grew
from.
It grew from, you know, sixfigures to yeah high seven
figures.
Uh, I think we, we, at the end,and at the end of it we exited.
We exited for, you know, multiseven figure that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
So you fell in love with marketing and you, like you
, moved from finance, got youthe crypto job, but then you
found your passion in marketingand I it's super cool isn't that
crazy how life works.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Like, like for you.
Like, how did everything startfor you?

Speaker 1 (40:19):
I was.
I graduated with a degree inengineering.
I was writing code, I was I wasgonna do uh, electromagnetic
fields and waves but I fell inlove with.
I did a marketing internshipwhile I was in college and I
fell in love with that more thanwriting code.
And then I went into enterprisesales after college, selling

(40:40):
technology.
So after that got to B school,went into product and marketing,
product management andmarketing eventually started
companies and that's how I fellin love and I love marketing.
I love connecting peopletogether, I love innovation, I
love technology and I likefiguring out how those great
disruptors can find their market.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Isn't that crazy it sounds when you say it out loud,
it sounds crazy, but that'sjust how your life journey went,
and it's crazy how life takesyou into different directions.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Welcome to the Spark Tank, where we spark unexpected
connections in the minds oftechnology's most innovative
thinkers.
Today we're joined by SimonChow, a digital storyteller
who's transformed communitybuilding into an art form, from
running Western Canada's leadingjob board to hosting spicy
conversations on his showMarketing on Mars.

(41:41):
This is the spark of age'scustom-built game where
community meets creativity,where digital networking
collides with authenticstorytelling and where the next
breakthrough might emerge froman unexpected word association.
Our brains are pattern-matchingmachines, constantly drawing
connections between seeminglyunrelated concepts.

(42:01):
Sometimes the mostgroundbreaking innovations come
from these spontaneous neuralleaps from content creation to
community building, from digitalmarketing to authentic
leadership.
And today we're going to tapinto that creative chaos.
This is the ultimate wordassociation challenge, where
every response could unveil anew perspective.
So here's how it works.

(42:22):
I will start with a marketingrelated word and, simon, you'll
respond with the very first wordthat pops in your mind.
No filtering, no secondguessing I know you'll do well
at this Then I'll respond toyour word and then we'll keep
this neural chain reaction going.
The only rule is spontaneity.
Let your mind make thoseunexpected leaps, so ready to

(42:43):
see where your synapses take us,simon.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
I'm worried, I'm worried.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
Did I freak you out with all that banter?
Okay, let's go.
This is going to be really easy.
Word association we're going tohave a blast with this, All
right.
First word Paradigm.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
Shift.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Leap Frog Crypto.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
Decentralization.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Blockchain Security Trust Human.
Uh, decentralization.
Blockchain security trust human.
I like that.
So we we end up being humanfrom starting.
About paradigm I love that.
All right, here's the next one.
This is gonna be a favorite ofyours linkedin.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Oh, oh man, I have so many words.
Go Community, I'll saycommunity.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Community Connections .

Speaker 2 (43:36):
I'll say IRL, it's more like three words into one.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
But that's fine, you can do a phrase.
Irl Events.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Light Lighthearted.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Friendships.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Effort.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Effort Consistency All right, I like that one.
That's a good one.
Here's another word associationgame, vancouver.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Rainy.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Flowers.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
Smell.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Meadows.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Exercise Exercise.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Do you exercise in the rain?
A lot in Vancouver.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Oh my God, every single day like it feels like an
exercise.
I don't know you got to do somuch.
You're wearing boots, so you'relike everything is heavier.
I don't know You're wearing ajacket, everything is just heavy
.
I'm not a really outdoorsyperson, you're not, if you
haven't already taken note ofthat.
I'm not a really outdoorsyperson, if you haven't already
taken note of that.
I'm usually indoors podcastingworking.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
All right, here's the last one Hot sauce.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Marketing on Mars.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Ah, I love it.
All right, that nails it.
You win that game.
Consistency All right, I likethat one.
That's a good one, all right.
What's the first word that popsin your mind when you get
negative feedback on an episode?

Speaker 2 (45:03):
I got to consider it.
Yeah, it's like, at the end ofthe day, we're all different,
we're all human.
There's a reason why thatperson said something and you
have to just try to figure outif that is real or not.
I know in the beginning youmight not fully understand why
they said what they said, butthe more research you do, I
think the more you understand.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Okay, so what are some of the best knowledge
nuggets you've taken away fromyour show and who are the folks
who dropped them taken away fromyour show?

Speaker 2 (45:31):
and who are the folks who dropped them?
I mean, this is pretty fundoing this and it's not my show,
but I'm having theseconversations.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
I can chat with you all day, Simon.
You're a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yeah, best Nuggets.
Oh my God.
Honestly, I learned from everysingle episode.
I just learned somethingdifferent from every single
episode, like on the episodewith Melissa Rosenthal.
She, you know, at ClickUp.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
She spent a lot of money on billboards, so I
learned a lot about howbillboards I really like that
point that she made about,because that is not what B2B
marketers think about isbuilding their brand through
billboards.
So I think, that wascounterintuitive and how she in
that episode talked about howshe made it performance-driven

(46:13):
too.
They could tell by the placesthey put the billboards versus.
They did their own A-B testingby putting in certain places
versus not in other places, andthey also used it as a clever
competitive thing, so that was agood one on that episode.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, and I'm sure there was a lot of things that
were not trackable, but they didtheir best and when they
calculate their blended, a lotof big companies do this right.
They do blended CPA Becausethere's so many things that are
untrackable, where you spend$50,000 on this marketing
initiative and you have no ideawhere to track it.
You just put a blended cost inmarketing and at the end of the

(46:49):
day it worked.
So that was really cool to diveinto it and I did ask some
spicy questions around that.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
And I think I think to your point like performance
marketers sometimes there areperformance marketers that are
too performance marketing,meaning there has to be a direct
response to the campaign rightaway, as opposed to looking at
it as a lag and and trying tomeasure based on that.
So if I do tv advertisement,does it drive my?

(47:17):
It may not initially drivepeople to buy from me, but
eventually it should lower mycost of acquisitions because
people see my brand and theyknow, okay, it's time to.
Then I go to buy.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Yeah, and like how many of the ads that we see
nowadays are we already numb toanyways?
Yes, like when was the lasttime you clicked into an ad?
How often per year?
Just think about it.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Other than using other than maybe Facebook, where
they know me pretty well andthey know I like tech kind of
stuff, clever tech stuff.
I rarely click on ads, butnowadays the B2B advertisers
have gotten better at knowingwhat I'm interested in, the
content I'm interested in, thethings I'm interested in

(48:06):
learning.
So sometimes I do click todownload something.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
It's rare, it's rare I don't, I don't think that's,
that should be the purpose.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
I think that's just about building an impression
about your brand exactly, yeah,it's about awareness, um yeah,
like, the folks at coca-cola arenot fools, right, they're
pretty bright people and theyknow that even though this is
something you drink all the time, you have to keep the brand in
front of your face.
So they always put everythingin terms of that coke bottle,
even on the can.
Right, they put a coke bottleand they put it everywhere,

(48:36):
right, I?
I one time I was in machupicchu, like we were on a
five-day hike.
There was no humans around anda woman walked up to us with on
her head a bunch of cold cokesand sold it to us.
Right, I was like, oh my god,coke even gets here.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
I mean, this is the most incredible marketing
distribution company in theworld yeah so anything else that
popped in your head of, like aone of your, maybe a recent
guest oh, we had a recent, uh,we had a recent guest that you
know they do about 600 milliondollars in revenue.
They um are in the health carespace, uh, health carousel and

(49:16):
uh, they basically helphospitals all over the us.
Staff, uh, staff them with withnurses, short-term nurses,
long-term nurses yeah, um, andtalk, talk a lot about that and
the process and just building Alot of it is just like building
culture, right, and like, how doyou market to nurses?

Speaker 1 (49:40):
So you mean it's like recruitment, marketing of
professionals?
Yeah, that's a huge problem, bythe way, for we have a number
of these health organizations,multi-location health, and that
is an important side of theirbusiness, what you're talking
about.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
And nurse shortages are all over right now.
All over, and so how do you getthese temp nurses to be able to
come in and work for a fewhours on call?
That's a very difficult taskright now.
How do you target these nurses?

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Was there some technique that they used that
really stuck in your head?

Speaker 2 (50:20):
They would host these , they would engage with the
nurses, they would host thesebig nurse kind of parties where
they would get their nurses to.
They realized that the best wayto uh meet nurses is that
nurses know other nurses, and sothey would host these parties
and you would just bring anothernurse friend and and they would

(50:40):
.
They would do these quarterlyand they would run these all
around all across north america.
They found that that was theeasiest way because, like if you
think about it?

Speaker 1 (50:48):
was it a social mixer or continuing ed, continuing ed
?

Speaker 2 (50:51):
kind of thing, um, yeah, just, uh, just mixers, and
they just keep it fun and andthey try to keep keep those non
non-educational right and justmore about fun, because they
realize that, uh, I mean,there's there's some portions of
continue ed as well, so you canlike learn things, but then
there's also like these funmixers and they, and they really

(51:11):
focus on that element becausethey they knew that that was
what would draw the nurses outand it's like, um, that's, it
was just interesting to hearyeah, I.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
I think this gets to our point about um, about the
notion of creating greatexperiences for people.
So it like it.
That is marketing is creatinggreat experiences for your
target market and once they havethat a great experience, they
associate that experience withyou and when the time comes to
buy, they'll think about yourcompany, right that's the most

(51:41):
important.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
I mean I I had a talk to another um company and they
they um, not this currentcompany, but worked for a
different company that soldearbuds, and we think about
earbuds.
Where do you use these earbuds?
They have a variety ofdifferent earbuds for different

(52:01):
purposes for sleep, for whenyou're on the plane, for
different purposes, but the onethat really put them on the map
was they created one earbud formusic experiences oh, wow and so
they became the main sponsor ofultra music festival in in
belgium.
Um, and I think a lot of peoplemight already know this brand,

(52:23):
um, uh now, but before they didthis campaign, they were like
struggling with ad spend andeverything.
But this put them on the mapbecause they got in front of
200,000 people, or a hundredthousand people, yeah, and
everyone.
They just pass a lot of thesefor free, just free free, free
here.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
You got one, you get one, you get one.
Give it to the top influencersin that field and have them use
it.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Everybody started posting about.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
It just had a big event.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Yeah yeah, it just became free, influential
marketing yeah so shout out toloop now.
Now they're all over korea,japan, they're all over now.
But it was just like figuringout what was going to be there.
We're going to be your ultrafans, people that are just going
to be your biggest fans.
And that, even though, eventhough they targeted the music

(53:13):
vertical that grew into everyother, they were thinking would
sleep be our best?
Uh, product line?
Would it be?
Would it be music, would it bewhatever?
And then they figured out thatone vertical that was going to
be your best and I think that iswhat we should all try to
figure out is what's our numberone channel?

Speaker 1 (53:30):
number one, influencer number one.
Yeah, I mean, I think your,your point is like people who
are the best influencers ormarket of of sound love, music,
right, and they are.
They are audiophiles.
It's hard to get someone that'sgoing to influence you about
sleep, you know right.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
But but you'll get bored.
I think you might fall.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Yeah, I sleep really well, but it's hard to get
really motivated and maybeyou're like a sleep doctor or
sleep something.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
But even then when was the last time we followed a
sleep doctor?
I mean, unless you havehorrible sleep and if you have
horrible sleep, you probablywant to listen to a sleep apnea,
or like an actual specialistnot like music.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Music is like community sharing um, it's
awesome.
So that that's brilliant.
That's brilliant.
Knowing your market and gettingto that um, okay, where do you?
I love these examples.
Where do you see the future ofpodcasting in terms of building
community and fostering deeperconnections?
Are there any trends ortechnologies you think will play

(54:33):
a significant role?

Speaker 2 (54:35):
I think it's so many people already have their own
podcasts.
I think it's not going tochange With AI technology.
Now anyone can edit theirpodcast really quickly, really
cheap as well.
We definitely leverage a lot ofthat on our show.
Equipment is getting better.

(54:55):
I have this whole setup.
This is my traveling setup.
I bought this whole set forunder $1,000.
It's never been cheaper.
It's never been easier to starta podcast.
I think a lot of people willhave it, whether they make it
past 20 or 30 episodes.
Like you said, that's up fordebate.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
That's discipline, right.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
That's just discipline.
That is hard.
That's always existed, whetherit was blogs from the 90s to
websites, to all the channelshave evolved and now podcast is
a big thing.
On the flip side, because thereare so many podcasts, all the
channels have evolved and nowit's podcast is the big thing.
But, uh, but on the flip side,because there are so many
podcasts, it hasn't been, neverhas been easier to stand out.

(55:39):
That's right.
If you're if you're a very goodpodcast host which you are and
you have great guests on yourshow um, it's inevitable after X
number of episodes that it willdo well and um.
Um, it's inevitable after xnumber of episodes that it will
do well and um.
And maybe it is just to buildbrand, like the way I do it.
Or maybe it blows off and thenyou become you know, you start
getting sponsorships and youstart getting all that.

(56:00):
But that should never be thethe goal.
I personally feel that apodcast should just be for the
connections, just like howeveryone you know in the b2c
world everyone uses instagram astheir daily journal and to
share about their life.
The podcast should be in the b2b.
Uh uh, you know b2b marketersarsenal for sure definitely.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
I think it's definitely a way to to keep
going and keep, keep, keeppresenting yourself in terms of
new content and challengingcontent.
I don't know about you, but ithelps me just learn things.
I mean I can read an articlekeep presenting yourself in
terms of new content andchallenging content.
I don't know about you, but ithelps me just learn things.
I mean I can read an article.
I always remember myconversation with someone and
it'll just pop in my head.
I had this great conversationand something they said popped

(56:43):
up Right and you know, like youtalk about experience.
John Miller talks aboutexperience.
He's the founder of, one of theco-founders of Marketo and he
was the co-founder of Engagio.
So he's like, yeah, MQLs,that's going to be the death of
marketers.
We need to focus on how tobuild a great market and great

(57:05):
experiences.
So it sticks in your head.
So it's a great way to learntoo and grow, and I get awesome
feedback from people.
I'm sure you do as well.
Nothing makes me happier thanwhen someone writes to me about
what we're up to or just callsme Okay, what's your personal
moonshot?

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Like this year, next three years or.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
It could be a life moonshot.
It could be a life moonshot.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
I really am passionate about just building a
strong community and if I canfigure out a way to turn that
into a living and not just havethat be secondary, it would be
awesome.
Just big on community that haskind of been my life since 2017.

(57:52):
Being able to turn it intosomething like an actual full-on
business would be really,really cool.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
So if I asked you, the question if money was no
object, would that be your job?

Speaker 2 (58:05):
That would be it.
Yeah, unfortunately, as youknow, with community, like a
podcast, everyone has acommunity and so it's very hard
to monetize the community andit's not a game that I want to
play in.
So it's something.
Nowadays, I focus 80% of mytime on building Clifford, my
startup, probably 10% of my timeon the podcast, and then the

(58:29):
remaining 10% on communitybuilding.
That's kind of like my splitnowadays.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
All right, how about this?
Tell me the second thing youlove.
You already told me the firstthing.
What's the second thing youlove?

Speaker 2 (58:40):
This podcasting, podcasting, having these
conversations yeah, I lovehaving these conversations.
I also don't similar tocommunity building.
I don't make a lot of money atall, just enough to kind of pay
the bills, pay the people thatwork on the podcast, and for me
that's enough and just havingthese conversations.
You and I would have never methad it not been through the

(59:02):
podcasting.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
That's right Through one of my folks, Taryn Talley.
She heard about you.
Loved your podcast, Taryn'samazing.
She heard about you loved yourpodcast went to your went to
your event, worked with you onyour live one that you had in
the bay area and, um, I was ableto uh, I listened to a couple
of your you know a couple reallyawesome guests and bring them

(59:24):
onto the show, so I reallyappreciate that.
I've learned a lot from you andI love listening to your
podcast, so I really appreciatehaving you on.
I mean it's been amazing.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Yeah, I know, appreciate it, Appreciate you
having me on.
Thank you, thank you for thisand hopefully your guests got
some, some tidbits, some nuggetshere and there.
Well, I think, and.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
I learned a lot just talking to you.
I mean, you saved me fromgetting onto TikTok and spending
a lot of time there.
So I appreciate that, because Iget a lot of folks saying, hey,
jump onto TikTok and do yourhot take and I'm like I don't
know if I'm the hot take kind ofguy.
Yeah, YouTube.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
YouTube is the way I like your point about YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
So I will definitely.
We did more LinkedIn andchannels and we do do YouTube,
and so now, based on your advice, channels and we do do YouTube.
And so now, um, based on youradvice, I want to do more
YouTube.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
So, we're doing YouTube shorts now, so I heard
you also do some comedy.
Oh yeah, we do like me, we dolike memes, yeah.
So so we, yeah, we do a lot ofmeme.
Uh, I mean it's meme cultureright now Everybody.
I mean it's meme culture rightnow Everybody.
It's into memes.
Just go with the culture rightnow it's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
It's awesome that you can see it and sense it and
then pick up on it and drive it,so it's really cool.
So, simon, just a thrill tohave you here.
Thank you for doing this withme, especially from South Korea,
and enjoy your travels.
Hope to see you in the Bay Area.
Look forward to meeting you inperson and let's do more shows
together.

(01:00:54):
This will be fun.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Let's make this a regular.
I will.
We'll get you on my show.
Let's, let's, let's just visiteach other's show back and forth
.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Let's do it.
I'm in.
I'm in.
Great to have you on, simon.
Thank you so much.
Great to have you on, simon.
Thank you so much.

(01:01:24):
You as well.
Thank you, the founders ofSubstantial Companies on his
podcast that it's great to meetwith someone that's met and
talked to all these people andused his platform as a way to
learn and build community andgrow and scale, and he's taught
me a few things.
One thing that we didn't talkabout that he mentioned was that

(01:01:46):
when he launches an episode, heactually sends a calendar
invite.
When he launches an episode, heactually sends a calendar
invite so that he and his guestor guests can all start sharing
at the same time.

(01:02:06):
Now what makes folks like SimonTick, as he mentioned, it's
something he loves to do, he'spassionate about doing, and it's
less about money and more aboutgreat connections, but I can
tell you it'll pay off for him.
Great guy and just a lot tolearn from him.
Anyone that can do 100 ofanything is someone you have to

(01:02:27):
respect, especially the type ofgrowth he's experienced over
time and just the pureperseverance of it.
So I love having him on.
If there's one thing I couldimpart from what I learned today
, it's just that power ofcommitment and passion put
together.

(01:02:48):
And what I liked about Simon inthat is that he just said that
he was there to learn.
It wasn't, he says, personalbrand, but it was really about
his just passion about learning,about marketing, and really for
him it was about community.
That's marketing to him and,frankly, that's what it should

(01:03:09):
be.
I think there's a lot to learnfrom him and I take that to
heart because it's somethingthat I care about all the time.
It relates, it feels reallyright to me.
So thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod, pleasetake a moment to rate it and
comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere
podcasts can be found.
The show is produced by AnandShah and Sandeep Parikh,

(01:03:33):
production assistant by TarynTalley and edited by Sean Maher
and Aidan McGarvey.
I'm your host, rajiv Parikh,from Position Squared.
We are a leading AI-centricgrowth marketing company based
in Silicon Valley.
Come visit us at position2.com.
This has been an effing funnyproduction production and we'll

(01:03:54):
catch you next time.
And remember, be ever curious.

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How Podcasting Leads to Growth/Simon Chou - Personal Branding, Community, Hot Sauce ~ Spark of Ages Ep 32

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How Podcasting Leads to Growth/Simon Chou - Personal Branding, Community, Hot Sauce ~ Spark of Ages Ep 32